A new book entitled, The Catholic Church, The Bible, and Evangelization in China, which was edited by Cindy Yik-yi Chu, was recently released and contains writings from authors in Italy, the United States, mainland China and Hong Kong. It provides various perspectives covering the Chinese Church in the contemporary period and considers the Church on the different levels -the diplomatic, the governmental, the communal, and the individual.
From the publisher’s website, “This edited volume starts from the perspectives of Beijing in how it sees that religion should serve the interests of the state. From China’s viewpoint, religion should act as a stabilizing force of society, or else the Christian Churches will lose their reason for existence. This might be incomprehensible to Western Christians, who believe in the freedom of religion and their right to embrace their faith. This collection of articles represents the concerted efforts of Chinese, Italians, and an American—who live in China, Europe, and the United States and belong to different disciplines, such as History, Religious Studies, and Language Studies—to promote a better understanding of the Catholic Church in the world and in China.”
Cindy Yik-yi Chu is a Professor of History at Hong Kong Baptist University and Editor of the Christianity in Modern China Series of Palgrave Macmillan. She writes on the Catholic Church and the Catholic sisters in China and Hong Kong. Her recent work is edited with Paul P. Mariani, People, Communities, and the Catholic Church in China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).