Tag: Book Review

Blog Entries

Summer 2024 Reading Recommendations

Looking for a good end-of-summer book? Check out this roundup of the book reviews we’ve done over the last year, from memoir to biography to in-depth history to analysis of the current situation in China.

Blog Entries

The Appeal of the Pentecostal Movement in Hong Kong

The Kaleidoscopic City: A Book Review

Mayfield highlights…the essential continuity that bound the early Pentecostal missionaries together with their evangelical contemporaries; the way in which the “heat and noise” of Pentecostal worship, which often repelled Europeans, actually served to attract the Chinese masses; and the strategic role that women played in the founding of Pentecostal churches.

Blog Entries

Faith Across Continents

Peter Anderson’s Story of Service in China

Readers who appreciate a detailed, chronological account of Christian work in China over the past few decades, and are also interested in Anderson’s personal journey, will enjoy this book….and will most likely enjoy the stories Anderson shares, including the joys and challenges he encountered along the way.

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Chinese Migrants in the Americas

At the Intersection of Resilience, Marginalization, and Hope

For all those who are of mixed-race descent and are looking to find threads of meaning in this conflictual experience, this account not only demonstrates what can be possible at the edges of luck, community, and political agency—but also the horrors of what can take place when monocultural and supremacist ideologies are enacted thus preventing the co-creation of communities of belonging for all.

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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.

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Robert Ekvall: Living on the Edge

A Book Review of Brave Son of Tibet

Robert and Betty went to the untamed Tibet and built relationships, preparing for themselves and others to move and live in these new areas. Robert was a visionary with deep understanding of the cultures, but also brave, as the title says, facing local robbers, politics, and later, war-haunted China.

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Telling the Truth in China

A Book Review of Sparks

At its most basic level, Sparks presents readers with a host of remarkable women and men who persist in talking about what really happened. In an environment focused on silencing certain aspects of the past, these are the stories of the Chinese citizens who say the quiet part out loud.

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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.

Blog Entries

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.

Book Reviews

A Framework for Digital Evangelism

Dr. Harris and Reed’s relational approach applies for individuals to begin relationships with Chinese people in various online spaces and understand their needs. The content of the book needs to be further contextualized for a local Chinese audience, where relationship building will have more nuances in both cultural and digital landscapes.