Date: 16 Oct 2025 - 16 Oct 2025

Date: Thursday, 16 October 2025
Time: 6:30–7:30 p.m.
Venue: Drake Gallery, 1/F, Fung Ping Shan Building, UMAG, HKU, 90 Bonham Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Language: English
Speaker: Dr Glen L. Thompson
Abstract
A thousand years before Protestant missionaries reached China, a branch of the Syriac-speaking Church of the East was already functioning legally within China. We have evidence for this church during both the Tang period (635–845), when it was known as the Jingjiao (景教) or ‘Luminous Teaching’, and the Song and Yuan periods (10th–13th centuries), when it was known as the Yelikewenjiao (也里可温教). Knowledge of the earlier period did not come until the discovery of the great ‘Nestorian stele’ in Xi’an just 400 years ago. Evidence from the later period includes the Nixon Collection of ‘Nestorian crosses’ at UMAG.
In 2015, UMAG co-sponsored an international conference on this subject. Eleven of those presentations were published in The Church of the East in Central Asia and China (Brepols Publishers, 2020). One of the conference presenters and co-editor of that volume, Glen L. Thompson, will discuss the latest discoveries and the current state of research in this fascinating field.
Speaker
Dr Glen L. Thompson
Dr Glen L. Thompson was the Academic Dean and Prof of New Testament and Historical Theology at the Asia Lutheran Seminary in Hong Kong until his retirement in 2020. He has lectured internationally on the history and spread of Christianity, and the cultural exchanges resulting from it. He is an expert on early Christianity. His book Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China (Eerdmans Publishing, 2024) won the Award of Merit from Christianity Today and will be available for purchase, as will be copies of The Church of the East in Central Asia and China.
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