In mid-July 2026, Chinese Christian scholars and pastors from various denominational backgrounds in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Hong Kong gathered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for the three-day Third Public Theology Conference.
What was most noteworthy about this congress was not only what it said, but also how it was experimenting with new ways to speak, lead, communicate, and understand the next generation.
After leaving Kuala Lumpur, one question stayed with me: were we, throughout the conference, actually speaking about the same thing when we used the term ‘public theology’?
Does the gospel of Christ also concern a nation's public life: justice, poverty, corruption, the environment, refugees, and people suffering in disasters? I believe the answer is yes.
The public witness of the church is not to win political power or cultural hegemony in this “competition of gods.” Rather, it is to imitate Christ, seeking the peace of the city in exile, living out embodied love in the virtual, and witnessing to the eternal kingdom in suffering.
Like all theology, public theology begins not with issues, but with the knowledge of God.
Can the Malaysian Chinese Church shift from a community primarily concerned with its own survival to one that participates in the holistic mission of God and seeks the peace of this land?
Resources for Chinese Public Theology
The thoughtful and wide-ranging contributions in this issue of ChinaSource Journal are particularly relevant to where China’s church finds itself today.
By looking not only at the church in China itself but also to Christian communities in the global Chinese diaspora, these scholars offer both cautionary tales as well as hopeful visions of what it means to be a witness to the “public God.”
The Chinese diaspora in Europe is transitioning from being a “mission field” (the recipient of gospel activity) to a burgeoning “mission force” (the agent of missional change).
Long before the word “Trinity” was rendered into Chinese as sanwei yiti (三位一體), Christians in Tang China were already searching for language to express the mystery of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.