Daniel H. Bays – författare

This pathbreaking volume will force a reassessment of many common assumptions about the relationship between Christianity and modern China. The overall thrust of the twenty essays is that despite the conflicts and tension that often have characterized relations between Christianity and China, in fact Christianity has been, for the past two centuries or more, putting down roots within Chinese society, and it is still in the process of doing so. Thus Christianity is here interpreted not just as a Western religion that imposed itself on China, but one that was becoming a Chinese religion, as Buddhism did centuries ago.Eschewing the usual focus on foreign missionaries, as is customary, this research effort is China-centered, drawing on Chinese sources, including government and organizational documents, private papers, and interviews. The essays are organized into four major sections: Christianity's role in Qing society, including local conflicts (6 essays); ethnicity (3 essays); women (5 essays); and indigenization of the Christian effort (6 essays). The editor has provided sectional introductions to highlight the major themes in each section, as well as a general Introduction.

This volume is the first to examine at length and in detail the impact of the missionary experience on American cultural, political, and religious history.

This collection of 15 essays provides a fully developed account of the domestic significance of foreign missions from the 19th century through the Vietnam War. U.S. and Canadian missions to China, South America, Africa, and the Middle East have, it shows, transformed the identity and purposes of their mother countries in important ways. Missions provided many Americans with their first significant exposure to non-Western cultures and religions. They helped to establish a variety of new academic disciplines in home universities—linguistics, anthropology, and comparative religion among them. Missionary women helped redefine gender roles in North America, and missions have vitalized tiny local churches as well as entire denominations, causing them to rethink their roles and priorities, both here and abroad. In fact, missionaries have helped define our own national identity by influencing our foreign, trade, military, and immigration policies over the last two centuries.

Topics in the collection range from John Saillant''s essay on the missions of free African Americans to Liberia in the 19th century to Grant Wacker''s essay on the eventual disillusionment of noted writer Pearl S. Buck. Kathryn T. Long’s essay on the “Auca martyrs” offers a sobering case study of the missionary establishment''s power to, in tandem with the evangelical and secular press, create and record the stories of our time. William L. Svelmoe documents the improbable friendship between fundamentalist Bible translator William Cameron Townsend and Mexico’s secular socialist president Lázaro Cárdenas. And Anne Blue Wills details the ways many American groups—black, Protestant, Catholic, and Mormon—sought to convert one another, stead- fastly envisioning “others” as every bit as “heathen” as those in far-off lands.

The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home is an insightful, provocative collection that will stimulate much discussion and debate. It is valuable for academic libraries and seminaries, scholars of religious history and American studies, missionary groups, cultural historians and ethnographers, and political scientists.

A New History of Christianity in China, written by one of the world's the leading writers on Christianity in China, looks at Christianity's long history in China, its extraordinarily rapid rise in the last half of the twentieth century, and charts its future direction.  Provides the first comprehensive  history of Christianity in China, an important, understudied area in both Asian studies and religious historyTraces the transformation of Christianity from an imported, Western religion to a thoroughly Chinese religionContextualizes the growth of Christianity in China within national and local politicsOffers a portrait of the complex religious scene in China todayContrasts China with other non-Western societies where Christianity is surging

A New History of Christianity in China, written by one of the world's the leading writers on Christianity in China, looks at Christianity's long history in China, its extraordinarily rapid rise in the last half of the twentieth century, and charts its future direction.  Provides the first comprehensive  history of Christianity in China, an important, understudied area in both Asian studies and religious historyTraces the transformation of Christianity from an imported, Western religion to a thoroughly Chinese religionContextualizes the growth of Christianity in China within national and local politicsOffers a portrait of the complex religious scene in China todayContrasts China with other non-Western societies where Christianity is surging

A New History of Christianity in China, written by one of the world''s the leading writers on Christianity in China, looks at Christianity''s long history in China, its extraordinarily rapid rise in the last half of the twentieth century, and charts its future direction.  Provides the first comprehensive  history of Christianity in China, an important, understudied area in both Asian studies and religious history Traces the transformation of Christianity from an imported, Western religion to a thoroughly Chinese religion Contextualizes the growth of Christianity in China within national and local politics Offers a portrait of the complex religious scene in China today Contrasts China with other non-Western societies where Christianity is surging

A New History of Christianity in China, written by one of the world''s the leading writers on Christianity in China, looks at Christianity''s long history in China, its extraordinarily rapid rise in the last half of the twentieth century, and charts its future direction.  Provides the first comprehensive  history of Christianity in China, an important, understudied area in both Asian studies and religious history Traces the transformation of Christianity from an imported, Western religion to a thoroughly Chinese religion Contextualizes the growth of Christianity in China within national and local politics Offers a portrait of the complex religious scene in China today Contrasts China with other non-Western societies where Christianity is surging