Bishop Taylor to lead delegation to Diocese of Taiwan anniversary celebration

[The Episcopal News] Bishop John Harvey Taylor will lead a Los Angeles delegation to join the 70th anniversary celebration of the Episcopal Diocese of Taiwan, with whom a companion relationship was established at the 128th annual diocesan convention in November 2023.

The trip, which will begin Sept. 21 and conclude Oct. 1, marks the beginning of an exchange that will include an August 2025 visit from Taiwan Bishop Lennon Yuan-Jung Chang and is expected to include “theological education exchanges, both of seminarians, recently ordained clergy and young people, and evangelism and mission,” Taylor told Diocesan Council members at their September 12 online meeting.

In addition to Taylor, the L.A. delegation will include: the Rev. Thomas Ni; the Rev. Katherine Feng and the Rev. Fennie Chang. The Rt. Rev. Lennon Yuan-Jung Chang (not related), who was consecrated sixth Bishop of Taiwan in 2020, will preside over a Sept. 28 anniversary ceremony, themed “Sharing the Good News,” at St. John’s University in Taipei.

“Lennon Chang is a Christian evangelist to his core,” Taylor said. “He wants to come and do some mission work in the broader Chinese diaspora community in 2025 and is inviting us to have some mission type of conversations in Taiwan.”

Impetus for the visit also includes support in the wake of “the growing tension across the Taiwan Strait,” Taylor said. “We feel a sense of solidarity with our siblings in the Diocese of Taiwan, as well as members of the Chinese diaspora, not only attending our churches, but living in our neighborhoods in the Diocese of L.A., who could be prone to race-based scapegoating in the event of heightened tensions with mainland China.”

The Diocese of Taiwan consists of about 18 churches with as many clergy and is actively engaged in church planting, and envisions becoming its own province, according to Catherine Lee of the Church of England Mission Society, who helped organize the delegation’s itinerary.

“The Taiwan Episcopal Church is small but very active,” Lee said in a statement on the Mission Society’s website. “My role is to encourage the mission of the church as it tries to witness in a wealthy but diplomatically isolated nation. I also support the international liaison ministry of the Diocese of Taiwan as the only diocese in Asia that is an overseas member of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.”

The delegation also will visit and preach in local churches, meet with congregants, and observe ministries for seniors and kindergarteners, afterschool, and daycare programs in Linkou, Chungli, Taichung, and Hsinchu, before returning to Taipei where they’ll wrap up the trip with a visit to Fennie Chang’s family, in Keelung, near Taipei.

For Chang, vicar of St. Thomas Church in Hacienda Heights, a multilingual congregation, entering a companion relationship with the Diocese of Taiwan and joining the anniversary celebration feels like “a dream come true.”

“My father passed away in March; Bishop Taylor knew about it, and he knows that I’m serving the church here in L.A. so most of the time so I really cannot spend much time with my mom. He mentioned that he really hoped the opportunity to meet my mom would come up when we’re in Taiwan.”

Chang’s mother, Li-Cheng Huang, is 85 “and still serves in her church; she plays the organ there once a season,” she said.

The trip, as well as the companion relationship, is hugely significant, Chang added. “Taiwan has been under pressure from China. China would like to take Taiwan back … but we would like to keep the democratic system in Taiwan, to have freedom, just like the American people, and that’s why the U.S. government has been supporting Taiwan,” she said.

“It is such a tiny island, but they never give up. So Bishop Taylor feels it is very important to show the support of our diocese to the Diocese of Taiwan. This is so important.”

The Taiwan diocese was established in 1954, after Chinese Episcopalians left mainland China in the wake of the 1949 Cultural Revolution, but the island country’s Anglicanism dates to 1897 when the first Japanese itinerant priest arrived.

By 1945, under colonialism, there were four churches with thousands of mostly Japanese members, Lee said, but those Anglican churches withdrew after World War II and their buildings were distributed to other denominations, she said.

Nine years later, the diocese made a fresh start with new buildings and worship spaces, she said. For a time, it was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Hawaii, and other bishops were assigned from Hong Kong and elsewhere. In 1961 the Episcopal Church of Japan officially transferred jurisdiction of the Taiwanese Episcopal Church to the United States-based Episcopal Church.

About 700 people are expected to attend the anniversary festivities, which will include an exhibition of historical church photos, a concert, and Taiko drummers.

“Bishop Chang said he didn’t want to have just a one-day event,” Fennie Chang recalled “We also want to share the good news of Jesus all year long.”

The people of the Diocese of Los Angeles stand with the people of the Diocese of Taiwan, Taylor said. “We stand in Christ, and we stand in mutual friendship. No matter what happens beyond our control in the world at large, we’re forming bonds that will last forever.”

Through an interpreter, Bishop Chang said he is anticipating a reciprocal visit, and the potential for a seminarian exchange program as early as 2026. Known for his “evangelical missionary fire,” Chang might even consider leading “a good old-fashioned revival” during next year’s visit, Taylor said, and reaching out, not just to Episcopalians but to all Christians who are of Chinese descent.