Recent initiatives such as journals and institutes on Christian studies and theology in Chinese have seen the terminological debate around what to call a “Chinese” theology resurface. Years ago, when He Guanghu introduced his native-language theology and when Liu Xiaofeng, with his Sino-Christian theology, emphasized universality over context, at the time rejecting Sinicization, C. S. Song had already developed his contextual theology in Taiwan. Other renderings of Chinese identity—whether emphasizing the nation, language, or the diasporic—all became candidates to designate theology as a carrier of certain cultural values, a unique written language, or a specific set of historical experiences. Some such designations deliberately contrasted with China’s current religious policy requiring religions to “Sinicize”—not in opposition to the principle of indigenization itself but in recognition of Christian claims to universality or “difference” vis-à-vis the cultures it inhabits. Christian expressions change from culture to culture, and it is precisely this change, versatility and its many varieties as seen from the perspective of larger comparisons that make these expressions interesting.
From April 8 to 11, 2026, a group of 120 Chinese church leaders, representative of theological institutes, schools, organizations, and supporters—along with scholars from a spectrum of disciplines relevant to the study of Chinese theology and Church history—gathered at the historic YMCA CityView Hotel in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district.
For many, it felt like a family reunion—the meeting of old friends who had worked together and met at these events for decades—promoters of the common cause of a Chinese theology grounded in Christian traditions, rigorous in its scholarship, and contextually engaged.
Jointly organized by the Institute for Advanced Studies of Chinese Christianity (IASCC), the Cambridge Center for Chinese Theology (CCCT), and the Biola Research Initiative for Chinese Theology, the four-day conference was built around the theme “Chinese Christian Scholarship and the Church in Global Perspective: Retrospect and Prospect,” echoing recent literature and calls within the field for the recognition of Chinese theology as multi-centered, transnational, culturally dynamic, and pluriform.
David Fergusson, professor at the University of Cambridge of the Cambridge Center for Chinese Theology (est. 2025), served as the main keynote speaker, holding three lectures, including one public lecture, generating rich discussions and exchanges. Fifteen densely packed scholarly panels brought the latest research of many younger and emerging scholars to attentive listeners. These sessions showcased the intensity and seriousness with which this generation is pursuing in-depth knowledge with academic integrity, intellectual purpose, and faith. The study of many topics—ranging from the histories of Chinese Christian institutions, to Bible translations, generational dynamics of local church cultures, new readings of Weber, biblical studies, and the globalization of Chinese theologies were presented as case studies for further learning, as presenters drew connections between their research concentrations and the wider concerns and problem consciousness of Chinese Christian studies and Chinese theology today.
The inherent tensions of conceptualizing “Chinese theology” within a “global perspective” were variously expressed throughout the different contributions to this conference and in the naming of the conference as a whole—huáyǔ (華語), one rendering of “Chinese”—Christian studies prioritizing not only written registers but the living, changing dynamics of the language, as well as its use beyond national borders.
