Papers by Jordan Zhixi WANG
“What Has Jesus to Do with Socialism”? Protestant Intellectuals, Political Use of the Mandarin Union Version, and the Remaking of a Socialistic Jesus in Republican China
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2019
This article explores the ways Chinese Protestant intellectuals, when facing up to the challenge ... more This article explores the ways Chinese Protestant intellectuals, when facing up to the challenge of socialism, interpreted and appropriated Chinese Gospel texts to refashion the image of Jesus. It argues that Protestant intellectuals’ political use of the Chinese Bible remade a socialistic Jesus with some religious qualifications. Both the reading of the Chinese Bible and the interaction of Chinese biblical texts with the socio-political milieus dramatically influenced the textual practice of Chinese Protestant communities in the Republican era.
Jesuits and matriarchs. Domestic worship in early modern China. By Nadine Amsler. Pp. xii + 272. Seattle, Wa: University of Washington Press, 2018. $30.00 (paper). 978 02 9574379 0
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2021
Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2020
he title of Wang Xiaoxuan's Maoism and Grassroots Religion: The Communist Revolution and the Rein... more he title of Wang Xiaoxuan's Maoism and Grassroots Religion: The Communist Revolution and the Reinvention of Religious Life in China contains two ands, both of which are thick with meaning. Readers may be tempted to interpret the first and as versus or against, in light of the common-knowledge view that Maoism was intractably hostile to religion in all forms. The second and may be taken to imply followed by, since, as many readers will be aware, the People's Republic has seen a resurgence of religious activity in recent years, a development usually dated to the period after the end of the highly destructive Cultural Revolution and the beginning of Reform and Opening. 1 If anything, readers might come to the book wondering if the antagonism between the party-state and religion has really abated, given the persistent and, in recent years, increasingly harsh suppression of religion, especially Islam.
Beyond East and West by John C. H. Wu
The Catholic Historical Review, 2021
Book Review: Saving the Nation: Chinese Protestant Elites and the Quest to Build a New China, 1922–1952 by Thomas H. Reilly
China Information, 2021
that the contentious political meaning making transpires. The photo is an odd bird. In many ways ... more that the contentious political meaning making transpires. The photo is an odd bird. In many ways it is the closest we come to a reproduction of the ‘real’, and yet we know it also as doctored and manipulated. Like the negatives through which the title shifts, the photo-forms dissected in this compelling work on visuality speak both to repression and visibility, inadmissible and unsayable but also publicly articulatable. While Hillenbrand does not use the term, we see how the photo-forms emerge as a marker and space of the liminal. While liminal spaces indicate transitions and rites of passage, they are also spaces of power – above, beyond, and outside of time and place. Hillenbrand shows us how critique is made possible through their presence.
Children's Literature and Transnational Knowledge in Modern China: Education, Religion, and Childhood. Shih-Wen Sue Chen
International Research in Children's Literature, 2021
Li Ma: Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China
Review of Religious Research, 2020
Religious Entrepreneurism in China’s Urban House Churches: The Rise and Fall of Early Rain Reformed Presbyterian Church
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2020
In recent years, there has been increasing scholarly interest in the Calvinist/Reformed theology ... more In recent years, there has been increasing scholarly interest in the Calvinist/Reformed theology and movement in contemporary Chinese Protestantism, as exemplified in the writings of such scholars ...
YongtaoChen. The Chinese Christology of T. C. Chao. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2017. 393 + xv pp
The Ecumenical Review, 2020
Religions, 2019
This article explores the integration of Marxism into the Gospel narratives of the Christian Bibl... more This article explores the integration of Marxism into the Gospel narratives of the Christian Bible in Zhu Weizhi’s Jesus the Proletarian (1950). It argues that Zhu in this Chinese Life of Jesus refashioned a Gospel according to Marxism, with a proletarian Jesus at its center, by creatively appropriating a wealth of global sources regarding historical Jesus and primitive Christianity. Zhu’s rewriting of Jesus can be appreciated as a precursor to the later Latin American liberation Christology.
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2020
This article explores the ways Chinese Protestant intellectuals, when facing up to the challenge ... more This article explores the ways Chinese Protestant intellectuals, when facing up to the challenge of socialism, interpreted and appropriated Chinese Gospel texts to refashion the image of Jesus. It argues that Protestant intellectuals’ political use of the Chinese Bible remade a socialistic Jesus with some religious qualifications. Both the reading of the Chinese Bible and the interaction of Chinese biblical texts with the socio-political milieus dramatically influenced the textual practice of Chinese Protestant communities in the Republican era.
