JRAS Editor's Introduction

In the 1960s and 1970s historical research into Christian missionary movements broadened its remit by asking the question: ‘What is the relationship between Christian conversion and European imperialism?’ Much work has been done since then, and more continues to take place. Recently, another chapter in this inquiry has emerged as a valid topic for study, shifting the focus more towards ‘What happened when Christianity took root outside its heartlands, and proliferated there?’ The contributors to the JRAS's latest Special Issue, edited by Dr George Mak (Hong Kong Baptist University), a former winner of the RAS's Barwis-Holliday Award for Far Eastern Studies, offer a collective response to this latest turn through their various explorations of the dynamic of ‘home-grown’ - Chinese - Christianity. Here we arguably find discussion of Chinese Christianity's coming of age. In the process, further questions are inevitably raised. Was this achieved once Christians in China had severed their ties with European institutions, or was it part of the same fundamental process of translation that had been taking place there since the nineteenth century? China today possesses one of the most religiously diverse cultures in the world, and, as the articles in this issue highlight, in the one hundred or so years since the publication of the Mandarin Union Version of the Bible in 1919, it has taken Christianity as its own to become an integral part of what is today an interesting mix unique and Chinese.