Abstract
The twelve essays contained in this slim volume were selected from papers contributed to a 2008 conference in Hong Kong on ‘Beyond our past: bible, cultural identity, and the global evangelical movement.’ With a heavy representation from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, the contributors are divided fairly evenly between the United States and Hong Kong. The essays cover a variety of topics from the disciplines of history and Biblical Studies, many displaying explicit intercultural or cross-cultural interests. Unfortunately, there are no contributions from Mainland Chinese scholars or pastors.
Doug Sweeney’s opening historical review is a helpful attempt to situate the contemporary Chinese church within the larger story of global evangelicalism. Although the (appropriate) broadness of Sweeney’s view precluded any attempt to look more closely at the story of the Chinese church, this deficiency is addressed by Ka Lun Leung’s focused examination of the historical development of the Chinese church. This essay, however, is materially weakened by the editorial decision to omit Leung’s references to Chinese language materials—a decision that neatly summarizes both the weaknesses and the strengths of the entire project.
While the four biblical studies contributions to the volume are of a high standard of scholarship, they have less to say with regards to the Chinese church than the book’s title promises. At the same time, the essays that do deal more directly with questions of Chinese identity demonstrate less interaction with the existing Chinese language conversations on their topics, perhaps reflecting the conference attendees varying levels of familiarity with the Chinese context. Kevin Yao’s survey of the development of social activism within Mainland Chinese churches is perhaps the strongest entry in the entire volume, as his historical narrative specifically highlights the abiding significance of evangelical concerns for Chinese church identity. But the impression of unevenness remains: not everyone is equally versed in both evangelicalism and China.
Since the conference, other volumes have come out that deal in a more integrated way with Christian identity and practice in Mainland China today (see, for example, 2013’s Christianity in Contemporary China, Francis Khek Gee Lim, ed.). Scholars and even pastors from Mainland China are also engaging in global theological discussions along evangelical lines to a degree unheard of five years ago (the ongoing annual symposiums of the Forum of Chinese Theology are a primary example). After Imperialism is thus best appreciated for what it represents: an early attempt to bring together two different conversations. Hopefully the participants behind After Imperialism will reconvene again soon, providing readers with an opportunity to appreciate more recent Chinese appropriations of global evangelicalism as well as the ways in which Chinese Christian identity can and will shape the nature of global evangelicalism on into the future.