Analysis

Timothy Conkling has written an extremely important book. Based on exhaustive research over many years and drawing upon a wide variety of unimpeachable sources, he has given us a definitive analysis of both house-church Protestants and government religious policy and practice as they were at the time of writing.

Palmeiro’s visit to China at the end of the Ming dynasty came at a critical juncture in the Jesuit mission there. His personal career, the decisions he made about mission strategy, and the story of the first two centuries of Jesuit missions worldwide carry potent lessons for us now.

Although containing much useful information, some illuminating insights, and a fresh perspective on the early years of the China Inland Mission, this revisionist history is almost fatally flawed by a profound prejudice that prevents objectivity in dealing with the sources and leads to misinterpretation and at times even misrepresentation.

On the Road to Siangyang is a labor of love and comes out of [Jack Lundbom's] own affiliation with the Evangelical Covenant Church, formerly known as the American Mission Covenant. Drawing upon an unusually rich store of personal conversations with former missionaries and their family members, as well as Chinese Christians, and supported by extensive documentation, this book will prove to be a gold mine for historians of missionary work in China.

Paul Golf's book is thoroughly researched, well written, well organized, and marked with energy, passion, remarkable balance, and extremely valuable as an expression of what many Chinese Christians believe about themselves – their history, their present condition, and the mandate God has passed on to them.

This book explores how and why this religion is growing at such a rapid rate and also speculates on its future growth. By and large, the authors do a very good job telling the story of Christianity in China since 1900 within the context of Chinese history.

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.

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.