Book Review - Darkest before the Dawn
Richard R. Cook, Darkest before the Dawn: A Brief History of the Rise of Christianity in China. In Studies in Chinese Christianity, edited by G. Wright Doyle and Carol Lee Hamrin. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2021.
Disclosure: Wright Doyle read and commented upon an early draft of the book and is co-editor of Studies in Chinese Christianity.
Darkest before the Dawn is meant to be an introductory textbook for the study of Christianity in China. The author uses secular and Christian history, personal notes, questions, and interactions with students to crate a very readable guide. The book developed out of Cook’s long teaching experience and includes features from his classroom instruction. Reflecting this origin, the book contains only what is necessary for us to know, a most helpful feature.
On the other hand, those who know a bit about Chinese Christianity will be very aware of the solid scholarship behind it and the wide reading that has gone into this very concise text.
Each chapter includes invaluable passages on the historical and cultural background in which the missionaries worked and in which Chinese Christians received the gospel and made it their own.
Part One: Pre-Protestant Missions (Beginnings–1807)
1 Alopen and the First Christian in China
As he does in later chapters, the author provides information about the Chinese cultural background of the first missionaries to China; in a foretaste of succeeding chapters, this one is succinct and helpful.
We learn that there was no Christianity in China in the early centuries of Christian history elsewhere.
We call the first missionaries from the “West” Nestorians by convention, but Cook asks: “Was Nestorius a heretic?” We now believe that he may not have been. Were the Nestorians orthodox? Yes: A close reading of the famous Nestorian stele demonstrates that their message included enough Christian truth for one to be saved by faith in Christ.
In an aside, Cook asks, “Why should Chinese students learn Western church history? Why should we learn about the Nestorians?” His answers are very convincing.
The emperor unleashed a fierce persecution upon Nestorians in 845, in which Nestorians were also targeted. Were they too much like the Buddhists? Too dependent on imperial support? Most of the names listed on the tablet appear to be foreign, suggesting that the Nestorian church did not contain many Chinese. Furthermore, their leadership was entirely foreign. Nestorians did survive among the Uighurs and Mongols.
In an excursus on Christian scholarship on Chinese Christianity, Cook insists that we need Christian scholars to do research and writing about this vastly important subject.
2 Marco Polo, Kublai Khan, and the Franciscan Friars
Yuan China and the Mongol Empire: A brief history
The Mongolian Peace brought the Polo brothers and Roman Catholicism to China in 1260. They were part of the rise of Venice. Marco joined his father until 1295 and then wrote up his memoirs, which had great influence on Europe.
Kublai Khan asked for missionaries to be sent, but only two went, including John of Montecorvin, who arrived in 1294 after Kublai Khan had died. He had great success, despite persistent opposition from the Nestorians, who had returned to China and had more influence and status than before. They baptized 10,000 people, but his church did not survive the Yuan Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty was xenophobic and revived Confucianism, suppressing all other faiths, especially foreign ones.
Question: Would the conversion of the emperor have helped the church to survive?
3 Matteo Ricci, the Jesuits, and the Emperor of China
In a change from his earlier position, Cook now likes the Jesuits and greatly admires Ricci. He begins with the story of Ignatius Loyola, who wrote the Spiritual Exercises, which Cook considers to be a helpful guide to the Christian life. Its spirituality contributed to the “personal piety and spiritual vitality of Matteo Ricci” (23).
Jesuits, missions, and the “fourth vow”
The Jesuit missionaries learned the language and culture of China, but also “focused their efforts on a spiritual mission and ministry” (24). They vowed obedience to the Pope, not a king, and thus they were not agents of political power or change, but of spiritual mission.
Matteo Ricci and China
Matteo Ricci was the first Westerner to reside in Beijing. In attempt to reach the Confucian intellectual elite, he wore a scholar’s dress, not that of a priest. His many-faceted approach employed his knowledge of Chinese, memorization techniques, mathematics, clocks (that had to be serviced by them!), and alchemy, as well as the doctrines that he preached. His converts included leading intellectuals who have been called the “Three Pillars of the Church.”
