Books

Babel Church: The Subversion of Christianity in an Age of Mass Media, Globalization, and #MeToo (Cascade Books, 2021)

Assisted by a diverse mass media industry, American evangelicalism has been long plagued by consumerism, entrepreneurism, and social engineering. Churches and movements that carry the name of Christ have become projects of ambition and scandals in the public eye. Without fixing its dysfunctions, these ministry models have expanded to other parts of the world, reaping similar fruits of corruption, prejudice, and abuses.

A creative Jacques Ellulian integration of sociological analysis and theology, Babel Church incisively reveals why American evangelicalism and its global projects have succumbed to the temptations of worldly power at the expense of vulnerable members in the body of Christ. 

  • Endorsements by Richard Mow, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Peter Choi, Mary DeMuth, etc.
  • Media coverage: Baptist Global News

Christian Women and Modern China: Recovering a Women's History of Chinese Protestantism (Lexington Books, 2021)

Christian Women and Modern China presents a social history of women pioneers in Chinese Protestantism from the 1880s to the 2010s. The author interrupts a hegemonic framework of historical narratives by exploring formal institutions and rules as well as social networks and social norms that shape the lived experiences of women. This book achieves a more nuanced understanding about the interplays of Christianity, gender, power and modern Chinese history. It reintroduces Chinese Christian women pioneers not only to women's history and the history of Chinese Christianity, but also to the history of global Christian mission and the global history of many modern professions, such as medicine, education, literature, music, charity, journalism, and literature.

  • Endorsements by Kwok Pui-lan, Kristin Du Mez

Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)

Women make up the vast majority of Protestant Christians in China―a largely faceless majority, as their stories too often go untold in scholarly research as well as popular media. This book writes Protestant Chinese women into the history of twenty-first-century China. It features the oral histories of over a dozen women, highlighting themes of spiritual transformation, politicized culture, social mobility, urbanization, and family life. Each subject narrates not only her own story, but that of her mother, as well, revealing a deeply personal dimension to the dramatic social change that has occurred in a matter of decades. By uncovering the stories of Christian women in China, Li Ma offers a unique window onto the interactions between femininity and Christianity, and onto the socioeconomic upheavals that mark recent Chinese history.

  • Reviewed by ChinaSource Quarterly; Review of Religious Research

Religious Entrepreneurism in China's Urban House Churches: The Rise and Fall of Early Rain Reformed Presbyterian Church (Routledge, 2019)

This book offers a unique historical documentation of the development of the ambitious religious entrepreneurism by leaders of the Early Rain church (and later Western China Presbytery leadership), in an effort to gain social influence in China through local institution-building and global public image management. It unravels the social processes of how this Christian community with a public image of defending religious freedom in China was undermined by an internal loss of moral authority.

  • Endorsements by Mark Noll, Richard Mow, Richard Swedberg
  • Reviewed in Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology; Four Seasons Book Review
  • Media coverage in Baptist Global News

The Chinese Exodus: Migration, Urbanization and Alienation in Contemporary China (Pickwick, 2018)

This book offers a sociological analysis as well as a theological discussion of China's internal migration since the marketization reform in 1978. It documents the social and political processes that encompass the experiences of internal migrants from the countryside to the city during China's integration into the global economy. Informed by sociological analysis and narratives of the urban poor, this volume reconstructs the political, economic, social and spiritual dimensions of this urban underclass in China who made up the economic backbone of the Asian superpower.

  • Reviewed in American Academy of Religion; ChinaSource Quarterly 

Surviving the State, Remaking the Church: A Sociological Portrait of Christians in Mainland China  (Pickwick, 2017)

This sociological portrait presents how Chinese Christians have coped with life under a hostile regime over a span of different historical periods, and how Christian churches as collective entities have been reshaped by ripples of social change. China's change from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, or from an agrarian society to an urbanizing society, are admittedly significant phenomena worthy of scholarly attention, but real changes are about values and beliefs that give rise to social structures over time. The growth of Christianity has become interwoven with the disintegration or emergence of Chinese cultural beliefs, political ideologies, and commercial values.

  • Endorsements by Mark Noll, Ian Johnson
  • Media coverage: Christianity Today, KOSMOS magazine, VoegelinView, Council on Foreign Relations, The National Reporter
  • Award: Ten Outstanding Books of 2017 in Mission Studies, International Bulletin of Mission Research
  • Reviewed in American Academy of Religion; Journal of Church and State; ChinaSource Quarterly; Review of Religion and Chinese Society; Calvin Theological Journal; Sino-Christian Studies; The China Review

Forthcoming Books

  • #MeToo and Cyber Activism in China: Gendered Violence and Scripts of Power (Routledge Global Gender series, Sept. 2021)
  • China's Art Market after 1978: Regional Entrepreneurship and Global Impact (Palgrave Macmillan, Worlds of Consumption series, 2022)
© 2021 Dr. Li Ma | All Rights Reserved
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