Author: Naomi Thurston Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 9004363076 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 307
Book Description
Naomi Thurston has investigated the emerging field of “Sino-Christian studies” in contemporary China. Based on extensive fieldwork in Chinese academic settings, the book explores a genuine frontier in the examination of Chinese intellectual encounters with theology and Christian culture.
Author: Daniel H. Bays Publisher: Stanford University Press ISBN: 9780804736510 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 526
Book Description
This pathbreaking volume will force a reassessment of many common assumptions about the relationship between Christianity and modern China. The overall thrust of the twenty essays is that despite the conflicts and tension that often have characterized relations between Christianity and China, in fact Christianity has been, for the past two centuries or more, putting down roots within Chinese society, and it is still in the process of doing so. Thus Christianity is here interpreted not just as a Western religion that imposed itself on China, but one that was becoming a Chinese religion, as Buddhism did centuries ago. Eschewing the usual focus on foreign missionaries, as is customary, this research effort is China-centered, drawing on Chinese sources, including government and organizational documents, private papers, and interviews. The essays are organized into four major sections: Christianitys role in Qing society, including local conflicts (6 essays); ethnicity (3 essays); women (5 essays); and indigenization of the Christian effort (6 essays). The editor has provided sectional introductions to highlight the major themes in each section, as well as a general Introduction.
Author: Pan-Chiu Lai Publisher: Peter Lang ISBN: 9783631604359 Category : China Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
«Sino-Christian theology» usually refers to an intellectual movement emerged in Mainland China since the late 1980s. The present volume aims to provide a self-explaining sketch of the historical development of this theological as well as cultural movement. In addition to the analyses on the theoretical issues involved and the articulations of the prospect, concrete examples are also offered to illustrate the characteristics of the movement.
Author: Rodney Stark Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press ISBN: 1599474883 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 161
Book Description
What is the state of Christianity in China? Some scholars say that China is invulnerable to religion. In contrast, others say that past efforts of missionaries have failed, writing off those converted as nothing more than “rice Christians” or cynical souls who had frequented the missions for the benefits they provided. Some wonder if the Cultural Revolution extinguished any chances of Christianity in China. Rodney Stark and Xiuhua Wang offer a different perspective, arguing that Christianity is alive, well, and on the rise. Stark approaches the topic from an extensive research background in Christianity and Chinese history, and Wang provides an inside look at Christianity and its place in her home country of China. Both authors cover the history of religion in China, disproving older theories concerning the number of Christians and the kinds of Christians that have emerged in the past 155 years. Stark and Wang claim that when just considering the visible Christians—those not part of underground churches—thousands of Chinese are still converted to Christianity daily, and forty new churches are opening each week. A Star in the East draws on two major national surveys to sketch a close-up of religion in China. A reliable estimate is that by 2007 there were approximately 60 million Christians in China. If the current growth rate were to hold until 2030, there would be more Christians in China—about 295 million—than in any other nation. This trend has significant implications, not just for China but for the greater world order. It is probable that Chinese Christianity will splinter into denominations, likely leading to the same political, social, and economic ramifications seen in the West today. Whether you’re new to studying Christianity in China or whether this has been your area of interest for years, A Star in the East provides a reliable, thought-provoking, and engaging account of the resilience of the Christian faith in China and the implications it has for the future.
Author: YANG Huilin Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing ISBN: 1443811904 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 341
Book Description
In the 1980s there was a wave of introducing western thoughts in the academia of Mainland China. The significance of this movement is regarded by some Chinese scholars as another Enlightenment since the May 4th movement, 1919. In this movement there was a small group of Chinese scholars who thought that subtle interaction between Christian thought and western culture and academic should be noticed. The aim of this book is at reporting this academic movement, which is still active and dynamic today. This book includes 22 essays written by authors from Mainland China and overseas, who may be intra or extra ecclesia. But all of them are prominent in their respective geographical and academic area. This is the first book introducing to the English-speaking world the origin and development of "Sino-Chirstian Studies" and "Sino-Christian Theology" systematically.
Author: Michel Chambon Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030556050 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 297
Book Description
An anthropological theorization of the unity and diversity of Christianity, this book focuses on Christian communities in Nanping, a small city in China. It applies methodological insights from Actor-Network Theory to investigate how the Christian God is made part of local social networks. The study examines how Christians interact with and re-define material objects, such as buildings, pews, offerings, and blood, in order to identify the kind of networks and non-human actors that they collectively design. By comparing local Christian traditions with other practices informing the Nanping religious landscape, the study points out potential cohesion via the centralizing presence of the Christian God, the governing nature of the pastoral clergy, and the semi-transcendent being of the Church.
Author: Huilin YANG Publisher: ISBN: 9781481300186 Category : Christianity Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Although the reputation of European and American missionaries to China has been in low repute in China itself for a long time, a different, far more generous accounting of the work of Western missionaries has begun to appear in the scholarship of Chinese cultural and intellectual historians. This book represents this recent turn and reminds us that missionaries accomplished intellectual as well as religious work of abiding value.--Foreword.
Author: Francis K.G. Lim Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000297438 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 141
Book Description
How does Christianity continue to experience growth in an increasingly authoritarian political system that enforces strict regulations on religion? How are ordinary Christians affected by social and political changes in the country, and how do they make their influence felt in wider society? Taking Chinese Christians’ experience as a case study, Lim and Sng examine the possibilities and limitations of Christian engagement in society under an authoritarian regime. They look especially at efforts by religious individuals and groups who are seeking to address social issues by engaging in unobtrusive and non-antagonistic activities that interact with controlling state institutions. Their emphasis is on everyday lived religion, analysing how Christians express their faith in their everyday activity and not only in spaces demarcated as falling within the religious domain. This book is a valuable reference for scholars and students looking to understand religion in relation to politics, culture and everyday life in rapidly modernising East Asian societies and particularly in China.
Author: Fenggang Yang Publisher: Penn State Press ISBN: 9780271042527 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 252
Book Description
Christianity has become the most practiced religion among the Chinese in America, but very little solid research exists on Chinese Christians and their churches. This book is the first to explore the subject from the inside, revealing how Chinese Christians construct and reconstruct their identity--as Christians, Americans, and Chinese--in local congregations amid the radical pluralism of the late twentieth century. Today there are more than one thousand Chinese churches in the United States, most of them Protestant evangelical congregations, bringing together diasporic Chinese from diverse origins--Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Southeast Asian countries. Fenggang Yang finds that despite the many tensions and conflicts that exist within these congregations, most individuals find ways to creatively integrate their evangelical Christian beliefs with traditional Chinese (most Confucian) values. The church becomes a place where they can selectively assimilate into American society while simultaneously preserving Chinese values and culture. Yang brings to this study unique experience as both participant and observer. Born in mainland China, he is a sociologist who converted to Christianity after coming to the United States. The heart of this book is an ethnographic study of a representative Chinese church, located in Washington, D. C., where he became a member. Throughout the book, Yang draws upon interviews with members of this congregation while making comparisons with other churches throughout the United States. Chinese Christians in America is an important addition to the literature on the experience of "new" immigrant communities.