The overall strategy of the Jesuits in China centered on the conversion of the emperor and the intelligentsia. Later, new missionaries (Dominicans and Franciscans) came who served among the poor. Cook provocatively asks, “Which strategy is best?”
The Rites Controversy
The Emperor Kangxi proclaimed toleration for Roman Catholic Christianity in 1692, partly because the Jesuits allowed Christians to venerate ancestors. The Dominicans and Franciscans sharply disagreed. The ensuing “Rites Controversy” lasted over one hundred years, until, in 1704, the pope decided against the Jesuits. In 1721, the emperor, enraged that a foreigner dared to intrude into China’s internal affairs, forbade their preaching in China.
Cook concludes by observing that two sets of missionaries listened to two different classes of Chinese society about the rites and came to different conclusions. He asks, “What is the best strategy?”
Part Two: Protestant Missions and Chinese Angst (1807–1900)
“Two stories should be told of nineteenth-century Christianity in China. The missionaries, on the one hand, constructed a massive infrastructure of churches, schools, and hospitals that transformed the landscape in China. During those same years, a delicate, small indigenous Chinese church was born . . . [The] missionaries made extraordinary sacrifices and, by and large, exhibited unimpeachable personal piety. They achieved innumerable accomplishments in China, and yet most Chinese could not differentiate the acts of the missionaries from the increasingly aggressive actions of Great Britain” (34).
4 Robert Morrison, the British, and Liang Fa
This chapter traces the actions of the first Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison, and the first Chinese evangelist, Liang Fa, against the background of the decline of the Qing Dynasty and the relentless aggression of the British.
Cook shows how Morrison accomplished great things, including his translations of the Scripture, composition of a Chinese grammar, and founding of the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca. He points out that Morrison’s home life set a new precedent for Christian missions in China, since the Roman Catholics, of course, had no wives. At the same time, his acceptance of employment with the British East India Company forever tainted the reputation of foreign missionaries in the eyes of Chinese, who saw the Christian gospel enter China along with opium.
Likewise, the career of Liang Fa demonstrated the indispensable role of dedicated and courageous Chinese to the evangelization of China, but Morrison’s intervention to protect him from persecution by the authorities forever burdened Chinese Christians with the suspicion that they were tools of the foreign imperialists.
Throughout this book, Cook displays a remarkable grasp of the complexities of the foreign missionary movement in China, both sympathizing with sincere efforts to promote the gospel and pointing out the immense costs of certain decisions.
5 The Opium Wars, the Taipings, and Hong Xiuquan
After the treaty of Tianjin in 1860, foreigners had the right to travel and live anywhere in China and to propagate the Christian message without hindrance. In addition, Chinese were given the right to follow Christ and belong to Christian churches, as well as to associate with foreign missionaries. These gains came at great cost, however, for Chinese saw the treaties, which resulted from China’s defeat in the “Opium Wars,” as a humiliation to their national pride, something that they still deeply resent. And they connected them with the spread of Christian missionary work.
Missionaries developed patterns of ministry that included literature, evangelism and church planting, education at all levels, missions of mercy (including hospitals and orphanages), and vocal opposition to many social evils (including foot binding, infanticide, and opium use). Gradually, they also cooperated with each other by assigning different regions to different mission organizations, an action that made some Chinese believe that they were “carving up China” in the same way that the imperialist powers were.
6 Sowing the Seed: J. Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission
Hudson Taylor came to China in 1854, as this new year was opening. Cook traces his early years, education, training, and first ministry in China. In 1865, unable to find a missionary society committed to sending workers to China, he founded the China Inland Mission, with the goal of the evangelism of all of China, especially its interior.
