Studying Christianity in China: Constructions of an Emerging Discourse, by Naomi Thurston

Abstract

Through in-depth interviews with nearly fifty leading scholars in Sino-Christian studies and theology inside the PRC and Hong Kong, Naomi Thurston charts the interdisciplinarity, marginality, and variable nature of what it means to study Christianity in China. Set against historical and cultural scholarship charting the growth of Christians and Christianity in recent decades, Thurston’s account is notable for its empirical, intellectual, and insular qualities. Indeed, what she terms Sino-Christian studies or theology is at best a loose amalgamation of scholars scattered across a variety of disciplines and institutions, whose embrace of the term “theologian” is ambivalent, whose training is interdisciplinary, and whose interaction with Chinese churches is often sparse. Although the Christian identity of such scholars is a topic of much scrutiny and contention both within and outside of the field, Thurston argues that these scholars “engage in strategic constructions of marginality” (228), playing the part of intellectual outsiders and exiles, while displaying an increasing openness to personal faith and to theology as a source of public and academic good in China.Thurston’s empirical study will be best appreciated by readers intimately familiar with not just the history of Christianity in China but also the nature of Chinese academic culture and institutional divisions with respect to religious studies, theology, and philosophy. Historians and political scientists will find her in depth and intellectual discussions of Chinese modern political history, “Cultural Christians,” and moral politics enlightening (chapter 4), while sociologists and anthropologists will value her thorough discussion of methodology and subjectivity (chapter 2). Chapters 5, 6, and 7 make the strongest and most distinctive contributions to this intellectual mapping of Sino-Christian studies and theology as Thurston draws from her interview material to construct five typologies of Sino-Christian scholars (chapter 5). Then, through the distinctions she identifies between the senior generation, scholars who emerged in the 1980s and 1990s (chapter 6), and younger scholars (chapter 7), she clarifies some of the overall historical shifts and trends in theological thinking. Whereas senior scholars are more likely to maintain a distance between academic scholarship and personal faith, younger scholars are more likely to combine religious interest and identity.In the penultimate chapter, where Thurston again takes up this theme of marginality for Sino-Christian studies and scholars, she illuminates that unlike Christianity in China, Sino-Christian studies do not simply respond to communal, ethical, and societal voids in post-Mao China. Rather these disciplines must and can cultivate a unique theological space in their dialogues between East and West (203–4) and their aspiration to truthful, public, and Chinese insight into a decidedly interdisciplinary and global conversation.Thurston’s empiricism makes a vital contribution to understanding how Chinese scholars articulate their field from within, what the future of Sino-Christian theology may hold, and how global scholars may participate and engage such scholars more fruitfully. The theme of marginality is widely substantiated by these scholar-insiders and their eagerness to maintain the position of outsider-intellectual and the separation of the ecclesial and academic realms offers an archetypal vision for Sino-Christian studies that conjures some distance and critique from contemporary, subjective, ethnographic methods. On this point, however, I’m disappointed to find the author silent: after a truly sophisticated and insightful discussion of empirical subjectivity on pp. 32-35, the author disengages herself from this important methodological debate, to which the Sino-Christian perspective raises so many stimulating, yet fundamentally unaddressed challenges. For the most part, she fails to engage as a co-constructor in this theological discussion, and the book for all its theological parsing with respect to scholarly identity is quite theologically “lite.” Still, Thurston does justice to her interlocutors: the distinct voices of these scholars leap off the pages, and it is a real triumph to map such a dizzying sea of academics and their idiosyncrasies. What is clear is that Sino-Christian studies’ marginality is hardly a detriment to its intricacy: Thurston succeeds in ascertaining the intellectual and theological depth that transcends intergenerational scholarship in China. This is quite the feat and quite the gift for English readers.