Mao Tse-tung's atheistic teaching governs all aspects of life in China today. But at the time of the 1949 revolution there were flourishing churches and student Christian Fellowships. What happened to them? David Adeney was in China during the revolution and the critical years in which Communism took root there. His first-hand account of life under the Communist régime describes the impact of Communist teaching on Christian students in the universities--the focal point of propaganda--and on the church as a whole. Now based in Singapore, he maintains his interest in modern China. He includes a chapter on the future of Christian witness in Communist countries generally.
Within the next decade, China could be home to more Christians than any country in the world. Through the 150-year saga of a single family, this book vividly dramatizes the remarkable religious evolution of the world’s most populous nation. Shanghai Faithful is both a touching family memoir and a chronicle of the astonishing spread of Christianity in China. Five generations of the Lin family—buffeted by history’s crosscurrents and personal strife—bring to life an epoch that is still unfolding. A compelling cast—a poor fisherman, a doctor who treated opium addicts, an Ivy League–educated priest, and the charismatic preacher Watchman Nee—sets the bookin motion. Veteran journalist Jennifer Lin takes readers from remote nineteenth-century mission outposts to the thriving house churches and cathedrals of today’s China. The Lin family—and the book’s central figure, the Reverend Lin Pu-chi—offer witness to China’s tumultuous past, up to and beyond the betrayals and madness of the Cultural Revolution, when the family’s resolute faith led to years of suffering. Forgiveness and redemption bring the story full circle. With its sweep of history and the intimacy of long-hidden family stories, Shanghai Faithful offers a fresh look at Christianity in China—past, present, and future.
Now revised and updated to incorporate numerous new materials, this is the major source for researching American Christian activity in China, especially that of missions and missionaries. It provides a thorough introduction and guide to primary and secondary sources on Christian enterprises and individuals in China that are preserved in hundreds of libraries, archives, historical societies, headquarters of religious orders, and other repositories in the United States. It includes data from the beginnings of Christianity in China in the early eighth century through 1952, when American missionary activity in China virtually ceased. For this new edition, the institutional base has shifted from the Princeton Theological Seminary (Protestant) to the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural Relations at the University of San Francisco (Jesuit), reflecting the ecumenical nature of this monumental undertaking.
"My name is Zhang Rongliang, and I am an unashamed follower of Jesus Christ.…It is considered quite dangerous to reveal the contents of this book, but these are stories that need to be told for God’s glory and for the encouragement of the church.” So begins this extraordinary first-person account by the prominent leader of one of the largest underground churches in China. A former Communist Party member, Zhang took a stand for Christ and was targeted for prison, work camps, and torture, all the while helping to build a network of millions of faithful believers. Spanning the time of Mao’s regime to today, Zhang testifies of God’s supernatural movements, of the sacrifice of countless Christians who loved and served Christ—regardless of the cost—and of the exciting new vision among believers in China to reach not only the Chinese but the entire world with the gospel.
This book focuses on the British Protestant missionaries in China in the period from 1945 to 1952. It captures the complexity and contradictions between the missionaries' own perception of their role and Chinese reality. It also examines the missionaries' perception of the nature of Communism and their evaluation of the future prospects under Communist rule. This study offers a stimulating reflection on the missionaries' strategies for propagating the Christian faith, their priorities, and theological as well as cultural assumptions with regard to mission and politics, mission and culture, and mission-church relations during the transition from Guomindang to Communist rule. In general terms, it provides an insight into the idealism and frustrations of missionaries as they wrestled with the changing political context in China.
A New History of Christianity in China, written by one of the world's the leading writers on Christianity in China, looks at Christianity's long history in China, its extraordinarily rapid rise in the last half of the twentieth century, and charts its future direction. Provides the first comprehensive history of Christianity in China, an important, understudied area in both Asian studies and religious history Traces the transformation of Christianity from an imported, Western religion to a thoroughly Chinese religion Contextualizes the growth of Christianity in China within national and local politics Offers a portrait of the complex religious scene in China today Contrasts China with other non-Western societies where Christianity is surging
Chronicles the history of Christianity in China throughout the centuries, from the arrival of Christian missionaries during the seventh century to efforts to connect Chinese followers with European Catholics in 2000.
Reaching Chinese Worldwide introduces the many ways in which Christians may communicate the truth and love of God in Christ to Chinese around the world. Drawing upon four decades of reading and experience, the author first lays a biblical foundation for cross-cultural witness, then briefly explores the various facets of ministry among Chinese: Preparation, Presence, Proclamation, Points of Contact, “Perfection” of Believers, Participation in the Body of Christ, Performance of Good Works, and Partnering with God.This nearly comprehensive survey contains both fundamental principles and practical suggestions useful for all those wanting to make a Christian impact on China.
Essays written in honour of Brian Stanley on the entangled nature of ecumenism and independency in the modern global history of Christianity. They demonstrate transnational connectivity as well as local and contextual expressions of Christianity.
To understand the position of Christianity in China today, one must review and assess the long sweep of the history - over thirteen hundred years - of the Christian faith in China. Confucius, the Buddha, and Christ does that and addresses the essential question of why Christianity over all those centuries has remained foreign to the Chinese - why it has remained an outsider never able really to enter the warp and woof of Chinese life. Dr. Covell's book details and analyzes the history of Nestorians, Catholics, and Protestants, who, in various eras, have tried unsuccessfully to knit Christianity into the fabric of Chinese culture. He argues that Christianity's failure to become Chines has two roots: its foreign connections and its foreign message. Works have been written to address the history of one or another of the waves of missionary activity in China. This book is unique in that it puts together and assesses the core of Christianity - it's message and form - in its varied contexts over more than a millennium of Chinese history. What was preached? How? Why did it fail? Also studied here is the only major attempt to Christianize China from within - the Taiping Movement in the mid-nineteenth century. Confucius, the Buddha, and Christ is a thoroughly-documented, in-depth case study of contextualization - the most significant theme in contemporary world mission studies. It is deceptive, not prescriptive. Its historical perspective opens the door to the only way that other Christians can wisely relate to Chinese Christianity, whether in the People's Republic or in the worldwide Chinese diaspora.
