jesus in beijing

ReviewReviewed Work(s): 336 pages. $16.95 paper. by David AikmanReview by: Peter Chen-main WangSource: Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, Vol. 13, No. 3(February 2010), pp. 132-134Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/nr.2010.13.3.132Accessed: 08-11-2016 03:14 UTC

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Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions

This content downloaded from 180.208.58.93 on Tue, 08 Nov 2016 03:14:25 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/termsJesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing theGlobal Balance of Power. By David Aikman. Regnery Publishing, 2006.336 pages. $16.95 paper.

A few years ago, China’s Christian population numbered more than50 million. Yet few books, either in Chinese or in English, haveattempted to explain why Christian churches could survive, develop,and thrive in a communist state like the People’s Republic of China. ThePRC has tried various ways to restrain and even suppress religions, espe-cially Christianity. This volume is an ambitious project that attempts togive a general account of the Christian churches, including both thestate-approved churches (the so-called Three-Self churches) and thehouse churches in China over the past six decades.David Aikman enjoys certain advantages in composing this project.First, he is a veteran journalist, working for Time Magazinefor morethan twenty years including a two-year stint as the Beijing BureauChief. Second, he has been in close contact with the house churchesfor more than a decade and has won the confidence of several societiesof missionaries who assisted the work of evangelization in China in var-ied ways. Third, the house churches have matured to an extent that they

Nova Religio132This content downloaded from 180.208.58.93 on Tue, 08 Nov 2016 03:14:25 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/termsare willing to share their stories with outsiders. Fourth, the PRC gov-ernment and the officials of its Religious Affairs Bureau have adopteda rather loose attitude in recent years. Fifth, China’s door is quite openand the flow of information between China and outside world is not eas-ily contained by the government. One great strength of this volume is its extensive coverage of thehouse church movement in China. Although piecemeal informationabout the house church movement can be seen in various newsletters,newspapers, magazines, reports, and academic publications, no one hasgiven a picture as complete and thorough as the current volume.Aikmen personally interviewed a number of house church leaders andhence is able to present much inside information. His coverage startedwith a few biographies of legendary house church leaders, like WangMingdao, Allen Yuan (Yuan Xiangchen), Samuel Lamb (Lin Xiangao),Moses Xie (Sie Moshan) and Li Tianen, who began their church min-istry before the Communist takeover of China in 1949. It follows with theyounger generation of church leaders, the underground seminaries,Christian artisans, church movements (like the Back to JerusalemMovement, Charismatic revival), and some by-products (such as cul-tural Christians and cults).Although the volume does not use the terms “church and state” or“contextualization” in its title, much of the narrative and discussionfully indicates the contextualized development of Christian churches inmodern China and also renders extremely rich sources for the futurestudy of the church and the state in China. It is noteworthy that thehouse church participants, despite not being officially registered withthe government, are patriotic and are able to speed up their develop-ment in the Chinese context.It is understandable that the PRC government, its officials, and lead-ers of the Three-Self churches will not appreciate this book. In additionto describing the persecution, including physical torture, prison and sup-pressive religious policy, the author repeatedly implies that the Three-Selfchurch leaders, from Y. T. Wu to Bishop K. H. Ting, have been under theinfluence of Modernists, and have been very close to the Communists. Healso mentions a startling story about how the government infiltrated thechurch organization. In order to avoid attack and criticism from the RedGuards during the Cultural Revolution, Li Chuwen, a leading Three-Self official, confessed to the Red Guards that he was actually a secretCommunist Party member. This background indicates the reason why thehouse churches prefer to keep their independence. One of the book’s chief defects is that the author uncritically sup-ports the house churches. Although it does faithfully reflect the opinionand attitude of the house church leaders and activists, this book wouldhave been more useful if the author was critical of the development ofthe house church movement while providing more information on the