The contribution of monks to the evangelization of lands not yet reached by the preaching of the Gospel has certainly been remarkable. The specific witness that the monastic community gives is of a radical Christian life naturally radiating outward, and thus it is implicitly missionary. The process of inculturation of Christian monasticism in China required a bold spiritual attitude of openness to the future and a willingness to accept the transformation of monastic forms that had been received. In Christian Monks on Chinese Soil, Matteo Nicolini-Zani highlights the willingness of foreign monks to encounter the cultural and spiritual realities of China and the degree of acceptance by the Chinese of the form of monastic life that was presented to them by the missionaries.

The contribution of monks to the evangelization of lands not yet reached by the preaching of the Gospel has certainly been remarkable. The specific witness that the monastic community gives is of a radical Christian life naturally radiating outward, and thus it is implicitly missionary. The process of inculturation of Christian monasticism in China required a bold spiritual attitude of openness to the future and a willingness to accept the transformation of monastic forms that had been received. In Christian Monks on Chinese Soil, Matteo Nicolini-Zani highlights the willingness of foreign monks to encounter the cultural and spiritual realities of China and the degree of acceptance by the Chinese of the form of monastic life that was presented to them by the missionaries.

The Oxford Handbook of Christian Monasticism addresses, for the first time in one volume, multiple strands of Christian monastic practice. Forty-four essays consider historical and thematic aspects of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican traditions, as well as contemporary 'new monasticism'.

This volume completes the previous volumes 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 4a of an interdisciplinary book project on the reception of Jesus Christ in China, as seen from the perspectives of Sinology, mission history, theology, and art history, among others. It consists of the following parts: A "Supplementary Anthology" that presents excerpts and longer quotations from selected works – such as translations, prayers, poems, and scholarly articles – listed in the bibliography of vol. 4a; two sections of "Notes on Contributors, Vols. 1–3b" and "Notes on Authors of the Anthologies, Vols. 1–3b, 4b" that provide short biographical information on the contributors of articles and authors of all texts in the anthologies; a "List of Reviews of Vols. 1–4a" published on the whole collection as well as on individual volumes; the Tables of Contents of vols. 1, 2, 3a, 3b and 4a; a "General Index and Glossary" that gives readers access to all articles and anthologies included in vols. 1, 2, 3a, 3b, and 4b, a corpus of almost two thousand pages of text; and finally a list of "Errata and Corrigenda."

The ‘spatial turn’ of missionary places Situated at the crossroads of missionary history, imperial history and colonial architecture, this volume examines the architectural staging and spatial implications of the worldwide expansion of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By focusing on specific architectural fragments, analysing the intersection of Christian edifices in colonial and traditional urban settings or unravelling the social understanding of missionary places, each chapter strives to understand the agency of missionary spaces. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and fields, this book aims to centre those missionary spaces by approaching them not merely as décor around and within which the missionary encounter was acted, but by making them part and parcel of it. Through its approach, Missionary Spaces provides a new paradigm for scrutinising the ‘spatial turn’ for missionary histories and contributes to the increased attention across the humanities to space, place, and location since the late 1990s. Space does not occur as an historical given, but as a social construction to be analysed, while at the same time having explanatory value of its own. This book focuses on Africa and the Chinese Region with contributions on Burundi, China, Congo, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, and Taiwan.

"The Missionary Dynamism of the Church of the East It would be an attractive undertaking for the historian to be able to follow in the footsteps of those heralds of the Gospel, who went forth from Antioch with firmness and tenacity in those early days making their way to the East . . . building new centers of Christian irradiation, creating communities and spreading the doctrine of Jesus everywhere. The interest would certainly grow if we were familiar with the challenges faced by these first evangelizers on their way to the Far East. Gaining that knowledge, however, is no easy task. Christ's teaching had to cover immense distances on its road from Antioch towards the East. . . . The details of this diffusion, however, remain obscure. There are no Acts of the Apostles, no Letters of Saint Paul, no contemporary or near-contemporary documents that might tell us how and when Christianity from the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris crossed over the mountainous regions of the Orient, how through Media and Parthia it went south to Herat and Segestan, and how it penetrated eastward, crossing the Margiana (Merv), into the region of the Oxus and the Jaxartes, and finally how it entered today's Russian province of Semireč'e, then Turfan, and then further south into the heart of China"--

In Borrowed Place: Mission Stations and Local Adaption in Early Twentieth-Century Hunan Riika-Leena Juntunen creates a microhistorical narrative around the establishment, reception, and development of Lizhou protestant stations during the turbulent years of popular nationalism and early communist activity. The book examines the changing place identity around the stations from political, religious, ritual, cultural, and gendered perspectives, revealing a Chinese semi-religious community with varying motivations and in constant dialogue with its surroundings. The group developed its own normative code and hierarchy, and it offered both economic and religious benefits according to local models. Yet the developing political situation also meant it had to solve the question of anti-foreignism to be able to continue its existence.