Opposition to foot binding had been raised by some Chinese writers in the 18th century. During the Taiping Rebellion, many of the rebel leaders were of Hakka background where their women did not bind their feet, and foot binding was outlawed.[31][32] The rebellion however failed, and Christian missionaries, who had provided education for girls and actively discouraged what they considered a barbaric practice, then played a part in changing elite opinion on footbinding through education, pamphleteering, and lobbying of the Qing court.[33][21] In 1875, 60-70 Christian women in Xiamen attended a meeting presided over by a missionary John MacGowan formed the Natural Foot (tianzu, literally Heavenly Foot) Society.[34] It was then championed by the Woman's Christian Temperance Movement founded in 1883 and advocated by missionaries including Timothy Richard, who thought that Christianity could promote equality between the sexes