Protestant Missions in China 1807 - 1953

China and the West were virtually unaware of each other s civilizations until the nineteenth century. In Europe, knowledge of China and its ruling (Manchu) Qing Dynasty was restricted to a small circle of experts familiar with the writings of earlier visitors, such as the Jesuit court missionaries. The same limitations applied to China s officials who, however educated they may have been, possessed very little insight into European civilization, including Christianity.During the last half of the eighteenth and the opening decades of the nineteenth century little was done among Protestant Christians to take the message of the Christian Gospel to China. Eventually, however, the release of national dynamism brought about by the Industrial Revolution and the spiritual renewal that began among the churches by the evangelical awakening throughout the English-speaking world coincided with an era of Western colonial expansion and what has been called The Great Century of modern missions.The few Roman Catholic missionaries operating in China before the 1800s were generally isolated and bound by an ever more tightly woven net of anti-missionary legislation.

Klappentext

China and the West were virtually unaware of each other's civilizations until the nineteenth century. In Europe, knowledge of China and its ruling (Manchu) Qing Dynasty was restricted to a small circle of experts familiar with the writings of earlier visitors, such as the Jesuit court missionaries. The same limitations applied to China's officials who, however educated they may have been, possessed very little insight into European civilization, including Christianity.During the last half of the eighteenth and the opening decades of the nineteenth century little was done among Protestant Christians to take the message of the Christian Gospel to China. Eventually, however, the release of national dynamism brought about by the Industrial Revolution and the spiritual renewal that began among the churches by the evangelical awakening throughout the English-speaking world coincided with an era of Western colonial expansion and what has been called "The Great Century" of modern missions.The few Roman Catholic missionaries operating in China before the 1800s were generally isolated and bound by an ever more tightly woven net of anti-missionary legislation.