Analysis

Whether Confucianism is, or has ever been, a religion is a consideration that has been hotly debated for centuries, with evidence for and against its religious nature presented by those who answer either “Yes” or “No.” Anna Sun states that this is indeed a question “the West has never been able to answer, and China never able to ask.” She continues, however, that Confucianism is a civil religion. In this section, we shall present the findings of two outstanding American writers, Kenneth Scott Latourette and Charles E. Farhadian, both of whom identify Confucianism as a world religion.

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“In the twentieth century, for the first time, there was in the world a universal religion – the Christian religion. . . . In country after country . . . it took root, not as a foreign import, but as the Church of the countries in which it dwells,” this author powerfully proclaims. Though the term is not used, this was the period when “World Christianity” fully came into being as the major development in Christian history and, perhaps, of all human history.

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In these chapters, we note the pattern of progression, “conquest,” and then retrogression, as formerly “Christian” nations and peoples were conquered from without or fatally compromised from within.

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This one-volume history of Christian missions is, in one sense, comprehensive. Neill’s grandparents and parents had served as missionaries in India, bequeathing to him an insider’s knowledge of missionary life and work, which he augmented by serving in India with the Church Missionary Society for twenty years. His narrative reads like a story rather than a mere chronicle.

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This is an outstanding book, of great usefulness to anyone wanting to understand the immense changes that took place in the twentieth century. It is also a marvel of conciseness: Sunquist packs an enormous amount of information and analysis into less than 200 pages.

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We’re revisiting this book review more than 25 years after the beginning of the new century to see what we can learn in hindsight. Noted historian on the subject of World Christianity, Scott Sunquist has given us another outstanding volume. He possesses both a wide knowledge of the Christian movement’s history as a whole and a comprehensive grasp of Christian missions in all its dimensions.

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In her epilogue, the author writes, “The main purpose for writing this book was to get to know a man—an ordinary man who nevertheless magnified the grace of God…. Another purpose … was to record the history of a crucial period in the development of the history of the Church in China.” In my opinion, she succeeded in both purposes.

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This volume contains papers written by Peter Ng over a period of fifteen years, presented in chronological order of publication with the purpose of illustrating his own intellectual journey, especially regarding the concept of Chinese indigenous Christianity, and the re-discovery of local Christianities and the Chinese side of the story. His goal is to elaborate on the theme of a new understanding of Chinese Christianity from a global-local perspective.

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I cannot recommend Sorrow and Blood highly enough. It came to me as a reminder of what my wife and I were told before we left home for Asia with OMF in 1975. Mission leaders said, “a missionary must be prepared to preach, pray, or die at a moment’s notice.” It seems that very little has changed since then.

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With decades of experience living in Asia, traveling within China, and meeting with both Chinese Christians and Christian leaders working within China, Brent Fulton has written the most authoritative and accurate book yet to appear on the urban Chinese church.

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In Zhejiang: The Jerusalem of China, Paul Hattaway has once again demonstrated his matchless skill as a popular historian of Christianity in China.

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Reality is based on relationships between created beings and the Creator Being. Mission work is about human beings who are in relationship with God introducing yet other human beings to Him. God’s purpose is relational. Our calling in mission is relational and training for mission also needs to be relational.

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