Within the context of the growing missionary presence, Hudson Taylor launched a new mission, based on different principles. At first, he mostly recruited people from the less educated strata of British society. He deployed his workers outside the coastal cities and “treaty ports,” sending them deep into the interior of China. They wore Chinese dress, ate Chinese food, and lived simply among the Chinese. Unlike many other foreign missionaries, they did not turn to Western powers for protection in times of trouble. Nor did they make open appeals for funds from supporters at home. Instead, they relied entirely on God, praying in faith for him to provide and protect.
In contrast to many other missionary societies, Taylor chose not to engage in “civilizing mission,” but “contextualized” his message and his mission. He aimed at evangelization, not Westernization. After his first wife died, he married a fellow CIM missionary, Jenny Faulding. He set a new pattern by living with both these wives and their children far away from the safety and comforts of the treaty ports. As a result, when the Boxer Rebellion broke out, the CIM lost more workers than any other mission. Yet they did not complain or seek compensation from the Chinese government.
As a missionary, Cook writes a chapter full of understanding and empathy for Taylor and the thousands of missionaries who gave up everything, gladly, to bring the gospel to the Chinese people. He acknowledges that complexities of the Chinese response and the inevitable association of mission work with foreign intrusion, and yet he honors their intentions, their sacrifice, and their success in planting an indigenous Chinese church.
7 Reaping the Whirlwind: Boxer Uprising
As a highly educated scholar of Chinese history, Cook shows that the “Boxer Rebellion” was not, in fact, a rebellion against the Qing government, but an uprising aimed at eliminating the foreign presence in China, especially Christians. Furthermore, the Boxer movement was animated by a strong spiritual element, infused with shamanism and the popular religion of Buddhist millenarian movements. Spirit possession, chants, spells, and magic, much of it inspired by operas popular in North China, fueled the fury of the Boxers. The author then details how widespread anger over special privileges granted by treaties to Chinese Christians and foreign missionaries, backed by foreign powers, ignited the fury that exploded into a violence that led to the deaths of thousands of Christians and hundreds of missionaries.
Cook explains, also, how the suppression of the Boxers and defeat of the Qing government, which felt it had to support them, featured widespread atrocities by the foreign armies against Chinese people. Many missionaries at the time angrily criticized these outrages, which forever connected Chinese Christians with foreign imperialism and sowed seeds of resentment that linger today.
Thus, when, in the twentieth century, the American government intervened to protect Chinese Christians from persecution, Chinese officials could not help but remember the humiliations inflicted upon them more than one hundred years before.
On small question: Why does he refer to “the emperor” when the Empress Dowager was fully in control?
8 Mission Compounds (An Excursus)
“What were missionaries’ motives when establishing a presence, and why did they build Western – style enclaves within China?” (92) Their high walls isolated them from the people among whom they lived.
These missionary compounds were an essential part of the Western communities in China.
Cook started out anti-compound, then realized that missionaries have “emotional and physical limitations, and there are situations which take them beyond their capacity to cope.” Incarnational ministry is good, but “there is also wisdom in building missionary compounds” (93). He notes that incarnational ministry is good, but often impracticable.
Compounds grew out of “three primary prongs of the missionary work . . . evangelism and church planting; education; and medical missions.” Cook traces the natural growth from a simple “house church” to a larger premises to handle more people.
Education: The missionaries engaged in home schooling at first, then a missionary might come help. Later, more missionaries joined the team. After that, they hired locals. The buildings increased to fit these growing needs. Opposition might lead them to build a wall for protection. In retrospect, Cook opines that maybe this was a good idea.
Medical missions began as a necessary service to the missionaries, then expanded to caring for all people. To prevent them being overwhelmed with patients, they needed walls and gates to regulate the traffic. This required more staff, who needed training; thus, more schools, even universities, with large campuses.
Chinese serving with them received special benefits, arousing ire from other Chinese. Even Christians sometimes thought it was not good for converts to be receiving special benefits. Some of them seemed to be merely “Rice Christians.” In time, more and more Chinese Christians thought it would be good to be independent of this entire foreign structure. Finally, the large institutions “served to undermine the gospel message and the witness of the indigenous churches” (101).
