Christianity in China

Christianity in China PDF Author: Daniel H. Bays
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804736510
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

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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: Christianity’s 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.

Christianity in China

Christianity in China PDF Author: Daniel H. Bays
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804736510
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 526

Get Book

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: Christianity’s 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.

A Star in the East

A Star in the East PDF Author: Rodney Stark
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 1599474883
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
What is the state of Christianity in China, really? Some scholars say that China is invulnerable to religion. Some say that past efforts of missionaries have failed, writing off those who were 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 even on the rise. Stark approaches the topic from an extensive research background in both 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 not only the number of Christians, but 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, there are still thousands of Chinese being converted to Christianity each day, and forty new churches 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 rate of growth were to hold until 2030, there would be more Christians in China—about 295 million—than in any other nation on earth. This 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 kinds of 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.

Ecclesial Diversity in Chinese Christianity

Ecclesial Diversity in Chinese Christianity PDF Author: Alexander Chow
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030730697
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This volume explores Chinese Christianity—or Chinese Christianities—in a variety of forms and expressions, including those from outside the geopolitical boundaries of mainland China. Advancing a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of Chinese churches, the essays collected here engage many historical, sociological, cultural, and theological contingencies. The collection includes historical discussions of the early-20th-century encounters of Protestant and Catholic missionaries in China and the rise of Christianity among Malaysian Chinese and British Chinese communities. Essays examine the thinking of K. H. Ting (or Ding Guangxun), often remembered for his leadership in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in the 1980s–90s, by revisiting his earlier theology and approach to the Bible in the 1930s–50s. These retrospectives give way to contemporary explorations into how Chinese churches negotiate their urban identities amidst the complexities of globalization in Chengdu and Shanghai, as well as in Vancouver, Canada. Taken as a whole, this collection offers close examinations into various aspects of Chinese Christianity’s complex picture, helping readers to recognize the many shades and colors of the global Chinese Church.

Pioneer Chinese Christian Women

Pioneer Chinese Christian Women PDF Author: Jessie Gregory Lutz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780980149685
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Chinese Christian women before the New Culture Movement and the May 4th Movement of 1919 have been largely invisible in the records of China missions and Chinese Christianity. We have known little about them either as individuals or as a group. The contributors of this volume have scoured a variety of sources to recreate the role of early Chinese women Christians in the life of the church and in Chinese society and to illustrate how gender affected their understanding of Christianity and their career choices. How did the Chinese context alter their relations with the church and with Christian and non-Christian communities? What was the legacy of pioneer Chinese Christian women? Essays on Chinese Christian educators, doctors, nurses, and evangelists show how the missionaries and the church made mobility and broadened horizons possible for women. They reveal also the contributions of these women and homemakers to a changing China.

A New History of Christianity in China

A New History of Christianity in China PDF Author: Daniel H. Bays
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1444342843
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
A New History of Christianity in China, written by one of the world's the leading writers on Christianity in China, looks at Christianity's long history in China, its extraordinarily rapid rise in the last half of the twentieth century, and charts its future direction. Provides the first comprehensive history of Christianity in China, an important, understudied area in both Asian studies and religious history Traces the transformation of Christianity from an imported, Western religion to a thoroughly Chinese religion Contextualizes the growth of Christianity in China within national and local politics Offers a portrait of the complex religious scene in China today Contrasts China with other non-Western societies where Christianity is surging

Chinese Christians in America

Chinese Christians in America PDF Author: Fenggang Yang
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271042527
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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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.

A Voluntary Exile

A Voluntary Exile PDF Author: Anthony E. Clark
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611461499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Western missionaries in China were challenged by something they could not have encountered in their native culture; most Westerners were Christian, and competitions in their own countries were principally denominational. Once they entered China they unwittingly became spiritual merchants who marketed Christianity as only one religion among the long-established purveyors of other religions, such as the masters of Buddhist and Daoist rites. A Voluntary Exile explores the convergence of cultures. This collection of new and insightful research considers themes of religious encounter and accommodation in China from 1552 to the present, and confronts how both Western Europeans and indigenous Chinese mitigated the cultural and religious antagonisms that resulted from cultural misunderstanding. The studies in this work identify areas where missionary accommodation in China has succeeded and failed, and offers new insights into what contributed to cultural conflict and confluence. Each essay responds in some way to the “accommodationist” approach of Western missionaries and Christianity, focusing on new areas of inquiry. For example, Michael Maher, SJ, considers the educational and religious formation of Matteo Ricci prior to his travels to China, and how Ricci’s intellectual approach was connected to his so-called “accommodationist method” during the late Ming. Eric Cunningham explores the hackneyed assertion that Francis Xavier’s mission to Asia was a “failure” due to his low conversion rates, suggesting that Xavier’s “failure” instigated the entire Chinese missionary enterprise of the 16th and 17th centuries. And, Liu Anrong confronts the hybridization of popular Chinese folk religion with Catholicism in Shanxi province. The voices in this work derive from divergent scholarly methodologies based on new research, and provide the reader a unique encounter with a variety of disciplinary views. This unique volume reaches across oceans, cultures, political systems, and religious traditions to provide important new research on the complexities of cultural encounters between China and the West.

Reconstructing Christianity in China

Reconstructing Christianity in China PDF Author: Philip L. Wickeri
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608333663
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Christianity and Chinese Religions

Christianity and Chinese Religions PDF Author: Hans Küng
Publisher: Doubleday Books
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Dr. Ching presents and comments on China's religious traditions, and Dr. Kungoffers a Christian theological response to her views. Together, they show thesignificance of traditions in China's long and varied history and address therole of Christianity in China today.

Chinese Culture and Christianity

Chinese Culture and Christianity PDF Author: Paul Chao
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Chinese Culture and Christianity traces the origin, development, and growth of Chinese culture in relationship to Christianity. This comprehensive work will be of interest to students of sociology, philosophy, religion, political science, and anthropology.