Christianity As a Chinese Religion: a Theological Consideration

Christianity as a Chinese religion : a theological consideration This page was generated automatically upon download from the Globethics.net Library. More information on Globethics.net see https://www.globethics.net. Data and content policy of Globethics.net Library repository see https:// repository.globethics.net/pages/policy Item Type Article Authors Chow, Alexander Publisher Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, Chung Chi College, Shatin, Hong Kong Rights Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, Chung Chi College, Shatin, Hong Kong Download date 04/10/2021 17:34:41 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/4013866 © Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture Ching Feng, n.s., 17.1–2 (2018) 27–41 Christianity as a Chinese Religion: A Theological Consideration ALEXANDER CHOW . Abstract There has been a growing discourse in mainland China about the “Chinization” or “Sinicization” (Zhongguo hua 中國化) of Christianity, which can be seen as an extension of the common rhetoric that Christianity is a “foreign religion” (yangjiao 洋教). This paper will explore the theological developments of Chinese Christianity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and argue that it has exhibited a key characteristic of all forms of Chinese religiosity: Heaven and humanity in unity (Tian ren heyi 天人合一). Indeed, this paper claims that Chinese Christianity must be accepted as a Chinese religion. INTRODUCTION Recently there has been a growing discourse in mainland China on the “Chinization” or “Sinicization” (Zhongguo hua 中國化) of Christianity.1 Alexander CHOW (CAO Rongjin 曹榮錦) is senior lecturer in theology and world Christianity in the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. 1 I have chosen in this text to render Zhongguo hua as “Chinization.” Historically, the terms “sinicization” or “sinification” are the English translations for various Chinese terms such as Zhongguo hua, hanhua 漢化, or huahua 華化. However, the use of the term Zhongguo hua in current discourse emphasizes a strong statist understanding, which therefore makes it more appropriate to speak of Chinization. 28 Alexander Chow In many ways, this conversation needs to be rooted in part of the broader view of Christianity as a “foreign religion” (yangjiao 洋教). It is often said that Christianity must learn from the path of Buddhism, another “foreign religion,” which eventually adapted to and embraced “Chinese” culture.2 In fact, the description of Christianity as a “foreign religion” largely arose during the Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century, in which many religious cases (jiao’an 教案) were levied against Christi- anity.3 By the early twentieth century, Christianity received the double charge as being both foreign and feudal. Despite attempts by the Chinese to reform Christianity4—as well as Confucianism and Buddhism5—all these ideologies were seen as part of the superstitious mindset which hindered the progress of modernity. This changed to a certain extent in the 1980s and 1990s in the Chinese academy. On the one hand, there was a growing interest in the Weberian thesis that the apparent success of capitalism must be attributed to the so-called “Protestant ethic.” But more than economics, Christianity was increasingly seen as offering pos- sibilities to rebuild Chinese civilization. The advent of “cultural Chris- tians” (wenhua Jidutu 文化基督徒) heralded the possibility for this foreign religion of Christianity—and its output of Christian culture—to be seen as essential for the progress of China.6 Politically, since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party has pursued a number of approaches to the existence of religion in the country. During Deng Xiaoping’s 鄧小平 reforms in the late 1970s, the emphasis was placed on the “freedom of religious belief” (zongjiao In English sources, it is instructive to note that Chinese Theological Review rendered the Chinese as “Chinization” in volume 26, but shifted to “Sinicization” in volume 27. See Janice Wickeri, “From the Editor,” Chinese Theological Review 26 (2014): vii; Janice Wickeri, “From the Editor,” Chinese Theological Review 27 (2015): ix. 2 One of the great classics on the development of early Chinese Buddhism is Eric Zü- rcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, 3rd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 3 For a fascinating discussion on these developments, see Thoralf Klein, “The Mission- ary as Devil: Anti-Missionary Demonology in China, 1860–1930,” in Europe as the Other: External Perspectives on European Christianity, ed. Judith Becker and Brian Stanley (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2014), 119–48. 4 See Samuel D. Ling, “The Other May Fourth Movement: The Chinese ‘Christian Re- naissance,’ 1919–1937” (PhD diss., Temple University, 1980). 5 Examples of this can be seen in the rise of New Confucianism (Xin Rujia 新儒家) and Taixu’s 太虛 Humanistic Buddhism (Renjian Fojiao 人間佛教). 6 See Fredrik Fällman, Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contempo- rary China, rev. ed. