Business-friendly evangelical churches originating in the Wenzhou region of China are expanding globally, serving as a new model of missions, but may also be spreading Chinese nationalism, according to two reports. In the evangelical Hong Kong-based journal China Source (June 8, 2020), Brad Fulton looks at how Chinese Christians from Wenzhou—considered China’s Bible belt—have pioneered in a model of missions where church planting networks follow the circuit of business entrepreneurs and their overseas contacts and opportunities.
Last month, we neglected to mention an important special issue of the journal International Affairs (March, 2020) devoted to the interaction between international relations and the discipline of religious studies. It is not as arcane as it sounds, with editor Katherine Brown writing in the introduction to the issue that “we cannot understand international affairs without understanding religion and also that we cannot understand religion without understanding international affairs.”
