After China, What?

In the discipline of religion and international relations, the study of modern day international missionary movement is attracting increasing academic interest. Nonetheless, very few scholars have undertaken in-depth study on the function of "China factor" in the overlapping and transformation of old and new missionary movements. This Thesis chooses the international mission institute China Inland Mission Overseas Missionary Fellowship (CIM-OMF) as the subject of a case study to demonstrate the methodological potential of the study of religion and international relation through an analysis of the transformation and development of this "Old China Hand" mission society. To achieve this, the author aims to overcome the conventional approaches of simple organisaitonal study and descriptive case study, and to incorporate the findings and methodology from the disciplines of international relations, sociology, missiology and history. Through this middle-range type of case study, this thesis also attempts to integrate history with reality, theory with practice, missiological trends with international phenomena in order to illustrate how a Western-oriented Christianity been influenced and changed by China while exerting influence and change in China. The "China experience" also brewed a paradoxical tension of catalysis and restriction on post-China international missionary movement. Globalisation theorist Roland Robertson’s conception of Glocalisation is employed to demonstrate the status and impact of Chinese Christianity in the globe-wide system. The CIM-OMF story is an ideal case in demonstrating the crossing-over and paralleling process of the "generalization of particularism"(the spread of Christianity) and the "particularization of generalism"(the indiginization of national churches). The first part of the thesis provides a background understanding of the withdrawal of the CIM as a mission organization shortly after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and its changing of identity to OMF. The second part is about CIM-OMF’s geographic expansion into East Asia (including HK, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaya, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Jndonesia, Indo-China, South Korea). The third part is about the non-geographic continuation and development in the areas of missionary means (including literature outreach, media, medical, and theological training), missionary objects (including students, urban people groups, overseas Chinese, and immigrants), missionary personnel (Asians, women, short-teamers, and professionals), and missionary concepts (financial principle, indigenous policy, interdenominationalism, and home vs. field dualism). The fourth part is about the global-wide influence accumulated during the glocalisation of the CIM-OMF.