Catholicism, Colonial Encounters and Secularism in Asia

Abstract

José Casanova examines the history of Asian Catholicism from the colonial period to the modern period of globalization. In doing so, Casanova pays special attention to the religious-secular dynamic in the region and uses the experience of Jesuit missions as a lens through which to view this dynamic. The first section of the chapter offers a revisionist account of European secularization in terms of dynamics of state confessionalization and deconfessionalization. The second section presents a reconstruction of the interreligious colonial encounters of the early modern era in Japan and China, mediated by the Jesuits. The final section offers a brief analysis of three different patterns of inculturation of Catholicism in Asia as a key to three different phases of globalization: the early modern phase before Western hegemony, the modern Western hegemonic phase, and the contemporary phase after Western hegemony.