Book Launch: Chinese Heritage in British Christianity

Join us in celebrating the publication of Alexander Chow’s recently edited volume, Chinese Heritage in British Christianity: More than Foreigners (SCM Press 2025).

From the publisher’s website:

This is a critical and unique time for British Chinese Christians. On the one hand, the national churches of each of Britain’s four nations have experienced an unprecedented decline in church attendance. On the other hand, British Chinese Christianity is today amongst the fastest growing Christian populations in the United Kingdom. But there is a much longer history in the background, with the first Chinese Christian in Britain dated to the 17th century, and a sizeable population existing since the late-19th century, eventually creating the first Chinese church established in Liverpool in 1910. This book tells the story of the rise of British Chinese Christianity, and how the British Chinese have been shaping and reshaping the future of British Christianity. It brings together theological educators, church ministers, and parachurch leaders in a collaborative project speaking to the historical and contemporary situation of British Chinese Christianity, and prospects moving forward.

The launch will be held on Friday, March 28th 2025, at 7:30pm, at the Chinese Church in London, Hammersmith (69-71 Brook Green, Hammersmith, London, W6 7BE).

Please register here.

Global Christians in Edinburgh

The Centre is pleased to have begun work on the ‘Global Christians in Edinburgh’ project.

From December 2022 to June 2023, the project sought to offer a baseline of the global diversity of Christianity in Edinburgh and the collaborative efforts of these communities. It coincides with a historic period of both downturn in many historic Edinburgh churches and upsurge in Christianity amongst migrants coming from Africa, Asia, Latin American, Oceania, and other parts of Europe, resulting in the creation of new fellowships, (sub)congregations, and worship services/mass.

For more information about the project and the report released in July 2023, see our dedicated project page.

Debunking 5 Myths about Middle Eastern Christians

Elizabeth Marteijn has written a piece debunking five myths of Middle Eastern Christians. Also worth a read is the special issue of Studies in World Christianity 28.3 which focuses on Middle Eastern Christianity.

https://euppublishingblog.com/2022/10/28/debunking-5-myths-about-middle-eastern-christians/

Studies in World Christianity 28.2

World Christianity and Reciprocal Exchange

Edited by Afe Adogame, Raimundo Barreto and Richard F. Young

There is sometimes an assumption that Christianity operates, grows and develops in a historical, social, cultural, political and religious silo or context. This is hardly the case. Christianity, past and present, has shaped all geographical, religious and cultural contexts in which it has found itself, but all these various contexts, cultures and religious traditions have in turn also had an impact on Christianity in manifold ways. An exploration of this reciprocal interaction is important for our global age. Christians once viewed the world in split-screen mode: there was Europe, the centre of the faith, and there was the rest of the world with large swaths of non-Christian lands that were ripe for the work of missionaries. However, over the last century an enormous growth in Christianity across the Global South and a drop in the proportion of Europeans and Americans who identify as Christian has upended that perspective. The centre of gravity has shifted from the Global North, serving notice that the future of the faith will look increasingly diverse and dynamic.

The study of World Christianity seeks to understand how Christian communities embody historical and cultural experiences locally and globally; as such, it fosters the study of both local and translocal ways of knowing and doing. Thus, World Christianity hardly exists in a historical and socio-cultural vacuum; it encounters, affects, and is in turn impacted by local, indigenous worldviews, religions and cultures. The complex historical and socio-cultural encounters of worldviews, religions and cultures at the root of Christian communities in a variety of contexts demand further understanding and analysis. The selected, peer-reviewed essays in this issue, originally presented at Princeton’s Third International Conference (2021), explore and reflect on such a diversity of local, indigenous expressions and experiences of Christianity, their encounter with other religious traditions, and the variety of ways they interact with one another critically and constructively across time and space. While based on case studies, they focus on ethnographic practices and new methodological directions. Common themes addressed include conversion, translation, identity, missions, materiality, migration, diaspora, intercultural theology and interreligious dialogue.

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