The following books were selected by Kazusa Okaya, a PhD candidate at Durham University and a researcher at the Kyoritsu Christian Institute at Tokyo Christian University.
Christianity first entered East Asia as early as the seventh century, when Nestorian missionaries arrived in China’s Tang dynasty. A second, more sustained wave of missionaries arrived in the 16th century, led by Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci in China and Francis Xavier in Japan. Catholicism spread to Korea from China in the 18th century, while Presbyterian and Anglican missionaries arrived in other parts of the region one century later.
Today, East Asia displays a striking diversity in its church-state relationships. On one end of the spectrum is South Korea, where roughly 30 percent of the population is Christian and believers often have a strong influence in society, culture, and politics. On the other end is North Korea, which is consistently ranked among the most dangerous places to be a believer.
China remains something of a religious black box, as rapidly growing underground churches coexist with strict state control and persecution. Japan presents yet another contrast as one of the most secular nations in Asia, where Christians account for less than 1 percent of the population.
The five books I recommend below serve as a sampler of Christianity in East Asia from an evangelical perspective. They span several genres, from a missionary memoir and a collection of sermons by persecuted pastors to a historical survey of the faith, an exploration of theological ethics, and an overview of missiology in the region.
Utterly Amazed by Miriam Davis
Missionary memoirs often spotlight the triumphant and the miraculous while skimming over hardship, leaving readers feeling inadequate in comparison or admiring missionaries’ achievements more than the God they serve.
English missionary Miriam Davis’s memoir, which charts her 42-year-long ministry in Japan, avoids those pitfalls. Besides being filled with practical wisdom on cross-cultural ministry, Davis writes with honesty about her struggles and disappointments. She recounts an unofficial engagement to a Japanese Christian that ended painfully under the weight of cultural and familial pressures. She also describes her experience of burnout and the long road to recovery, along with the unsettling sense of not being herself as she returned to ministry feeling less capable than before.
Davis is now an assistant curate at an Anglican church in the UK, but her memoir is an invaluable read for anyone considering overseas missions in East Asia. It also holds relevance for churches and supporters of long-term missionaries. Many missionaries find it difficult to be fully honest with their supporters, fearing that disclosures about loneliness, relational struggles, or exhaustion might put their financial support at risk. Davis’s openness offers a different model, one in which vulnerability is regarded not as weakness but as a place where we can find what she calls God’s “treasures in darkness.”
Asian Church History: Arise Asian Church by Bong Rin Ro
Korean American missiologist Bong Rin Ro is a towering figure in East Asian theological education. He was one of the first missionaries of Asian descent commissioned by missions organization OMF and the first general secretary of the evangelical Asian Theological Association.
Bong’s 2024 publication, available as a free e-book, devotes nearly half its pages to East Asia. This is not a conventionally academic tome; what sets it apart is its unapologetically evangelical and missional lens. Reading it feels less like consulting a detached historian and more like attending a class led by a seasoned missionary, one who recounts the unfolding story of Asian Christianity with passion and conviction.
The book offers details that often fall outside formal academic histories, like snapshots of evangelical denominations, mission organizations, and conferences led by Asian Christians. A substantial, supplementary 258-page volume includes a useful timeline of denominational and missionary movements organized by country.
Still, the book has its limitations. Its evangelical commitments sometimes lead to historical or theological oversimplifications, especially in its quick dismissal of nonevangelical traditions under the broad label of “liberal theology” and the near absence of discussions on decolonial or postcolonial missiology. Despite these caveats, the book remains an accessible and spirited introduction to East Asian Christianity.
Asian Christian Ethics: Evangelical Perspectives edited by Aldrin M. Peñamora and Bernard K. Wong
This volume—a sequel to Asian Christian Theology: Evangelical Perspectives—pursues the same aim as its predecessor: to sketch a framework for Christian ethics from an Asian evangelical viewpoint. It is a helpful resource for missionaries, ministers, and laypeople who are interested in how to live Christianly amid complex multicultural and multireligious norms.
Five of the book’s fifteen chapters are written by scholars from East Asia. They include must-read chapters on filial piety and its grounding in Confucian moral thought. Two authors in the book, Hong Kong theologian Bernard Wong and Korean theologian ShinHyung Seong, address this issue directly, albeit from different perspectives.
Wong urges Asian Christians to move beyond an idealized traditional family structure, which is often patriarchal, to a Christ-centered model that places Jesus as the true head of the household. Seong compares Confucian ethics with scriptural paradigms and contends that Christianity can transform the Confucian notion of filial piety.
Theologian Agnes Chiu, who teaches at China Evangelical Seminary North America, also applies this East Asian emphasis on family relationships in her chapter on political engagement and public theology. Chiu argues that the church can provide supportive networks for public engagement by becoming a surrogate family for believers who are often ostracized by becoming Christians in China.
Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures by Jayson Georges and Mark D. Baker
The thread of shame and honor runs widely through many East Asian cultures, shaping everything from family dynamics to public behavior. This concept can feel especially difficult to grasp for Western missionaries who are formed in more individualistic cultures and may overlook the relationship between sin and shame.
Georges and Baker’s book illuminates how shame, a concept that appears frequently in Scripture in relation to sin, is tied to identity and not merely to action. Consequently, an Asian understanding of shame offers a valuable lens for understanding the pervasive nature of sin as estrangement from God.
The book has received criticism for its novel approach to the atonement. Some readers also worry that framing the gospel in culturally specific ways may imply that there are multiple gospels: an honor-shame version for the East versus a guilt-forgiveness version for the West. But the authors’ intent is to present the gospel in a way that reveals its beauty through different cultures, like how a diamond refracts light from different angles.
The book’s greatest strength lies in its third section, which brims with thoughtful guidance on spirituality, relationships, evangelism, conversion, ethics, and community within shame-honor contexts. Readers who disagree with some of the book’s theological emphases will still find it helpful in understanding how shame and honor function in East Asian identity and community formation.
Faith in the Wilderness: Words of Exhortation from the Chinese Church edited by Hannah Nation and Simon Liu
This book is unlike any devotional most readers have encountered. It contains a series of sermons written by persecuted Chinese Christians, opening a rare window into the church’s struggles and its spiritual imagination through sermons preached by leaders who minister under constant pressure.
I find it fascinating to encounter these pastors’ varying perspectives on being a Christian witness in the political arena. One sermon boldly denounces preachers who fail to confront falsehood and hypocrisy among government officials, calling out such leaders as prophets who do not speak truth. Another sermon articulates a deeply rooted pilgrim theology, warning Christians not to place their hopes in any political program.
Admittedly, an overemphasis on pilgrimage-related imagery may risk sliding into a kind of Gnosticism—a form of escapism that ignores social suffering. But these pastors turn the pilgrim metaphor into a much-needed corrective for the church, especially against forms of Christianity that tie earthly prosperity or political power to the advancement of the gospel.
These sermons will both encourage and unsettle readers far beyond China’s borders. They invite Christians everywhere to reconsider what faithful witness looks like in their own contexts, and they serve as a powerful reminder to pray for and stand alongside members of the body of Christ who live under persecution.
Check out other top 5 books on Christianity in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
