Download Free The Catholic Church And The Chinese World Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Catholic Church And The Chinese World and write the review.

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.
This book traces the history of the Catholic Church in China since the country opened up to the world in December 1978. It comprehensively studies the Chinese Catholic Church on various levels, including an analysis of Sino-Vatican relations, the control over the Catholic Church by the Beijing government, the supervision of local Church activities, and the consecration of government-approved bishops, the formation of priests, and the everyday lives of Chinese Catholics.
This groundbreaking study examines decorative Chinese works of art and visual culture, known as chinoiserie, in the context of church and state politics, with a particular focus on the Catholic missionsÕ impact on Western attitudes toward China and the Chinese. Art-historical examinations of chinoiserie have largely ignored the role of the Church and its conversion efforts in Asia. Johns, however, demonstrates that the emperorÕs 1722 prohibition against Catholic evangelization, which occurred after almost a century and a half of tolerance, prompted a remarkable change in European visualizations of China in Roman Catholic countries. ChinaandtheChurch considers the progress of Christianity in China during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, examines authentic works of Chinese art available to the European artists who produced chinoiserie, and explains how the East Asian male body in Western art changed from ÒnormativeÓ depictions to whimsical, feminized grotesques after the collapse of the missionary efforts during the 1720s.
The first book-length study of China's Catholic martyr saints, this work recounts the cultural, religious, and economic conflicts that unfolded during China's Qing dynasty (1644–1911). China's Saints considers closely the personal and public lives of both missionaries and Chinese converts lived during China's late-imperial era.
This ethnographic study of a Chinese Catholic village reveals how the rapid penetration of transnational processes into the People’s Republic of China during the post-Mao period has redefined and created new social and cultural structures in rural communities. In examining the resurfacing of a Catholic community in a Hakka village in Jiaoling county, Guangdong, the book shows what it means to be part of a global and modern rural village. The Hakka are members of a Chinese diasporic group that in the past few decades have mobilized international campaigns to strengthen ethnic solidarity. After surviving campaigns of persecution in the Maoist era, Catholic villagers incorporated their village church into the state religious administrative structure while remaining faithful to Catholic traditions. They managed this transformation despite a multiplicity of national and transnational processes that might have deterred them: the privatization of local sectors of the socialist economy; the global movement of people as workers, students, and tourists; and the swift modernization of Chinese production and consumption. Through a close examination of life-cycle rituals such as weddings, baptisms, and funerals, and community-wide events such as the building of a new church and a celebration of Christmas, the author shows how Catholic villagers pursued strategies to make their imagined futures a reality. For these villagers, Chinese Catholicism has defined a deterritorialized community’s boundaries while simultaneously connecting them to the rest of the world through an international religious tradition.
This book details the great unreported story of the Chinese giant, its enormously rapid conversion to Christianity, and what this change means to the global balance of power.
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.
The Missionary’s Curse tells the story of a Chinese village that has been Catholic since the seventeenth century, drawing direct connections between its history, the globalizing church, and the nation. Harrison recounts the popular folk tales of merchants and peasants who once adopted Catholic rituals and teachings for their own purposes, only to find themselves in conflict with the orthodoxy of Franciscan missionaries arriving from Italy. The village’s long religious history, combined with the similarities between Chinese folk religion and Italian Catholicism, forces us to rethink the extreme violence committed in the area during the Boxer Uprising. The author also follows nineteenth century Chinese priests who campaigned against missionary control, up through the founding of the official church by the Communist Party in the 1950s. Harrison’s in-depth study provides a rare insight into villager experiences during the Socialist Education Movement and Cultural Revolution, as well as the growth of Christianity in China in recent years. She makes the compelling argument that Catholic practice in the village, rather than adopting Chinese forms in a gradual process of acculturation, has in fact become increasingly similar to those of Catholics in other parts of the world.
China’s Old Churches, by Alan Sweeten, surveys the history of Catholicism in China (1600 to the present) as reflected by the location, style, and details of sacred structures in three crucial areas of north China. Closely examined are the most famous and important churches in the urban settings of Beijing and Tianjin, as well as lesser-known ones in rural Hebei Province. Missionaries built Western-looking churches to make a broad religious statement important to themselves and Chinese worshippers. Non-Catholics, however, tended to see churches as sociopolitically foreign and culturally invasive. The physical-visual impact of church buildings is significant. Today, restored old churches and new sacred structures are still mostly of Western style, but often include a sacred grotto dedicated to Our Lady of China--a growing number of Catholics supporting Marian-centered activities.