After suffering isolation and persecution during the Maoist era, the Catholic Church in China has reemerged with astonishing vitality in recent years. Richard Madsen focuses on this revival and relates it to the larger issue of the changing structure of Chinese society, particularly to its implications for the development of a "civil society."

Madsen knows China well and has spent extensive time there interviewing Chinese Catholics both young and old, the "true believers" and the less devout. Their stories reveal the tensions that have arisen even as political control over everyday life...