Chinese Christian Research Articles

The Bible in Chinese Christianity

The Ecumenical ReviewVolume 67, Issue 1 p. 96-106 Christianity in China The Bible in Chinese Christianity Its Reception and Appropriation in China Archie C. C. Lee, Archie C. C. LeeSearch for more papers by this author Archie C. C. Lee, Archie C. C. LeeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 24 April 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/erev.12139Citations: 1Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume67, Issue1March 2015Pages 96-106 RelatedInformation

Challenges and Opportunities Chinese Christians Face in the Global Economic Crisis

Challenges and Opportunities Chinese Christians Face in the Global Economic Crisis

Documentation of Chinese Christianity at Yale University

Documentation of Chinese Christianity at Yale University

Anthony E. Clark, editor. A Voluntary Exile: Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence since 1552

Anthony E. Clark, editor. A Voluntary Exile: Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence since 1552

Social Virtues in the Hong Kong Catholic Community: Examining Catholic and Confucian Ethics

This article examines the importance of strengthening the virtue ethics approach in Catholic social teaching for a Chinese Christian community through putting the Catholic tradition and Confucian tradition into dialogue. Through examining the virtue features in the Confucian and Christian traditions, it is found that they share a number of commensurable elements. This study contributes to the ongoing reflection on inculturation in the Hong Kong Church and dialogue between Chinese culture and Christianity. Moreover, strengthening virtue ethics approach in CST is important in moving the hearts of Chinese Christians and transforming them to engage in social justice endeavor, leading to common good and solidarity with the vulnerables. It can complement the principle-based approach in CST. Employing virtue ethics method to approach CST, it would emphasize both rational and emotive approaches rather than primarily cognitive principles, leading to a more holistic formation and integrative way of planning pastoral action. It also offers concrete ways of practice through practicing various virtues. Moreover, it can integrate spirituality and morality, linking personal ethic with social ethic. It is an attempt to contribute to the renewal of ethical methods of Catholic social ethics.

Religiosity/spirituality and prosocial behaviors among Chinese Christian adolescents: The mediating role of values and gratitude.

Religiosity/spirituality and prosocial behaviors among Chinese Christian adolescents: The mediating role of values and gratitude.

Restituting Church Buildings and Negotiating Church Factions: Missionary Mapmakers and the Making of Local Networks (1712−1716)

At the turn of the 18th century, the Kangxi emperor initiated a large project to map the vast territories of the Qing. The land surveys that ensued were executed by teams of Qing officials and European missionaries, most of them French Jesuits first sent to China in 1685 and actively supported by the French crown. Early 18th century Jesuit publications foster a much-heralded claim that these missionary-mapmakers drew on their status of imperial envoys during the surveys to locally advance the position of the Catholic church. This article strives to explore the formation of such local networks by these missionaries as they passed through the cities and towns of the Chinese provinces. On the basis of archival material, details emerge of contacts with local Qing administrators and Chinese Christians, and of attempts to purchase and recover local churches. This is then discussed against the background of the Rites Controversy, in an attempt to evaluate how such local networks relate to the rivalry between missionaries of different orders. The article emphasizes that there was (and perhaps is) no such thing as “pure science” by underscoring that important technical achievements such as the Qing mapping project are often shaped by complex networks and historical contingencies.

Being Christians in Urbanizing China

With the rapid urbanization of China in the last 20 years, hundreds of millions of rural residents surged into the cities searching for better livelihoods. Hundreds of thousands of these urban migrants have been Christians. The Christian migrants not only found themselves confronted by the same overwhelming city life and culture as other new rural-urban migrants, they also found a new church setting marked by unfamiliar expressions of their familiar faith and different ways of understanding, approaching, and experiencing God as well as new ways of understanding self and the world. Besides the “moral torment” and identity tension between being “Chinese Christian” and “Christian Chinese,” they are struggling with at least two distinct Christian epistemological styles, one of which is more inward, emotional, and practice centered and the other of which is more outward, intellectual, and text centered.

