Shanghai Community Church
The Community Church has been on this spot on Hengshan Road since 1925, a gathering place for song and prayer for nearly a century. It’s been closed for most of the last three (Covid) years, but now, in the midst of renovation, a door was open, the workers were looking the other way, so in we went!
The Community Church, 1928 (Virtual Shanghai), and March 2023
The Community Church started out, in 1917, as the American Song Service, held at the Palace Hotel. By 1920, they had moved to a larger rented space on Rue Doumer (Donghu Lu), but that was quickly outgrown, and funds were raised to build a permanent non-denominational Protestant church, hence the name Community Church. A plot of land on Avenue Pétain (Hengshan Lu) was purchased in 1923 from the Shanghai American School (SAS) which had just opened their new campus across the street on what had been rural farmland, dotted with graveyard hillocks.
The Community Church after renovation (top) and before (below.
Although squarely within the French Concession–Avenue Pétain was named for World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain, the “Lion of Verdun” and later head of the Vichy regime’s Nazi collaborationist government–the presence of the school quickly made it an American enclave, with newly built apartments marketing to SAS families by naming their nearby buildings the Washington, the Lincoln, and the Pershing.
Designed by the Mission Architects Bureau in a modern Gothic style, the church opened on March 7, 1925 at a cost of $70,000. It was “another landmark for the American community,” according to the China Weekly Review. Indeed, from the beginning, as the congregation had been predominantly American (plus a few Chinese who had studied in the U.S.), the church was also referred to as the American Community Church, or simply the American church. (In Chinese: Xiehe Libaitang 協和禮拜堂, the Union Church.)
Community Church details, including bottom right: the Keys of St. Peter in the ironwork
The church was closely linked to the Shanghai American School: boarders were required to attend Sunday services, and many day students and their families did as well. Several times in its history when the school had to close (2), the Community Church sheltered a “bootleg SAS”, staffed by SAS teachers, so that students could continue their educations uninterrupted.
Like all churches in Shanghai, the Community Church ceased operations for the duration of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when it became a warehouse and rehearsal space for revolutionary operas. The church reopened in 1981 with the name it had acquired during the Japanese Occupation: the International Community Church (上海國際禮拜堂 Shanghai Guoji Libeitang), a showpiece where foreign dignitaries like the Archbishop of Canterbury and Jimmy Carter attended services. Until it was shuttered by Covid, the Community Church held services in English and Chinese, the latter so popular that it spilled out into the garden, with speakers set up outside so people could hear the service inside.
Shanghai Community Church / 53 Hengshan Road
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