Over a decade ago, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences hosted an annual gathering that insiders nicknamed the “Immortals’ Symposium.”1 Hundreds of Chinese scholars converged to present papers on Christianity. It was a curious era: most scholars who studied Christianity weren’t Christians themselves, while the Christians who showed up to theological conferences were mostly from overseas. Mainland Chinese Christian theologians at the time could have fit comfortably around a single round table.
A conference held in Hong Kong this past April 8–11, organized by the China Institute for Advanced Christian Studies, brought that old “Immortals’ Symposium” to mind. Again, hundreds of scholars gathered, with papers covering topics such as “The Cross-Cultural Reception and Adaptation of Watchman Nee’s Thought in the Jesus People Movement,” “The Authority and Future of the Union Version,” “Where Economics Meets Theology,” and “Theological Aesthetics as a Methodological Proposal for Public Theology.” Yet compared to those gatherings of a decade ago, this conference was different in two fundamental ways.
First, the quality of the scholarship was markedly higher—the intellectual depth was simply in another league. Second, and more striking, the overwhelming majority of scholars present had mainland Chinese backgrounds, and all of them were Christians.
These two observations may sound straightforward, but they carry the weight of a profound transformation unfolding within the Chinese church. Over the past decade or so, Christians from mainland China have made remarkable strides in theological formation, academic training, and international engagement.Many Chinese believers have now earned doctoral degrees in theology; some have even joined the faculties of leading seminaries and universities abroad. The Chinese church is gradually moving from numerical breadth to intellectual maturity—from movement-driven growth to the building of institutions and a knowledge tradition. And the unlikely catalyst behind this shift has been the tightening of religious policy in China in recent years.
This may sound paradoxical, but there is an internal logic to it. When the religious climate was relatively open, the Chinese church expanded rapidly. Ministry programs multiplied, and growth in membership became the primary benchmark of success. Committed believers had little breathing room for systematic theological formation—the frontline demands were too urgent, the workers never enough. Breadth was the watchword of that era; the church’s missional energy drove outward expansion rather than inward rootedness.
But when the environment tightened and many churches were forced to downsize or go underground, public gatherings and ministries faced new restrictions. For many committed young believers, the most viable path forward was to go abroad—to pursue the rigorous theological study, and to wait and prepare for whatever came next.
I recall a conversation between an overseas seminary and a group of Christian scholars in Beijing, in which the seminary floated the idea of launching a doctoral program in the city. Several professors teaching at Beijing universities responded frankly: they doubted there would be enough students—the theological foundations of ordinary believers at the time simply weren’t strong enough to support doctoral-level academic work.
The landscape today looks entirely different. Fuller Theological Seminary, Cambridge University, Biola University, and other institutions have established centers for Chinese Christian studies, and the rationale is straightforward: the demand is there. Large numbers of believers from mainland China are hungry for formal theological education, forming a substantial academic community. A seminary that once couldn’t recruit doctoral students within China’s borders has given way to a new reality: today, many Western university theology programs sustain themselves in no small part because of doctoral students from mainland China.
External pressure stripped the church of some of its space for outward expansion—but it also pushed the church inward, toward formation and the accumulation of theological knowledge. If the defining feature of the Chinese church over the past thirty years has been numerical growth, then what may matter most in the next thirty years is the emergence of a theological tradition and intellectual heritage.
From the “Immortals’ Symposium” in Beijing to the theological conference in Hong Kong—on the surface, it is just a change of venue and a passage of years. But the people sitting in the room are not the same. If this trajectory holds, a significant portion of the theological vitality and academic innovation of the Chinese-speaking church may well come from scholars with mainland Chinese backgrounds. This would not only reshape the landscape of Chinese-language theology—it could profoundly influence the future of global Christian thought.
- The “Immortals’ Symposium” was an informal nickname used by insiders for an annual Christianity-related academic gathering associated with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It was not the official name of the conference, but a playful way of describing a gathering of leading scholars in the field.