Christian Scholar Xu Guangqi and the Spread of Catholicism in Shanghai

Xu Guangqi, one of the first and most notable Christian scholars in the Ming Dynasty, cast a profound influence on the spread of Catholicism in Shanghai. After his conversion, Xu Guangqi successfully proselytized all of his family members by kinship and affinity, a fact that was foundational to the development of Jesuit missionary work in Shanghai. His social relationships with pupils, friends, and officials also significantly facilitated the proliferation of Catholicism in Shanghai. This paper expands the current body of literature on Chinese–Christian scholar Xu Guangqi and his role in the spread of Catholicism in Shanghai during the late Ming and early Qing. Though there are several extant studies on this topic, most of them focus on Xu’s personal achievements and neglect the areas that this paper picks up: the role of Xu’s family and social status in his proliferate evangelism, and the longevity his influence had even beyond his own time. Through this approach, this paper aims to attain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of Xu Guangqi’s influence on the dissemination and perdurance of Catholicism in Shanghai.

Integration of Immigrants: The Role of Ethnic Churches

Churches played a critical role in assisting immigrants’ access to the host society. Churches provide stability for new immigrants in Jamaica by creating a sense of community and often act as extended families. But, limited research has been carried out on the settlement of immigrants and the role of ethnic organisations in Jamaica. This study examines the history, functions and, to a greater extent, the impact of a Chinese Christian Church in Jamaica in facilitating Chinese immigrants’ settlement. The study uses qualitative analysis in the form of case studies from members/ex-members of the church, associated organisations and the Chinese community in Jamaica. The results suggest that the church provides stability and acts as a centre for social networks through which employment, vital services and housing were found. However, the position and the future of the church are questionable due to internal conflicts and the increasing diversity in the Chinese immigrant population.

The Christ-human and Jia Yuming's Doctrine of Sanctification: A Case Study in the Confucianisation of Chinese Fundamentalist Christianity

Cai Renhou, a prominent New Confucian scholar, has challenged the notion that Christianity can affirm that ‘everyone can be Christ’. This article will, however, explore the doctrine of sanctification of Jia Yuming (1880–1964), a Chinese fundamentalist theologian who constructed a Chinese Christian teaching of the self-cultivation of heart and mind with the objective of encouraging people to become ‘Christ-human’, thus having a life which is Christ. It argues that Jia's training and background, his natural theology and his belief in the possibility of a collaboration between Confucianism and Christianity on moral issues made him affirm a convergence between Christianity and Confucianism and to assert that Christianity and Confucianism could learn from each other – a surprising move in the light of the impression we commonly have of fundamentalist theology. The article examines Jia's strategy of connecting Christianity with Chinese culture and points out that Jia's fundamentalism seems to provide a protection against heretical teachings, a feature which might gain the acceptance of conservative Christians for incorporating ‘heathen’ thought into the Christian faith. Taken together, these points suggest a remarkably multifaceted confrontation, interaction, assimilation and mutual transformation between Christianity and Chinese culture.

Book review: Pioneer Chinese Christian Women: Gender, Christianity, and Social Mobility, written by Jessie G. Lutz

Book review: Pioneer Chinese Christian Women: Gender, Christianity, and Social Mobility, written by Jessie G. Lutz

Book Review: Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspective

Book Review: Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspective

Shared beliefs enhance shared feelings: Religious/irreligious identifications modulate empathic neural responses

Recent neuroimaging research has revealed stronger empathic neural responses to same-race compared to other-race individuals. Is the in-group favouritism in empathic neural responses specific to race identification or a more general effect of social identification—including those based on religious/irreligious beliefs? The present study investigated whether and how intergroup relationships based on religious/irreligious identifications modulate empathic neural responses to others’ pain expressions. We recorded event-related brain potentials from Chinese Christian and atheist participants while they perceived pain or neutral expressions of Chinese faces that were marked as being Christians or atheists. We found that both Christian and atheist participants showed stronger neural activity to pain (versus neutral) expressions at 132–168 ms and 200–320 ms over the frontal region to those with the same (versus different) religious/irreligious beliefs. The in-group favouritism in empathic neural responses was also evident in a later time window (412–612 ms) over the central/parietal regions in Christian but not in atheist participants. Our results indicate that the intergroup relationship based on shared beliefs, either religious or irreligious, can lead to in-group favouritism in empathy for others’ suffering.

