This book is a major attempt to situate the origins of Chinese Protestant churches in the Philippines in their proper historical and sociocultural settings. Jean Uy Uayan draws on her decades-long research to provide a sweeping history of Chinese Protestants—mostly from Fujian Province—in the Philippines. Combining a diverse array of archival sources in English, Spanish, and Chinese with immensely rich collections of local church materials and interviews, she traces the history of Fujianese migration to the Philippines and discusses their encounters with American missionaries and Philippine Christians from the late nineteenth to twentieth century.

While the colorful history of Chinese Protestant migrants constitutes an integral part of the Filipino church history and merits a telling in its own right, Uayan employs Fujianese diasporic churches as an analytical case study of the confluence of faith and culture, religion and ethnicity, and global and local encounters. Focusing on the symbiosis between church growth and identity formation, she surveys six Chinese denominational groups, four of which are of Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican, and Methodist origins, and the other two from Watchman Nee's Little Flock, a fast-growing Chinese revivalist movement. The arrival of these migrant believers—mixed into the transition of the Philippines from Spanish (1521–1898) to American rule (1898–1946)—contributed to the formation of Chinese Christian transnationalism.

Composed of four chapters, the introduction contextualizes the rise of Chinese Protestants against the backdrop of Fujianese migration to the Philippines and lays out the analytical framework for this investigation. Chapter 2 discusses some methodological problems arising from the study of various archival materials and interviews. Looking at the organizational structure, mission methods, and contributions of Chinese migrant churches, chapter 3 shows that from their arrival as laborers and traders, these migrants blended their faith practices into the local religious landscape and crafted a transnational ecclesiology with deep ties to their ancestral homelands in Fujian. It reveals the diverse circumstances that shaped the Fujianese-dialect speaking congregations, as well as the opportunities that they presented to Western missionary enterprises. The concluding chapter addresses some thematic implications of the Chinese Christian experience in the Philippines. The one hundred pages of illustrations in the appendices provide rich visual explanations and identify the Chinese names of early Christian migrants and church founders.

Two important lessons can be discerned from Uayan's informative and insightful investigation. The first lesson concerns the indigeneity of Chinese-Filipino churches. At the forefront of the effort to build and lead these migrant denominational churches were Fujianese evangelists and believers who skillfully employed Christian resources and ethnic networks to negotiate their way up the racial, sociopolitical, and economic ladders in the Philippines. Conscious of the negative popular stereotype of Chinese migrants in American colonies, they sought to portray themselves as respectable church members. Transcending ideological and linguistic differences, the diasporic churches provided Chinese migrants and mestizos with a clear pathway for social upward mobility at a time of rapid change. Their creativity, courage, and commitment shaped their unique role as religious and cultural pioneers, bridging East and West. Furthermore, Uayan's findings not only add an inter-Asian dimension to our understanding of the worldwide Christian movements among the Chinese diaspora, but also yield valuable ethnographic data about extensive Chinese migrant networks, their engagement with Western missions, and cross-fertilization between Chinese and Filipino churches.

The second lesson is a methodological one. Since the creation of diasporic Chinese Protestantism was an ongoing process, its story ought to be told from the local believers’ perspective rather than from the view of Western missionaries. Balancing a mission-centered focus with unique indigenous voices, Uayan argues that the indigenization of diasporic Chinese Christianity has never been unidirectional, because these migrants often theologized their faith experience and the gospel message in specific contexts. Explaining why Protestantism was better received among Chinese migrants in some parts of the Philippines than in others requires a closer look at the concrete circumstances in which religious interactions and migrations took place.

In short, the generalization of “Chinese Christianity” makes sense in conceptual terms because Christianity always adapts to the cultural conditions of any locality. Through the examples of Chinese migrant churches in a maritime society like the Philippines, Uayan challenges scholars to combine archival and library research with oral history as new viable approaches to studying the history of Christian migrations worldwide.