Negotiating the Christian Past in China

“This is a wonderful new resource for all scholars of Chinese religion and historians of China more generally. It is a beautiful example of how contemporary ethnographic work combined with historical archival research can produce some of the most pertinent and insightful portraits of state– society relations and their co-production of memory, history and identity.”

—Gerda Wielander China Quarterly

“This book is not only a catalyst for the development of empirical Christian studies in China but also contributes to deepening the exploration of the field of Christian history and cultural memory studies.”

—Wei Xiong Religious Studies Review

“At a time when the Chinese state is restricting access to the official archives and to fieldwork among local Christian communities, and when the public security officials suspect any Three-Self patriotic church leaders who travel to the West as infiltrators, Liu’s ethnography represents the latest, and hopefully not the last, scholarly endeavor to raise awareness about Chinese Christian experiences.”

—Christie Chui-Shan Chow International Bulletin of Mission Research

“The book aspires to illustrate ‘the complexities of memory and missions in shaping the city’s cultural landscape, church-state dynamics, and global aspirations.’ That project might seem ambiguous and difficult to demonstrate, but Jifeng Liu has successfully employed a creative approach.”

—Richard Cook Journal of Church and State

“This book is a significant contribution to the growing literature on Chinese Christianities and provides an illustrative model for how to ethnographically study the social life of religious history.”

—Xiaobo Yuan Review of Religion and Chinese Society

“Negotiating the Christian Past in China coalesces granular, deeply researched ethnographic data into a fresh and expansive take on the unique patterns of Church-state engagement and the relationship between social memory and faith identity. This story is local and global, particular and general. For anyone who has not yet visited, or cannot travel to, Xiamen, especially Gulangyu Island, this book is the next best thing.”

—Joseph T. H. Lee, Pace University

“Drawing on firsthand interviews, locally produced Chinese-language histories, and observation of historical celebrations, Negotiating the Christian Past in China offers a new understanding of China’s Christian past. In particular, Liu shows how this past is constructed by combining both official frameworks and unofficial nostalgias and experiences into a social memory that is actively produced without being dominated by state repression or characterized as grassroots resistance. This book takes readers as never before inside the lived world of Xiamen’s Christian present. It does so by exploring how protagonists construct its past in negotiations with other societal actors in the shadow of the state.”

—Carsten Vala, author of The Politics of Protestant Churches and the Party-State in China