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The last decade has seen keen interest among governments, businesses, academe, and the nonprofit sector in the role religions can play in the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030. In China, until the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020, there were conferences and debates about this that increasingly involved the religious sector. This study looks at Christian social practice among faith-based organizations in China, especially its transformative potential, in contributing to sustainable development. It will highlight some of the best practices of the Amity Foundation, a Chinese FBO headquartered in Nanjing, to illustrate how, through a combination of service delivery and advocacy (Chinese style), FBOs in China can help shift official and religious perspectives and attitudes toward a more participatory and sustainable approach to development. Although the term "transformative diaconia" has not been explicitly used by Amity to describe its work, the values embedded in its practice and the impact it has made on stakeholders and policies can be considered transformative. The UN SDGs 2030, which have been strongly supported by Amity's ecumenical partners and the Chinese government, provide an important frame of reference for Amity's advocacy work as well as help to identify some of the content for diaconal capacity building for churches in China. Some of the opportunities and challenges confronting FBOs as they transition from service delivery to advocacy will be explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adequate research has been done on the relationship of evangelism to non‐Christian religions, church mission, and culture. These topics have been studied and addressed when ecumenical organizations like the International Missionary Council (IMC) – now the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) of the World Council of Churches – develop the theory of evangelism in their evangelizing enterprises. The China Continuation Committee was one of the founding members of the IMC in 1921, and thus proactively participated in the IMC's mission. Chinese Christians inevitably encountered the same challenges in their early evangelizing attempts. This article examines Chinese Christians' early efforts to self‐propagate the gospel in the social environment of the first half of the 20th century in China. Chinese Christianity has demonstrated distinctive approaches to the above three key relationships, as Chinese Christians dedicate themselves to national salvation and liberation. It can even be said that in the first half of the 1900s, Chinese churches made more progress than other churches in the ecumenical world in such respects as indigenization and self‐propagating ministry – even though some of the efforts were mingled with narrow‐minded motives of converting Chinese people. It was not until the launch of the Three‐Self Patriotic Movement that Chinese Christianity became an authentically autonomous Christian church, which has severed its ties with colonialism and started pursuing all‐round self‐reliance, including church evangelism. After analyzing the challenges that Chinese churches still face today in terms of evangelism, this article calls for Chinese Christianity to learn from IMC‐CWME's experience of evangelism for the further contextualization of Christianity in China. This aims at making the gospel proclamation carry more Chinese characteristics and eventually form an evangelism theology of Chinese Christianity. In this way, the outcome of the early efforts can be consolidated and the gospel message will better fit today's Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the significance and impact of the family as an ecclesiological metaphor in the Chinese context. It describes how a specific Confucian understanding of the family shapes congregational life. It argues that, while the metaphor of the family is a possible obstacle in ecumenical church relations, it has also significantly contributed to the growth of Christianity in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an edited version of the director's report given to the meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Commission in Nanjing, China, 12 to 19 June 2019. After looking at the significance of meeting in China, and Chinese perspectives on ecumenism, the text reviews the work undertaken by three study groups set up following the WCC 10th Assembly in Busan, Korea, on ecclesiology, pilgrimage and ecclesial communion, and the understanding of disagreement on moral issues. It concludes by exploring a proposal to hold a World Conference on Faith and Order in 2025 to coincide with the 1700th anniversary of the first Ecumenical Council at Nicea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The involvement of Chinese churches and Chinese Christians with the ecumenical movement preceded the establishment of the World Council of Churches in 1948. Recurring themes in the encounter have been de-colonization and indigenization, church unity and post-denominationalism, and Asian regional ecumenism. There was also a determination among Chinese church leaders to reconfigure mission and relations between churches in the West and those in Asia. These concerns have their origins in the chequered history of Christian missions and their association with imperialism in the last century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Church of Christ in China - a visible fruit of the church unity movement in early twentieth-century China - as a case study. Through examining its formation and development from 1927 to 1937, especially its progress in the advocacy of ecumenism in China, this paper aims to explore how the idea of ecumenism had been transplanted, rooted, accommodated and applied in the Chinese context during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper argues that, although the Chinese vision of ecumenism was derived from the West, it had taken a rather different path and reflected an indigenous understanding of ecumenism and ecclesiology. The case of the CCC demonstrated that national requirements played a significant role in reshaping the universal Christian message. The Christian message, in this case the vision of ecumenism, would always have to revise and incarnate itself in the local context which it encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses ecclesiology in the Protestant Church of China. Topics include the emergence of Chinese Protestantism as the most vital of the Christian movements as of 2015, China's lack of real theologically well-founded nationwide ecclesiastical structures, and Chinese Protestantism's representation of the most advanced realization of ecumenism.

Recent years have witnessed an articulated attention given to 'China' as a rising economic power. Parallel to this economic perspective, a renewed attention to the relationship between China and Christianity has also started to become verbalised in speeches of such prominent persons as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope and the general secretary of the World Council of Churches. China is accentuated on the agenda of missionary organizations. Where do fascination and passion for China come from? How does this China-fever influence certain processes within contemporary World Christianity? Where is China in World Christianity today? The present article aims to contest the oversimplifications exercised in the China question and maps the complexity of trajectories involved in the question of the China-World Christianity nexus. Looking at certain examples of global-local dynamics, the article aims to localise 'China' in its relation to World Christianity and vice versa. In doing so, the article focuses on issues such as transnational communities, ecumenical understanding, contextualisation and theological pluralism. The present contribution argues that the 'where' question in this case poses the challenge of moving beyond the geographical and numerical mappings. In order to understand the multiple theological connotations of the 'where' questions, the article proposes a new missiological-ecumenical approach which perceives 'super-diversity' as a guiding principle for the integrity of World Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007 Protestants in China celebrated the 200th anniversary of their journey of faith. The continuing concern of Chinese Christian theological educators is to rejuvenate Christianity in China by critically adapting to the contemporary socialist order and the best religio-cultural tradition of Chinese society. Chinese Christians have been challenged by the socialist order of society particularly because of the political and social changes that have taken place in China since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 and the changes brought about within Chinese society. With the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and the change of political atmosphere in 1978 there has been once again an opening for public Christian activities within the confines of certain state regulations. This change has provided scope for pursuing the reconstruction in China of Christianity initiated in the 1950s under the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM). Besides the revival of TSPM, the Chinese leaders have set up another instrument, the China Christian Council (CCC) especially to cater to the surging pastoral and congregational needs. This article briefly surveys the development of the vision of reconstructing Christianity through "theological reconstruction" and the need for ecumenical accompaniment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the association between globalization and ecumenism in Hong Kong, China. Background of the globalization in Hong Kong; Details on the Christian ecumenical movement in Hong Kong; Information on Pentecostalism in Hong Kong.

Presents a reflection on the theme of the World Council of Churches to be held in Brazil in February 2006 which focuses on the grace of God. Manifestations of the grace of God in the experiences of Chinese Christians; Growth in the number of Protestant Christians in China; State of the ecumenical movement in the country.