Real Lives of Real Missionaries:
Timothy Richard (1845-1919)

On April 30, 2020, Prof. Andrew Kaiser shared his reflections on the life of Timothy Richard. Richard was a unique and inspired Baptist missionary who went to China from Wales in the late nineteenth century. Sometimes hailed as the Protestant Matteo Ricci, he came to China as a young man and immersed himself in its social life, its hopes and its struggles.
A video of Prof. Kaiser's lecture and additional resources on the life of Timothy Richard are provided below.
Organized by ChinaSource
Co-sponsored by the US-China Catholic Association (USCCA)
and the China Academic Consortium (CAC).


About Timothy Richard
As a young man, Timothy Richard set out from his native rural Wales to bring the Gospel to a distant land. He joined the English Baptist Missionary Society and arrived in China in 1870.
Over the next 45 years, Richards fell in love with his new land and new people. While shared the Gospel that had changed his own life, he touched and inspired many others. One of his early responsibilities was to organize relief during the devastating North China Famine (1876–1878). He later directed the Christian Literature Society for China, which introduced some of China’s best and brightest scholars to perspectives that aided China’s development as it engaged with modernity. During the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, Richards got local missionary societies to agree to set aside exorbitant compensation claims and instead accept funding from local governments to establish the Imperial University of Shanxi, one of the first modern universities in China.
A young idealist who persevered into old age, Richard changed others and was changed in turn. Yet the core commitment of his life never wavered: The Gospel of Jesus Christ.
What can we learn today from this missionary and friend of China - “one of the greatest missionaries whom any branch of the Church, whether Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, or Protestant, has sent to China” (Kenneth Scott Latourette, noted scholar of Christianity in China at Yale University).
About Andrew Kaiser
Our speaker, Andrew Kaiser, is author of Encountering China: The Evolution of Timothy Richard's Missionary Thought (1870 – 1891) (Pickwick Publications, 2019). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. his recent publications also include The Rushing on of the Purposes of God: Christian Missionaries in Shanxi since 1876 (Pickwick Publications, 2016). Kaiser is a frequently requested international public speaker. He and his family have been living in Shanxi province since 1997, serving the community through professional work and public benefits.

Books on Timothy Richard
Books by Timothy Richard