In my opinion, this is a brilliant chapter, marked by the analytical sophistication and nuance at which Cook excels.
Part Three: Independent Chinese Churches (1900–1949)
After the suppression of the Boxer uprising, the people of China were gripped by what Cook describes as national “angst” in the wake of “international events that undermined Chinese self-confidence.” “China’s intellectuals were searching for direction for their country . . . Many of the prominent radical Chinese thinkers . . . were inspired by the Enlightenment, the West, and Judeo- Christian traditions, but, ironically, they rejected both the missionaries and Christianity” (103).
They despised Christianity for what they considered its illogical, superstitious nature. They also rejected its connection with aggressive Western imperialism. In this context, Chinese Christians increasingly looked for ways to break free from their close association with the foreign missionaries. Part Three of this volume explores the emergence of independent Chinese Christianity against this historical backdrop, which included the currents of nationalism, fundamentalism, and global Christianity, along with the abiding effects of imperialism. As a focus for his study, Cook tells the stories of two Chinese Christians, Wang Mingdao and John Sung.
9 New China: A Christian Civilization . . . without Christ?
This chapter and the next one describe the revolutionary cultural, social, and intellectual movements that radically changed China in the first few decades of the twentieth century. With deft strokes, the author traces how the culture turned against Christianity in a new way, as Christianity rapidly came to be viewed not only as a foreign, but a backward religion that threatened the formation of a “New China.”
This “New China” grew out of the failed attempts of the Qing Dynasty to ward off the forces of a new idea of China as a “nation”; social transformation through modern schools, industry, and equality for women; and political revolution under Sun Yat-sen. During this time, missionaries were increasingly shut out of public debate.
10 New Enemies of Christianity: May Fourth Era
The May Fourth Era included the introduction of popular Mandarin, which replaced classical Chinese as the medium of educated discourse and the focus of education. Literature in this medium challenged the very basis of traditional Chinese society, but Christian missionaries were unable to take advantage of this moment, because they were engrossed in the life-and-death struggle between “modernism,” that is, liberal theology, and “fundamentalism,” traditional Christian theology. Instead, Enlightenment ideas, featuring radical scientism and rationalism, portrayed Christianity as superstitious and anti-progress.
Fueled by this “Chinese Enlightenment,” the Anti-Christian Movement directly attacked Christianity as a foreign invader, and the missionaries as agents of Western imperialism. New educational policies produced thousands of government schools, and Christian schools were ordered to put Chinese into leadership positions and not to require religion classes. In 1927, after the Nanjing Incident, thousands of missionaries left the country to escape danger, highlighting the need for an independent Chinese church.
Through it all, “the missionaries continued to live out their calling, to show the patience and love of Christ. And the Chinese Christians persevered in finding their footing as they toiled to cultivate an indigenous church” (131).
11 Cross Currents: Nationalism, Fundamentalism, and Global Christianity
Nationalism confronted the missionaries’ practice of baptizing individual converts rather than whole families, thus extracting believers from their social context. Likewise, when Christians didn’t participate in ancestor “worship,” their families and neighbors felt that their entire cultural system was being rejected. Cook discusses here the recent practice of seeking “functional equivalents” for pagan practices.
Nationalists continued to criticize Christians for being antiquated and inseparably bound up with Western imperialism. Cook points out that Wang Mingdao consciously charted an independent course and “remained doggedly true to Chinese culture and China” (137). (Indeed, some have recently charged his preaching as being more Confucianist than Christian, at least in his ethics.) He further opines that contemporary Chinese Christians, stung by these previous charges, may be too anxious to identify with Chinese nationalism, rather than offering a biblical critique.
