China is complicated. Good questions about China beget more questions. Sorting out the complexity is not easy, but for someone wanting to get a handle on the key trends shaping China and impacting China’s church, this podcast is a great place to start.
Two book reviews provide Eastern (WANG Jun ) and Western (Richard Cook) perspectives on Surviving the State, Remaking the Church: A Sociological Portrait of Christians in Mainland China by Li Ma and Jin Li in which the responses to faith by Chinese Christians in mainland China since 1949 are explored through many interviews.
Some interesting statistics from the new government White Paper on religious belief and practice in China.
A superb book about a very significant topic.
Pastor Wang Zhenmin says homogenization is one of the major crises facing China’s church.
Selected by the International Bulletin of Mission Research as one of the ten outstanding books of 2017 for Missions Studies, this sociological portrait presents how Chinese Christians have coped with life under a hostile regime over a span of different historical periods, and how Christian churches as collective entities have been reshaped by ripples of social change.
This year ChinaSource marks our 20th anniversary. As part of our celebration, Chinese Church Voices is taking a look back with Chinese Christians at what has changed in China over the past 20 years.
As ChinaSource celebrates 20 years of ministry, it is a time of reflection and giving thanks. We are privileged to have served the China-ministry community for as long as we have. With today’s post, we are beginning a series, called Looking Back that will take a closer look at those twenty years.
From 1807 to the 1920s, when a new phase of growth began, thousands of missionaries and Chinese Christians labored to lay the groundwork for a solid, healthy, and self-sustaining Chinese church. Builders of the Chinese Church contains the stories of nine of these leading pioneers.
A genuine "must-read" for those seeking to understand the complexities of religious life in China today.
In China, the study of religion as an academic discipline has been gaining momentum in recent years. Centers and institutes for the study of religion have been established at numerous top-tier Chinese universities. As research on religion in China grows, indigenous theories regarding the role of religion in Chinese society and culture are also being constructed and debated. One theoretical framework of note is the “religious ecology” model.
Some of China’s most famous universities and hospitals were founded by Christian missionaries. Take a quick tour around some of the historic Christian sites in the southern city of Hangzhou with this article from Gospel Times. Once thriving with Christian presence, Hangzhou is a city where its past continues to come alive today.