China’s Catholics in an Era of Transformation

by Anthony E. Clark

Author	: Anthony E. Clark
Publisher	: Springer Nature
Total Pages	: 293
Release	: 2020-07-13
Genre	: Religion
ISBN	: 9811561826

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This book features a collection of essays on China’s modern Catholic Church by a scholar of China-West intellectual and religious exchange. The essays and reflections were mostly written in China while the author was traveling by train, or staying in villages or large cities near to Roman Catholic cathedrals or other important historical sites during research trips to the country. It is clear that Clark’s understanding of Catholicism in China evolved from the first entry to the final ones in 2019. The essays included in this compendium were written in disparate contexts and in response to different events. As such, there is no obvious theme or order to the content. However, despite this, the book provides valuable insights for readers wishing to gain a better understanding of the complex topography of Catholic history in China, the contours of which have undergone stark transformations with each dynastic, political, and ecclesial transition. The information presented serves to highlight and explain the lives of Catholic people and the events that have punctuated one of the most significant dimensions of China’s long history of friendship, conflict and exchange with the West.

The Catholic Invasion of China

by D. E. Mungello

Author	: D. E. Mungello
Publisher	: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages	: 195
Release	: 2015-07-01
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 144225050X

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The culmination of D. E. Mungello’s forty years of study on Sino-Western history, this book provides a compelling and nuanced history of Roman Catholicism in modern China. As the author vividly shows, when China declined into a two-century cycle of poverty, powerlessness, and humiliation, the attitudes of Catholic missionaries became less accommodating than their famous Jesuit predecessors. He argues that “invasion” accurately characterizes the dominant attitude of Catholic missionaries (especially the French Jesuits) in their attempt to introduce Western religion and culture into China during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Elements of this attitude lingered until the end of the last century, when many Chinese felt that Pope John Paul II’s canonization of 120 martyrs reflected the imposition of an imperialist mentality. In this important work, Mungello corrects a major misreading of modern Chinese history by arguing that the growth of an indigenous Catholic church in the twentieth century transformed the negative aspects of the “invasion” into a positive Chinese religious force.

China’s Catholics in an Era of Transformation

by Anthony E. Clark

Author	: Anthony E. Clark
Publisher	: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages	: 278
Release	: 2020-09-13
Genre	: Religion
ISBN	: 9789811561818

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This book features a collection of essays on China’s modern Catholic Church by a scholar of China-West intellectual and religious exchange. The essays and reflections were mostly written in China while the author was traveling by train, or staying in villages or large cities near to Roman Catholic cathedrals or other important historical sites during research trips to the country. It is clear that Clark’s understanding of Catholicism in China evolved from the first entry to the final ones in 2019. The essays included in this compendium were written in disparate contexts and in response to different events. As such, there is no obvious theme or order to the content. However, despite this, the book provides valuable insights for readers wishing to gain a better understanding of the complex topography of Catholic history in China, the contours of which have undergone stark transformations with each dynastic, political, and ecclesial transition. The information presented serves to highlight and explain the lives of Catholic people and the events that have punctuated one of the most significant dimensions of China’s long history of friendship, conflict and exchange with the West.

People, Communities, and the Catholic Church in China

by Cindy Yik-yi Chu

Author	: Cindy Yik-yi Chu
Publisher	: Springer Nature
Total Pages	: 163
Release	: 2020-01-02
Genre	: Religion
ISBN	: 9811516790

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This book explores the Chinese Catholic Church as a whole as well as focusing on particular aspects of its activities, including diplomacy, politics, leadership, pilgrimage, youths, and non-Chinese Catholics in China. It discusses Sino-Vatican relations and the rationale behind the decisions taken by Pope Francis with regard to the appointment of bishops in China. The book also examines important changes and personalities in the Chinese Church, the Catholic organizations, and the Catholic communities in the Church, offering a key read for researchers and graduate students studying the Chinese Catholic Church, the Church in Asia, and religion in contemporary China.

Geopolitics of Global Catholicism

by Petr Kratochvíl

Author	: Petr Kratochvíl
Publisher	: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages	: 260
Release	: 2024-05-29
Genre	: Political Science
ISBN	: 1040024904

