Boris Anderson

Boris Anderson was a British Presbyterian minister, missionary, theologian, translator, musician, and advocate for Taiwan. Born in Hull in 1918, he studied at the Royal Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne, Pembroke College, Oxford, and Westminster College, Cambridge. He married Clare Porteous in 1945, and the couple went to Fujian Province in China as Presbyterian missionaries in 1946 before moving to Taiwan in 1948 at the invitation of Shoki Coe.

At Tainan Theological College and Seminary, Anderson served as vice principal and taught New Testament, church history, and Western philosophy. He also took part in the hymnal committee that produced the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan's 1964 hymnal. Music was part of his personal and church life: he played the flute, often accompanied at the piano by Clare.

After returning to Britain, Anderson served from 1964 to 1972 as secretary of the Overseas Mission Committee of the Presbyterian Church of England and from 1972 to 1983 in the World Church and Mission Department of the United Reformed Church. His published work included The Future of Taiwan, and he later edited Shoki Coe's Recollections and Reflections. He also wrote Taiwanese Voice under the pseudonym Anne Ming. Tainan Theological College and Seminary awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity in 1987.

Anderson's career joined theological education, mission administration, translation, church music, and sustained engagement with Taiwanese church and public life. He died in 2013.