This blog post was written by Centre alumna Nuam Hatzaw, and originally published on the Church Mission Society blog on 8 April 2025.
Last week, in my role with the Acts 11 Centre for Global Witness and Human Migration, I had the pleasure of hosting the launch event for the new book Chinese Heritage in British Christianity: More than Foreigners (SCM Press) edited by Alexander Chow of the University of Edinburgh.
The book responds to an important, ongoing moment in British Christianity. On the one hand, historic denominations across Britain, such as the Church of England, are recording unprecedented decline in church attendance and membership. On the other hand, British Chinese Christianity is one of the fastest growing Christian populations in the UK today, and these Christians are revitalising existing churches or starting new, vibrant congregations that challenge us to think differently about what we mean when we talk about British Christianity.
These were some of the issues explored at the launch, which was attended by 60 people and held in Hammersmith at the historic Chinese Church in London, which was founded by Stephen YT Wang in 1951 and was one of the first Chinese churches in Britain.
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I was invited to respond to Professor Kwok Pui-lan’s paper, and share about being a woman in the Zomi church. Professor Kwok highlighted the somewhat contradictory nature of freedom that many missionary women experienced. She noted that although mission work allowed women to have a profession, they were still nonetheless working within the confines of set gender roles and Victorian notions of domesticity. Their work was ‘woman’s work’, and they received low wages if any. For me, as a Zomi woman, her remarks reminded me of the current situation of many women in my community.