Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts

Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts PDF Author: Fenggang Yang
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004369902
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The speed and the scale with which traditional religions in China have been revived and new spiritual movements have emerged in recent decades make it difficult for scholars to stay up-to-date on the religious transformations within Chinese society. This unique atlas presents a bird’s-eye view of the religious landscape in China today. In more than 150 full-color maps and six different case studies, it maps the officially registered venues of China’s major religions - Buddhism, Christianity (Protestant and Catholic), Daoism, and Islam - at the national, provincial, and county levels. The atlas also outlines the contours of Confucianism, folk religion, and the Mao cult. Further, it describes the main organizations, beliefs, and rituals of China’s main religions, as well as the social and demographic characteristics of their respective believers. Putting multiple religions side by side in their contexts, this atlas deploys the latest qualitative, quantitative and spatial data acquired from censuses, surveys, and fieldwork to offer a definitive overview of religion in contemporary China. An essential resource for all scholars and students of religion and society in China.

Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts

Atlas of Religion in China: Social and Geographical Contexts PDF Author: Fenggang Yang
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004369902
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The speed and the scale with which traditional religions in China have been revived and new spiritual movements have emerged in recent decades make it difficult for scholars to stay up-to-date on the religious transformations within Chinese society. This unique atlas presents a bird’s-eye view of the religious landscape in China today. In more than 150 full-color maps and six different case studies, it maps the officially registered venues of China’s major religions - Buddhism, Christianity (Protestant and Catholic), Daoism, and Islam - at the national, provincial, and county levels. The atlas also outlines the contours of Confucianism, folk religion, and the Mao cult. Further, it describes the main organizations, beliefs, and rituals of China’s main religions, as well as the social and demographic characteristics of their respective believers. Putting multiple religions side by side in their contexts, this atlas deploys the latest qualitative, quantitative and spatial data acquired from censuses, surveys, and fieldwork to offer a definitive overview of religion in contemporary China. An essential resource for all scholars and students of religion and society in China.

Sinicizing Christianity

Sinicizing Christianity PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004330380
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Chinese people have been instrumental in indigenizing Christianity. Sinizing Christianity examines Christianity's transplantation to and transformation in China by focusing on three key elements: Chinese agents of introduction; Chinese redefinition of Christianity for the local context; and Chinese institutions and practices that emerged and enabled indigenisation. As a matter of fact, Christianity is not an exception, but just one of many foreign ideas and religions, which China has absorbed since the formation of the Middle Kingdom, Buddhism and Islam are great examples. Few scholars of China have analysed and synthesised the process to determine whether there is a pattern to the ways in which Chinese people have redefined foreign imports for local use and what insight Christianity has to offer. Contributors are: Robert Entenmann, Christopher Sneller, Yuqin Huang, Wai Luen Kwok, Thomas Harvey, Monica Romano, Thomas Coomans, Chris White, Dennis Ng, Ruiwen Chen and Richard Madsen.

Shanghai Faithful

Shanghai Faithful PDF Author: Jennifer Lin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 144225694X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Within the next decade, China could be home to more Christians than any country in the world. Through the 150-year saga of a single family, this book vividly dramatizes the remarkable religious evolution of the world’s most populous nation. Shanghai Faithful is both a touching family memoir and a chronicle of the astonishing spread of Christianity in China. Five generations of the Lin family—buffeted by history’s crosscurrents and personal strife—bring to life an epoch that is still unfolding. A compelling cast—a poor fisherman, a doctor who treated opium addicts, an Ivy League–educated priest, and the charismatic preacher Watchman Nee—sets the bookin motion. Veteran journalist Jennifer Lin takes readers from remote nineteenth-century mission outposts to the thriving house churches and cathedrals of today’s China. The Lin family—and the book’s central figure, the Reverend Lin Pu-chi—offer witness to China’s tumultuous past, up to and beyond the betrayals and madness of the Cultural Revolution, when the family’s resolute faith led to years of suffering. Forgiveness and redemption bring the story full circle. With its sweep of history and the intimacy of long-hidden family stories, Shanghai Faithful offers a fresh look at Christianity in China—past, present, and future.

