David Woodbridge should be congratulated for producing an original, thoroughly researched, and highly engaging text that advances our understanding of the operation, impact, and legacy of the British Brethren Mission in China. As a latecomer to the China mission field, the Brethren reaped the fruits of past evangelistic progress. Unlike the Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Seventh-day Adventists, the Brethren did not leave behind elaborate ecclesiastical hierarchies or church architecture, modern universities or hospitals devoted to the study of Western science, or a web of printing houses and publishers in China. However, its enduring theological insights live on in the Little Flock, a globalized indigenous church that was started by Watchman Nee (1903–1972) in the 1920s as a truly Chinese form of Christianity, striving to be self-supporting, self-propagating, and self-financing according to the popular “Three-Self” principles.

This book is composed of six in-depth, lucid, and well-written chapters. The introduction engages with the latest scholarship on Chinese Christianity to discuss the symbiosis between biblical primitivism and secular modernity among the Brethren missionary activities in China, Mongolia, and Tibet. Primitivism prompted the Brethren to treat all peoples as lost souls in need of salvation through Christ, to reject the concept of human progress in history, and to downplay the importance of using modern science and technology for evangelization. The Brethren deemed the success of evangelization as a lively “record and demonstration of primitivism in action” (15).

Tracing the origins of the evangelistic impulse of different branches of the Brethren in the U.K., chapter 1 draws on an important church periodical, Echoes of Service, to identify the profiles of their missionaries, the geographical distributions of their outstations, and the scope of their ministry in China. The Brethren believed that biblical primitivism provided “an essential gospel message and a simple framework for church life,” deemed to be easily translatable in any cultural context (35). What the Brethren missionaries did not foresee were the uncontrollable events of revolutions and wars in China. When they were trapped in the warpath of militarists and revolutionaries during the 1920s, they navigated the hostile terrain and sought protection from British diplomats.

Chapter 2 offers the first systematic investigation of the Brethren's interactions with Watchman Nee. The spread of biblical primitivism complemented the growth of the Little Flock. Nee subscribed to John Nelson Darby's (1800–1882) biblical theory of dispensationalism, by which human history is divided into separate periods, each of which represents a different stage in God's salvation plan. Greatly inspired by two tenets of primitivism, the empowering of the Holy Spirit and strict adherence to the Bible, Nee drew on the Plymouth Brethren's writings to articulate his theology and ecclesiology, urging the church to be a spiritual body of Christ, and to break away from missionary control. In particular, he implemented plural eldership, disavowed the clergy–laity distinction, and organized worship around the Lord's Supper. Furthermore, thanks to the international Brethren networks, Nee attended and left a deep impression among British evangelicals at the Keswick Convention in 1938. He also visited numerous Brethren assemblies and translated his spiritual writings into English for the global audiences. Combining biblical primitivism with modern business practices and printing techniques, the Little Flock attracted affluent and educated followers in coastal cities and quickly expanded into every corner of China through evangelistic inland migration.

Woodbridge evaluates the efficacy of the Brethren through comparisons of its religious expansion into Mongolia and Tibet. Chapter three tells the story of Reginald Sturt (1881–1948), who took the initiative to build a mission outpost in Mongolia. Sturt established several churches among Chinese inhabitants in Mongolia but only gained a handful of converts among the Mongols. This had to do with the difficulty of adapting a territorially bound Christian missionary enterprise to the nomadic lifestyle of fluidity and change of the Eurasian steppe. Chapter 4 discusses the ministry of Geoffrey Bull (1921–1999) and George Patterson (1920–2012) in Tibet. Both missionaries succeeded in converting a few Tibetan Buddhists, but they were caught up in the chaos and panic of the Chinese Communist military invasion of Tibet in 1950.

Chapter 5 documents the end of the Brethren in Maoist China. After the outbreak of the Korean War on July 25, 1950, many Brethren missionaries were put under house arrest, and they were eventually forced to suspend their work and leave the country. The only exception was Patterson in Tibet, who continued to document the independence struggle of Khampa guerilla fighters against Chinese rule during the Cold War. The concluding chapter revisits the overall findings and asserts that the only visible legacy of biblical primitivism still evident in the Chinese world is among the Little Flock's house meetings in China and abroad.

Methodologically, Woodbridge consults a large array of the Brethren's archival materials and publications to reveal the way in which the global theological currents of the Exclusive Brethren became indigenized and exerted a profound impact on Watchman Nee, inspiring him to build the Little Flock and enrich the biblical spirituality of Chinese Protestantism. The most important takeaway from Woodbridge's analysis concerns the translation, reception, and appropriation of John Nelson Darby's writings among Chinese Christians. There has been a renewed academic interest in the study of Darby's theological impacts throughout Europe, North America and the West Indies. An ordained priest in the Church of England, Darby joined some other dissenters in Plymouth, England, advancing the idea of dispensationalism, and bringing the centrality of eschatology and ecclesiology back into congregational life. These theological ideas, once transplanted into the Chinese soil, fueled the growth of the Little Flock movement.

Given its insightful details on the Brethren Mission and their strong theological ties with Watchman Nee, Missionary Primitivism and Chinese Modernity should be essential reading for Chinese church historians, mission scholars, and religious specialists.