George Leslie Mackay was born near Ontario, Canada, the youngest of six children to Scottish immigrants. Converted at the young age of ten, George began theological training initially in Toronto, then Princeton, then in Edinburgh, Scotland.
With a heart beating desperately for missions, George advocated for and in 1871 became the first Evangelical Presbyterian missionary sent from Canada. Arriving in Tamsui, Formosa (Taiwan) in 1872, George sought to immerse himself in the culture – desiring a robust knowledge of the culture. He shunned contact with anyone speaking English, practicing his language skills with anyone who would listen to him.
George used his enthusiasm for speaking with people, coupled with a basic medical and dental knowledge, to minister and to endear himself to the native population. Within five months, he felt comfortable enough to preach his first sermon.
The Formosans called him “the blackbearded barbarian due to his long black beard. This “barbarian” prayed for his first convert and specifically asked God for an energetic young man. God answered his prayer in the first months and gave him A-hoa. Twenty-five years later, A-hoa led sixty churches.
Bucking tradition in both cultures at the time, George married a Chinese slave-woman named Tiu Chhang Mia in 1877. This union produced two daughters and a son. In a letter he wrote, “as I from my heart believe that Chinese and Canadians are exactly the same in the presence of our Lord, I act accordingly.”
George’s marriage to a local, his adoption of the local culture coupled with his fierce devotion to the Gospel first and secondly to the people of Formosa endeared him greatly to the people he ministered to. In his extensive diaries, he records numerous instances of entire communities giving up their individual idols – always spontaneous and discreet individual decisions. The papers of the idolatry he burned. The physical idols themselves he collected in one place, receiving them from the people. In later years, his detailed diaries as well as his extensive collection of idols were a treasure mine for archaeologists to study, even to this day, and have been divided up into a number of museums.
George Leslie Mackay’s thirty years of ministry in Formosa led to the establishment of a major hospital which still bears his name, a university, a girls’ school, and the establishment of over sixty churches – most of which are still in operation today. He developed a westernized alphabet to aid in the education of the lower classes in northern Formosa – an alphabet still in use today. To this day, many people in the lower class add George’s Chinese surname “Kai” to their own.
George died in 1901 of throat cancer and the “black-headed barbarian” was buried near his church in Tamsui, where a marker shows his resting place. Taiwanese people today remember him fondly, even to the point that Taiwan’s first-ever grand opera was entitled Mackay: The Black-Bearded Bible Man. It took over five years to produce and over a hundred singers and stage crew from around the world were involved.
Christian History e-mail: 14 June 2021
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Leslie_Mackay
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2001/05/27/0000087547
https://presbyterianarchives.ca/150-years-of-mackay/
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