Christ in China

Worldview ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Miriam ◽  
Ivan D. London
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
New Research ◽  
Prayer Meetings ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Christianity is a sleeper in China. It has not expired since the massive antireligious campaign of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, any more than has the traditional body of Chinese beliefs, ranging from philosophical Buddhism to primitive superstition. The Chinese landscape still abounds with gods, ghosts, and heavenly omens. And the church lives cautiously, but intensely, underground. The evidence suggests that wherever Protestant or Catholic belief once took hold, the faith is practiced to some degree; secret prayer meetings take place and young people are converted. The fact that the Peking Kuang Ming Daily of September, 27, 1977, published an article proposing new "research" efforts directed toward the criticism and the eradication of all religions, including Christianity, is sign enough that the central propagandists still see themselves as battling a live adversary.

scholarly journals “The Praying People were Quite Distressed...”. Towards the Results of the Cultural Revolution in the Kama Countryside.

TECHNOLOGOS ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 36-45
Author(s):  
Leybovich Oleg
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Rural Youth ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Time Behavior ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

By means of the case study method the problem of revealing the results of the 1930’s Cultural Revolution in the leisure-time behavior of the rural youth has been posed in the article. The Cultural Revolution is understood by the author as a large Soviet project which was started in the 1920s and finished in the post-war decade with the formation of the Soviet man, who mastered the Bolshevik journalese and the necessary public ritual practices along with the symbols of the Soviet system. Antireligious agitation was an integral component of the Cultural Revolution; in fact it was its core. As the subject of the historical reconstruction it was chosen an incident in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Gamovo village during the Easter holiday 1953. A document with the description of the incident compiled by P.S. Gorbunov, plenipotentiary for the Russian Orthodox Church in Molotov Region has been analyzed in detail. For the solution of this problem the author applied the resources which hadn’t been introduced for the scientific use earlier: materials from Party conferences and meetings; information from the Administration of the MGB in the Molotov region, letters and written requests to the Regional Committee of the CPSU. The original thesis of the article is stated as follows. As a result of the Cultural Revolution it was formed a new type of the Soviet person who according to the basic characteristics was divided into two types: the urban inhabitant living by his on private interests, and the hooligan from the workers' suburb, a violent and disruptive troublemaker. In the article it is reconstructed the events which took place in the village church on the night from the third to the fourth of April, 1953: intrusion of the drunken young men, their outrage on the porch and in the church fence, a knife-fight and, finally, a murder. The author has offered a hypothesis making possible to explain their licentious behavior by the fact that in the culture of working (rural) youth the boundaries between different kinds of space were erased. The Orthodox Church and the village club were identical for them in their leisure value. The norms of street and courtyard culture were applied to them equally. The status of the temple was lower than that of the club. Young people equated the church with something backward, boring, and old. The party and punitive agencies did all they could to alienate the new generation from any form of religious life. As a result, young people either stood aside the Orthodox Church or treated it with contempt, or, in exceptional cases, outraged within its bounds.

Chinese Art of the Cultural Revolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Ma
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Mao Zedong ◽  
Chinese Art ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The art of the Cultural Revolution in China, created during the ten-year period from 1967 to 1977, includes a large variety of visual materials in different media. Generally characterized by unambiguous and heroic images that appealed to the masses, these artworks became powerful tools of political propaganda. Most scholars attribute the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to the 1965 play HaiRui Dismissed from Office. Written by Wu Han, a local Communist official, the play was a thinly veiled critique of Mao Zedong. Though semi-retired in the early 1960s, Mao was determined to hold on to power by launching a new revolution to reawaken young Chinese people and root out the counterrevolutionary and anti-proletarian elements in society. Under Mao’s directive, people, places, and things representing the Four Olds (Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas) were targeted and violently attacked by young people wearing red armbands and carrying the Little Red Book, a collection of quotes by Mao. Party officials, teachers, professors, authors, and artists had their homes raided and were publically dragged out by the Red Guards for public humiliation. In addition, historical and cultural sites were desecrated and vandalized. While the real violence only lasted the first few years, it set the tone of militarism and revolutionary fervor for the next decade, which permeated through all the arts.

Urban Residentship and Return Migration to Shanghai in the Aftermath of the Cultural Revolution

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.K. Luis ◽  
Qiming Liu
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Young People ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Return Migration ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Chinese Youth ◽  
Return Home ◽  
The City ◽  
Chinese Civil Society ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Young people were sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution and were later allowed to return home in the 1970s. This paper examines the return migration of Chinese youth from the countryside based on officially sanctioned reasons and grounds. The most often used reasons or grounds were in fact claims to urban residentship arising from connections to the city by previous residence, by birth and by family. Claimants negotitated with the state in a cultural language which rationalizes the claimed needs in terms of traditional social codes. The study reveals that the passive and submissive image the Chinese civil society outwardly present is deceptive. Their claims, however, still fall short of modern social citizenship.

The Handwritten Hymnbook (1958–1974)

2019 ◽  
pp. 212-234
Author(s):  
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Elderly Women ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Cultural Activities ◽  
True Jesus Church ◽  
Prayer Meetings ◽  
The Church

During the Cultural Revolution, organizations and individuals of all stripes came under attack in a chaotic age characterized by the widespread breakdown of social relationships. As “old” art, music, and literature were criticized and replaced by “new” politically orthodox works, clandestine communities formed to preserve and produce alternative forms of culture. The silent prayer meetings of the True Jesus Church are akin to other covert cultural activities such as groups dedicated to reading banned literature, listening to Western music, and creating art. Charismatic experience played a key role in sustaining the life of the True Jesus Church underground because it could occur within informal, intimate settings. The church experienced an inversion of gendered power, as top male leaders were arrested and elderly women became key figures in sustaining the community’s religious life.

Some Conclusions

2020 ◽  
pp. 126-132
Author(s):  
Massimo Introvigne
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Deng Xiaoping ◽  
Xi Jinping ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

The confrontation between the Chinese regime and The Church of Almighty God does not happen in a vacuum. The chapter reconstructs the different attitudes the Chinese Communist Party has had toward religions. Mao originally believed that, with the progress of Communism in China, religion will naturally disappear. Meanwhile, he tried to control it through five national associations (Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Buddhist, and Daoist), to which all believers should mandatorily adhere. This strategy, however, failed to prevent the growth of independent religious bodies, and the Cultural Revolution tried to wipe religion out entirely. After the dust of the Cultural Revolution settled, Deng Xiaoping restored the five national associations and granted religion a limited tolerance. The chapter also shows that, under Xi Jinping, the attitude toward religion became again more negative. The groups banned as xie jiao suffer more than all the others.

Students and Class Warfare: The Social Roots of the Red Guard Conflict in Guangzhou (Canton)

1980 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 397-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Chan ◽  
Stanley Rosen ◽  
Jonathan Unger
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern China ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Red Guard ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Until recent years, scholars of modern China had generally assumed that in the Cultural Revolution violence of 1966–68 young people were almost arbitrarily joining one or the other of the opposing Red Guard groups. Only within the past few years have researchers begun to unveil the antagonism among students early in the Cultural Revolution over “class” issues and the resulting differences in the composition, tactics and goals of the Red Guard factions.

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