The Mission to China

The Friends Foreign Mission Association had been formed in 1867 amid some controversy, since not all Friends accepted the evangelical view on spreading the Gospel to non-Christian countries. The FFMA was therefore not fully integrated into the Society until much later. In the early 1880s some evangelical Friends were concerned that there was no Friends Mission to China, although other Christian denominations were already there. The China Committee of the FFMA was set up in 1883.

From a minute of the first meeting of the FFMA's newly appointed China Committee on December 5th 1883, recording the training of Robert J. Davidson as a missionary

One Quaker family in Northern Ireland had particular reason to feel a concern for China. In 1883 when Robert Davidson, not yet twenty years old, offered his services to the FFMA for work in China, he was carrying out the wishes of his father Adam Davidson of Hillsborough.

The Story of Adam Davidson of Hillsborough