The middle school period is seen as one when a child goes into adolescence; and during that stage... more The middle school period is seen as one when a child goes into adolescence; and during that stage, an adolescent tends to become psychologically rebellious against adults. From the perspective of religious education, it is noteworthy to understand how the religious faith of adolescents is shaped. Basing on the "faith development" theory proposed by James Fowler, Professor of Theology and Human Development at Emory University, the present paper takes as a case study the interview materials of nine middle school Christian students from three Protestant churches in City A and B along the coast of Fujian Province, China. These materials are analyzed, focusing on two central elements, that is, 1) interpersonal relationship and 2) religious WANG Zhixi 王志希 is a PhD Student in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
This article investigates the dialogue, interaction and integration of “global history of Chr... more This article investigates the dialogue, interaction and integration of “global history of Christianity” as a new “Christian historiography” from the mid-20th century and “reception history” in philosophical hermeneutics which arose at almost the same time.
First of all, originating from the reflection upon the older Western-centered historiography, “global history of Christianity” emphasizes the significance of non-Western histories of Christianity and the local responses to the Christian messages. “Glocalization”, “indigenization” and “contextualization” become key words of “global history of Christianity”, and some historians even advocate researching Christian history from the perspective of “the translation principle”.
Secondly, Christian studies, especially biblical studies, have been influenced over the past few decades by “effective history” theory of Hans-Georg Gadamer and “reception history” theory of Hans Robert Jauss. The principle of “effective history” challenges the objective assumption of the previous “historicism”; Gadamer argues for “the historicity of understanding”, and draws one's attention to the effects of “prejudice” and “tradition”. And it is asserted that the true historical thinking should always consider the “effect” or “impact” of a historical phenomenon or text in later time. Basing on the concept of “effective history”, Jauss's concept of “reception history” shifts the emphasis from the “effect” of a text to its “reception” by different readers in history.
Thirdly, unlike biblical scholars, not so many historians of Christianity discuss the methodological issue of “reception history”; however, two inaugural addresses respectively by Gerhard Ebeling and Karlfried Froehlich have already contained the hermeneutical implication of “reception history”. Continuing their arguments, we may, through the insights from “global history of Christianity”, enlarge the scope of “reception history of the Bible” to include the non-Western worlds; and the introduction of “reception history” may also supplement, advance and refine the research of “global history of Christianity”. Three case studies of history of Christianity in China by the author demonstrate the preliminary outcomes of the encounter of “global history of Christianity” and “reception history”.
The article offers an overview of the research on Christian intellectuals’ images of Jesus in Rep... more The article offers an overview of the research on Christian intellectuals’ images of Jesus in Republican China before 1949. First, concerning the primary sources, existing scholarship has utilized many articles related to images of Jesus in various Republican-era Christian journals and monographs written at that time by such renowned Christian writers as T. C. Chao, L. C. Wu, Y. T. Wu and S. C. Chang. Furthermore, Y. T. Wu in the 1920s, Wing-hung Lam in the 1980s, and Ken-pa Chin in the 2010s have also compiled collections of relevant primary sources. More primary sources may be obtained through: 1) comprehensively reading through Christian journals of the time; 2) taking into consideration translated works from the West; and 3) relying on “e-research” of several online databases. Second, regarding research approaches, most previous research took either a literary or a theological perspective. The former, focusing on literary sources, has dealt with those works written by Bingxin, Wei-chih Chu, Jiaowo Wang, and T. C. Chao, as well as S. C. Chang. The latter has mostly emphasized theology in a narrow sense. The theological conceptual frames of Christology and Soteriology, for instance, were utilized to analyze the remaking of Jesus by T. C. Chao, L. C. Wu, Y. T. Wu, or Yuming Jia. Or researchers adopted contemporary theories of political theology and public theology in order to interpret Republican Christian intellectuals’ images of Jesus. Most of the previous research, however, neglects the approach of biblical studies as one of the disciplines of theology in a broad sense. Recently, many efforts have been put into the reception history of the Bible, and biblical scholars such as Sze-kar Wan and John Yueh-Han Yieh have introduced this approach to the history of Chinese Christianity. Lastly, scholars often focus on these three types of images of Jesus: a soul savior, a character builder, and a social revolutionary.
