Brent Fulton
Brent Fulton is the founder of ChinaSource.
Dr. Fulton served as the first president of ChinaSource until 2019. Prior to his service with ChinaSource, he served from 1995 to 2000 as the managing director of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Wheaton College. From 1987 to 1995 he served as founding US director of China Ministries International, and from 1985 to 1986 as the English publications editor for the Chinese Church Research Center in Hong Kong.
Dr. Fulton holds MA and PhD degrees in political science from the University of Southern California and a BA in radio-TV-film from Messiah College.
An avid China watcher, Dr. Fulton has written and taught extensively on the church in China and on Chinese social and political phenomena. He is the author of China's Urban Christians: A Light That Cannot Be Hidden and co-authored China's Next Generation: New China, New Church, New World with Luis Bush.
Dr. Fulton and his wife, Jasmine, previously lived in Hong Kong from 2006 to 2017. They currently reside in northern California.
He is currently facilitating a network of member care professionals serving missionaries sent out from China. He also consults with other organizations on the impact of China's religious policy.
China and the Church: The Perennial Questions
"How many Christians in China?"
"Are believers still persecuted?"
Religion and Control in Chinese History
The rigid control structures comprising the "box" within which China's church currently operates are often assumed to be merely a function of China's Leninist political system. Were this system to be dismantled, one might argue, the "box" would come apart and China's Christians would enjoy genuine freedom of religion.
China’s (Unfinished) Education Explosion
China is in the midst of an education explosion.
China’s Demographic Fork in the Road
Up until the beginning of this decade, China's elderly and young adult populations were growing at roughly the same rate.
Partnering with China’s Church in an Era of Global Convergence
We live in an era when partnership between the church in China and the global church is both desired and increasingly possible. The challenges facing the church in China have evolved significantly in recent decades A survey of these challenges may lead some to conclude that church life in China today is not that much different from church life in the West or among overseas Chinese communities in Asia. Postmodernism, urbanization, secularization, and family breakdown are endemic to industrialized and post-industrialized societies the world over. The difference for China is that it has experienced in thirty years what in most other nations has taken place over a century or more.
China’s Religious Policy: The Unfinished Mandate
China's current policy on religion is spelled out in Central Party Document no. 19, "The Basic Viewpoint and Policy on the Religious Question during Our Country's Socialist Period," issued in March of 1982.
How Many NGOs does China Really Have?
According to a recent article in The Economist, over the past 25 years half a million non-governmental organizations have registered in China. Another 1.5 million social entities have not registered and are effectively functioning illegally. Many others are registered as businesses.
China’s Schizophrenic NGO Policy
As far as I know China's NGO sector doesn't have a theme song, but if it did it would likely be the U2 hit single "With or Without You."
Urbanization and the Future of China’s Church
Along with the massive urbanization that has forever reshaped the social and cultural landscape of China, the church in China has itself undergone a major transformation. From a largely rural, peasant-led movement in the 1980s the church is now very much an urban phenomenon.
Six Trends Shaping China (and What They Mean for the Church)
Jeffrey Towson and Jonathan Woetzel, both professors at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management in Beijing, claim you can understand China in an hour. An excerpt from their new book on the McKinsey and Company website says getting a handle on China is a lot less about politics and a lot more about a handful of major economic and social trends that are shaping the country's future.