Sinicising Christianity

390 Pages·2017·5.524 MB·English

by  Yangwen Zheng

Sinicizing Christianity
Studies in Christian Mission
Editor in Chief
Peggy Brock (Edith Cowan University)
Editorial Board
Jean-Philippe Belleau (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
James Grayson (University of Sheffield)
David Maxwell (University of Cambridge)
VOLUME 49
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scm
Sinicizing Christianity
Edited by
Zheng Yangwen
鄭揚文
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Cover illustration: The chapel of Tao Fong Shan at Shatin, Hong Kong 1930–1935 (THOC, May 2014)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Zheng, Yangwen, editor.
Title: Sinicizing Christianity / edited by Zheng Yangwen.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2017. | Series: Studies in Christian
 mission, ISSN 0924-9389 ; Volume 49 | Includes bibliographical references
 and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016051517 (print) | LCCN 2017001332 (ebook) | ISBN
 9789004330375 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004330382 (E-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Christianity—China. | Christianity and
 culture—China—History.
Classification: LCC BR1285 .S55 2017 (print) | LCC BR1285 (ebook) | DDC
 275.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051517
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 0924-9389
isbn 978-90-04-33037-5 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-33038-2 (e-book)
Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Images viii
Author Biographies Ix
Introduction. Christianity: Towards a Theory of Sinicization
Zheng Yangwen 1
Part 1
Agents of Introduction and Enculturation
1 A Mission Without Missionaries: Chinese Catholic Clergy in Sichuan,
1746–1756 33
Robert Entenmann
2 The Role of Union Theological Seminary (New York) in Sinicizing
Christianity 55
Christopher D. Sneller
3 “Taking Jesus Back to China”: New Gospel Agents in Shanghai 82
Yuqin Huang
Part 2
Redefining Christianity for the Chinese Context
4 Christ-human and Jia Yuming’s Doctrine of Sanctification 109
Wai Luen Kwok
5 Sermon, Story, and Song in the Inculturation of Christianity in
China 138
Thomas Alan Harvey
6 Translating and Transplanting the Word of God in Chinese 167
Monica Romano
vi Contents
Part 3
Building and Singing the Kingdom of God
7 The “Sino-Christian Style”: A Major Tool for Architectural
Indigenization 197
Thomas Coomans
8 Sacred Dwellings: Protestant Ancestral Halls and Homes in Southern
Fujian 233
Chris White
9 The Sinicization of Sacred Music: A Study of T. C. Chao 261
Dennis T.W. Ng
10 Sinicizing Christian Music at Shanghai Community Church 290
Chen Ruiwen
Epilogue. Multiple Sinicizations of Multiple Christianities 319
Richard Madsen
Bibliography 327
Index 368
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the British Inter-university China Centre (BICC) for fund-
ing my research into Chinese Christianity. I am very grateful to my colleagues
Elena Barabantzeva, Xiaobing Wang, Yin-fang Zhang, and Heather Inwood at
the Centre for Chinese Studies, and to Dr. Carl Kilcourse for their help with
organising the conference “The Glocalisation of Christianity in China” in
May 2014, which has resulted in the production of this volume. There were
many great papers which for reasons of thematic coherence are not included
in this volume. I would also like to thank Thomas Harvey, James St. Andre,
Peter Ng, Kevin Ward, Peter Scott, Scott Pacey, William Schroeder, and Mark
McLeister for chairing the panels. I am very grateful to the John Rylands
Library at Deansgate for hosting the conference, to its Chinese collection cura-
tor Elizabeth Gow who exhibited the Chinese collection to delegates, and to
our Vice President, Professor Luke Georghiou, for opening the 3-day confer-
ence, and to Professor Richard Madsen for delivering the keynote speech. My
thanks also go to Jonathan Jucker and Alistair Dickins for copyediting work,
to Alan Chong, Ken Parry and Ronald Kydd for giving me permission to repro-
duce images, and to Ingrid Heijckers-Velt and Anita Opdam at Brill who put up
with my endless questions. Finally, I am grateful to my colleagues in the his-
tory department: Laurence Brown, Steven Pierce, Anindita Ghosh, Christopher
Godden, Natalie Zacek, Bertrand Taithe, Stuart Jones, Paul Fouracre, Penny
Summerfield, Dan Szechi, Pierre Fuller, Sasha Handley, Henry Miller, Frank
Mort, Georg Christ, Max Jones, and Peter Gatrell. Their intellectual curiosity,
compassion and humour sustained me over the years. How fortunate I am to
have such fantastic colleagues, without whom Manchester would be a dull
place to live and work.
Zheng Yangwen
鄭揚文
Manchester
1 August 2016
List of Images
0.1 Virgin and child 21
0.2 Jar with Jesuit emblem 21
0.3 Lacquer bureau shrine 22
0.4 Octagonal pillar with cross 24
0.5 Side of a sarcophagus with cross 24
3.1 Returnee Handbook (Campus Evangelical Fellowship, 2009) 91
7.1 Our Ladyn of Sheshan basilica in Shanghai, 1924–1935 206
7.2 Yenching University in Beijing, 1929 208
7.3 Parish church of Gaojiazhuang, 1927 212
7.4 Fu Jen University in Beijing, 1929–1930 215
7.5 The Seminary of the Disciples of the Lord at Xuanhua,
1928–1935 216
7.6 The Regional Seminary of Kaifeng, 1932 216
7.7 The Regional Seminary of Hong Kong 218
7.8 Church of Xin Hui lepers’ village, 1938 221
7.9 The Catholic catechism: Wenda xiangjie, 1928 223
7.10 Tao Fong Shan chapel at Shatin, 1930–1935 224
7.11 St. Francis of Assisi parish church at Sham Shui Po, Kowloon,
1953 225