Wang also disdained missionaries’ hiring Chinese Christians to help in their ministries, aware of the over-dependency on the West that such a practice created. Instead, he insisted the Chinese churches should support their own workers. (Cook highlights the complexity of this issue by describing how an overseas Chinese Christian in recent years has provided support for local Chinese to attend training courses, so that they could be better equipped to serve indigenous ministries.)
Dependency could also result from missionaries’ well-intentioned disaster relief and employing Chinese believers to work in their schools and hospitals.
The clash between fundamentalism and modernism split the churches in the 1920s and 1930s. Cook highlights the contrasts between these two movements through the examples of “Jimmy” Yen, who promoted rural education, and Wang Mingdao, who sought renewal of society through truly regenerated believers.
Global Christianity has become a vibrant field of academic research since the 1990s; the author helps us see that this movement had already begun in the 19th and 20th centuries through the international missions movement and the churches planted all over the world through foreign missionaries. The 1920 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh was the peak event of this world-wide project, but World War I sounded the death knell of Western-dominated Christianity. Just at that time, Wang Mingdao and John Sung, along with others in Asia and Africa, were sowing the seeds of a strong independent Chinese church. After World War II, the Chinese church moved into a position of leadership in global Christianity.
Like Roland Allen, Cook maintains that the massive structure of the Western missionary movement, rather than “holding up” the local churches, was actually “holding back” the growth of truly indigenous Christianity. In recent decades, the Holy Spirit has revitalized the entire world Christian scene and brought a new kind of energy and growth.
12 Rethinking Imperialism
Richard Cook began as a fervent anti-imperialist. Even after he was converted to Christ, he retained a strong aversion to what he considered the essentially imperialistic motivations and impact of Christian missionaries.
Later, he read John Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad, which shows that our motivation for cross-cultural missions is the glory of God, who wills to bring into being a church in every culture. That means that missionary work seeks not to expand Western control over local peoples, but to bring them freedom to know and worship God in their own culture, so that they may find true joy.
Lamin Sanneh’s volume Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, refutes the common charge that missionaries had an imperialistic impact. On the contrary, when missionaries came, they injected a new and liberating dynamic into local African cultures by translating the Bible into indigenous languages. As new converts read the Scriptures, they were given tools to critique their traditions and cultures in the light of God’s truth, affirming what was true and valid in them and also exposing in them what was not true and thus harmful to people. As a result, African cultures were both strengthened and reformed, so that Christians were able to bring true transformation.
The same is true for Chinese culture: Christianity has affirmed such values as filial piety and traditional family ties.
Finally, the research of Robert Woodberry as presented in The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy prove that Christianity has fostered the growth of democracy and better government in all the nations and cultures in which it has taken root.
Thus, Cook and other historians have been able to shift their focus from imperialism to the vibrant young churches that have been planted in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
13 Real Lives: Wang Mingdao and John Sung and
Part Four: From 1949 to the Present, and Prospects for the Future (1949–Present)
14 A Land without Missionaries: The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party
These two chapters follow the careers of Wang Mingdao and John Sung (Song Shangjie), placing them firmly in the context of the intellectual and political ferment of the early twentieth century.
Wang Mingdao was educated by missionaries and had a promising career ahead of him as a minister in a missionary denomination. Then, reading the new Mandarin translation of the Bible, he became convinced that he should be baptized as a believer, and by immersion. As a result, he lost his position with the Western missionaries, and he struck out on his own to found a truly indigenous Chinese church. Through preaching and writing, he became a nationally known leader of independent Chinese churches.
He was therefore totally independent of the foreigners, and not the “running dog” of the imperialists, as the Communists and others accused Christians of being. He advocated the application of biblical principles to Christian living and to society, in contrast to the modernists, who would rely on education and political action to reform that nation, and the Marxists, who thought they could improve society through revolution. He spoke against evils in society, but he did not take political and party affiliations. He insisted that one must be “born again” in order to experience personal change, and that outward reforms would be superficial otherwise.
In addition to speaking and writing, he organized Christians to form churches, as the Communists organized them to promote revolution. By creating a Christian community, he believed, the combined impact of transformed believers would have an impact on society.
