Churches in Global Chinese Communities: Chinese Ecclesiology in the Making

The dramatic growth and expansion of Christianity among Chinese communities represents a significant development in world Christianity. Given that over 50 million people of Chinese origin live outside mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong*, Chinese churches have now spread across the globe. The global phenomenon of Chinese Christianity has brought into existence vibrant Chinese Christian communities in Greater China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, Oceania, North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. This global dispersal has diversified Chinese Christianity to such an extent that it is no longer tenable to view the Chinese church as a single, homeland-centred entity. Both rapid migration and the widespread deployment of digital technology have given rise to a global network of Chinese churches, spanning many cultures and nations. As such, understanding Chinese ecclesiology requires close attention to how theological refection emerges from the lived experiences, cultural contexts, and historical trajectories of Chinese Christian communities, which in turn lead to distinctive theological formulations, ecclesiastical structures, and ecclesial practices.

The global expansion of Chinese churches has generated pressing and profound theological questions about denominations, the nature and mission of the church, Chinese identity, cultural contextualisation, ecclesial practices, spirituality, transnational migration, and engagement with local public affairs. The conference is intended to foster international and interdisciplinary dialogue on the current debates and challenges in how Chinese churches relate to this global configuration of Chinese Christianities. In this way, the conference seeks to enrich our understanding of how ‘church’ is conceived among Chinese Christian communities worldwide and how Chinese ecclesiological insights might contribute to the wider study of ecclesiology and World Christianity.

We invite paper proposals that explore the conference theme from diverse perspectives. Short-paper presentations are limited to 20 minutes maximum (timed), followed by 10-minute Q&A. Suggested topics and research questions include, but are not limited to:

• Contextual articulation of ecclesiology: How is the doctrine of ekklesia articulated and shaped by Chinese cultural, communal, and linguistic factors across various contexts?
• Spirituality and ecclesiology: How is Chinese Christian spirituality—such as devotional habits, charismatic expressions, and indigenous spiritual practices—formative of Chinese ecclesiological discourse?
• Identity, Chinese Christian communities, and churches: To what extent—if at all—does Chinese identity undergird or undermine the emergence of Chinese ecclesial forms, given the ecclesiological implications of migration and diaspora for churches?
• Chinese denominations: What is the denominational status quo of Chinese churches, and in what ways do transnational encounters between Chinese churches reconfigure denominational identities for Chinese Christianities?
• Ecclesiology in Chinese and wider contexts: How might Chinese ecclesiological insights enrich ecumenical conversations about the nature of the church?
• The church’s role in society: In what ways are Chinese Christian communities addressing social, ethical, and cultural challenges, and what does this engagement reveal about their understanding of the role that the church has to play in society?
• Ecclesiology in relation to the history of Chinese Christianities: How do different historical narratives about Chinese Christianities inform contemporary Chinese ecclesiology, and what ecclesiological heritage can Chinese churches retrieve and develop?
• Christian literature and Chinese ecclesial forms: What role does Christian literature play in shaping how Chinese Christians articulate ecclesiology?
• Church polity and liturgy: To what extent do church polity and liturgical practices in Chinese churches reflect the indigenous, contextual, and broader cultural dynamics?

* Statistical yearbook of the Overseas Community Affairs Council, Overseas Community Affairs Council of R.O.C, accessed by 3 November 2025, https://www.ocac.gov.tw/OCAC/File/Attach/313/File_547498.pdf.

Professor Brian Stanley, Professor Emeritus of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh

Lecture title: Ecclesiology and World Christianity
Abstract: This paper will place the theme of the conference in a global and historical setting.  Ecclesiology is comparatively neglected in contemporary studies of world Christianity, but the transition from European Christendom as the default setting for reflection on church order has profound implications. The majority of the world’s Christians now live in countries where the State maintains either strict religious neutrality or open hostility to Christian faith.  Historic church traditions of East and West intermingle, evolve, and interact with new Pentecostal Christianities. These often display a striking hybridity of ecclesiological characteristics, often combining emphasis on the availability of spiritual power to all Christians with strict lineages of apostolic authority. New lines of division within the world church have appeared, which may in time eclipse in importance those inherited from the 16th century. Chinese Christianity, both within China and in diaspora, exhibits many of these features, so this introductory paper should set the stage for our conference.

