The Lamp That Never Went Out
In northern China, there is a large family that has followed Christ for nearly a century and has given birth to preachers for four consecutive generations.
In northern China, there is a large family that has followed Christ for nearly a century and has given birth to preachers for four consecutive generations.
Surveying the fraught relationship between church and state in China, the late Chinese church historian Daniel Bays asserted that government control of religion has been a constant feature from Imperial times to the present.
At this crossroads, perhaps Wu Jingxiong points the way forward… In an era when conflict threatens to dehumanize us all, Wu Jingxiong’s Christian humanism remains to this day a beacon of hope.
Viable parallels exist between ancient Christian learning and life with Chinese Christianity, and part of the purpose of our writing these series of presentations is to identify what those are in the best way we know how.
Mayfield highlights…the essential continuity that bound the early Pentecostal missionaries together with their evangelical contemporaries; the way in which the “heat and noise” of Pentecostal worship, which often repelled Europeans, actually served to attract the Chinese masses; and the strategic role that women played in the founding of Pentecostal churches.
Readers [of Jingjiao] will not only be equipped with the fascinating history of Jingjiao, which helps overcome the anti-Christian narrative that Christianity was brought into China by European and American colonial imperialists. Christians and missionaries in various global cultural contexts will also benefit from this book by learning from the Church of the East missionaries’ creative strategies of inculturation.
Robert and Betty went to the untamed Tibet and built relationships, preparing for themselves and others to move and live in these new areas. Robert was a visionary with deep understanding of the cultures, but also brave, as the title says, facing local robbers, politics, and later, war-haunted China.
Given China’s place in the world order today, it is very unlikely that they will completely ban all foreigners.... We can be confident that no matter how few the foreigners or how persecuted the flock, our God who makes the rocks cry out in testimony will ensure that his witness is never silenced, and his kingdom continues to advance.
The study then takes a closer look at the brief emergence of a comparatively Chinese underground church…before concluding with a fascinating reflection on martyrdom, comparing the Chinese notion of suffering perseverance motivated by filial loyalty to the saints who have gone before with the European concept of sacrificing one’s life for the gospel.
At a time when the study of Christianity in China is becoming more difficult, the CHCD opens a new portal to explore China’s Christian past. The tool might be different than rummaging through a traditional archive, but by repackaging archival materials into an online tool it invites anyone to ask, “What could be discovered if…?”
Menzies discusses his belief that the Pentecostal churches in China have an important contribution to make to the larger, global body of Christ, and that the Pentecostal movement, in China and globally, need the larger body of Christ.
The maintenance and advancement of Christianity is highly correlated to three main factors: government control, social receptivity, and culture. Comparatively, China is not the most difficult place for Christianity to develop.