Fictional Representation of the Bible: Chinese Christian Novels of the Late 19th Century

Fictional Representation of the Bible: Chinese Christian Novels of the Late 19th Century

Chinese vs. Western perspectives: understanding contemporary China

Preface Acknowledgments 1. Roots of Contemporary China 2. Chinese Family 3. Population and Development 4. Status of Chinese Women 5. Globalization and Chinese Women 6. Chinese Economy 7. China' Rise and Environmental Degradation 8. Chinese Political System 9. Rampant Corruption and Chinese Political System 10. Traditional Chinese Religions 11. Chinese Christianity in the Post-Mao Era 12. Will Confucianism Be Able to Help China's Democratization? 13. Marxism and Maoism 14. Media in China: Internet and Chinese Cinema 15. U.S.-China Relations 16. Does China's Rise Threaten the United States? 17. Finding Common Ground for Chinese and Western Perspectives 18. Future of China: Undemocratic China Cannot Rule the World Bibliography Index About the Author

기독교 인구수치로 본 중국교회의 현황과 과제

The importance and critical value the number of Christian population in China holds is related to the issues ranging from whether Christianity is taking position and growing in China, whether it influences Chinese society, to whether it acts as one of core variable factors in making China’s political decisions on religions. Moreover, it is also related to the issue on whether a continued participation of South Korean churches and otherchurches in the world in China for further mission work is necessary or not. If the number of Christian population in China is not many, all the churches in China should work harder for deliver the gospel, and if not, churches in the world should encourage and support Chinese Christians to develop further to the point that they will be able to positively affect Chinese society and go out to the world for mission work. In this article, various claims on the legitimate number of Chinese Christians ranging from 18 million to 130 million are discussed. It, then, proved that 63 million is the appropriate number of Chinese Christian population by recalculating 23.05 million number of Chinese Christian population until April 2009 presented by Annual Report on Religions in China (2010). Furthermore, it presented the estimated total number of Chinese Christian until August 2013 which ranges from 67.77 million to 76.02 million by adding the variable number of new believers of Christianity since April 2009. The estimated total number of Chinese Christian is about 4.98 percentage to 5.59 percentage of total Chinese population of 1.36 billion. This means that at least 1.28398 billion Chinese is not evangelized so far due to various obstacles in China. Yet, a number of researches and facts indicate that Chinese churches are growing in number. Therefore, it is required that preparing and suppling the more qualified ministers who received formal education designed for chinese situation and church in terms of qualitative and quantitative aspects. Continued attention and support from the Christians in the world, of course, is necessary for Chinese churches to be independent and reach out for foreign mission work in the future.

The Role of Religion and Ethnicity in Jakarta's 2012 Gubernatorial Election

The victory of Joko Widodo (‘Jokowi’) in Jakarta's 2012 gubernatorial election has been described as a “triumph of democracy” as Joko and his running mate Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (‘Ahok’), a Chinese Christian, successfully won the election despite negative ethno-religious campaigns against them. How exactly did the ethno-religious boundary influence the election? By analysing the results of the election in relation to ethnicities and religions using the 2000 National Census, the author reveals an ethnopolitical map of Jakarta, for political analysis a potentially important but still under-researched area. The article then proceeds to examine the ‘religionisation’ process of the election campaign. The incumbent governor, Fauzi Bowo, carefully established his religious image and tried to mobilise support through religious symbols and persuasion, even though the electoral results seemed to be divided along ethnic lines. Joko also participated in a number of religious campaigns, albeit in a different way that was more subtle. Because ideological differences between Islamic and secular nationalist parties have become blurred and the general ‘religionisation’ of Indonesian society has continued, religious campaigns are becoming more important in domestic politics, even for ‘less-Islamic’ politicians like Joko.

The Impact of Stressful Life Events on Highly Religious Chinese Christians Living in Belgium

While there has been considerable inquiry into how religion may help Christians deal with stressful life events (SLEs), only limited research has been conducted on the impact SLEs might have on religion. This study's purpose was to provide an in-depth analysis of this relationship in a sample of highly religious Christians of Chinese origin. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 11 Chinese couples residing in Belgium, and a conceptual model was created to describe how SLEs impact religiosity and how religion influences people's coping processes. Results indicated that for highly religious Chinese Christians, an SLE may represent a faith-growth opportunity.

The Femininity of Chinese Christianity

The Femininity of Chinese Christianity