In Shaping Christianity in greater China, the editor and contributors employ the theme of indigenisation as an analytical window onto larger political, sociocultural and religious issues confronting Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Varying in research scope and interest, the seventeen chapters explore how Chinese evangelistic agents took the initiative to indigenise Christian doctrines, beliefs and practices and to embed Christianity into their identity. The rich empirical findings highlight the diverse Chinese responses to global Christianity, the enduring patterns of mission-church collaborations, and the resilience of the Chinese Christian faith in times of rapid change.

By staging a meaningful dialogue between Chinese and global church history, David Killingray draws on the changing landscape of worldwide Christian movements to discuss the interplay between external forces and local conditions in the making of Chinese Churches. Lian Xi investigates the growth of vernacular Christianity among marginalised ethnicities in China's south-western frontier. In particular, both Lisu and Miao communities have used Christian resources to empower themselves, producing their own vernacular Bible and strengthening their ethnic identities. Kuo Ya-Pei reviews Li Chunsheng (1838–1924), who criticised the failure of nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries to incorporate Confucianism into the Bible translation process. Li's frustration prompted him, after 1895, to mediate between the Presbyterian Churches and Japanese colonialists in Taiwan.

Liu Yanyan's evaluation of Catholic poems reveals the cultural sensitivities of Chinese converts in the seventeenth century. Stephen Donoho revisits the 1885 publication of a romanised Presbyterian periodical, The Taiwan Church News. This periodical provided a model for Taiwanese Catholics, as well as Chinese Presbyterians in the treaty ports of Xiamen and Shantou, to romanise their own vernacular Christian literature. Today, some elderly Christians in these places still communicate with their missionary mentors through these romanised scripts. Zhou Yun investigates the political activism of Li Guanfang (1896–1937), a female Christian intellectual who was killed for her involvement in clandestine Communist activities in Fujian Province. Monica Romano documents mid twentieth-century Chinese Catholic efforts to translate the Bible and make it easily accessible to the faithful.

Peter Cunich draws on his years-long research on the Church Missionary Society in China to contextualise the Anglican hierarchy along the provincial border of Guangxi and Hunan. Although the remote location made it difficult for the Anglican mission to recruit qualified native church staff, the missionaries were embroiled in ongoing battles among warlords and Communist forces and learnt to be agile in fluid political situations. Lauren Pfister and Liu Jihua take a closer look at the unresolved murder of Dr Kao Gin-Cheng (1888–1938), a medical practitioner at the China Inland Mission who treated wounded Communist soldiers and joined the socialist revolution. Similar to Li Guanfang, Dr Kao saw no contradiction in asserting his faith and working with the Communists. Christine Wong tells fascinating stories of American women missionaries and prominent deaconesses in Guangzhou who created an autonomous sphere to assert female agency in patriarchal mission schools and hospitals. Bai Limin regards Wang Hengtong's (1868–1928) professional networks with the emerging Christian-run commercial publishing industry in Shanghai as essential for the rapid development of modern Chinese school textbooks.

Paul Woods reflects on the hardships of Chinese Protestants in rural Shanxi Province during the Boxer Uprising, highlighting the sustaining power of faith in a desperate situation. Stephen Williams urges scholars to take seriously Watchman Nee's (1903–72) theological impact on Chinese Churches worldwide, as Nee developed effective mechanisms to publish and circulate his spiritual writings across Chinese denominations in the early twentieth century. Charles Weber surveys the anti-opium discourse in popular writings by Chinese Christians, who lobbied the West to end the opium trade.

Niki Alsford refers to the Taiwanese theologian Shoki Coe (1914–88), who fought for human rights and democratic governance during the White Terror era (1949–87), while Kwok Wai-Luen relies on oral histories to investigate the social activism of several Protestant church leaders in British Hong Kong. Eastern Law focuses on the ministry of a Chinese Christian non-governmental organisation in Sichuan Province after the disastrous earthquake on 12 May 2008. He asserts that the success of this faith-based NGO had to do with its ability to coordinate and implement an efficient plan of disaster relief and community reconstruction.

Two lessons can be discerned from these essays. Conceptually, the idea of bringing global Christianity and local conditions together in an interactive dialogue is very constructive. The contributors reveal significant historical, doctrinal and socioeconomic connections between these two spheres. They integrate analytical insights with concrete historical and anthropological examples. Another lesson is that Chinese, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and ethnic minority believers found, in Christianity, a way to transcend ideological, religious and cultural boundaries. These evangelistic and communicative efforts display significant global, regional and local links, and exhibit innovative modes of faith practices that involve people from all walks of life.

In short, this timely publication should appeal to Chinese church historians and religious scholars. The variety of examples capture the unique experiences and memories that shape manifestations of Christian faith in today's China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Whatever global ideas and denominational practices Chinese people acquired from missionaries, they contextualised and made them their own. Therefore, the indigeneity of Christianity in greater China expresses itself in the freedom to actualise the Gospel in specific settings and to engage in fellowship with global Churches.