Not every missionary remembered by history preached from pulpits or translated Scripture: Rosalind Goforth became known for sustaining, behind the scenes, decades of evangelistic work amid one of the most violent episodes of Christian mission in China, the Boxer Rebellion.
Born Florence Rosalind Bell-Smith in London in 1864, she moved as a child to Canada, first to Montreal and then to Toronto, where she completed her studies at the Toronto Art School. In 1887 she married Jonathan Goforth, and the following year sailed with him to the Presbyterian mission in northern Honan, China.
Of the eleven children she had, five died while still young, victims of the diseases and hardships common to the Chinese mission field. Rosalind recorded these losses with honesty in her later writings, without hiding the pain of a mother who buried half her children far from home.
In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion forced the family to flee from the city of Changde to Fancheng, under attack from armed mobs. Jonathan was wounded by a sword blow that nearly split his skull; Rosalind pressed on with her small children amid the danger until they reached the safety of a port linked to the Yangtze River.
After a year of recovery in Canada, the couple returned to Honan in 1901 and, decades later, came to support the revival that shook Manchuria. Rosalind cared for the home, the children, and the logistics of travel, a role that rarely appears in revival accounts but without which they would not exist.
Her honesty did not spare her own failings: in her autobiography she recounted that for years she refused to forgive a fellow missionary who had offended her, holding onto resentment even after he left the station. Only on a train journey, years later, did she feel compelled to write to him asking forgiveness for her own hardness.
After Jonathan’s death in 1936, Rosalind began writing more regularly. She published How I Know God Answers Prayer, an account of answered prayers amid dangers, and Goforth of China, a biography of her husband that became popular reading among missionaries.
Rosalind Goforth died in Toronto in 1942, six years after her husband, leaving behind books still read by those who face difficult fields today. Her story reminds us that mission also rests on the invisible work of those who care, wait, and pray behind the scenes, far from the pulpits and the crowds of revival.
