Brent Fulton is the founder of ChinaSource.
Dr. Fulton served as the first president of ChinaSource until 2019. Prior to his service with ChinaSource, he served from 1995 to 2000 as the managing director of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Wheaton College. From 1987 to 1995 he served as founding US director of China Ministries International, and from 1985 to 1986 as the English publications editor for the Chinese Church Research Center in Hong Kong.
Dr. Fulton holds MA and PhD degrees in political science from the University of Southern California and a BA in radio-TV-film from Messiah College.
An avid China watcher, Dr. Fulton has written and taught extensively on the church in China and on Chinese social and political phenomena. He is the author of China's Urban Christians: A Light That Cannot Be Hidden and co-authored China's Next Generation: New China, New Church, New World with Luis Bush.
Dr. Fulton and his wife, Jasmine, previously lived in Hong Kong from 2006 to 2017. They currently reside in northern California.
He is currently facilitating a network of member care professionals serving missionaries sent out from China. He also consults with other organizations on the impact of China's religious policy.
The rigid control structures comprising the "box" within which China's church currently operates are often assumed to be merely a function of China's Leninist political system. Were this system to be dismantled, one might argue, the "box" would come apart and China's Christians would enjoy genuine freedom of religion.
China is in the midst of an education explosion.
Up until the beginning of this decade, China's elderly and young adult populations were growing at roughly the same rate.
We live in an era when partnership between the church in China and the global church is both desired and increasingly possible. The challenges facing the church in China have evolved significantly in recent decades A survey of these challenges may lead some to conclude that church life in China today is not that much different from church life in the West or among overseas Chinese communities in Asia. Postmodernism, urbanization, secularization, and family breakdown are endemic to industrialized and post-industrialized societies the world over. The difference for China is that it has experienced in thirty years what in most other nations has taken place over a century or more.
China's current policy on religion is spelled out in Central Party Document no. 19, "The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question during Our Country's Socialist Period," issued in March of 1982.
According to a recent article in The Economist, over the past 25 years half a million non-governmental organizations have registered in China. Another 1.5 million social entities have not registered and are effectively functioning illegally. Many others are registered as businesses.
As far as I know China's NGO sector doesn't have a theme song, but if it did it would likely be the U2 hit single "With or Without You."
Along with the massive urbanization that has forever reshaped the social and cultural landscape of China, the church in China has itself undergone a major transformation. From a largely rural, peasant-led movement in the 1980s the church is now very much an urban phenomenon.
Jeffrey Towson and Jonathan Woetzel, both professors at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management in Beijing, claim you can understand China in an hour. An excerpt from their new book on the McKinsey and Company website says getting a handle on China is a lot less about politics and a lot more about a handful of major economic and social trends that are shaping the country's future.
The 2006 China Church Leadership Study, conducted jointly by ChinaSource and Geneva Global Research, identified seven types of Christian leaders in China. While three of these are in traditional church roles at various levels, the other four function largely outside the bounds of the local church and represent the growing role of Christians in China's larger society.
Urbanization has irreversibly changed the landscape of Chinademographically, socially, geographically, and economically.
In our previous post, "How to Fail at Philanthropy in China," we shared some insights from Clare Pearson in Beijing, based on her experience with corporate donors in China. Clare presented these last month at Philanthropy and China: A Time of Promise, a conference sponsored by the International Association of Advisors in Philanthropy.