Brent Fulton is the founder of ChinaSource.
Dr. Fulton served as the first president of ChinaSource until 2019. Prior to his service with ChinaSource, he served from 1995 to 2000 as the managing director of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Wheaton College. From 1987 to 1995 he served as founding US director of China Ministries International, and from 1985 to 1986 as the English publications editor for the Chinese Church Research Center in Hong Kong.
Dr. Fulton holds MA and PhD degrees in political science from the University of Southern California and a BA in radio-TV-film from Messiah College.
An avid China watcher, Dr. Fulton has written and taught extensively on the church in China and on Chinese social and political phenomena. He is the author of China's Urban Christians: A Light That Cannot Be Hidden and co-authored China's Next Generation: New China, New Church, New World with Luis Bush.
Dr. Fulton and his wife, Jasmine, previously lived in Hong Kong from 2006 to 2017. They currently reside in northern California.
He is currently facilitating a network of member care professionals serving missionaries sent out from China. He also consults with other organizations on the impact of China's religious policy.
The development of leadership training within China’s unregistered church has followed a trajectory that roughly parallels that of the larger society as it has experienced major advances in education, a rising standard of living, and massive urbanization.
An introduction to the 2014 winter issue by the editor of the ChinaSource Quarterly.
What a difference a decade makes! Over the last ten years the nation of China and the Chinese church have changed significantly; so has…
Given the relatively opaque nature of China's church, international organizations have often found it difficult to know where to connect. Chinese representation at several high-profile international conferences in recent years has, in some ways, been a welcome breakthrough. These events have ostensibly helped to bring together a wide spectrum of leaders from within China with those from abroad who are seeking to partner with them.
In Mobilized Merchants - Patriotic Martyrs, Dr. Timothy Conkling sheds much-needed light on the relationship between China's unregistered church and the Chinese Party-State. The dissertation research that forms the basis for the book set out to answer the question of why Chinese Christians are persecuted and how they respond to this persecution.
In past decades, China's church had much less of a public presence. The gospel message was conveyed primarily through clandestine small group meetings or personal relationships.
In a recent ChinaSource Quarterly article entitled, "Five Profound Mentoring Needs in China," Eric Lee notes that the most common requests from Chinese church leaders during the past three decades have been for Bibles, spiritual literature, and training. Now, however, they are asking for cross-cultural missionary training and mentoring.
With literally hundreds of crosses falling prey to overzealous local officials in Wenzhou and neighboring cities, the region once seen as a bastion of extraordinary religious freedom is now the subject of worldwide attention due to an equally extraordinary crackdown on its churches.
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.
Reformed theology has found fertile ground in China, particularly among urban unregistered churches.
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.
The past decade has seen a groundswell of passion among Christians in China to pursue cross-cultural ministry. A corresponding wave of activity among outside organizations and churches has aimed at equipping China's church for this task.