Dr Renie Chow Choy, Public Historian, Westminster Abbey, and Associate Lecturer in Church History, Westcott House, Cambridge

Lecture title: Becoming Established: The Chinese Diaspora in the Church of England

Abstract: The British church landscape is unlike any other. Because the Church of England is the established church, it confers a unique level of access, visibility, influence, and opportunity in national life. In this context, British Anglicanism is not simply one denomination among many equals: for Chinese British Christians to flourish in the long term, they must relate meaningfully to the established church, beyond existing as independent fellowships, ethnic chaplaincies, or groups renting space. Yet one significant challenge in this relationship is heritage. The established Anglican Church is woven into national culture and national history, whereas most Chinese migrants encounter Anglicanism through choice, circumstance, or conversion. What happens when these two types of belonging meet? How does sharing life together change both the historic church and the migrant congregation? My lecture explores this question through the case study of the Cantonese congregation at St Martin-in-the-Fields in the heart of Trafalgar Square. It considers what it means for a migrant congregation to participate in the institutional, liturgical, and sacramental life of one of the most established, historic, and culturally important churches in the country. Can this shared life unfold without slipping into old colonial patterns – the binaries of host/guest, origin/copy, precedent/successor, centre/periphery? What difference does it make when a historic church is shaped by a migrant congregation, and when that congregation is formed within a place so deeply rooted in English history? This case study allows us to explore what happens when heritage and migration are woven together within the life of the same church.

Professor Shao Kai Tseng, Research Professor at Zhejiang University, China

Lecture title: Communion of differences: challenges of unity and diversity in Chinese ecclesiology

Abstract: Religious conflicts among the branches and denominations of Christianity following the Protestant Reformation have led to profound theological reflections and ecumenical efforts in early-modern and modern times. From the time of the English Civil War to that of the Glorious Revolution, theologians and philosophers like John Owen and John Locke came to be increasingly united in their call for religious toleration—not without significant hindrances to be sure. In Germany, reconciliatory endeavours in the century following the Thirty Years’ War can be found in religious poetry, syncretistic approaches to doctrinal convictions among theologians (e.g. George Calixt) and Philosophers (e.g. G. W. Leibniz), the spread of Lutheran pietism among German Catholics in the generation of Auguste Hermann Francke, etc.. The nineteenth century saw ecumenical efforts such that advanced by Friedrich Schleiermacher in Germany and by the Tractarians in England, again not entirely without criticisms, pushbacks, and negative consequences. When Catholic and Protestant missionaries flooded into China by the masses following the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), Christian branches and denominations in America, Britain, and Europe were already working closely with one another on the mission field. These collaborative efforts came to an abrupt end when foreign missions were banned by the communist regime in 1953. A significant loss of confessional identities ensued in both underground and Three-Self churches. The Open and Reform program gradually opened up China’s doors to foreign missions as well as domestic evangelism, and the 1990s saw a decade of rapid church growth in the nation. The need of doctrinal formation came to be strongly felt around the turn of the twenty-first century. By the late 2000s, Chinese church leaders became aware of the intimate connections between doctrinal convictions and confessional identities. Fallouts between former colleagues often find their causes in confessional differences. The development of an ecclesiology honouring both unity and diversity among members of different branches and denominations has become an urgent need in contemporary Chinese Christianity. In this lecture, I will draw on the Catholic ecumenist J.-M.-R. Tillard and neo-Calvinistic dogmatician Herman Bavinck to propose a basic ecclesiological trajectory in which the Church is understood as neither the ‘abolition’ or ‘addition’, but rather the ‘communion’ of differences among the members of the body of Christ.

Dr Clement Wen, Assistant Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology, Howard and Shirley Bentall Chair in Evangelical Thought at McMaster Divinity College, Canada

Lecture title: Inhabiting the “Space Between” and “Space Amidst” in view of the Coming Basileia of God: Constructing a Theologically Eclectic Ecclesiological Future for the Chinese Diaspora in North America

Abstract: Without downplaying the fact of an immense plurality to Chinese American and Chinese Canadian Christianities, a more overarching argument for a theologically eclectic ecclesiological construction for the Chinese Diaspora Churches in North America will be made that, among other voices, resources the theological proposals of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, and Wolfhart Pannenberg; the missiological reflections of Michael W. Stroope; the sociological observations of Fenggang Yang; and the contextual approaches of C. S. Song, Timothy Tseng, and Amos Yong. The result is a twenty-first century theological construction that encourages Chinese American and Chinese Canadian Ecclesiologies to more thoroughly inhabit the liminal “space between” Chinese and North American cultures as well as the “space amidst” their own generational divides in a post-missions, post-missional, “storied” ecumenical landscape that, by way of trinitarian participation by the Spirit, is centred upon Christ in view of the coming basileia of God.

A limited number of bursaries are available covering three nights’ accommodation and the registration fee. Details of eligibility and the application process (e.g., short statement of need) will be provided here shortly. Travel costs are not covered.