Chinese Buddhism and Traditional Culture

Chinese Buddhism and Traditional Culture PDF Author: Litian Fang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317519094
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Since the first century, when Buddhism entered China, the foreign religion has influenced and been influenced in turn by traditional Chinese culture, and eventually became an important part of it. That is one of the great historical themes not only for China but also for East Asia. This book explores the elements of Buddhism, including its classics, doctrines, system, and rituals, to reveal the basic connotation of Buddhism as a cultural entity. Regarding the development of Buddhism in China, it traces the spread in chronological order, from the introduction in Han Dynasties (202 BC–220 AD), to the prosperity in the Sixteen Kingdoms (ca. 304–439 AD), and then to the decline since the Five Dynasties (907–ca. 960 AD). It is noteworthy that the Buddhist schools in the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589 AD) and the Buddhist sects in Sui and Tang Dynasties (581–907 AD) contributed to the sinicization of Buddhism. This book also deals with the interesting question of the similarities and differences between Chinese Buddhism and Indian Buddhism, to examine the specific characters of the former in terms of thought and culture. In the last chapter, the external influence of Chinese Buddhism in East Asia is studied. Scholars and students in Buddhism and Chinese culture studies, especially those in Buddhist countries, will benefit from the book. Also, it will appeal to readers interested in religion, Chinese culture, and ancient Chinese history.

The Sinicization of Chinese Religions: From Above and Below

The Sinicization of Chinese Religions: From Above and Below PDF Author: Richard Madsen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004465189
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
“Sinicization” has become the slogan that guides Chinese official policy towards religion. What does it mean? Where will it lead? This book is one of the first in English that answers these questions.

Freedom of Religion in China

Freedom of Religion in China PDF Author: Asia Watch Committee (U.S.)
Publisher: Human Rights Watch
ISBN: 9781564320506
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
V. Arrests and Trials

The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva

The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva PDF Author: Shi Zhiru
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824830458
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
In modern Chinese Buddhism, Dizang is especially popular as the sovereign of the underworld. Often represented as a monk wearing a royal crown, Dizang helps the deceased faithful navigate the complex underworld bureaucracy, avert the punitive terrors of hell, and arrive at the happy realm of rebirth. The author is concerned with the formative period of this important Buddhist deity, before his underworldly aspect eclipses his connections to other religious expressions and at a time when the art, mythology, practices, and texts of his cult were still replete with possibilities. She begins by problematizing the reigning model of Dizang, one that proposes an evolution of gradual sinicization and increasing vulgarization of a relatively unknown Indian bodhisattva, Ksitigarbha, into a Chinese deity of the underworld. Such a model, the author argues, obscures the many-faceted personality and iconography of Dizang. Rejecting it, she deploys a broad array of materials (art, epigraphy, ritual texts, scripture, and narrative literature) to recomplexify Dizang and restore (as much as possible from the fragmented historical sources) what this figure meant to Chinese Buddhists from the sixth to tenth centuries. Rather than privilege any one genre of evidence, the author treats both material artifacts and literary works, canonical and noncanonical sources. Adopting an archaeological approach, she excavates motifs from and finds resonances across disparate genres to paint a vibrant, detailed picture of the medieval Dizang cult. Through her analysis, the cult, far from being an isolated phenomenon, is revealed as integrally woven into the entire fabric of Chinese Buddhism, functioning as a kaleidoscopic lens encompassing a multivalent religio-cultural assimilation that resists the usual bifurcation of doctrine and practice or "elite" and "popular" religion. The Making of a Savior Bodhisattva presents a fascinating wealth of material on the personality, iconography, and lore associated with the medieval Dizang. It elucidates the complex cultural, religious, and social forces shaping the florescence of this savior cult in Tang China while simultaneously addressing several broader theoretical issues that have preoccupied the field. Zhiru not only questions the use of sinicization as a lens through which to view Chinese Buddhist history, she also brings both canonical and noncanonical literature into dialogue with a body of archaeological remains that has been ignored in the study of East Asian Buddhism.

Inside the Church of Almighty God

Inside the Church of Almighty God PDF Author: Massimo Introvigne
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190089091
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Branded as "the new Falun Gong" by local authorities, The Church of Almighty God is today the most persecuted religious movement in China. Renowned scholar of religion Massimo Introvigne interviewed several hundred members of this once secretive movement, as well as the Chinese police officers who hunt them. The Church's belief that God has returned to earth in the shape of a Chinese woman makes its theology unique. The story of its continuing persecution in China, and of the accusations of crimes it vehemently denies having committed, reads as one of the most dramatic tales of our time.

Islam and Confucianism

Islam and Confucianism PDF Author: Osman Bakar
Publisher: University of Malaya Press
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description


Handbook on Religion in China

Handbook on Religion in China PDF Author: Stephan Feuchtwang
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1786437961
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
Informative and eye-opening, the Handbook on Religion in China provides a uniquely broad insight into the contemporary Chinese variations of Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. In turn, China's own religions and transmissions of rites and systems of divination have spread beyond China, a progression that is explored in detail across 19 chapters, written by leading experts in the field.