Abstract
Over the past decade, Reformed Christianity, broadly based on the theology of Calvinism, has spread widely in China, especially by appealing to Chinese ‘intellectuals’ who constitute most of the house church leaders in urban areas. It draws its moral guidance from a so-called rational or intellectual focus on biblical theology, reinforced by theological training in special seminaries. It consequently rejects the ‘heresy’ of the older Pentecostal Christianity, with its emphasis on charisma, miracles, and theology based on emotional ‘feeling’. This Reformed theology and its further elaboration have been introduced into China in two main ways. The first is through overseas Chinese, especially via theological seminaries in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. For instance, preachings of the famous Reformed pastor Stephen Tong (唐崇荣) have been widely disseminated online and among Chinese Christians. Second, Korean missionaries have established theological seminaries mainly in cities in northern China. This has resulted in more and more Chinese church leaders becoming advocates of Calvinism and converting their churches to Reformed status. This paper asks why Calvinism attracts Chinese Christians, what Calvinism means for the so-called house churches of a Christian community in a northern Chinese city, and what kinds of change the importation of Reformed theology has brought to Chinese house churches. Various significant accounts have addressed this development in China generally. My analysis complements these accounts by focusing on a small number of interconnected house churches in one city, and uses this case study to highlight interpersonal and organizational issues arising from the Calvinist approach.
Highlights
Over the past decade, Reformed Christianity broadly based on the theology of Calvinism has spread widely in China (Brown 2009; Chow 2014a, 2014b)
Unlike most published work on Chinese Calvinism, which highlights public intellectuals and politically high-profile elites (e.g., Chow 2014a, 2018; Fällman 2012), this paper focuses on a grass-roots and low-profile community in what I will call City A2 in North China and its Pastor Liu, and analyses through case material how a distinctively Chinese form of Calvinism is shaped by its dissemination in
Since its pastor studied at the Korean Calvinist Theological Seminary, the Gospel Church has changed dramatically
Summary
Over the past decade, Reformed Christianity broadly based on the theology of Calvinism has spread widely in China (Brown 2009; Chow 2014a, 2014b). For such intellectual Christian leaders, the evolving Chinese version of Calvinism is much more sophisticated than other, usually earlier and rural, forms of Christianity, which depend less on literacy and the use of key texts Calvinist theology meets their demands by providing a comprehensive understanding and interpretation of doctrine, a large amount of literature on how to practice Christianity in everyday life, a well-structured belief system, and a systematic, Presbyterian-like method of organising and governing churches. I would modify Fällman’s observation and would instead claim that the major factor in the spread of Calvinist theology is the grass-roots Christian network in mainland China, and that this supersedes the influence of overseas Chinese or politically high-profile public intellectuals.
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