Glen Thompson
Glen L. Thompson received an MDiv from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and MA and PhD degrees in history from Columbia University. He served as a missionary in Zambia, New York City, and Hong Kong, and held professorships at Wisconsin Lutheran College (Milwaukee) and most recently at Asia Lutheran Seminary (Hong Kong) where he also served as Academic Dean until his retirement in 2020. He has published numerous articles and books on church history and missions and founded Fourth-Century Christianity, a widely used website on early Christianity. His most recent books are In This Way We Came to Rome: With Paul on the Appian Way (Lexham Press, 2024) and Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China (Eerdmans, 2024).
Creating a Truly Chinese Church
A truly “Christian” Chinese church will not only be thoroughly enculturated, but it will also retain the entire “rule of faith” shared by the rest of the universal church. Finally, Chinese Christians, knowing they are part of the universal church, will continue to seek to share the joys and trials of the indigenous churches of all other cultures. Such a church would be biblical, God-pleasing, and truly Chinese.
The Long History of Government Oversight and China’s Church
When [Church of the East] missionaries arrived in the Chinese capital of Chang’an in 635, they understood that Christianity in the Middle Kingdom required government approval…The application was successful, and a government edict allowed the new Luminous Teaching, as it called itself, to be spread in all China, including the building of a church in the capital city.
Jingjiao—Not Nestorian
In AD 635 Christian missionaries whose worship language was Syriac traveled thousands of miles down the Silk Road to plant a church in China. The imperial officials examined their teaching and issued a decree (preserved in the stele) allowing the church to be established.