Jonathan Goforth

Who was Jonathan Goforth?

Jonathan Goforth was the first Canadian Presbyterian missionary to China with the Canadian Presbyterian Mission, with his wife, Rosalind Goforth. Jonathan Goforth became the foremost missionary revivalist in early 20th century China and helped to establish revivalism as a major element in Protestant China missions.

Goforth grew up on an Oxford County, Ontario farm, the seventh of eleven children. As a young man he taught school in Thamesford, Ontario. Hearing fellow-Oxford County native George Leslie Mackay, Presbyterian missionary to Taiwan, speak, he claimed to sense a call from God to go to China. He attended University of Toronto, and Knox College, where he graduated in 1887, and was awarded the Doctor of Divinity in 1915. During his training, Goforth met Rosalind Bell-Smith at the Toronto Union Mission. She had been born in London, England, and had grown up in Montreal. They married in 1887, in his final year at Knox, and eventually had eleven children, six of whom survived childhood.

Goforth was greatly supported by his classmates to become an overseas missionary.