Abstract
The essays in this volume emerged from a multidisciplinary gathering in 2015 of scholars at Whitworth University focused on the Chinese church’s transition from being largely governed by foreign missionaries to its post-1950s reality of (predominantly) self-government. The title, China’s Christianity, points toward the primary question unifying the book: “What happened after the agency of manufacturing a Christian culture in China was removed from foreign missionaries and transferred into the hands of native Christians?” (2). Examining this question from a wide range of disciplines and subjects produces a rich portrait of the variety of Christian expressions that emerged within what is today referred to—perhaps too casually—as Chinese Christianity.
Clark’s introduction sets the tone nicely, explaining the decision to emulate the technique used by David E. Mungello in his recent The Catholic Invasion of China: Remaking Chinese Christianity (2017), which uses a variety of essays to enrich and complicate received understandings of the emergence of the indigenous Chinese church. While for the most part agreeing with the contention of Liam Brockey (in Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 [2007]) that missionaries were more interested in Christian conversion than in political or cultural transformation, the ten contributors to this volume explore their chosen subjects in ways that intersect with the argument by Henrietta Harrison (in The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village [2013]) that Christianity in China prospered over time as it became not more integrated with Chinese culture but rather increasingly integrated with the global church.
Each chapter presents a detailed look at a specific individual or incident related to the development of Christianity in China. Moving between the disciplines employed by the various authors can make the book feel uneven; however, these same shifts also help emphasize the diverse and often complicated ways in which different people from different places throughout China appropriated or experienced Christianity for themselves. Many of the essays helpfully tell stories not widely known: this reviewer found the final three chapters on Chinese Adventist publications, rural Chinese Catholic experience, and examples of current Chinese research on Christianity in China to be particularly informative.
The wide array of eras and issues addressed in this volume makes it a good textbook choice for introductory-level classes looking to expose students to the variety that exists within China’s Christianity—both Catholic and Protestant. One hopes that additional collections of similar essays exploring other strands of this fascinating story will emerge in the coming years.