Over the past two decades considerable scholarly attention has been paid to the growth of Christianity outside of Europe and North America. Led by scholars such as Andrew Walls and Lamin Sanneh, Philip Jenkins and others, the new focus on ‘world’ or ‘global’ Christianity has attempted to frame this ‘demographic shift’ in terms of concepts such as translation, appropriation and indigenous agency. Whereas the majority of these earlier works have had an Africa focus, this impressive volume provides a fine sampling of the vibrant and diverse expressions of Christianity across many Asian contexts. The contributions are evenly distributed between South and East Asia and, as the title indicates, are centred on the question of what exactly makes Christianity Asian. The thirteen contributors join the editors in their goal of viewing conversion from the perspective of converts, not as a top-down imposition by foreign missionaries (p. 10). Throughout the volume, this goal is well served by the consistent use of local languages, categories and practices to explain the reshaping and reformulation of Christianity by Asians.
Two of the China contributions illustrate the emphasis on local agency nicely. Richard Burton's essay describes the centrality of spirit possession in the language of Chinese Christians. At the nexus of Chinese folk beliefs, Pentecostalism, and grass-roots churches in Shandong, possession and baptism for Christians ‘reimagined hierarchies' within the expanded semantic meanings of biblical terms (p. 77). Joseph Tse-Hei Lee's essay also draws considerable insights from linguistic analysis, tracing the shifting meanings of chuan (preaching), xin (believing or trusting), and bai (worship) from missionary to local Christian usage (pp. 83ff).
The volume balances stories of intellectuals and their conversions with more populist dynamics in the story of Asian Christianity. Richard Young, for instance, questions ‘why the intellect and its role in conversion … is now so very understated (if not actually trivialized)’ (p. 214). His profile of the Bengali convert Nehemiah Goreh situates his Christian theological journey within a world profoundly shaped by Sanskrit concepts and terminology. A similar task is accomplished in Jonas Jorgensen's study of Christianity in Bangladesh, where conversions to the religion among the Isa imandars (‘those who are faithful to Jesus') contextualised faith in Jesus Christ within the framework of Islamic concepts of iman (faith), jamaat (fellowship) and the study of kitabs (‘the books'). Rather than understanding the experience of the Isa imandars in terms of a crude notion of syncretism, Jorgensen frames their experience as an attempt to maintain a Muslim virtue of commitment, though in connection to Christ (p. 293).
Against the geographic breadth and multi-disciplinary approach of this volume, the editors should be commended for producing a book with remarkable focus and discipline. One gains a sense that the contributions were carefully chosen, well-edited, tactically arranged and deftly conversant with the core concepts that the editors signalled from the outset.
