2015/03/01 by Miikka Mauno Ruokanen, Yongtao Chen, Ruomin Liu · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Chinese history and philosophy #Christian Theology and Mission
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/erev.12138
openalex publication_date 2015/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Chinese Protestantism is the most rapidly growing form of Christianity of our time: each year about one million adults are baptized as new members of the registered Protestant church, now counting over 30 million members.And this is only one side of the story: there are also thousands of non-registered congregations, the so-called home or house churches, which account for another over 30 million members, demonstrating the same growth rate of one million baptized adults every year.Every day a new congregation is established in China.In 1949, at the dawn of the People's Republic of China, there were some 700,000 Protestant Christians in China.Today the total number is over 60 million, almost 5 % of the population of the country.This means that the number of baptized Protestants has grown almost 90 times larger under the rule of Communism.Even during the exceptionally difficult years of 1958-1976 the church membership grew ten times bigger. Advanced Ecumenism?Chinese Protestantism is one of the most vital of the Christian movements of our day.Yet it is also a very complicated one.Local congregations, municipal churches, and regional provincial church structures are very independent, not being particularly subservient to guidance from the national leadership.At present, China lacks any real, theologically well-founded nationwide ecclesiastical structures.The Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) of 1951 is the political organ of Chinese Protestantism, which seeks to foster good relations with the secular government at all levels.The China Christian Council (CCC) of 1980 instituted a relatively loose national organ that provides various services to the Protestant Church nationwide and represents Chinese bsbsbanner