Envisioning an Ideal Christian Family in Republican China

Amid debates and discussions on the institution of the family in Republican China, foreign missionaries and Chinese Christians played an active role in promoting an ideal Christian family. This article investigates the three waves of prominent theological thinking that underpinned changing ideals of the Christian family throughout the Republican period: Chinese society’s encounter with the gendered ethics of the Christian community in the early Republican period, discussions of domesticity by Chinese Christians amid the social gospel movements of the 1920s, and discussions of domesticity during the National Christianizing the Home Movement. An exploration of Christian publications on domesticity points to a gendered perspective on women’s domestic roles as well as a male-dominated theological construct that attempted to reconfigure the notion of the Chinese Christian family. The discourse on the ideal Chinese Christian family had both secular and spiritual dimensions, shaped by the dynamic transnational flow of ideas and the development of local theological thinking.

The "Jesus-Mozi Dialogue" In The Revival of Mohism In The Republic Of China——Take Zhang Yijing, Wang Zhixin And Wu Leichuan As Examples

"Jesus-Mozi Dialogue" is an underflow in the revival of Mohism in the Republic of China. Since modern times, the intellectual circles have mostly taken Christianity as the "rational model" of Mohism. When it comes to the best reference for Christianity in traditional Chinese culture, Mohism is always used as an example, which has been discussed in the field of Mohism research. However, in the past, people still paid little attention to the church's view of the "Jesus-Mozi Dialogue" between Mohist School and Chinese Christians, which is a pity. This article attempts to discuss the various viewpoints of Zhang Yijing, Wang Zhixin, and Wu Leichuan on Mohism and "Mohist religion" as examples, and looks forward to giving a clear definition of the literature and the division of school attribution to the results of the "Jesus-Mozi Dialogue".

Culture Reproduction or Value Conflict? The Morally Fraught Experience of Chinese Christians in Virtual Communities

Based on Robbins' understanding that both Durkhcimian and Weberian approaches could help the study of social morality, this paper explores the dynamics of cultural reproduction and value conflicts in Chinese Christians' communication on the WcChat platform. It evaluates ten religious WeChat groups' norms and activities and categorizes them into four typologies according to their group inclusiveness and interactivity. It collects group chats from the WeChat platform and reveals the forming dynamics of group verbal abuse, and further explores the Chinese Christians' morally fraught experience in the virtual communities, ‘『his research shows that Christian values as an external force encourage Christians to fulfill their gospel mission and seek their group identity. Christians exhibit their discursive power through group norms and group behaviors. Cultural authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism arc the ideological factors that underline the exclusive group behaviors of the Christian virtual comm unities. The contradiction between exclusive and inclusive group cultures reflects the incompatibility between Chinese authoritarian tradition and the call for a more open society. Under the current social structure and cultural environment, particularistic ethics and exclusive practices would still be dominant in Chinese Christian virtual communities for a comparatively long time.

A Tentative Proposal to Use Orthodox Theological Relational Selfhood as an Alternative for Confucian-Influenced Chinese Evangelicals

Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Chinese evangelicals have rarely interacted. Even if it seems that Eastern Orthodox Christianity and its theology have hardly influenced Chinese evangelicals in the past, this article demonstrates the possibility that Orthodox theology can still indirectly transform Confucian-influenced Chinese evangelicals. Moltmann, a great contemporary Protestant theologian, is influenced deeply by Stăniloae, a great modern Eastern Orthodox theologian, particularly in the development of social trinitarian theology in Eastern Orthodox heritage. Moltmann argues that social trinitarian anthropology can prevent the social and individual problems appeared in the societies shaped by either individualism or collectivism. Selfhood is one academic language used to discuss this relationship between the self and society. Despite modernization and westernization, contemporary Chinese people are still deeply influenced by Confucian models of relational selfhood. Even for Chinese evangelicals who had converted years ago, their way of thinking and behavior might be as much Confucian as biblical. The Confucian-influenced collectivist mindset may lead to problematic selfhood and more challenging interpersonal relationships. This article uses Orthodox theology via Moltmann’s social trinitarian, Stăniloae-inspired approach to develop an alternative relational selfhood for contemporary Chinese Christians.

