Blog Entries on Church History
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.
The Earliest Chinese Christianity Brought Back to Life
Readers [of Jingjiao] will not only be equipped with the fascinating history of Jingjiao, which helps overcome the anti-Christian narrative that Christianity was brought into China by European and American colonial imperialists. Christians and missionaries in various global cultural contexts will also benefit from this book by learning from the Church of the East missionaries’ creative strategies of inculturation.
Chinese Christianity Endures, Part 2
Learning from the 18th-Century Church Under Authoritarian Rule
Given China’s place in the world order today, it is very unlikely that they will completely ban all foreigners.... We can be confident that no matter how few the foreigners or how persecuted the flock, our God who makes the rocks cry out in testimony will ensure that his witness is never silenced, and his kingdom continues to advance.
J.O. Fraser and the Making of the Lisu Bible
Fraser’s most acclaimed contribution to missions is his translation of the Bible and Christian hymns into the Lisu language. When he first met the Lisu people in Tengyueh, they had no written language of their own. After Fraser learned to speak the language, he began to translate the Bible into Lisu.
Chinese Christianity Endures, Part 1
Studying the 18th-Century Church under Authoritarian Rule
The study then takes a closer look at the brief emergence of a comparatively Chinese underground church…before concluding with a fascinating reflection on martyrdom, comparing the Chinese notion of suffering perseverance motivated by filial loyalty to the saints who have gone before with the European concept of sacrificing one’s life for the gospel.
Meet the Translators of the Chinese Bible
Chinese Bible translations were often the result of years of diligence, at times division, and significant group work. While Westerners often numerically dominated the projects mentioned above, Chinese Christians also played a role.
Meet the Missionaries Who Went to China
ChinaSource Summer School Session 3
God works through the lives of individual believers to spread the gospel and fulfill the great commission. In this post, we have rounded up several posts that look at multiple important missionaries from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Christianity Comes to China
ChinaSource Summer School Session 2
Take a walk through the past and learn about different missionary efforts in China, from the Nestorians to Matteo Ricci to missionaries like Robert Morrison and Hudson Taylor.
7 Women Who Braved a Chaotic China
Through the Valley of the Shadow: Australian Women in War-torn China
The women were among the bravest missionaries to serve in China… The authors describe…fending off bandits, experiencing bombing, walking miles and miles to get food, enduring flea bombs dropped on their city, hiding in the woods from violent mobs, and more.
Breakthrough: James O. Fraser
With everything going on in the world, Christians in China are facing increasingly complicated circumstances, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for outsiders to connect with the Chinese church. But Fraser’s life reminds us that engaging in prayer is one of the most powerful things we can do. . . . wherever we might live in the world.