by Kevin Xiyi Yao
Yao’s book successfully utilizes the methodology of experts such as Ernest Sandeen, George M. Marsden and Joel A. Carpenter on the study of “fundamentalist movement in the West” and applies it to the historical study of China missions.
University Press of America, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706, 2003, 334 pages, $44.00.
—Reviewed by Enoch Wan, chair, division of intercultural studies, Western Seminary, Portland, Oregon.
Many theories and explanations have been offered for the explosive growth of Christianity in the People’s Republic of China in the latter half of the twentieth century. This book provides insights for those who question this phenomenal growth today despite the forced withdrawal of Western missionaries.
Unlike the trendy, socio-cultural approach to studying China missions pioneered by John King Fairbank, this work is theological-historical in perspective.
Yao’s book successfully utilizes the methodology of experts such as Ernest Sandeen, George M. Marsden and Joel A. Carpenter on the study of “fundamentalist movement in the West” and applies it to the historical study of China missions.
Yao convincingly shows “the fundamentalist movement among Protestant missionaries in China, 1920-1937” was an integral part of the “fundamentalist-modernist” struggle in the West in the early twentieth century. Instead of isolating Western mission efforts in China, the author demonstrates the value of “multiple perspectives of modern Chinese history, Christianity in China, and fundamentalism in North America” (12).
The book provides a rare glimpse into the “conservative” aspect of mission forces in China and their impact on Chinese Christianity through key figures like Wang Ming-dao and Watchman Nee and institutions such as the Bible Union of China, China Inland Mission and North China Theological Seminary. While most English-speaking researchers focus primarily on the “liberal” Chinese missionaries who have been instrumental in ushering in socio-cultural changes (westernization) in modern China, this volume fills in the blanks on theological (fundamentalist) aspects of contemporary Chinese Christianity.
This volume is a dissertation-turned-book, yet is readable and informative to a general missiology readership.
Check these websites:
www.chinasoul.com/e/cross-news.htm
www.christianityinchina.org/Common/Admin/showNews_auto.jsp?
Nid=303&Charset=big5
www.globalmissiology.net/
www.questia.com/Index.jsp?CRID=christianity_in_china
&OFFID=se1&KEY=christianity_in_china
www.usfca.edu/ricci/
www.illuminatedlantern.com/cinema/features/christianity.html
www.intervarsity.org/ism/article_item.php?article_id=803
www.ncronline.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2004b/052104/052104ssi.htm
Copyright © 2004 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.
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