Not a Pagan Temple (1922)

When Anna Bøg first arrived in Siuyen in 1920, the Danish Missionary Society had been active in Siuyen for over twenty years. There was a Chinese congregation but only a street chapel -- no church building.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century “the missions had got on with the building of small temporary chapels and rented premises. . . . However, around 1915 the conditions in Manchuria were so tolerable for missionary work that the mission had begun building proper churches, hospitals, and schools. Around 1920 this work was in full activity.” (1)

In 1921, a year after Anna Bøg arrived, the congregation in Siuyen began efforts to erect a church. In large part, the Chinese congregation, not the Danish Missionary Society, would pay for the construction: According to Jensen and Pedersen, “Friends in Denmark paid for the first church built in Dalian in 1914. But for the [subsequent] churches it was agreed that the congregation would raise nine tenths while D.M.S. only contributed one tenth of the costs. After completion the church belonged to the local congregation.” (2)

In his annual report for 1921, Rev. Olesen wrote in January, 1922 that the congregation hoped to begin the construction of a church in Siuyen in the spring. About $6,000 had been raised for the project and several of the Chinese Christians had made rather large contributions. Prices for building supplies had risen, however, and by the end of Chinese New Year they would have spent $4,000 on timber, boulders, bricks, tiles, and lime. They would still need glass, paint, fittings, and furniture, not to speak of the cost of labor. (3)

What Rev. Olesen did not mention was that a couple of months earlier there had been a bit of a crisis regarding the plans for the church. A Danish architect, Carl Schiøtz had been approached to design the church for Siuyen. Schiøtz, however, had written to Rev. Olesen suggesting that another Danish architect, Johannes Prip-Møller, take on the job. The Circle of Architects in Copenhagen had raised money to support Prip-Møller in China for three years until he could establish himself as an architect. Prip-Møller had recently arrived and was still in language school in Beijing. Nevertheless, he already had definite ideas about harmonizing Chinese and Western architecture.

According to Prip-Møller’s biographer, Tobias Faber, the following occurred regarding the church in Siuyen:

“In November 1921 [Prip-Møller] made a beautiful rough design for a quite simple church with a sturdy, slightly curved tile roof and a small belfry or bell frame next to the nave. In December, 1921, immediately after he had sent the rough design, he started completing the principal designs. Then he received a discouraging letter from Olesen, who regretted that the local church committee had turned down his proposal because they thought the building resembled a ‘pagan temple!’. They wanted ‘a Danish village church with a tower and corbiestep gables’ in the town. Many such churches were built in the area at that time. Subsequently, another master builder designed and built such a ‘Danish village church’ in Siuyen. The church . . . was finished in 1922.” (4)

A publication of D.M.S. described the 1922 church as follows:

“In the southwestern part of the city where the roads pass through the old Western Gate to the hospital, you find the church, standing alongside the parsonage. The church is built of big cut granite ashlars, and above that gray bricks with strongly accented frames for the windows. The tower had frames with biblical motifs. The church could seat 250 persons. Rev. Christiansen inaugurated the church on December 3, 1922, and Rev. Olesen headed the construction.” (5)

Referenced sources:
(1) Faber, Tobias; Johannes Prip-Møller: A Danish Architect in China (Hong Kong, 1994), p. 16.
(2) Jensen and Pedersen, “China -- A Fact-finding visit - April 2002, p. 3.
(3) Olesen, Rev. Ole; “Missionaer Olesens Beretning”, Det Danske Missionsselskabs Arsberetning for 1921, p. 144.
(4) Faber, op. cit., p. 17-18. (The actual drawings for the church are found on pp. 8- 9.)
(5) D.M.S., Guds Kirke Bygges (Copenhagen, 1941), pp. 52-53.

Image:
Photograph of the church in Siuyen from Guds Kirke Bygges, which identifies the picture as, "The church before the fire". The fire was in December, 1935. There do not appear to be any corbie-step gables, although Faber implies there were. We will be writing more about the fire and the subsequent reconstruction of the church in a future excerpt.