Alexander Chow - Böcker

The Oxford Handbook of Digital Theology is the first comprehensive overview of theological reflections on digital technology. It is situated in the history of Christian theology which explores the intertwined nature of technology and human experience. While the digital revolution continues to disrupt and alter socio-political processes set in motion by events like the industrial revolution, digital theology breaks from this trajectory, creating its own methodologies and modes of dissemination. In recent years, the academic field has grown due to the rising use of digital technology by Christians and churches, in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of generative AI. To address this rapidly changing reality, this volume presents theological interventions into the ever-expanding application of digital technology in all spheres of life.The Handbook is divided into four parts, written by an interdisciplinary group of scholars from different ecclesial traditions. Part One discusses the use of digital technology in theological research and considers digital culture's influences on theological thought. Part Two presents the dialogue between digital culture and traditional theological topics. Part Three reviews the research on the impact of digital technology on the life of the church and Christian ministry. Part Four includes theological reflections on the wider socio-political impact of digital technology. Together, this volume is the definitive reference to theological reflection on digital technology.

It has been widely recognized that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in one of the last communist-run countries of the world: the People's Republic of China. Yet it would be a mistake to describe Chinese Christianity as merely a clandestine faith or, as hoped by the Communist Party of China, a privatized religion. Alexander Chow argues that Christians in mainland China have been constructing a more intentional public theology to engage the Chinese state and society, since the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Chinese Public Theology recalls the events which have led to this transformation and examines the developments of Christianity across three generations of Chinese intellectuals from the state-sanctioned Protestant church, the secular academy, and the growing urban renaissance in Calvinism. Moreover, Chow shows how each of these generations have provided different theological responses to the same sociopolitical moments of the last three decades.This study illustrates how a growing understanding of Chinese public theology has been developed through a subconscious intermingling of Christian and Confucian understandings of public intellectualism. These factors result in a contextually-unique understanding of public theology, but also one which is faced by contextual limitations as well. With this in mind, Chow draws from the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis and the Chinese traditional teaching of the unity of Heaven and humanity (Tian ren heyi) to offer a way forward in the construction of a Chinese public theology.

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.Blogpost: The Chinese shaping British Christianity

This volume explores Chinese Christianity—or Chinese Christianities—in a variety of forms and expressions, including those from outside the geopolitical boundaries of mainland China.

This volume explores Chinese Christianity—or Chinese Christianities—in a variety of forms and expressions, including those from outside the geopolitical boundaries of mainland China.

‘Ecumenism’ and ‘independency’ suggest two distinct impulses in the history of Christianity: the desire for unity, co-operation, connectivity, and shared belief and practice, and the impulse for distinction, plurality, and contextual translation. Yet ecumenism and independency are better understood as existing in critical tension with one another. They provide a way of examining changes in World Christianity. Taking their lead from the internationally acclaimed research of Brian Stanley, in whose honour this book is published, contributors examine the entangled nature of ecumenism and independency in the modern global history of Christianity. They show how the scrutiny afforded by the attention to local, contextual approaches to Christianity outside the western world, may inform and enrich the attention to transnational connectivity.