History of the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, San Francisco
Founded a century and a half ago, the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown is the oldest Asian American Christian congregation in North America. Designated a "foreign mission" by the Presbyterian denomination, the church opened its doors on November 6, 1853 with four members under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. William Speer. It was not until 1925 that jurisdiction of the church was transferred from the Board of Foreign Missions to the Board of National Missions. After changing its name from the Presbyterian Chinese Mission Church, the congregation continued to be known as the Chinese Presbyterian Church until 1958, when the current name emphasizing the church's recognition of its social context and its commitment to the San Francisco Chinatown community was adopted by its members.
The Presbyterian Church in Chinatown, in partnership with the PANA Institute (Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion) at the Pacific School of Religion and the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, is engaged in a Rockefeller-Foundation-funded project to archive primary records from its one hundred fifty-five years of history. Known as the Historical Documentation Project, this endeavor seeks to assemble a publicly accessible collection of documents available for research purposes that attests to the witness of PCC as the first Asian church in North America.
An exhibit of selected photographs with accompanying text in English and Chinese is on display at the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown.
For more information on the exhibit or on the Historical Documentation Project, please contact the Project Director, Christopher Chua, at (510) 849-8210 or cchua@psr.edu.
The link below will take you to an on-line display of the panels as well as the text accompanying the panels.
PANA - Preserving the History of North America's First Asian American Church
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