Imperial to International: A History of St John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong

Introduction

Up to this point, the Cathedral Church of St John the Evangelist has been served in print by a hardback handbook, The Story of St John’s Cathedral, published by FormAsia and briskly written by journalist Stephen Vines, and by a softback, St John’s Cathedral Hong Kong: A Short History and Guide, by Doreen King. Vines writes a concise account of the historical milestones, and King’s particular contribution is an informed and expert summary of the fabric and furnishings upon which this book has gratefully drawn. Imperial to International moves on from both of them. Any great and antique place of Christian worship in Asia which has survived and continues to breathe its faith is a phenomenon which deserves to be recorded. Anglican cathedrals in Asia are particularly rare phenomena which merit close attention. St John’s in Hong Kong commands the particular attention which this book gives it, not just for its near pristine Victorian Gothic form set in a twenty-first-century Chinese city but for its testimony to the survival of organised Christian worship in Hong Kong from an era which we can barely recognise into an era we hardly dare make prediction for. This book looks not only at its architecture but at the development of its status, its liturgy, its ministry and charity, its social impact and, above all, the souls who populated it through its first one hundred and fifty years. In September 2009, the Most Reverend Dr. Paul Kwong,Archbishop of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui, whose seat St John’s is, and then Dean the Very Reverend Andrew Chan asked me to write a thoroughgoing story of the church. Initially the dean conjured with the idea of an ‘extended King’. The archbishop took it further and into hardback. He saw a spiritual and political history as well as one of structure and contents. Introduction 2 Imperial to International Archbishop Kwong added that he would like it to be ‘readable’ too. He was not looking for a work of microscopic academic propriety which set off ruthlessly along donnish tangents and performed feats of bar-bending to bring them back to the plot. He wanted people to put the book down and look forward to picking it up again. I have regarded this as one of the most important charges of my commission. The commission was a generous one. It allowed the writer his own interpretation of events, which steers away from excessive idealism or hagiography towards a more realistic account. A consequence is that my views expressed are not necessarily those of the cathedral or of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui. This book does not pretend to be an utterly complete history. It is a chronological medley of the important strains that ran through the life of St John’s. It is not split into topic areas, which would have reduced it to a collection of essays and a great deal of repetition. It is a story during which, for certain topics, the narrative slows a bit, harks back and looks forward before resuming its pace. It remains, above all, a narrative. As a story, there are parts which are missing. Records have vanished or were never properly kept in the first place. In a Christian congregation in which there was familiarity and trust, matters more to do with mission and spirit and less with law and cash were handled by word of mouth or unofficial jottings. The Japanese Occupation accounts for some of the shortfall and for the fact that, after the economic devastations of their stay in Hong Kong, paper of any sort became attractive as cooking fuel. Over a century and a half, there will have been remarkable instances of enterprise, enmity and charity of which we will know nothing. There are also tantalising and quite unpredictable clues to structure and behaviour at the cathedral that can only be found in references in other subject areas. An aside remark in Church Missionary Society (CMS) correspondence or between church schoolteachers or government servants or Freemasons can throw a thin but fascinating beam on something that may have been going on in St John’s. The history of the cathedral is a subject about which there will always be something new to be found. I am aware, for example, that the ‘disestablishment ’ of the bishopric from 1874 and the Second World War and its immediate aftermath are periods on which more detail may exist but distantly and in...