Editor’s note: As we prepare to release the Summer 2026 issue of ChinaSource Journal, Chinese Public Theology for Our Time, we are pleased to share Brent Fulton’s ChinaSource Perspective as a preview of the upcoming issue.
This issue brings together Chinese Christian scholars and ministry leaders reflecting on public witness, virtue, peace, justice, and beauty. With contributions engaging contexts in China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the broader Chinese diaspora, the journal asks what faithful public witness can look like when churches face pluralistic societies, restricted public space, social division, and rapid technological change.
In this essay, Brent Fulton reflects on the changing metaphors for China’s church—from “a city on a hill” to “a pine tree in winter”—and considers what it might mean for the church to become an alternative community. His reflection offers a fitting entry point into the larger conversation of this issue: public theology is not only about how the church speaks to the world, but also about how the church embodies a different way of life before the world.
Be sure to subscribe to receive the full issue of ChinaSource Journal when it is released. We hope this issue will invite readers to consider how Chinese churches, both in China and across the diaspora, can bear witness to the “public God” with humility, courage, beauty, peace, and service.
Enjoy the read and stay tuned for the full release!
From “a city on a hill” to “a pine tree in winter,” the shifting metaphors for China’s church reflect the progressively shrinking space for Christian expression over the past decade. In this era of rapid transformation, assumptions about how China’s church might engage with society, find its role vis-à-vis the state, and function as the visible representation of Christ are being brought into question. The thoughtful and wide-ranging contributions in this issue of ChinaSource Journal are particularly relevant to where China’s church finds itself today. By looking not only at the church in China itself but also to Christian communities in the global Chinese diaspora, these scholars offer both cautionary tales as well as hopeful visions of what it means to be a witness to the “public God.”
Experiencing what many have termed a “golden era,” the church in the mid-2000s began moving toward increasingly public expressions of faith. Unregistered megachurches appeared in major cities, and with the explosion of the internet, Christian websites and social media platforms flourished. Universities welcomed scholarly discussions on Christianity, publishers produced hundreds of titles for sale in Christian bookstores, and social service agencies run by believers pushed the bounds of civil society as they worked with people on the margins. Some pastors and Christian intellectuals directly engaged political authorities, seeking to carve out legal space for activities that, although technically forbidden, were nonetheless happening in plain sight.
Today the shape of the church is very different, comprising less visible, smaller congregations and Bible study groups. The robust conversations in cyberspace have been silenced, along with the faith-centered discussions in classrooms and lecture halls. Civil society groups face tight restrictions. Public discussion of policy is off-limits. With so much of what had been assumed to be the future of the church’s public witness now gone, the church finds itself rethinking its role, or at least the means by which to fulfill it.
Perhaps in the void left by these rapid and seemingly unfortunate developments may be found the seeds of a new kind of public presence. The attraction model inherent in megachurch ministry is giving way to the very real attraction of human warmth and relationship that can only be found in a safe, trusting community. True human fellowship stands out in stark contrast to the digital fragmentation and depersonalization that have come to dominate modern society. Freed from what David Doong calls “the algorithmic echo chamber,” with its never-ending competition for more clicks and online followers, the church can offer a real-life alternative to the enticing yet disappointingly hollow world of AI-generated experiences. As Doong writes, “It must be a way of life and communal witness that returns to the gospel.”
Yucheng Bai and other contributors to this issue argue that, if the church desires to promote virtue in society, it must first cultivate virtue internally. Following a season in which rapid church growth was the norm and institutional developments often outpaced spiritual readiness, the church may be at a place where it can reexamine practices—many of which were hastily adopted from outside China—that are not conducive to becoming the community Christ intends. As Bai writes,
In a context where public space is restricted and church institutionalization is still taking shape, the ‘community of virtue’ reminds the Chinese house church that public theology is not only about how the church speaks to the world, but also about whether the church itself lives out a life of peace, justice, humility, and mutual service.
Jiushuang Chen’s critique of the church’s approach to art (Is it useful?) mirrors the bottom-line mentality that has too often characterized evangelical endeavors globally. With the increased sophistication of China’s church in the opening decades of this century came a greater emphasis on efficiency. Perhaps, as Sheng-Yu Peng suggests, the present moment provides an opportunity to move from needing to be seen to a new desire to see, from an emphasis on technique and results to a genuine interest in the needs and concerns of the church’s neighbors. Over-produced worship can give way to silent contemplation, nonstop information to sacred space. Relieved of the demands of putting on a public performance, believers can rediscover beauty as a means of appreciating and sharing God’s glory. “As the church relearns how to look, listen, and wait,” Chen writes, “the disciples’ perception of beauty will also slowly awaken.”
The case studies from Taiwan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong presented in this issue provide a hopeful look at how the church can create a new kind of civil society, engaging with the larger culture even when the powers that be are inherently opposed to the gospel. Pushed to the margins, China’s believers have the opportunity to imagine anew how—to quote guest editor Jerry An— “through its independent and distinct existence before society, the church manifests that God is a public God.” Barred from using public platforms to speak prophetically against structural evil in society, the church can instead respond to the call to suffer quietly with the victims of injustice, just as Christ suffered quietly on our behalf.
As this issue goes online, Christians in many parts of the world are bitterly divided over how to live out their faith in the public sphere. The example of Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham, which Ping-cheung Lo examines in detail in his book, Who Is the Prophet of Our Time?, has given way to the ethics of “I’ll fight for you” and “Take back our country!” As China’s church steps back from building a city on a hill and reconsiders the nature of its witness in society, perhaps its example can serve as a much-needed corrective for Western Christians who have exhausted themselves and tarnished the church’s witness in their pursuit of power.
David Doong writes, “Through the reshaping of narrative, existence, and power, the church becomes an alternative community set apart for the common good amid shattered meaning and pluralistic values.” China’s church finds itself at a crossroads. Exchanging the narrative of conquest for the values of the Beatitudes means living out its public witness from a position of vulnerability, humility, and service. In the months and years ahead, may it contribute a new chapter to the larger Chinese public theology story, showing the world what this alternative community can look like.
