When trying to understand the church in China, it's easy to let predetermined narratives drive our interpretation of the things we observe. A recent article in the Huffington Post is a clear example of this.
Chinese Church Voices is running a series of articles taken from a lengthy interview with a Reformed unregistered church pastor in China. The fact that the Christian website in China where the interview originated gave the topic such in-depth attention, and the fact that this particular pastor (and many others like him) are such strong advocates of Reformed theology, raise the question of why denominations have become so attractive to Christians in China.
Our top picks this week include articles on poverty and leadership and an interview with one of our favorite China authors.
Anyone serving in China knows that one of the more vexing issues to deal with is "security." How public can / should I be about my faith? How public can/should I be about the faith and values that undergird my ministry?
This year’s attacks on church buildings in Wenzhou have been the subject of much analysis, the majority focusing on the relationship between church and government in Wenzhou. The following blog post, written by a Christian in China, and published in the mainland Christian Times, takes a closer look at the impact on the Wenzhou church itself.
Since China's great gǎigé kāifàng (Reform and Opening) experiment was begun by reformists in the Communist Party of China (CPC) under Deng Xiaoping in late 1978, tens of thousands of articles—in print and online—have been written about the huge changes and nearly miraculous standard-of-living improvements that have happened throughout China.
Reformed theology has found fertile ground in China, particularly among urban unregistered churches.
What does it mean to be Chinese? Three articles this week highlight the complexity of being Chinese.
On October 1, the Cornerstone Blog of The Religious Freedom Project at The Berkeley Center published two helpful posts on religious liberty in China.
During a recent conversation with a Chinese friend I listened as he recounted his conversion to Christianity and the difficulty he experienced overcoming his deeply ingrained tendency toward self-reliance.
On September 3, we posted a translated article about the trouble that anti-cult campaigns often cause for house churches because government officials, scholars, and ordinary people often don't know the difference between a cult and a house church.
Somewhere between my third and fourth trips to the bank to open a new account, it hit me. I realized why I was so frustrated. In my efforts to negotiate a system that seemed, to me, overly complicated, I had made a serious tactical error.