•Publication Date：04/14/2014
•Source： United Daily News
The six places of worship along Xinsheng South Road are a focal point for this year’s cultural festival organized by Taipei City’s Da-an District.
The area boasts six major non-Chinese places of worship: Bread of Life Christian Church, Grace Baptist Church, Holy Family Catholic Church, Taipei Grand Mosque, Taipei Truth Lutheran Church and Taipei Wesley Methodist Church, earning it the moniker Heaven Street.
According to Da-an District chief Su Su-zhen, a wide range of foreign religions, including Catholicism, Protestantism, Mormonism and Islam, arrived in the area following the end of World War II. The area now has the highest concentration of religious establishments in the city, she said.
Grace Baptist Church, constructed in 1954 and completed a year later, was the first in the area. It gradually expanded and became one of the city’s major Christian centers. Taipei Truth Lutheran Church, built some years later and a few doors down the road, testifies to the abundance of Christians in the area.
Bread of Life Christian Church was founded by Pastor Zhao Shi-guang in 1954, and moved to its current location around the corner on Heping East Road in 1957.
Taipei Grand Mosque, opposite Da-an Forest Park, was completed in 1960, Su said. Many leaders and prominent people from Muslim countries have since visited the mosque, which also sponsored Taiwan’s first translation of the “Koran” into Mandarin. The mosque is now a listed historic building, as well as the main place of worship for the country’s Muslims.
In 1952, Holy Family Catholic Church became the area’s first Catholic center. Work on the present edifice began two years later, and was completed in 1965. With its giant cross and tent-shaped exterior, it has become a favorite backdrop for wedding shoots.
Taipei Wesley Methodist Church, on the corner of Xinsheng South Road and Qinan Road, began as a temporary aluminum structure in 1954. In 1958, it was replaced with the current building, which can hold 1,000 worshippers.
This is the first year the festival has joined forces with teachers and students from Taipei-based National Taiwan Normal University’s Humanities Society to exhibit the latter’s collection of old photographs and conduct a historical survey on Da-an Forest Park.
The only religious symbol of local beliefs found in this area is the statue of the goddess Guanyin near the northwest corner of the park. The statue, designed by famous Taiwan sculptor Yuyu Yang, was erected in 1985.
Cultural worker Lee Chieh-ying said that when the area was converted into a park in 1993, the authorities agreed that the statue could remain in place on condition that worshippers henceforth treated it as a work of art, rather than an object of veneration, and would no longer burn offerings in front of it.
