January 9 1995

ARTICLE TOOLS

Find similar articles E-mail this page

"The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou," by David E. Mungello (Univ. of Hawaii, 248 pp.; $36, hardcover). Reviewed by Daniel H. Bays, professor of modern Chinese history at the University of Kansas, Lawrence; he is the author of "Christian Revival in China, 1900-1937," in Modern Christian Revivals, edited by Edith L. Blumhofer and Randall Balmer (Univ. of Ill.).

Many readers of CHRISTIANITY TODAYare aware that the last 15 years have seen a great revival of Christianity in China (CT, May 16, 1994, p. 17; pp. 33-34). As a result of the rapid expansion of the faith in recent decades, which has been duplicated in Africa and the rest of Asia, a majority of Christians in the world today are outside Europe and North America. China is an example of a society where Christianity is being integrated into existing cultural structures without the guidance of foreign missionaries—in part, because all such missionaries were forced to leave China more than 40 years ago, but also because the indigenous church has continued to mature.

There are many good resources for understanding the church in China today. Two recent books well worth reading are Alan Hunter and Chan Kim-Kwong, "Protestantism in Contemporary China" (Cambridge, 1993), and Edmond Tang and Jean-Paul Wiest, editors, "The Catholic Church in Modern China" (Orbis, 1993). There are also some excellent Protestant and Catholic "China-watching" organizations in Hong Kong, with informative publications. Yet too strong an emphasis on the Chinese church today obscures the fact that Christianity has been present continuously in China for more than four hundred years.

In "The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou," David Mungello, formerly of Coe College and now of Baylor University, gives ...