Chinese Christian Witness by Xiaoli Yang and Daryl R. Ireland. Brill, 2026. 430 pages. ISBN-10: 9004741607; ISBN-13: 9789004741607. Available from Press and Amazon.
Chinese Christian Witness will be an informative, enriching addition to the library of anyone interested in not just Chinese missions, but in the big picture of Christianity’s encounters with the Middle Kingdom, its culture, and history. This book would serve well as a text in a class on the story of the faith there, and indeed as supplemental reading for students of missions history generally—furnishing thought-provoking insights into the interactions of the Gospel with a high culture. If I may be so bold, my hope is also that these papers might be recommended to missionaries now coming out from China to reach the rest of the world. Their efforts would be all the more effective if informed by the notable accomplishments and missteps of their forebears. Tobias Brandner’s essay, placed among the latter third of the papers, gives a clear-eyed account of the present state of Chinese missionary sending—an incisive piece as readers both look back at the historical record and forward into, per Brandner’s subtitle, “a Chinese Mission Century?”
The editors of this book have enabled the above-referenced breadth thanks to their expansive definition of “mission”. With a few deft strokes, they explain why familiar uses of the word “mission” are inadequate for the purpose of describing past and present outreach to, among, and by Chinese. “Mission” then is replaced by “witness”. The Lord Jesus spoke of his followers being his “witnesses” as often as he spoke of their going out to make disciples (Luke 24:48; Acts 1:8; John 15:27).
This anthology is a signpost of sorts in the progress of the gospel inasmuch as it reflects the maturing of the Chinese church. Such an eclectic assemblage of articles testifies to the full-orbed presence of Chinese Christianity on the world’s stage, and not just in our own era. Papers are included that illumine the earlier witness of Chinese believers to the reality of Christ.
Nineteen chapters are grouped into four sections, the first, Identity, debuted as a special issue of Mission Studies (2022). As editors Xiaoli Yang and Daryl Ireland note, fortunately there was an opportunity to expand the discourse and the remaining three sections of this book are the result: Creativity, Transmission, and Poetics. The latter papers open up topics and fields not often thought of in relation to missions—for example a discourse on church buildings, “Embedding the House of God: Confluences of Place, Mission, and Tradition in China’s Atypical Churches” (ch. 10), “Silent and Vocal: Christian Funerals, a Unique way of Mission” (ch. 11). Wings of Christendom often overlooked, especially by today’s evangelicals—such as the Russian Orthodox Church and the Three Self Patriotic Movement in Mainland China—receive welcome attention in this anthology. A final section is devoted entirely to exploring Chinese Christians’ work in today’s arts scene, besides a fascinating look at earlier decades of cinema in Hong Kong.
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee writes of the artistic energy and entrepreneurship of figures in the Hong Kong film industry who made movies with a conscious evangelistic intent (“Screening Faith and Family,” ch. 8). What an opportunity was afforded to impact mid-twentieth-century society when producer Lo Ming-yau opened a theater near the University of Hong Kong campus and screened Christian movies. Sadly, local Christian leaders, suspicious of movie houses as “immoral, dark and unholy space(s),” did not share Lo’s vision of missionizing through the burgeoning mass media tool of cinema (Lee, 160).
Lee expounds at some length on the “female-centric” themes of the films he brings to our notice.
The protagonists are women—“female spirituality” versus “masculine materialism.” This dualism, Lee notes, spoke to the Hong Kong of the 1950s and 1960s when the city was flooded with Mainland refugees; urbanization, the struggle to survive versus the attractiveness of Christian ethics and self-sacrificial love—the latter portrayed by strong female characters.
While earlier film-makers promoted Christian values of social justice against corruption, the SARS outbreak of 2003-2004, Lee says, spurred a younger generation of Christian producers to explore suffering and the finding of meaning and hope despite despair. Self-sacrificial love again is exemplified in the true-life stories of female medical personnel. These films were successfully used by Hong Kong churches as evangelistic tools and had a significant impact on Mainland docudramas—one made in 2014, and another in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Although stripped of Christian references, these Mainland productions “opened up a dialogical space for conversation about Christianity” among Mainland viewers (Lee, 167).
Joseph Lee’s choice of female-centric films is notable, as is the fact that Michel Chambon’s five examples of revived activity in Catholic circles all have women at the center. They play crucial, indispensable roles in “Remaking the Church Catholic in Post-Maoist China.”
In everything from being key intermediaries connecting Mainland Catholics with missionaries and overseas supporters, to raising funds and establishing major ministries to the marginalized—women took the lead and made the presence of Christ felt among the Catholic faithful and in the society around them.
It is perhaps regrettable that this collection of essays does not include a paper specifically looking at women’s roles in historic or contemporary Chinese Christianity. Women’s impact is noted in several papers, but no explicit examination is made of the significance of women’s participation in Chinese Christian Witness.
As the editors note, this volume is not exhaustive. What physical book could be in this day of fast-changing facts, and when the Chinese presence, Christian and otherwise, is so speedily spreading? They identify “missiology in relation to the rest of the creation—[as] a field yet to be explored amongst Chinese Christians” (Intro, 11). And to this lack, I would add the above-mentioned regarding women’s contributions, and a perhaps a third—a look at how social media and the artificial yet all-too-real digital world are shaping both the message itself, its bearers, and how it is conveyed. Finally, in future studies we may hope to hear more directly the voices of believers still living in the People’s Republic—fewer than a quarter of the contributors in this book appear to be Mainland residents, although overall half would appear to be Chinese. The book does an excellent job incorporating viewpoints from the first and other worlds, and in the Poetics section. To see original texts from Chinese artists, accompanied by English translation, is very satisfying.
In sum, Chinese Christian Witness is a heartening collection of reflections which cannot but help drive onward the movement of God’s Chinese children in response to his command to make him known.
Editor’s note: This review is based on an early digital version of Chinese Christian Witness. The final print edition includes a notable clarification by Xiaoli Yang and Daryl Ireland, namely that with regard to missiology and creation, it is not a field unexplored by Chinese believers; rather, it was not possible to treat the topic in this particular volume.
Our thanks to Brill for providing a copy of Chinese Christian Witness by Xiaoli Yang and Daryl R. Ireland for this review.
