Now that August has rolled around, it’s the perfect time to squeeze in another couple of summer books before vacation mode comes to an end. We’ve published reviews of several excellent books over the past year, and today we’re rounding them all up to give you a convenient list.
Chinese Christianity Endures, Part 1 and Part 2
Regular contributor Swells in the Middle Kingdom reviews This Suffering is My Joy: The Underground Church in Eighteenth-Century China by D. E. Mungello. He writes,
While overseas cross-cultural workers tend to view today’s tightening in light of the so-called “exodus” of expatriate Christian workers in 1950, this cycle of Christian progress followed by persecution has a much longer pedigree in Chinese history. In his latest book This Suffering is My Joy, China historian D. E. Mungello offers a brief study of the Catholic Church in China following the Yongzheng Emperor’s 1724 proscription of Christianity, highlighting how local and expatriate Catholics responded to official persecution over the following century. As priests and missionaries from overseas became more and more rare, Catholic practice and identity in China moved “underground” where it was increasingly sustained and nurtured by local believers.
Available from Amazon.
Telling the Truth in China
Swells brings us another fantastic book review, this time of Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and Their Battle for the Future by Ian Johnson. He says of the book,
Reading through Sparks was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. I could not help but think of all the women and men I have known over the last three decades, some heroic resistors, some seemingly cowed by the persistent threat of violence. As Johnson’s subjects recounted their stories, I swung wildly from depressed to inspired, ultimately joining Johnson in his conviction that victory will eventually belong to the counter-historians.
Available from Amazon.
Robert Ekvall: Living on the Edge
Chris Gabriel helps to bring the fascinating character of Robert Ekvall to life in his review of Brave Son of Tibet: The Many Lives of Robert B. Ekvall by David P. Jones. According to Gabriel,
It is a book well worth reading, not the least as Robert Ekvall’s life is very interesting and never boring. But within the stories you have to consider the life of Tibetans, how the gospel is shared and how relationships are birthed and grown. It is a challenge to follow a man like Robert who lived on the edge and watched with open eyes in the most demanding and dangerous situations.
Available from Wipf and Stock and Amazon.
If you want to learn more about evangelistic efforts in Tibet, check out another post by Chris Gabriel called “God Continues to Speak Tibetan,” which gives an account of the great task of translating the Bible into Tibetan.
The Chinese Church in Transition
For the spring 2024 issue of ChinaSource Quarterly, Jackie J. Hwang reviewed Mission through Diaspora: The Case of the Chinese Church in the USA by Jeanne Wu. She writes of its significance,
In my estimation, the most fascinating aspect of this book is Wu’s own reflections on the same-ethnicity mission focus found in US Chinese churches. She confesses to a change in her perspective on why these churches hold to this focus. Wu writes, “Before I started this research project, my reasoning for the mission approach of Chinese churches was simply ‘ethnocentrism.’ But after careful research, I discovered that the cause behind this kind of mission practice is more complicated than ethnocentrism” (pp. 157–8). By sharing her own journey, Wu helps readers understand why a same-ethnic mission focus may still have a place in diaspora mission, thus adding nuance to the contemporary mission focus on unreached people groups…
Available from Langham Monographs and Amazon.
The Earliest Chinese Christianity Brought Back to Life
How and when did Christianity first come to China? How did the first missionaries contextualize their preaching so that it made sense to their Chinese listeners? Looking back to the sixth and seventh centuries will provide new and challenging answers, which is what Jacob Chengwei Feng does in his review of Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China by Glen L. Thompson. He says of the book,
Readers will not only be equipped with the fascinating history of Jingjiao, which helps overcome the anti-Christian narrative that Christianity was brought into China by European and American colonial imperialists. Christians and missionaries in various global cultural contexts will also benefit from this book by learning from the Church of the East missionaries’ creative strategies of inculturation.
Available from Eerdmans and Amazon.
Glen Thompson, the author of Jingjao, contributed a deeply informative series about the Jingjao, which makes excellent companion reading to this book review.
Chinese Migrants in the Americas
Aizaiah G. Yong reviewed America’s Lost Chinese: The Rise and Fall of a Migrant Family Dream by Hugo Wong, taking a careful and sensitive look at the difficult topic of Chinese migration to North America, mixed-race households, and the place of Christianity in the lives of these often-overlooked people. According to Yong,
In this book, Hugo Wong’s goals are twofold: 1) to tell the long-lost stories of his own mixed-race ancestors and their pivotal roles in building the Americas and 2) to share insights on the possibilities of intercultural dialogue and community amid conflict, injustice, and systemic oppression. While this book is definitively historical, it is also a humanist account about the promises and pitfalls of migration and mixed-ethnic households.
Available from C. Hurst and Amazon.
Faith Across Continents
Michelle Woods reviewed the memoir of our contributor Peter Anderson, entitled Africa to China with Love: A Lifelong Missional Adventure. She writes warmly of the book,
As I read the book Africa to China with Love, I could sense that Anderson has a deep love for God and for China and its people, and that he has served them from the heart. At times, it felt like I was sitting next to the author, and he was showing his photo album while sharing his memories and telling stories of the different time periods.
Available from Amazon, Ambassadors for Christ, and Castle Publishing.
The Appeal of the Pentecostal Movement in Hong Kong
Robert Menzies edited the summer 2023 ChinaSource Quarterly, which focused on the legacy and current state of Pentecostal churches in China. More recently, he wrote an excellent review of Alex Mayfield’s book, The Kaleidoscopic City: Hong Kong, Mission, and the Evolution of Global Pentecostalism. Menzies shows how Mayfield demonstrates the appeal of Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century. Menzies praises Mayfield,
One distinctive aspect of the spirituality of those early Pentecostals in Hong Kong was their manner of worship. Mayfield aptly describes it with the Chinese phrase, renao, which means “hot and noisy.” Mayfield notes that while Pentecostal worship “was by and large” opposed by Europeans, the “lower classes of Chinese people, who may not have had as much exposure to Western ways and customs, found Pentecostal worship curiously intriguing and perhaps even a good form of entertainment” (p. 145).
Available from Baylor University Press and Amazon.
I hope this reading round-up gives you a good starting point for your next book. You can find more book reviews in our “Book Review” tag and many more recommendations in “Summer Reading.”
Happy reading!
Rachel Anderson
Rachel Anderson serves as the Assistant Content Manager at ChinaSource. Though she has never been to China, her ancestors were missionaries in East Asia and passed on a deep love and respect for those cultures. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their five delightful children. View Full Bio
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