Abstract

This lecture explores diverse approaches in the contemporary academic study of Christianity in China—a research endeavour spanning many disciplines, interpretive positions, intellectual persuasions, and contextual restrictions. Representing neither a network of scholars with one vision nor a set of shared assumptions, this field today is divided along discursive, cultural, and institutional lines highlighting the complex histories in church and academy, in and outside of China, that contribute to diverging interpretations of the place and meaning of Christianity in China’s past and present. The talk enumerates conceptual understandings of Christianity in China, from indigenisation and contextualisation to Sinicisation, religious policy perspectives, and Chinese Christianity within World Christianity, and critically engages the premises and rationale of each approach presented.

About the Speaker

Naomi Thurston is a scholar of contemporary Chinese Christianity based at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Her research focuses on the contributions of Chinese intellectuals to issues in contextual and academic theology and Christian studies. She has translated the writings of contemporary Chinese scholars in the fields of art criticism and Christian thought and currently serves as director of the China Christianity Studies Group and as Associate Editor of Ching Feng: A Journal on Christianity and Chinese Religion and Culture. Her latest book is Moltmann in China: Reception and Dialogue (Routledge, 2025).