New York is the largest city in the United States, so it should not be surprising that there’s plenty of religious organizations that do all manner of charitable work for the downtrodden. Much of this goes unnoticed (charitable organizations often don’t have advertising put in their budgets). However the folks over at “A Journey Through NYC Religions” have included an online photobook of the Bowery Mission (“mission” is one word used by Christians to describe some of their charitable work and organizations).

I’m always keeping an eye out for material related to the Asian American religious experience and I was pleased to see that page 12 includes a short description of the charitable work among some Chinese immigrants back in 1909 (it’s a little blurry but the date is at the top; minor aside: my wife informs me that her great-grandfather was in this part of the country around the time that this story was reported-amazing what things I learn from editing a blog post!). When I saw the headline “Should Our Women Teach Chinese?” I thought at first, “why is teaching Mandarin and Cantonese a problem during this time?” And “why would white Christian women be interested in teaching Chinese at this time anyway?” Ah silly 21st century assumptions. This is about teaching English to Chinese immigrants! This makes sense also since the Bowery shares a border with Chinatown, NYC.

If I did the math correctly, this story appears about 27 years after [Read more...]