Vantage - Columbia Theological Seminary

Historic Change for the Taiwan Aboriginals

How It Changed My Life

by Robert L. Montgomery ’53

When my wife, Polly, and I arrived in Taiwan in 1956, we were assigned to the East Coast because of the historic movement among the aboriginal people that had brought thousands to Christ and into the Taiwan Presbyterian Church.

Of the ten language groups (five large and five small), my work was primarily with the Amis group. They had approximately 100 villages, and they had built a church for every village. There was not a single aboriginal ordained minister among them. It was wonderful to work among people who were so eager to hear what God had done for the world in Christ.

The Bible, hymns, and educational materials were made available in the aboriginal languages and a training school for ministers, Yu-Shan Theological Institute, was established by the Presbyterian Church. My major work was to hold conferences for church leaders, develop educational materials, teach at Yu- Shan, and take communion to small churches without ministers. Encouraged by the Taiwan Church, each aboriginal group began to organize their own presbytery and by 1963 the Amis had accomplished this. In 1965, the Centennial Celebration of the Taiwan Presbyterian Church took place, remembering that in 1865 Presbyterian missionaries from England had arrived in southern Taiwan. Three years later, Canadian Presbyterian missionaries arrived in the north. There were special services around the Island, but on the East Coast, there was a great celebration in the large Fataan (Guang Fu) Amis Church. Numerous foreign visitors attended, and the Amis, in addition to their worship, did their celebratory dancing.

One of my great pleasures in the Amis church was seeing how they took to the Presbyterian system and to see church elders, sometimes barefoot, speaking up at meetings. So much for the “stuffed shirt” image that Presbyterians have acquired in

America

! Tribal people and peasant farmers can be good Presbyterians.

All this made me wonder why these people were so responsive to the Christian message when this was not the rule in much of Asia. I had been a history major in college and had further training in the humanities in seminary, but lacked any training in the social sciences to help me analyze what was happening. As a result, I went back to graduate school at Emory University and obtained a Ph.D. in social scientific studies of religion. Subsequently, my life followed a somewhat winding path in various kinds of rewarding work, but after retirement I returned to my original question about the aboriginal people. Four books have been the result.

Why anyone or any group comes to Christ is based on the work of God’s Spirit, but it is clear that God works in and through human beings and circumstances to prepare people to receive the Good News. If this is the case, then we can learn something from those who study the human side of religion.

I am thankful to have been able to observe the historic movement to Christ among the Taiwan aboriginals. To know them was highly inspiring, and they also led me down a road of intellectual exploration that has been very rewarding.