Images of Church and Mission: The China Case

Abstract

This paper relies largely on perspectives from the Catholic tradition and considers how the Chinese Christians can take their place in the universal communion of an emerging world church.

Beginning in the 1980s, Chinese Christians have had a new window of opportunity to incarnate authentically their faith and to contextualize fully the gospel in their own social and cultural context. They face a crisis—an opportunity fraught with risks—to seize the moment for a prophetic proclamation of the gospel in the face of rampant materialism, fragmenting secularization, and the “modernization” frenzy.

The irrepressibility of Chinese Christians who have endured decades of repression and outright persecution is a courageous witness of hope for a new tomorrow.