BRITISH Chinese Christianity is one of the most dynamic expressions of the faith in British church life today. Since 2021, approximately 150,000 Hong Kong Chinese have moved to the UK, since the establishment of the Hong Kong British Nationality (Overseas) visa. They are but the most recent contribution to the more than half a million British residents with Chinese heritage, of whom about one in five self-describes as Christian. It is the experience of these Christians, whether freshly arrived or having lived in Britain for generations, which is the subject of this loose collection of essays brought together by the University of Edinburgh’s Dr Alexander Chow.
The structure of British Chinese Christianity is highly decentralised. The first British Chinese church, the Gospel Hall Mission, was established in Liverpool in 1910. In the 1950s, the number of independent British Chinese churches began to grow. Many of these churches adopted the mission character of working in a “non-Christian” environment, and so sought little engagement with other churches more widely.
Since the 1990s, converts among Chinese students studying in the UK have led to new Chinese congregations; and so large Chinese churches today, for example in Liverpool and London, provide services in a variety of Chinese languages, as well as in English. Many Chinese-heritage Christians, especially second- and third- generation immigrants, also work and serve in “local” British churches of all denominations.
Most chapters in this book reflect the creativity and strains that such transnational and transcultural experiences of Christian faith entail. Renie Chow Choy asks what British Chinese Christians can make of the historic monuments found in many parish churches to the “Christian heroes” of British imperialism in China. Calida Chu shows how immigrants often wrestle with a “refugee mentality”: about 40 per cent of the recent Hong Kong immigrants say that they experience isolation, and one tenth speak of depression and social anxiety. The distrust between different groups of Chinese immigrants is the background to Yinxuan Huang’s work.
Later chapters seek theological and ecclesiological resources to help to address individual and communal pressures. The Revd Mark Nam contends that the divine encounter entails reconciliation and so resists a theology from the margins. He has established the Tea House, to network and encourage Church of England clergy with Chinese heritage. The migrant background of Moses, the exilic prophets, and the incarnation provide fertile ground for theological reflection.
Alex Chow shows the wide networks, often international, informal, and enabled by technology, in which British Chinese churches often now participate. These networks, he suggests, could provide a new catholicity for today’s networked generation of British Chinese Christians.
The strength of this book is the variety of perspectives offered by the authors, women and men, involved in church leadership and outreach, research and academia. Their own experience is to the fore, and Alex Chow’s introductory remarks of living through COVID as a person of Chinese heritage in Scotland will be eye-opening to many.
The authors do not spell out how the British Chinese Christian experience might inform the wider future of British Christianity as a whole. Nor do they directly address some of the polarising factors in today’s world which might militate against multicultural Christian identity and churches. Nevertheless, British Chinese Christianity has now well and truly arrived, and will continue to be a significant influence on the British church scene in the generations to come.
The Revd Lawrence Braschi is Vicar of St Pancras’s, Plymouth, and formerly director of the China Desk at Churches Together in Britain and Ireland.
Chinese Heritage in British Christianity: More than foreigners
Alexander Chow, editor
SCM Press £25
(978-0-334-06617-0)
Church Times Bookshop £20