Christian Poetry from Tang to Republican Era

This essay surveys Christian poetry in the Tang dynasty to the Republic of China era. It discusses two basic criteria for defining the constitution and requirements of Christian poetry. It also looks at poetic elements of Christian motifs and biblical genres as they were used in Christian poetry composed by foreign missionaries, non-Christians, and Chinese Christians. This essay also describes how Chinese Christian poets used the styles of Chinese poetry to express the themes of Christianity in different historical periods. According to this period, Xu Guangqi, Wang Zheng, Wu Li, Zhao Zichen, and Bing Xin are the important Christian poets. Wu Jingxiong, Zhu Weizhi, John Chalmers, and Frederick William Baller are excellent translators who translated Hebrew poems into Chinese poetic style. The essay discusses the contributions of Chinese Christian poetry to Chinese writing and the limitations of their writing based on context.

Biblical Ecclesiology and the Chinese Church

The challenge of the Chinese Church is to explore an innovative and effective operational model of its own. This essay studies the phenomenon of the Chinese Church in mainland China but does not include those in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. It discusses the complexity of Chinese churches as they have survived and thrived over the centuries and explores the compatibility of Chinese Christians’ religious experiences with the biblical tradition of the church. It surveys the rise, the struggle, the mission, and the hope of the following churches in China: Chinese Three-Self Patriotic Protestant (TSP), Protestant Family Churches, Catholic Churches, and Russian Orthodox Churches.

Confucian Classics and the Bible

After a brief survey of the encounter between the Confucian and Christian canons, the essay discusses the issues that arose when the Bible was translated into Chinese as Shengjing (the Holy Canon). To find out how Chinese Christians (missionaries and Chinese) treat Confucian classics and the way they translate and read the Bible in light of the Confucian language/classics, the essay explores the following issues: (1) the distinction between the Bible being interpreted as the Holy Canon and Confucian classics being considered as humanistic Canons; (2) the kind of authority that can raise a jingdian (classic) into a jing (canon) in the Chinese context; and (3) the fact that, because Confucians understand canons in the light of humanistic criteria, they treat the Bible as a humanistic classic rather than a divinely revealed canon. The essay ends by introducing a Christian-Chinese intertextual reading of the Bible and the Analects and a proposal of “Sino-Christian academic biblical studies.”

A History of Biblical Interpretation in China

Since its first Protestant translation by Robert Morrison in 1823, the Chinese Bible has been earnestly used for devotional and apologetical purposes by Chinese Christians. This essay discusses why it is necessary to construct a history of biblical interpretation in China now and suggests how best to conceive it and what to include. A history of biblical interpretation has historical and hermeneutical value and it may help clarify three elements of “Chinese biblical interpretation.” It can be divided into four stages of development in correlation to the radical changes in national history and the main challenges in church history, to provide proper socio-historical contexts. For basic content, it should assess major interpreters and influential approaches in four settings, i.e. translation, church, society, and universities and discuss four inquiries regarding its reception, interpretation, appropriation, and consequence in China.

The Bible and Ethics in Chinese Society

Confucianism, the dominant ideology of Chinese culture, exerts significant influence on how Chinese Christians read the Bible for ethics. Confucian pragmatism and emphasis on ethics causes readers to accentuate the ethical function of the Bible. Early converts in the nineteenth century championed a common morality between the Bible and Confucian classics as an apologetic strategy. The Confucian ethical framework of “inner sageliness and outer kingliness” has been widely adopted by Chinese interpreters, informing how Christian intellectuals read the Bible for “national salvation by character” in the early twentieth century. When Christianity became rooted in China, Confucian concepts and maxims continued to be used to help Chinese understand the Bible. Besides Confucianism, other factors that shape how an interpreter reads the Bible for ethics include the reader’s historical and social context, theological tradition, and intellectual and educational background.