Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black, While Chinese American – A Book Review

Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope. By Esau McCaulley. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020. Pp. 208. $22.00.

For those who are used to my rantings, it is mainly around (Mainland) Chinese Christian theology or World Christianity. This is about something quite different: Esau McCaulley’s Reading While Black. I have heard a lot about this book. As I read it, it stirred quite a lot in my own thinking as a Chinese American Christian (exiled in the UK).

Matthew Kim and Daniel Wong’s Finding Our Voice – A Book Review

Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching.  By Matthew D. Kim and Daniel L. Wong. Bellingham, WA, USA, Lexham Press 2020. Pp. 187. $17.99.

The first class I ever took in seminary was entitled the ‘Ministry of God’s Word’. I was instructed to preach mindful of Karl Barth who said that we are to hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. The course proceeded to discuss the biblical precedence of preaching and what was to be expected in our continued ministry of God’s word. I very much appreciated that class. But, in hindsight, I realise that the tools I was trained in were much more focused on properly holding the Bible than in holding the newspaper—the present situations the congregation was facing.

It has been two decades since taking that class and the majority of my sermons have been delivered in Chinese communities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. I have read a number of books, with envy, which address other communities such as Cleophus LaRue’s The Heart of Black Preaching (WJK 2000) and Justo González and Pablo Jiménez’s Púlpito: An Introduction to Hispanic Preaching (Abingdon 2005). So I was excited to see the publication of a book that’s authors read a similar ‘newspaper’ as I do—Matthew Kim and Daniel Wong’s Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching (Lexham 2020).

Adrian Pei’s The Minority Experience – A Book Review

The Minority Experience: Navigating Emotional and Organizational Realities. By Adrian Pei. Downers Grove, IL, USA, IVP Books 2018. Pp. 208. $17.00.

Few books evoke the kind of deep reaction I had when reading this volume for review. Adrian Pei’s The Minority Experience articulates in writing experiences and emotions that I have felt all my life, as a ‘Chinese’ in Southern California, as an ‘American’ in China, and as a ‘Chinese’ in the UK. In each of these places, my presence as a minority has been magnified by others, intentional or not. Pei’s work wrestles with these kinds of experiences and explains how organisations can do more in addressing the deep-seated challenges of the minority experience.

Carl Kilcourse’s Taiping Theology – A Book Review

Taiping Theology: The Localization of Christianity in China, 1843–64. By Carl S. Kilcourse. New York, NY, USA, Palgrave Macmillan 2016. Pp. xvii+281. $100.00.

As Christians around the world have been commemorating the quincentenary anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, many have reiterated one of its most famous dicta: sola Scriptura. These two Latin words have been used to summarise the spirit of Protestantism, especially as found through the reading of the vernacular bible. However, one often forgets that many of the translations were accompanied by copious notes to clarify words and expressions, and to comment on ‘correct’ Christian doctrine.¹ While the Protestants behind each of these bibles held to the principle of sola Scriptura, they also held to a very strong sense that the bible read ‘incorrectly’ could be wielded — not as a sword of truth, but as a sword of blasphemy. In many ways, the book under review offers a profound case study of the power of the bible and the attempts of a religious leader in asserting his ‘correct’ reading of that vernacular text. Carl S. Kilcourse has provided a magnificent study of ‘Taiping Theology’ and the thinking of the main leader behind it, Hong Xiuquan.

Brent Fulton’s China’s Urban Christians – A Book Review

China’s Urban Christians: A Light that Cannot be Hidden. By Brent Fulton. Eugene, OR, USA, Pickwick Publications 2015. Pp. ix + 145. $21.00.

One of the greatest forces to remould the landscape of mainland China in the last two decades has been the country’s push towards rapid urbanisation. Contrary to the measured approach the sociologist Fei Xiaotong recommended to the communist cadre, the speed of constructing and populating China’s urban centres has undoubtedly resulted in many significant societal challenges. Likewise, urbanisation has had significant consequences for the church in China which once was known as having a ‘Christianity fever’ amongst the rural poor but is now seeing a formidable force of urban intellectuals and entrepreneurs.

The volume under review addresses this complex reality.