Making Catholicism Chinese : the Catholic Church in a modernizing China / Stephanie M. Wong.
| Author/creator | Wong, Stephanie M. author. |
| Format | Book |
| Publication | New York : Oxford University Press, [2025] |
| Copyright Date | ©2025 |
| Description | vii, 249 pages ; 24 cm |
| Subjects |
| Contents | Part 1. Setting the stage -- Catholic witness and Chinese religion in Republican era China -- Transnational, national, and local : Catholicism in semi-colonized China -- Part 2. Making the Church Chinese -- The early life of Vincent Lebbe -- A Church like any other-lobbying for a Chinese episcopate -- Race and the local church : theological analysis -- Part 3. The Church in service of nation -- The later life of Vincent Lebbe -- A Church for Chinese culture : shaping aesthetics -- A Church for the modern state : defending the nation -- Mission and politics : theological analysis -- Conclusion: Indigenization beyond nationalization. |
| Abstract | "Making Catholicism Chinese examines a little-known chapter of Catholic life in China, when a coalition of foreign-born and Chinese Catholics strove to make the Church indigenously "Chinese." This book demonstrates how the indigenization movement, begun as a bid to render Catholicism a Chinese religion, came to support Chinese state-building instead. In the first half of the 20th century, China transformed from a faltering and semi-colonized empire to a tentatively pluralistic republic to an increasingly militarized one-party state. Religious communities were driven to 'modernize' for the sake of the new nation. In the case of Catholicism, the Belgian-born Lazarist Vincent Lebbe most publicly advocated for a Chinese Church, though the wider movement was guided by an array of Chinese clergy, newspaper magnates, scholar-politicians, artists, and army medics and combatants striving in various ways to be both faithful Catholics and patriotic citizens. Their indigenization project coincided with a national embrace of modernity as an ideal, leading Catholics to take up a variety of causes: promoting Chinese clergy as bishops in opposition to French dominance in the missions, experimenting with new forms of education and mass media, and ultimately joining the right-leaning Nationalist regime's war effort against Japan. Stephanie Wong thoroughly documents this history and definitively shows that the movement failed to establish the local Church as a distinct Chinese religion." -- Publisher, page four of cover. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN | 9780197623695 |
| ISBN | 0197623697 (hardback) |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | Order on Demand Title | Order On Demand | ✔ Available | Click to order this title |