The belated formation of the China Bible House (1937): Nationalism and the indigenization of Protestantism in Republican China

2015 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-535
Author(s):  
George Kam Wah Mak
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Global Identity ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Chinese Nationalism ◽  
Chinese Church ◽  
Republican Era

AbstractThis paper investigates the belated formation of the China Bible House, the first national Bible society in China, as a result of the interplay between the politics of foreign Bible societies and the indigenizing Chinese church in relation to rising nationalism during the Republican era. The challenge of Chinese nationalism to Christianity drove foreign Bible societies and Chinese Protestants to work towards the indigenization of Bible work. However, distrust and conflicts hindered foreign Bible societies' co-operation among themselves and also with Chinese Protestants. While Chinese church leaders saw the founding of a Chinese Bible society as a manifestation of the Chineseness of the Protestant church in China, they agreed with foreign Bible societies on the global identity of Bible work, which justified the latter's continuing presence in China. This understanding, together with the need for foreign financial support and expertise, explains why Sino-foreign co-operation existed in Bible work in China.

The Church and the People’s Republic of China

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloë Starr
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Religious Activity ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Chinese Church ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Church ◽  
Difficult Transition ◽  
Great Growth

If the early twentieth century saw great growth in the Chinese church, the first decade of the second half of the century saw persecution and a mass falling away from the church. By the end of the 1960s, when public religious activity in China had been shut down for several years, the rest of the world wondered if a Chinese church still existed. The focus of this chapter is the key decade of the 1950s, and particularly the policies and events of the first years of that decade. The chapter discusses the very different responses of Roman Catholic and certain Protestant church leaders to the leadership of New China and to the creation of state patriotic bodies during the difficult transition to a “post-denominational” church.

scholarly journals The True Jesus Church and the Bible in Republican China

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Pan Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Republican China ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Republican Era ◽  
Unique Identity ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
True Jesus Church ◽  
The Church

During China’s Republican Era (1912–1949), the True Jesus Church, comprising one of the largest indigenous Pentecostal/charismatic churches in China, created a whole set of exclusive salvation doctrines based on its unique biblical interpretation. This paper attempts to illustrate the role that the Bible played in the development of the True Jesus Church (TJC for short) and how its biblical interpretations functioned in the shaping of its exclusive identity based on certain aspects of its charismatic experiences and unique doctrinal system. The founding of the TJC relied upon charismatic experiences, which were regarded as the work of the Holy Spirit to prove the authority of the Church. Doctrinally, the approaches to biblical interpretation employed by TJC leaders were another source of the church’s unique identity: The exclusive status the church assigned to itself was evident in its distinct interpretive approaches, as well as in its innovative rituals, especially facedown immersion baptism. Along with various influences of the Pentecostal tradition and the Chinese social context, these hermeneutics were an important reason for the TJC’s development as an independent denomination in the Republican era.

“What Has Jesus to Do with Socialism”? Protestant Intellectuals, Political Use of the Mandarin Union Version, and the Remaking of a Socialistic Jesus in Republican China

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
ZHIXI WANG
Keyword(s):  
Republican China ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
Republican Era ◽  
Biblical Texts

AbstractThis article explores the ways Chinese Protestant intellectuals, when facing up to the challenge of socialism, interpreted and appropriated Chinese Gospel texts to refashion the image of Jesus. It argues that Protestant intellectuals’ political use of the Chinese Bible remade a socialistic Jesus with some religious qualifications. Both the reading of the Chinese Bible and the interaction of Chinese biblical texts with the socio-political milieus dramatically influenced the textual practice of Chinese Protestant communities in the Republican era.

Unfulfilled Promises

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Monshan Wu
Keyword(s):  
Church Leaders ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Economic Instability ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Chinese Church ◽  
Missionary Societies ◽  
Christian Leaders

This chapter asks: If by the 1920s, both German missionary societies had embraced the impetus to transfer control to Chinese church leaders, why did independence still remain such a slow and arduous process? The chapter argues that persistent political, social, and economic instability hindered the missionaries from giving their Chinese Christian leaders more power. The Chinese themselves also thought that they were not ready for church independence. Ultimately, a series of catastrophic political events—the escalation of the Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s and the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in 1933—catalyzed the Germans to relinquish their power.

Order Out of Chaos

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Monshan Wu
Keyword(s):  
Church Leaders ◽  
Chinese Church

This chapter tells the story of how German missionary leaders, unable to raise funds from Europe, began to transfer more power to their Chinese church leaders. The mission directors of the SVD and the BMS both traveled to China, hoping to encourage Chinese church independence. Yet, these reforms came with strings attached, and the missionaries delayed the transition to an independent church. The chapter also examines how the German missionaries formulated their ideas for Chinese church independence out of fears of a rising global socialist and secular threat.

The Cosmopolitan Moment in Colonial Modernity: The Bahá’í faith, spiritual networks, and universalist movements in early twentieth-century China

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 1787-1827
Author(s):  
ZHAOYUAN WAN ◽  
DAVID A. PALMER
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
World Community ◽  
Baha'i Faith ◽  
Chinese Nationalism

AbstractThis article outlines the spread of the Bahá’í religion—known in Chinese as Datong jiao 大同教)— as a form of religious cosmopolitanism in Republican China (1912–1949). Originating in Iran, its spread to China can be traced to links with the Ottoman empire, British Palestine, the United States, and Japan. By tracking the individuals, connections, and events through which knowledge of the Bahá’í movement spread in China, our study reveals an overlapping nexus of networks—intellectual reformers, liberal Christians, Esperantists, Confucian modernizers, redemptive society activists, and socialists—that shared cosmopolitan ideals. The Bahá’í connections thus serve as a thread that reveals the influence of a unique ‘cosmopolitan moment’ in Republican China, hitherto largely ignored in the scholarly literature on this period, which has focused primarily on the growth of modern Chinese nationalism. Leading nationalist figures endorsed these movements at a specific juncture of Asian colonial modernity, showing that nationalism and cosmopolitanism were seen as expressions of the same ideal of a world community. We argue that the sociology of cosmopolitanism should attend to non-secular and non-state movements that advocated utopian visions of cosmopolitanism, map the circulations that form the nexus of such groups, and identify the contextual dynamics that produce ‘cosmopolitan moments’ at specific historical junctures and locations.

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