Christian Women In Chinese Society

Christian Women in Chinese Society: The Anglican Story expands on the long-standing debates about whether Christianity is a collaborator in or a liberating force against the oppressive patriarchal culture for women in Asia. Women have played an important role in the history of Chinese Christianity, but their contributions have yet to receive due recognition, partly because of the complexities arising out of the historical tension between Western imperialism and Chinese patriarchy. Single women missionaries and missionary spouses in the nineteenth century set the early examples of what women could do to spread the Gospel, yet they might not have intended to instill the same free spirit into their Chinese converts. The education provided to Chinese women by missionaries was expected to turn them into good wives and mothers, but knowledge empowered the students, allowing them to become full participants not only in the Church but also in the wider society. Together, the Western female missionaries and the Chinese women whom they trained explored their newfound freedom and tried out their roles with the help of each other. These developments culminated in the ordination of Florence Li Tim Oi to priesthood in 1944, a singular event that fundamentally changed the history of the Anglican Communion. At the heart of this collection lies the rich experience of those women, both Chinese and Western, who devoted their lives to the propagation of Anglicanism across different regions of mainland China and Hong Kong. Contributors make the most of the sources to reconstruct their voices and present sympathetic accounts of these remarkable women’s achievements. “This inspiring volume restores women converts and missionaries to their central place in the history of Chinese Christianity. Its critical re-evaluation of the contribution of women to the Anglican church in China reconfigures our understanding of mission and of the construct of Chinese womanhood.” —Chloë Starr, Yale University “This engaging volume provides a rounded and nuanced picture of the role of women in the history of the Anglican church in China by approaching it from multiple perspectives. A must-read for those interested in Asian Christianity or the role of women in the history of the church.” —Judith Berling, Graduate Theological Union “This wide-ranging collection offers a re-appraisal of the role of women in Anglican mission in China. Careful and detailed scholarship allows women’s often painful stories to be told afresh. Like all good collections, this book serves to challenge assumptions, stimulate research, and provoke further questions.” —Mark D. Chapman, University of Oxford

Chinese Christian women before the New Culture Movement and the May 4th Movement of 1919 have been largely invisible in the records of China missions and Chinese Christianity. We have known little about them either as individuals or as a group. The contributors of this volume have scoured a variety of sources to recreate the role of early Chinese women Christians in the life of the church and in Chinese society and to illustrate how gender affected their understanding of Christianity and their career choices. How did the Chinese context alter their relations with the church and with Christian and non-Christian communities? What was the legacy of pioneer Chinese Christian women? Essays on Chinese Christian educators, doctors, nurses, and evangelists show how the missionaries and the church made mobility and broadened horizons possible for women. They reveal also the contributions of these women and homemakers to a changing China.

Christian Women and Modern China presents a social history of women pioneers in Chinese Protestantism from the 1880s to the 2010s. The author interrupts a hegemonic framework of historical narratives by exploring formal institutions and rules as well as social networks and social norms that shape the lived experiences of women. This book achieves a more nuanced understanding about the interplays of Christianity, gender, power and modern Chinese history. It reintroduces Chinese Christian women pioneers not only to women’s history and the history of Chinese Christianity, but also to the history of global Christian mission and the global history of many modern professions, such as medicine, education, literature, music, charity, journalism, and literature.

Chinese theologian Kwok Pui-lan draws on a wide variety of archival material to reconstruct the life of Chinese women in the church. She analyzes their participation in social reform, and looks at their relationship to the feminist movement in China. Compared to their Chinese sisters, Christian women had more prolonged exposure to Western civilization through the Christian Church, mission schools, and Christian benevolence. Their responses, shows Kwok, provide rare information on how Chinese women reacted to foreign influences and religion in particular. At the same time, Kwok'sstudy broadens our understanding of how Christianity adapts to and functions in a totally new cultural context.

Chinese Women in Christian Ministry uses an interdisciplinary (theological, historical, and anthropological) approach to analyze how theological and cultural factors have influenced attitudes about the place and role of women in the Chinese church and Christian ministry in Asia and in the West. The changing status and role of women in Chinese historical sociocultural contexts provide insights into the development of Confucian gender ideology and its impact on the Chinese. Western women missionaries with their Christian and cultural ideals became a catalyst for change in the gender role and mentality of Chinese women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Global women's issues have sparked a genuine concern among the Chinese leading to changing attitudes toward Chinese women in Christian ministry.

This biography of Candida Xu (1607–1680), granddaughter of the prominent Chinese Christian convert and statesman Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) and foremost Chinese Christian woman of the seventeenth century, is based on the biography of Candida Xu titled Histoire d’une dame chrétienne de la Chine (Paris, 1688) written by her confessor Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623–1693), an obituary of his mother and other writings by her eldest son, and the Xu family history. Using these as well as other relevant European missionary and Chinese language sources, Candida Xu’s life as daughter, wife, mother, and generous contributor to the Christian Church is recounted. Events in her life are set in the context of historical and religious circumstances in China at the time. Consideration of the situation of women, particularly Christian women, draws out how Candida Xu’s faith helped her and other believing Christian women to gain greater freedom of choice and action.

Within the next decade, China could be home to more Christians than any country in the world. Through the 150-year saga of a single family, this book vividly dramatizes the remarkable religious evolution of the world’s most populous nation. Shanghai Faithful is both a touching family memoir and a chronicle of the astonishing spread of Christianity in China. Five generations of the Lin family—buffeted by history’s crosscurrents and personal strife—bring to life an epoch that is still unfolding. A compelling cast—a poor fisherman, a doctor who treated opium addicts, an Ivy League–educated priest, and the charismatic preacher Watchman Nee—sets the book in motion. Veteran journalist Jennifer Lin takes readers from remote nineteenth-century mission outposts to the thriving house churches and cathedrals of today’s China. The Lin family—and the book’s central figure, the Reverend Lin Pu-chi—offer witness to China’s tumultuous past, up to and beyond the betrayals and madness of the Cultural Revolution, when the family’s resolute faith led to years of suffering. Forgiveness and redemption bring the story full circle. With its sweep of history and the intimacy of long-hidden family stories, Shanghai Faithful offers a fresh look at Christianity in China—past, present, and future.