the first diocesan bishop in Westminster Abbey, in the same year. In 1897, Cecil Polhill, also one of the Cambridge Seven, along with other four China Inland Mission missionaries, they established a missionary station in Tatsienlu, west of Sichuan, which paved the way for the future construction of the Gospel Church. The West China Union University was launched in 1910, in Chengdu. It was the product of a collective effort of four Protestant missionary boards: American Baptist Foreign Mission Society (American Baptist Churches USA), American Methodist Episcopal Mission (Methodist Episcopal Church), Friends' Foreign Mission Association (British Quakers) and Canadian Methodist Mission (Methodist Church of Canada). The Church Missionary Society (Church of England) became a partner in the university in 1918. In 1914, the Adventist Mission established a mission station in Chongqing. Their Sichuan Mission was officially formed in 1917. In 1919, the mission was divided into East Sichuan Mission and West Sichuan Mission for easier administration. By 1922, the Foreign Christian Missionary Society had its center at Batang. Due to the constitution of Sichuan at the time, Batang fell outside the western boundary and belonged to the special territory of Chuanbian. Lutheranism also had a small presence in Chongqing, which was part of east Sichuan. The Lutheran Holy Cross Church was founded in Wan County in 1925, under the supervision of , a pastor-missionary sent by the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. In 1940, the Church of Christ in China established the first mission station in Lixian, a county lies in the Sichuan-Khams Tibetan border region, as part of their Border Service Movement. This movement had a marked character of Social Gospel, with the aim of spreading Christianity to the Tibetan, Qiang and Yi peoples. In 1950 it was estimated there were more than 50,000 Protestants in Sichuan, meeting in hundreds of churches and chapels. Today, the number of Protestants exceeds 200,000, many Christians are in rural areas. Panzhihua was an area of rapid growth of Christianity in around 2000 AD. A Sichuan Theological College exists. Current situation After the communist takeover of China in 1949, Protestant Churches in China were forced to sever their ties with respective overseas Churches, which has thus led to the merging of all the denominations into communist-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Church. As for the Catholic Church in China, all legal worship has to be conducted in government-approved churches belonging to the Catholic Patriotic Association, which does not