Protestant Dissenting Traditions in Asia in the Twentieth Century

Author(s):  
John Roxborogh

Protestant Christianities in Asia today are Asian, but they also carry markers of piety, resilience, and social sensibility which reflect dissenting traditions. While acknowledging the fundamental importance of Asian agency, elements of Protestant Dissent can be identified among the multiple ideas, traditions, personalities, social phenomena, and historical events which have contributed to the formation of Asian Christianity. Denominational names often signify connection with a dissenting Christian identity. A dissenting heritage is often associated with education, an emphasis on bible -reading and translation, an openness to women and lay-leadership in positions of authority, and a cautious attitude towards relationships with governments. Links are also found in stories about pioneer personalities. However, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, British Methodist, and some Baptist churches who joined in national union schemes in India, China, the Philippines, and Thailand, have generally had their memory, and sometimes their polity, subsumed under the shared vision of a new national church.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin Camba

Through an analysis of archival data and findings from interviews with industry leaders, I explore the genesis, rise, and fall of the various Philippine mineral regimes of the twentieth century. Specifically, I examine the background of successive and overlapping colonial and neocolonial powers in three eras: late colonial (1901-1941), national developmental (1945-1964), and state authoritarianism (1965-1985). I also briefly examine the current neoliberal mineral regime (1986-present). I argue that, to date, capitalist enterprises and neocolonial powers have pursued two contradictory paths to extract precious (gold and silver) and base (chromite, iron, copper, nickel, magnesium, and ore) metals in the Philippines. On the one hand, mining companies appropriated expansive land, underpriced labor and inexpensive food to subsidize capital expenditure and mineral operations. The appropriation of basic inputs - or what is referred to as "cheap natures" - allowed these companies to reduce their sunken investments and operational costs. But on the other hand, as the sector developed more, it became increasingly difficult to appropriate such "cheap natures." While initially profitable because of successful appropriation of "cheap natures," companies eventually experienced decreasing returns because of the problems this caused.


Author(s):  
Ikumi Akasaka ◽  
Hisayuki Kubota ◽  
Jun Matsumoto ◽  
Esperanza O. Cayanan ◽  
Rosalina G. de Guzman ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee ◽  
Christie Chui-Shan Chow

This essay investigates the influential role that the Bible played in the sphere of Chinese popular Christianity. It explores the widespread use of the Bible among the lay populace who were traditionally excluded from the concerns and pursuits of Chinese Christian elites in cosmopolitan cities. Beginning with an overview of the cultural influence of the Bible in the mid-nineteenth century, this study argues that the liberating power of the Word was leveraged by peasant converts looking for new cosmologies and norms to change society. The twentieth century witnessed multiple levels of direct engagement with biblical texts, unmediated by foreign missionaries, among Chinese evangelists and congregants. Some drew on new biblical inspirations to found independent churches and sectarian groups, and some relied on the practice of bibliomancy to seek guidance in times of chaos. These examples offer complex view of the symbiosis between Bible reading and conversion in Chinese popular Christianity.


2019 ◽  
pp. 131-159
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Rotter

The chapter provides a sensory history of empire in the two countries, India and the Philippines, at the turn of the twentieth century. By that point, the process of visualizing Indian and Filipino subjects was well underway by their colonizers. The chapter looks at sight and sound and how they can be used to narrate the story at this point. The dynamics of Anglo-American soundscapes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transferred readily and deliberately to sites of empire, to India and the Philippines. In particular, it looks at the music in the two empires at this time.


2021 ◽  
pp. 266-292
Author(s):  
Yin Cao

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tens of thousands of Sikhs emigrated from Punjab to Southeast and East Asia to purse a better livelihood. At the same time, the Singh Sabha Movement was gradually gaining momentum in Punjab, strengthening the Sikh identity. Furthermore, Sikh soldiers and policemen were deployed widely in Asia to safeguard the interests of the British Empire. This chapter argues that the three seemingly irrelevant historical events (the modern Sikh diaspora, the Singh Sabha Movement, and the Indian expedition during the Boxer Uprising in China) were essentially interrelated. The convergent point of these moments was the erection of a Sikh temple (gurdwara) on Queen’s Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong Island, in 1902. Taking this event as a case study, this chapter seeks to explore the Singh Sabha Movement through the lens of the Sikh diasporic network and the imperial network. It also unveils the Indian face of the British Empire by the turn of the twentieth century, when Indians, rather than the British, were the protagonists and engineers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-115
Author(s):  
Alexandre Coello de la Rosa

Abstract This article deals with the missionary work of the Society of Jesus in today’s Micronesia from the 17th to the 20th century. Although the Jesuit missionaries wanted to reach Japan and other Pacific islands, such as the Palau and Caroline archipelagos, the crown encouraged them to stay in the Marianas until 1769 (when the Society of Jesus was expelled from the Philippines) to evangelize the native Chamorros as well as to reinforce the Spanish presence on the fringes of the Pacific empire. In 1859, a group of Jesuit missionaries returned to the Philippines, but they never officially set foot on the Marianas during the nineteenth century. It was not until the twentieth century that they went back to Micronesia, taking charge of the mission on the Northern Marianas along with the Caroline and Marshall Islands, thus returning to one of the cradles of Jesuit martyrdom in Oceania.


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