When the Japanese occupied North China, he refused to join their government-controlled church, just as he did when the Communists took power. Throughout, he maintained strict independence, despite fierce criticism, enormous pressure, and finally persecution by the leader of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, Bishop K.H. Ting. As a consequence, he (and his wife) suffered many years in prison. When he was released, he emerged nearly blind and physically broken, but he was a spiritually unbowed leader who was greatly admired by members of the unregistered churches in China.
Cook then briefly traces the dramatic career of John Sung, the impassioned and immensely influential revivalist and evangelist who, despite a terrible cancer, indefatigably proclaimed the gospel all over China and Southeast Asia. (Like Cook, I find Sung immensely attractive as a Christian leader. My only question is whether he fabricated as much of his personal story as some have charged.)
After 1949, when the missionaries were forced to leave and the Communist Party assumed power and began to change the nation, Chinese Christians had to adjust to a life without missionaries. In addition, modernist churches, who emphasized “social justice,” found that the government intended to step in and do all that they had long advocated, so they accommodated to this new situation by joining the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. They cooperated with the policies of the government to unify all of society under control of the Party.
The “fundamentalists,” on the other hand, vowed to remain independent of government control, and they would not join any “church” that they believed had departed from the gospel. A fierce debate between these two wings of Protestantism, led by Wang Mingdao on the one hand and Bishop Ding Guangxun on the other. Ding insisted that Romans 14:1-2 meant that Christians should unite under one banner. Wang, however, countered that Paul was talking about true Christians, who believed the Bible. The modernists denied cardinal truths of Scripture and were thus not to be considered “brothers” in Christ. Christians should refuse to honor or collaborate with such people, or with the government that supported them.
After several years of such intense debate, Wang and others like him were imprisoned, with the full endorsement of Ding and the TSPM. The believers who shared their convictions went underground, meeting in homes and facing relentless persecution for the ensuing decades. They seemed to have lost the battle, but Cook notes that they displayed “tremendous staying power,” and they later emerged as a vast network of Bible-believing Christians with spiritual vitality.
15 A Land without Christians: Victory from the Tomb
“The period between 1950 and 1990 contained two paradoxical realities that are difficult to juxtapose in one brief chapter: both the unspeakable series of tragedies that rained down on the nation and the miraculous survival of the churches which culminated in the spiritual revivals of the 1980s” (181).
First, Cook traverses the well-known history of those fateful years, including the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Then, he shares how he gradually learned about “the marvelous work of God during those difficult years,” concluding with a short description of “the sweet worship and intense spiritual hunger that characterized the indigenous churches of the 1980s and 1990s” (182). “Grandpa Yeye” serves as an example of the sufferings and endurance by Christians.
The house churches “were characterized by prayer, love for the Word of God, signs and wonders, warm fellowship, and rapid growth.” The TSPM survived, maintaining a tenuous link between Christians and the government.
He concludes by showing how Chinese Christianity “emerged in a broader worldwide context” of Global Christianity.
16 Out of the Dark Shadows, into the Light of the Global Stage
In this final chapter, Cook surveys what has happened to the Chinese churches since the year 2000, suggests “three fundamental questions that . . . may occupy the attention of Chinese Christian thinkers for the next several generations,” and shares his “dream of many in the missions movement that a mighty missionary force will arise within China.”
Since 2003
The year 2003, he affirms, marked a turning point. Forces developing since 2000 culminated in a new breakout into the open. Revivals had continued in the countryside, but massive migration to the cities led to a shift, as Christians flowed into them, and as urban-educated believers multiplied and their leaders became more and more prominent in Chinese Christianity.
Cook describes a moving moment in 2003, when foreign Christian missionaries were asked to stand and be recognized by the 2,000 Chinese believers in attendance at a conference on Chinese missions to the world. Their thunderous applause expressed their great gratitude for all that previous generations of missionaries had done, and their recognition represented their readiness to rise up and carry the torch forward. I was present at that meeting, and I felt the same degree of unworthiness as he did, while sharing his sense that the baton had been passed. A similar gathering took place in Chicago that year.
