ABSTRACT
The case for women missionaries was much more quickly heard and accepted by those outside the mainline societies. It came not in the main from the heart of the establishment but from the revivalist and holiness periphery which was fighting a successful battle for greater recognition and influence. Hudson Taylor , the famous founder of the China Inland Mission, was part of this circle. Taylor’s radical missionary methods were not popular in the European community in China. It was, however, the presence of single unattached young women which focused the opposition by providing it with easy to use ammunition. The argument was the more compelling to Victorian philanthropic mores as the women and children had been in moral, as well as physical, danger. The holiness conference, which had begun in Keswick in 1875, was an altogether more middle-class and Anglican affair. The pressure to change did not only come from holiness, revivalist sources.
