Christianity in China
Subtitle: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: December 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 483
ISBN-13: 9780804726092
Subjects: Christianity; History of religion; Christianity - History - General; Asia - China; History - General History; Religion; China; Church History; Christianity - General; 20th century; 18th century; 19th century
First sentence: In the concrete cases provided, the detail in which they are described, and the variety of sources employed, several of the chapters in this section enable us to test and modify two major interpretive schemes put forward in recent years to explain the links between Christianity and Chinese society, those of Jacques Gernet and Paul Cohen.
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 as not just 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, this research effort is China-centered, drawing on Chinese sources, including government and organizational documents, private papers, and interviews.