8.1 A mid-week Christian service at the Shi ancestral home in
Shicuo 234
8.2 The larger Shen ancestral hall in Shanbian Village 237
8.3 The Xiao ancestral home in Xiaocuo 240
8.4 The Kang family ancestral hall near Xiaozha 245
8.5 Interior of the Jiang family ancestral hall 248
9.1 Eucharist Prayers, taken from Sheng Shi Ge Jing Jianyao 266
9.2 A comparison of the Chinese Gongche notation and the
five-line staff 267
9.3 The prelude of Shegdan qu 272
10.1 “Union System”, combining Western and Chinese notation 311
Author Biographies
Chen Ruiwen
is Lecturer at Ming Hua Theological College, Hong Kong; Research Associate of
the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui (Hong Kong Anglican Church). She completed
her PhD in religious studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2014. Her
research focuses on the history of Christianity in China and Chinese Christian
music. Her books include Fragrant Flowers Bloom: T. C. Chao, Bliss Wiant and
the Contextualization of Hymns in Twentieth Century China (2015) and All
Generations Shall Call You Blessed: The History of Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui St.
Mary’s Church (1912–2012) (co-authored with Philip L. Wickeri in Chinese, 2014).
Her articles include “Überlegungen zur Kontextualisierung von Kirchenmusik
in China” (Es freuet sich die Engelschar: Christliche chinesische Kunst und Musik
der Gegenwart, 2014) and “Music and Mission: Re-interpretation of Post-
Colonial Culture Criticism – Centered on The Chinese Recorder”, amongst oth-
ers. She was a visiting scholar at the Universität für Musik und darstellende
Kunst Wien (2013) and IASACT Scholar (2009). She has held piano recitals in
2003 and 2010, and she has been an accompanying pianist in churches in Hong
Kong and Shanghai. Her hymn compositions include “The Rough Path” and
“Asking”.
Thomas Coomans
is Professor at the University of Leuven, Department of Architecture, and staff
of the Raymond Lemaire International Centre for Conservation. His teach-
ing includes the history and theory of conservation, and architectural history.
He was also Adjunct Assistant Professor at The Chinese University of Hong
Kong, School of Architecture, and is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy
of Belgium for Science and the Arts. Over the past twenty years, Dr Coomans’
research on various aspects of church architecture resulted in thirteen books
and more than one hundred articles and book chapters dealing with building
archaeology, construction history, iconological interpretations of architecture,
and conservation issues. His subjects include medieval churches in the Low
Countries, monasteries of religious orders, Gothic revival, reuse of redundant
churches and more. His current research on Christian church architecture in
China from the 1840s to the 1940s combines fieldwork in China (with the School
of Archaeology of Peking University and the Cultural Heritage Conservation
Centre of Tsinghua University) and research in Western archives.
x Author Biographies
Robert Entenmann
is Professor of History and Asian Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield,
Minnesota, USA. His research examines the social history of Catholics in
eighteenth-century China. His publications include two chapters in Daniel H.
Bays, ed., Christianity in China from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (1996)
and a contribution to Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China:
635–1800 vol. 1: (2001). Five of his essays have been translated into Chinese by
Gu Weimin 顾卫民, a historian at Shanghai Normal University, and published
in Yan Huayang 鄢华阳 (Robert Entenmann) et al., Zhongguo Tianzhujiao Lishi
Yiwenji 中国天主教历史译文集 (A Collection of translated essays on the his-
tory of Chinese Catholicism), (2010). Recently he collaborated with François
Barriquand and Joseph Ruellen in the publication of the journal of a French
missionary, Sichuan: Journal de Joachim Enjobert de Martiliat, vicaire apos-
tolique, évêque d’Écrinée, 1732–1745 (2015).
Thomas Alan Harvey
is the Academic Dean of the OCMS: a doctoral research centre in Oxford
University specializing in the study of World Christianity and civil soci-
ety. His area of expertise is Christianity in China and Southeast Asia in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Dr. Harvey is author of numerous
works on Christianity in Asia and Southeast Asia. His particular interests lie
in Christianity in the public Square, relations between church and state in
Asia and more recently on Diaspora movements of people groups in Asia and
Southeast Asia. Dr. Harvey holds degrees from Duke University (PhD) and the
University of Notre Dame (MA).
Yuqin Huang
is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at East China University of Science
and Technology (ECUST) in Shanghai, China. She was a Research Fellow at the
Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen,
Germany between 2009 and 2013. Having received her PhD in Sociology at the
University of Essex, UK, her research mainly focuses on development, labor/
work, national and transnational migration, gender, family and marriage, and reli-
gion. Her articles on these topics have been published in Social Compass, China
Perspectives, Local Economy, Journal of Comparative Family Studies, Sociological
Studies, and edited volumes published by Routledge and Edward Elgar.
Wai-Luen Kwok
is Assistant Professor of Christian Theology in the Department of Religion
and Philosophy and Associate Director of the Centre for Sino-Christian