Kathleen L. Lodwick should be praised for having produced this highly informative and easily accessible historical survey of Chinese Christianity. She draws on decades-long research to discuss how the triad of Christian missionary movements—evangelization, Western-style education, and modern medicine—contributed to transformative changes in China.

Besides the introduction and conclusion, the book is composed of six lucid chapters. In chapter 1, Lodwick discusses the trajectories of Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Protestantism in China, highlighting the incremental transformation of Christianity from a foreign belief system into an indigenous faith. She is sensitive to many practical problems like culture shock, mental breakdowns, and emotional stress that troubled missionary pioneers in the interior (38). Chapter 2 argues that denominationalism was not as contentious an issue among the Protestant missionaries and native converts in China as it was in Europe and America, and ecumenism brought most missionaries together until the 1920s. But Lodwick critiques the hagiographic representations of James Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), who founded the China Inland Mission on June 25, 1865, and asserts that this nondenominational enterprise suffered from the problem of top-down management by Taylor (102–112).

In chapter 3, Lodwick emphasizes the practical benefits of Christianity in modern education, enlightening and empowering generations of Chinese youths and women. In particular, the Church served as a refuge for women to escape from abusive relationships (114), and Bible classes taught them literacy skills. Some female graduates founded village churches and created a new platform to exercise their agency. Despite these contributions, intercultural dialogue was a two-way process, fraught with promises and conflicts, and many missionaries strove to balance proselytization and adjustment to life in China.

The Christian missionary movements were far from homogeneous, attracting people from diverse denominational backgrounds. Chapter 4 outlines the geographical expansion of Christianity from coastal regions to remote frontiers, impacting Han Chinese and dozens of ethnic minorities. Chapter 5 presents biographical sketches of prominent missionaries and Chinese church leaders. Chapter 6 is the most sophisticated one in the book, as it evaluates four theological controversies that continue to affect Chinese Protestants today, including the Chinese Rite Controversies, the theological debate between fundamentalism and modernism, the quest for ecumenical cooperation, and the feminization of Christian doctrines and practices.

Underlying Lodwick's compelling narrative is the remarkable process of cross-cultural adaptation. This development was both global and local. While Chinese Christians embraced and appropriated foreign missionary resources and modern knowledge to empower themselves, Westerners adapted to the Chinese environment and made it their new home. As China struggled to come to terms with modernization (i.e., the process of being modern) and modernity (i.e., a sense of recognition that one situates at the most crucial juncture in a historical moment), Chinese converts were at the forefront of engaging the West. Intense encounters between missionaries and Chinese permitted a high level of accommodation, without domination and victimization. The core Christian values and norms not only became a sinicized religion, but also intermingled and fused with local customs into the spirit of cosmopolitanism.

Second, the advent of Western-style education opened the door to new ideas, values, pedagogies, and lifestyles. The introduction of team sports like basketball, soccer, and volleyball, was a welcoming innovation to teenagers. When sports were incorporated into the curriculum, physical exercise became popular among students. In the age of rising nationalism, being physically strong was held as a point of individual and collective Chinese pride. This marked a significant step in China's search for modernity in the sociocultural sphere.

Third, the history of Sino-Christian cultural encounters still assumes that the pronouncements of the small band of foreign missionaries and educated Christians represented the Chinese Church as a whole. This mindset ignores ordinary believers beyond the margins of high culture. Yet, many Chinese converts combined the Western denominational structure with local kinship and lineage networks to build independent churches. These churches positioned themselves as the congregations of the people, closely in tune with their needs and less constrained by elaborate liturgies or structures. They emphasized miraculous healing, confession of sin, dramatic experience of conversion, all of which corresponded to the waves of charismatic spiritualism that influenced global Christianity.

To conclude, How Christianity Came to China is authoritative and balanced, and everyone will benefit from Lodwick's concise and convincing explanation of this chapter in Chinese history.