Expressions of Chinese Christianity in Texts and Contexts: In Memory of Our Mentor Professor R. G. Tiedemann (1941–2019)

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue has been edited in memory of our doctoral supervisor, Professor R. G. Tiedemann (1941–2019), 永念恩師狄德滿教授.

Chinese Christianity, or Chinese Christianities, being perceived both as a cultural phenomenon and as a field of research, has gained much attention in recent decades.

The “phenomenon” of the rapid growth of Chinese churches, with multiple expressions of faith and practices, has been investigated by historians, anthropologists, sociologists and religious scholars and continues to attract ample attention.

Equally important is the scholarly debate about the historical transformation of Chinese Christianity, or Chinese Christianities, as a field of study in the historiography of modern China. Some of the following analytical contours and approaches of this field have emerged:

1. Attention to the spatial and temporal diversities of Christian missionary presence and indigenous church movements from a historical perspective in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
2. Investigation into the transnational, national and local connectivities of Christian communities and its evangelistic agents/transmitters/recipients (whether individual, organizational, material, cosmological, artistic, linguistic or multipolar networks).
3. Research on the encounters and correlations between expressions of Christianity and Chinese social, economic, cultural and historical forces, as well as between Christianity and other existing Chinese religious and spiritual traditions.
4. Reflection on the empirical and analytical tools, such as access to new and old archival sources, the re-conceptualization of Christian terminologies, doctrinal concepts, lived religious experiences and the reassessment of perceived turning points in specific time and space.

This Special Issue showcases the latest historical and social–scientific scholarship on the continuities and changes in Chinese Christian movements and the new emerging research directions.

We strive to move beyond the longstanding state-centered paradigm that defines a Chinese indigenous church against Euro-American Christianity and the oversimplification of “Chinese Christianity” as a singular entity, overlooking intra-/inter-church exchanges across doctrinal and liturgical boundaries and the living reality of trans-local church ties.

We seek to demonstrate that the multiple Chinese expressions of Christianity took root in resistance to Western missionary efforts to win the hearts and minds of the people since the Ming–Qing eras and to decades of sociopolitical upheavals that greatly impacted Chinese churches and believers since the early 20th century.

Methodologically, we explore ways in which the analytical term of Chinese Christianity or Chinese Christianities reveals changing interpretations and approaches in studying China’s rich and diverse Christian landscape across time and space. This Special Issue places the reciprocal process of Chinese–Christian interactions at the center of discussion, revealing the overlap of circulatory local and global church networks.

• Circulating Resources: Exploring the expressions of Christianity in diverse Chinese historical/political/cultural contexts.

• Circulating Knowledge: Mapping the interconnectivity of Christian faith experiences between China and the world via the exchange of religious prints, arts/songs, scientific and theological knowledge, etc.

• Circulating Networks: Studying the trends of Chinese Christian migrations.

Dr. Lars Laamann
Prof. Dr. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee
Guest Editors

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