Professor Mo Ruxi, a former vice dean of Nanjing Union Theological Seminary(NUTS), died of illness in Nanjing at the age of 95 on March 3, 2018, according to the obituary NUTS issued on the same day.
According to Rev. Chen Yilu, the standing vice-dean of NUTS, Mo was originally from Jiangmen, Guangdong. She studied at Yenching University then taught at Yanjing Union Theological Seminary. Later the seminary merged into Nanjing-based NUTS and she moved to Nanjing. After the national seminary reopened in the 1980s, she worked as an English professor at Nanjing University and the seminary. Afterward, she held the post of the vice dean in NUTS.
In June 1996, Mo and her husband, Rev. Xu Dingxin, a senior professor in the Old Testament and Hebrew, attended an international conference "Bible in Modern China" held in Jerusalem, according to an article published on the official website of the CCC&TSPM. She was the interpreter for her husband's lecture that showed the freedom of religious belief in China. Rev. Xu dismissed claims that there were no bibles or Christians in Chinese churches.
After the conference, the couple joined in a tour of the Holy Land organized by a Canadian Chinese pastor. They also visited Egypt, Greece, and Turkey, considered as few Chinese scholar who could get access to the land at that time. They had a morning devotional on the top of Mount Sinai, causing a stir in China.
Hundreds of pictures of the biblical places shot by them became precious research material. Later her husband published a book primarily featuring pictures of Israel and the four neighboring countries in 1999, arousing a boom of traveling to the Holy Land and research interests to the places in Chinese churches.
The memorial service for Mo will be held in Nanjing Saint Paul's Church on March 12, 2018.
- Translated by Karen Luo