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Geopolitics of Global Catholicism uncovers the key trends in today’s Catholicism, providing an incisive analysis of its deep entanglement with national, regional, as well as global politics. This book offers an exciting exploration of five versions of local Catholicism(s) and sheds light on the various theo-political constellations that not only differ widely across these national contexts but also have global geopolitical consequences. It is built around a novel theoretical argument showing that Catholic geopolitics contains not only a spatial dimension (as classic geopolitical studies would have it) but also a temporal one. As a consequence, the Catholic role in the world cannot be simply understood as a result of the spatial expansion of the Church but rather as a result of the complex relationships between Catholicism and colonization, inculturation, backwardness, and modernization(s). To counter the lingering Eurocentrism of most studies of the Catholic Church, this book’s case studies explore Catholic geopolitics in five non-European contexts, focusing mainly on the Global South (plus the United States): Latin America (Brazil), North America (the United States), Asia (India and China), and Africa (the Democratic Republic of the Congo). These case studies also show that the successes and failures of Catholicism cannot be explained by a recourse to a single, top-down interpretation of Catholic geopolitics, but rather by exploring the various Catholic spatio-temporal constellations on the global, regional, and local levels. With the accelerating diversification of the Church and the growing role of the Global South, these local and regional influences gain further importance as they are likely to increasingly define the future of Catholicism. This book will be of utmost interest to scholars of International Relations, Religious Studies, Political Science, and Theology, as well as Geopolitics, especially to those studying the global rise of religion. Its accessible language will also appeal to the wider public beyond academia, especially those interested in global Christianity, as well as church leaders, and members of Catholic organizations.

Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China

by John T. P. Lai

Author	: John T. P. Lai
Publisher	: BRILL
Total Pages	: 211
Release	: 2019-03-27
Genre	: Literary Criticism
ISBN	: 9004394486

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Literary Representations of Christianity in Late Qing and Republican China contributes to the “literary turn” in the study of Chinese Christianity by foregrounding the importance of literary texts, including the major genres of Chinese Christian literature (novels, drama and poetry) of the late Qing and Republican periods. These multifarious types of texts demonstrated the multiple representations and dynamic scenes of Christianity, where Christian imageries and symbolism were transformed by linguistic manipulation into new contextualized forms which nurtured distinctive new fruits of literature and modernized the literary landscape of Chinese literature. The study of the composition and poetics of Chinese Christian literary works helps us rediscover the concerns, priorities, textual strategies of the Christian writers, the cross-cultural challenges involved, and the reception of the Bible.

A Chinese Jesuit Catechism

by Anthony E. Clark

Author	: Anthony E. Clark
Publisher	: Springer Nature
Total Pages	: 118
Release	: 2021-01-09
Genre	: Religion
ISBN	: 9811596247

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This book is the first scholarly study of the famous Jesuit Chinese children’s primer, the Four Character Classic, written by Giulio Aleni (1582–1649) while living in Fujian, China. This book also includes masterful translations of both Wang Yinglin’s (1551–1602) hallowed Confucian Three Character Classic and Aleni’s Chinese catechism that was published during the Qing (1644–1911). Clark’s careful reading of the Four Character Classic provides new insights into an area of the Jesuit mission in early modern China that has so far been given little attention, the education of children. This book underscores how Aleni’s published work functions as a good example of the Jesuit use of normative Chinese print culture to serve the catechetical exigencies of the Catholic mission in East Asia, particularly his meticulous imitation of Confucian children’s primers to promote decidedly Christian content.

The Church as Safe Haven

by

Author	:
Publisher	: BRILL
Total Pages	: 346
Release	: 2018-11-23
Genre	: Religion
ISBN	: 9004383727

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The Church as Safe Haven conceptualizes the rise of Chinese Christianity as a new civilizational paradigm that encouraged individuals and communities to construct a sacred order for empowerment in modern China. Once Christianity enrooted itself in Chinese society as an indigenous religion, local congregations acquired much autonomy which enabled new religious institutions to take charge of community governance. Our contributors draw on newly-released archival sources, as well as on fieldwork observations investigating what Christianity meant to Chinese believers, how native actors built their churches and faith-based associations within the pre-existing social networks, and how they appropriated Christian resources in response to the fast-changing world. This book reconstructs the narratives of ordinary Christians, and places everyday faith experience at the center. Contributors are: Christie Chui-Shan Chow, Lydia Gerber, Melissa Inouye, Diana Junio, David Jong Hyuk Kang, Lars Peter Laamann, Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, George Kam Wah Mak, John R. Stanley, R. G. Tiedemann, Man-Shun Yeung.

The Battle for China's Spirit

by Sarah Cook

Author	: Sarah Cook
Publisher	: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages	: 140
Release	: 2017-05-16
Genre	: Political Science
ISBN	: 1538106116

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The Battle for China’s Spirit is the first comprehensive analysis of its kind, focusing on seven major religious groups in China that together account for over 350 million believers: Chinese Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Tibetan Buddhism, and Falun Gong. The study examines the evolution of the Communist Party’s policies of religious control, how they are applied differently to diverse faith communities, and how citizens are responding to these policies. The study—which draws on hundreds of official documents and interviews with religious leaders, lay believers, and scholars—finds that Chinese government controls over religion have intensified since November 2012, seeping into new areas of daily life. Yet millions of religious believers defy official restrictions or engage in some form of direct protest, at times scoring significant victories. The report explores how these dynamics affect China’s overall social, political, and economic environment, while offering recommendations to both the Chinese government and international actors for how to increase the space for peaceful religious practice in a country where spirituality has been deeply embedded in its culture for millennia.