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2008). Christianity as a Chinese Religion 29 xinyang ziyou 宗教信仰自由).7 Ryan Dunch makes a helpful observa- tion that, during this period, “Chinese Communist Party leaders expected that only a small remnant of elderly religious believers remained, and that the disappearance of religion from socialist China was only a matter of time.”8 Instead, quite the opposite happened and the number of religious believers grew at a phenomenal rate. In 1993, and reiterated in 2002, Jiang Zemin 江澤民 spoke about the need for religions to “adapt to a socialist society” (yu Shehuizhuyi shehui xiang shiying 與社會主義社會相適應). K. H. Ting (Ding Guangxun 丁光訓) responded to Jiang Zemin’s call in the 1990s campaign for the “reconstruction of theological thinking” (shenxue sixiang jianshe 神學思想建設), with an explicit attempt to adapt Christianity to socialism.9 Likewise, when Xi Jinping 習近平 spoke about the “Chinization” (Zhongguo hua 中國化) of religions in 2015 and 2016, Chinese academics and Chinese Christian leaders associated with the state-sanctioned Protestant and Catholic bodies echoed such initiatives within Christianity.10 Hence, the notion of the Chinization of Christianity is in many ways a new phase of this question of Christianity as a foreign religion. It is, however, an odd development as it has progressed in a top-down approach to the localization or, shall we say, domestication of Christianity. Historically, Christianity can be seen as having already become a Chi- nese religion in its own right. Christianity first entered the country in the seventh century—almost contemporaneous to the Augustinian mission sent by Pope Gregory the Great to convert the Anglo-Saxons in Britain. The record in China is most clearly noted through the archaeological ev- idence found in the so-called “Nestorian stele” (Jingjiao bei 景教碑)11— the stone tablet erected as a way to recognize Christianity’s status from the vantage point of the imperial state of the Tang dynasty. Today, one may even be able to speak about “Christian villages” which can be traced 7 It should be noted that the phrase should not be translated as “freedom of religion” (zongjiao ziyou 宗教自由), which offers a very different connotation. 8 Ryan Dunch, “Christianity and ‘Adaptation to Socialism,’” in Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation, ed. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 155. 9 Philip L. Wickeri, Reconstructing Christianity in China: K. H. Ting and the Chinese Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2007), 344. 10 Sergio Ticozzi, “Xi Jinping’s Meaning of ‘Sinicization of Religions,’” Tripod 37, no. 184 (Spring 2017): 99–105. See volume 26 of Chinese Theological Review. 11 Whilst many historical studies continue to use the term “Nestorianism” to describe Jingjiao 景教, this is inaccurate and highly problematic. See Alexander Chow, Theosis, Sino-Christian Theology and the Second Chinese Enlightenment: Heaven and Human- ity in Unity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 177n1. 30 Alexander Chow back many generations—for some, many centuries.12 From a historical perspective, Christianity has been present in China for thirteen centuries longer than a more recent so-called “Chinese” ideology—Chinese com- munism. We can also challenge this discourse based on numerical growth. In 1949, there were just shy of four million Christians (three million Cath- olics and 700,000 Protestants) out of the country’s population of some 500 million. Today, while accurate numbers are hard to come by, it would perhaps be safe to estimate roughly 70 to 80 million Christians (58 million Protestants and 12 to 15 million Catholics) out of the country’s population of 1.3 billion. Despite the tripling of the overall Chinese population in the past seven decades, the Christian religion in China has witnessed a phenomenal 20 fold growth.13 Much of this has to do with what many have described as a “Christianity fever” (Jidujiao re 基督教熱) experienced in the mainland since the 1980s. However, according to many interpreters during the earlier period, this was seen as mainly amongst the “four manys” (si duo 四多)—many old, many women, many illiterate, and many ill.14 In other words, Christianity has been accepted by those in the margins who have turned towards religion in a kind of “rice Christianity.” Clearly, underlying this is a kind of Marxist rhetoric about religion as the opiate of the masses, promoting a backward feudal thinking. It has also overlooked the growing interest in the 1980s and 1990s in cultural Christianity and the burgeoning academic field of Sino-Christian theology (Hanyu shenxue 漢語神學). Nevertheless, it shows that Christianity is increasingly being accepted as part of the broader Chinese religious ecosystem. From a different vantage point, we can approach this question about whether or not Christianity is a Chinese religion based on its sociopolit- ical influence. Connected to the last point, what we find happening since the late 1990s and into the twenty-first century has been a significant shift in Chinese Christianity to include many entrepreneurs and well- educated intellectuals.

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