In the aftermath of the First Opium War and the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), the coastal city of Fuzhou was declared a treaty port, opening it to foreign presence and allowing missionaries to proselytise and construct churches. Western missionaries who arrived soon thereafter were driven by notions of an inseparable unity between Christian faith and an architectural ideal intrinsically linked to it. Adverse conditions in the mission field would soon necessitate occasional and often permanent departures from the pursuit of ideal-typical churches in favour of more pragmatic, economically viable, or strategically motivated alternatives.

Drawing on case studies taken from the set of 30 structures built between 1848 and 1949 by the four mission organisations active in Fuzhou, this presentation will explore the diverse types of ‘place of worship’ the missionaries actually established in the city, the extent to which they actually conformed to the architectural ideals they brought with them, and the degree to which they were shaped by intrinsic and contextual challenges navigated by the mission builders.