ABSTRACT

Christianity is one of the fastest growing religions in China. Despite its long history in China and its significant indigenization or intertwinement with Chinese society and culture, Christianity continues to generate suspicion among political elites and intense debates among broader communities within China.

This unique book applies socio-cultural methods in the study of contemporary Christianity. Through a wide range of empirical analyses of the complex and highly diverse experience of Christianity in contemporary China, it examines the fraught processes by which various forms and practices of Christianity interact with the Chinese social, political and cultural spheres. Contributions by top scholars in the field are structured in the following sections: Enchantment, Nation and History, Civil Society, and Negotiating Boundaries.

This book offers a major contribution to the field and provides a timely, wide-ranging assessment of Christianity in Contemporary China.

chapter |13 pages

Shields of faith

Christianity in contemporary China

part I|27 pages

Enchantment

chapter 1|14 pages

Signs and wonders

Christianity and hybrid modernity in China

chapter 2|11 pages

From ‘Christianity in China' to ‘Chinese Christianity'

Changing paradigms and changing perspectives

part II|78 pages

Nation and history

chapter 3|14 pages

Christian revival from within

Seventh-day Adventism in China

chapter 5|13 pages

Trying to make sense of history

Chinese Christian traditions of countercultural belief and their theological and political interpretation of past and present history

chapter 7|16 pages

‘To the Peoples'

Christianity and ethnicity in China's minority areas

part III|83 pages

Civil society

chapter 9|15 pages

The emergence of Christian subcultures in China

Beginnings of an inculturation from the grassroots?

chapter 10|16 pages

Calvin, culture and Christ?

Developments of faith among Chinese intellectuals

chapter 11|14 pages

Christian ethics and business life

An ethnographic account of overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs in China's economic transition

chapter 12|21 pages

Saints, secrets, and salvation

Emergence of spiritual—religious groups in China between 1978 and 1989

part IV|57 pages

Negotiating boundaries