Carsten T. Vala is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland. He published a book on the rise and fall of public house churches like Beijing Shouwang church in 2017 (The Politics of Protestant Churches and the Party-State in China: God Above Party?), and has written a number of articles on church-state relations, Protestants and patriotism, the Bible hand-copying movement, Protestant seminary politics, and other issues in China.