Daniel Bays's splendid introduction to the history of the Christian religion in China marks a welcome summation of more than 25 years of investigation and research. After an initial focus on the great Qing reformer Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909), Professor Bays has led the way in opening up new avenues of research and publication on Chinese Christianity for a number of scholars in the West and in China. As a result, this introduction is beautifully judged, well informed by Chinese and Western commentators, and limpidly clear in all its deliberations. Bays concentrates on a chronological, historical narrative, making his book a worthy successor to such previous introductions as Bob Whyte's Unfinished Encounter (Collins Fount Paperbacks, 1988), Jean-Pierre Charbonnier's Christians in China (Ignatius Press, 2002) and Kenneth Scott Latourette's much more detailed, but now outdated, classic A History of Christian Missions in China (MacMillan, 1929). A comparison with Latourette's title is indicative; Bays's new volume represents an attempt to come to terms with Christianity as a Chinese religion, an essential part of an emerging “post-Western Christianity” (p. 205).
The difficulty faced by narrative histories of Christianity in China remains the episodic nature of its origins, which necessitates a focus on repeated missionary efforts, a lack of continuity, and difficulties in drawing conclusions over events spaced hundreds of years apart. Bays resolves this by rolling through the events of the Tang, Yuan and Ming dynasties at a rapid pace. In part, this anticipates the Protestant focus of the book, with fully half of the work's 220 pages focussing on the “expansion,” “golden age” and “crises” of the Protestant Chinese churches between 1860 and 1950. This leaves space for a chapter exploring Christian responses to the Communist Liberation and Cultural Revolution, and a concluding chapter interpreting the myriad developments since 1977.
The book's strength lies in its exploration of the Sino-Foreign Protestant Establishment (SFPE) (pp. 99–120), a term coined by Bays to denote the group of influential reformers and missionaries who influenced the course of Chinese religion and politics in the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising through to the “anti-Christian movements” of the early 1920s. The career of the evangelist Chen Chonggui (1883–1961), who for a time worked with the “Christian general” Feng Yuxiang, is used to illustrate this trajectory. The May Thirtieth Incident (1925) led Feng increasingly to seek aid from the Soviets rather than the Christian deity, and his troops began singing patriotic lyrics to the tune of the Christian doxology. Bays well illustrates the collapse of confidence in the SFPE and the growth of an independent Chinese Christianity (or Christianities) during the Nanjing Decade. Several paragraph-length sketches of movements like the True Jesus Church, Ni Tuosheng's Little Flock, and the less well-known “Spiritual Gifts Society” (Ling'en hui) show the range of Bays's own research into these early developments of an “indigenous” Chinese Pentecostalism.
Events covered in the subsequent chapters on Christian developments during the People's Republic of China are, by their nature, the most difficult to summarize neatly for any historian. Bays's main difficulty, faced equally by Chinese researchers, is the continued sensitivity of Christianity as a “foreign religion” (yangjiao) in China, and a paucity of Chinese documentary source material. As a result, these chapters provide little of the detail which illuminates the coverage of the Republican period. Bays's even-handed commentary on the creation of the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the “house churches” feels more detached, and there are few clues as to the reasons for Protestant Christianity's rapid growth in China since the late 1970s. Party–government attempts to co-opt an inexperienced Chinese Catholic hierarchy in the 1950s, and their subsequent extensive imprisonment, are also duly reported. But we gain little sense of how the on-going deep tensions within Chinese Catholic communities continue to affect daily religious life as a result of stances taken in Beijing and the Vatican.
As an introductory text, Bays cannot examine in any detail the interaction between Chinese Christians and the wider religious ecology of post-1979 China. This leads to a certain unevenness in the final chapter; the discussion of the new phenomenon of urban house churches and “cultural Christians” feels undercooked. This is unfortunate, as current political concerns about a “religious imbalance” in China stem largely from these Christians' influence. Bays's structure allows him to draw few conclusions about the future trajectory of Chinese Christianity, though he wisely takes issue with David Aikman's predictions of a “Christian China” (p. 205).
Despite these cavils, A New History represents the best and most up-to-date introductory history to Protestant Christianity in China. Bays eschews theological or sociological discursions in favour of a straightforward historical approach, making his book well suited to undergraduate courses on Chinese religion or world Christianity. As a readable and reliable guide, it will also find a wide readership outside the walls of the academy.
