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At that scale, could a person see what role Christians and their institutions played in the formation of modern China? Daryl Ireland, the Associate Director at Boston University’s Center for Global Christianity and Mission (CGCM), was intrigued. Such a question aligned with the Center’s research focus and overlapped with his own expertise. Ireland, Mayfield, and Menegon agreed to expand the original project into the China Historical Christian Database (CHCD), making it an initiative of the CGCM in 2018.
Since that time, the CHCD has become the largest repository of information on Christianity in China ever assembled. It is a global effort. Partnering institutions and scholars from around the world are finding and inputting data. Since the initial launch of the CHCD in July 2022, for example, over 150 scholars and students on four continents have joined the effort to record where every Christian church, school, hospital, orphanage, publishing house, and the like were located in China, and helped identify who worked inside them, whether they were foreigners or Chinese.