Cook notes, however, that these events may have marked the apogee of spiritual fervor among the Christians in China.
Three questions
Three questions will likely confront Chinese Christians in coming decades: “Who are we?” And subsequent to that question are these two: “Are Chinese believers Christians first, or Chinese first?” “What is our primary loyalty?” As in today’s America, in China, this tension may also divide the church.
Secondly: “What is our relationship to the nation?”
And related to that question follow these:
“What roles should Christians play in the nation?”
“Should they speak out on important matters, get involved in politics, support a revolution, try to build a Christian nation?”
“What is our relationship to Chinese culture?”
“Will Chinese Christians try to temper the rising imperialism of their nation?”
Finally: “What is the relationship between Christianity and Chinese culture?” “Confucius and Christ?” Within China, a heated debate asks, “What is, or ought to be, the relationship between traditional Chinese culture and modern Chinese society?” “Will Chinese theologians take the lead and play a ‘prominent role in shaping the future of Chinese civilization?’”
What is next for Chinese Christianity?
Cook hopes that Chinese Christians will be a force in world missions, in partnership with Christians from the West. It certainly seems possible, even probable. God has brought them out of darkness into the light of the world, he believes, to serve as a light to the world.
Evaluation
Darkest before the Dawn is an important book. Cook very skillfully weaves together a tapestry of cultural context and Christian history; large movements and key moments; powerful forces and prominent personalities; his own experience and those of Chinese whom he has interviewed. Cook has taught this subject for more than twenty years in major seminaries, including Logos Seminary, where he uses Mandarin. He brings the classroom into the book as he relates how his Chinese students have responded to questions about sensitive matters.
Cook clearly intends this volume to become the standard textbook on Chinese Christianity for university and seminary courses, and I hope it does. The clear organization, uncluttered narrative, thoughtful study questions, suggested readings, and informative sidebars, plus the author’s frequent entry into the story, all combine to make this a very reader-and-teacher-friendly tool.
Darkest Before the Dawn must be compared to a similar book by the late Daniel Bays, A New History of Christianity in China, published in 2012. They both focus on Protestantism, with some reference to Roman Catholics, in recognition of the brilliant survey by Jean-Pierre Charbonnier (Christians in China: A.D. 600-2000, published in 2002), which largely focuses on Roman Catholics. Bays gives much more detail about the main people involved in all eras of Chinese history, without neglecting entirely the historical context in each period. He is mostly fair to evangelicals, but clearly favors “mainstream,” “ecumenical” Christianity.
Cook, on the other hand, writes from a “decidedly Evangelical” perspective. He concentrates upon a few key people in each chapter who illustrate larger movements. Most of all, Cook places the story of Chinese Christianity fully within the context of Chinese history and culture. Indeed, this context sometimes seems like the “main character” in the story. Furthermore, he is clearly responding to secular historians’ criticisms of the missionary movement. At times, he seems to be composing an elaborate apologia for missionaries. Always sensitive to the “darker side” of missions history, he tries to give an answer to these criticisms that is both honest and sympathetic to the intentions of the missionaries and even their often-misunderstood actions.
All in all, I consider Darkest before the Dawn to be a major contribution to the study of Christianity in China and a significant academic treatment to this vastly important subject.
G. Wright Doyle
For further reading, I suggest these volumes in the Studies in Chinese Christianity: China’s Urban Christians, by Brent Fulton; Surviving the State, Remaking the Church, by Li Ma and Jin Li; and The Registered Church in China, by Wayne Ten Harmsel. I also recommend two collections of the reviews by me of books on Chinese Christianity: Chinese Christianity: An Introduction to the Literature, and The Missionary Movement in China: An Introduction to the Literature, found here.