Community Church

Community Church (国际礼拜堂, Guójì Lǐbàitáng) is a brick-and-timber Gothic Revival church of 1925 at 53 Hengshan Road, built by Shanghai’s American community as a Protestant church open to all denominations. It is still a working church, with Chinese services on Sunday and a separate afternoon service in English for foreign passport holders.

The congregation began in 1917 as a Sunday song service for Americans. By September 1920 it had more than two hundred members, set up a committee and became the Community Church (协和礼拜堂, Xiéhé Lǐbàitáng), meeting in rented rooms on Rue Doumer. From 1923 it raised money and bought a plot on Avenue Pétain, today’s Hengshan Road, from the Shanghai American School, whose campus stood across the street. The foundation stone was laid on 8 June 1924. The church was dedicated in March 1925, on the 8th according to Chinese sources and the 7th according to the China Weekly Review, at a cost of about US$70,000. It was then the largest Christian church in Shanghai, with room for about 700 people on a site of more than 7,300 square metres. Accounts differ on who designed it.

The style is a plain modern Gothic with something of an English village church about it. The entrance faces north between pointed-arch arcades, the windows have arched frames glazed in a plum-blossom pattern, and a steep slate roof rests on scissor-shaped timber trusses that are left exposed inside. The plan is a basilica, with side aisles carrying galleries on two levels. A three-storey wing on the west, holding offices, a nursery and a small chapel, was added in the 1930s and gave the building its L-shaped plan. A pipe organ was bought in 1932. During the war with Japan the congregation took in many Europeans and was renamed the International Church, the name it keeps in Chinese.

In December 1950 the church passed to Chinese pastors and a Chinese board, and services moved from English to Mandarin. From 1958 the seventeen Protestant congregations of Xuhui district worshipped jointly here and at 救主堂 (Jiùzhǔ Táng). Services stopped in 1966. An opera troupe used the building as a store and rehearsal space, and the organ, font and bronze cross were destroyed.

Repairs began in 1979. A thanksgiving service was held on 24 December 1980 and the church formally reopened on 4 January 1981. Jimmy Carter visited on 2 September 1981, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was among later visitors. A separate English-language service for foreigners began in October 1996.

The city listed the church as a municipal protected site on 25 September 1989 and included it in the first batch of Outstanding Historical Buildings. A full restoration began in May 2021, and the church returned to use in March 2023.