The Woman’s Messenger: Evangelical Literature and the Missionary Movement in Republican China , By Yun Zhou

A periodical devoted to the Christian home might seem an unlikely place to look for theological innovation. Yun Zhou's The Woman's Messenger makes a persuasive case for doing so. Her subject is Nü duo, a women's magazine published by the Christian Literature Society in China between 1912 and 1951. Through its successive editors, Zhou follows the changing relationship between evangelical domesticity and women's participation in public life. The book's achievement lies in showing how the work of producing a magazine enabled women to interpret Christianity for themselves, even as its pages prescribed demanding ideals of feminine service. Across four chronological chapters, Zhou brings periodical texts into conversation with missionary correspondence, institutional records and the biographies of three principal editors, Laura M. White, Li Guanfang, and Liu Meili. Her account locates the magazine within a “middle realm” connecting domestic life, voluntary association, and public debate (20–21). Supported by a transnational network of Christian women, Nü duo also emerges as a site where missionary projects acquired meanings that overseas sponsors could not fully determine. This approach makes visible forms of religious activity easily obscured by histories organized around either missionary institutions or secular emancipation. Questions about education, household management, and personal suffering become occasions for women to negotiate the meaning of Christian belief.