The idea of pacifism, which Y. T. Wu, a famous Christian Intellectual in Republican China, stuck ... more The idea of pacifism, which Y. T. Wu, a famous Christian Intellectual in Republican China, stuck to for at least 20 years, has been dealt with in the previous scholarship on his life and thought. The less-attended question concerning pacifism, however, is how Wuʼs understanding, interpretation and use of various Gospel texts in different periods influence his images of Jesus. This article, taking “reception history of the Bible” as its approach, investigates this question in light of Wuʼs life and the political contexts in which he lived from 1918 to 1948 in the following three dimensions: (1) Jesusʼ love and non-violence; (2) Jesusʼ hatred of sins as well as his view on the necessity of class struggle (jieji douzheng), revolution (geming) and even violence (wuli) in pursuit of justice; and (3) Jesusʼ hatred of sinners. Firstly, Wu from late 1910s until late 1930s firmly believed that the most significant image of Jesus was his love and non-violence reflected most obviously in the Sermon on the Mount recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. And even the deterioration of Sino-Japanese relation in the 1930s did not totally sway him from this perception. Secondly, expressed in the writings of Wu in the 1920s and 1930s, Jesus who loved also hated sins (rather than sinners yet); and even though Jesus preferred non-violence, he also advocated the so-called non-violent struggle and revolution for the sake of justice and love. There were some sayings of Jesus from the Gospels interpreted by Wu to justify the above assertions, such as “I have come to send fire on the earth” and “I have come to give…division”. Since late 1930s, the pericope of Jesusʼ cleansing of the temple in the Gospels came to be used for demonstrating a violence that Jesus, under some circumstances, also exerted. And this image was able to co-exist with that of the non-violent Jesus in Wuʼs mind. Thirdly, from 1939 onward, the Jesus who only hated sins gradually evolved into one who hated sinners as well. This was persuasively argued for in his debate with Margaret H. Brown, a Canadian missionary in China, in 1948. Nonetheless, even at that time Wu still insisted that Jesus only hated the “reality” of sinners but loved their “potentiality”. On the whole, Wuʼs images of Jesus from 1918-1948 were constantly “between love and hatred”.
While translating Bible into Chinese, protestant missionaries living in the environment ... more While translating Bible into Chinese, protestant missionaries living in the environment of 19th century China also interpret and use the biblical texts in their works written in Chinese, among which Commentary on Mark's Gospel by Ernst Faber (1839-1899), one German missionary, is one typical example. The present paper will inquire into how Ernst Faber, in response to the socio-cultural context of late Qing China, interpreted and used the texts of Mark’s Gospel in his commentary, associating those specific texts with China, so as to make the "useless" Gospel into a "useful" one in the eyes of some Late Qing Chinese readers.
十九世紀新教傳教士入華後，在翻譯聖經的同時，亦開始在晚清中國的歷史處境之中對聖經文本進行「詮釋」與「使用」。德國傳教士花之安（ Ernst Faber ， 1839-1899 年）出版於 1875 年的《馬可講義》，便是一個重要典範。本文擬探討花之安在《馬可講義》之中如何因應晚清中國的社會文化處境，來「詮釋」與「使用」馬可福音文本，使該文本與中國發生聯繫，以致在某些晚清華人看來，簡直將「腐朽」的馬可福音「化為神奇」。
How does Jesus relate to the poet as well as poems? From a perspective of cultural history of Chr... more How does Jesus relate to the poet as well as poems? From a perspective of cultural history of Christianity in Republican China (1912-1949), on the one hand, Jesus becomes a poet (or the Poet) in the eyes of some Republican Christians; on the other hand, Chinese Christians begin to shape their images of Jesus in the form of poetry. And both aspects involve not only the interpretation and use of Gospel texts, but also the intellectual ethos, religio-cultural environments and socio-political contexts at that time. In short, “Jesus the Poet” in Republican China is just similar to the Jesus constructed by Western Romanticism from the late 18 century, while “Jesus in poems” written by Republican Christians is more indigenized and contextualized, albeit still with some characteristics from Western Christian traditions.
耶稣、诗人与诗，这三者有什么样的关系？从民国基督教文化史的角度出发，一方面，耶稣在一些民国基督徒的笔下成为一位诗人，即“诗人耶稣”；另一方面，民国基督徒也以诗歌的形式，塑造他们眼中的耶稣形象，即“诗中耶稣”。而无论是“诗人耶稣”，还是“诗中耶稣”，都既涉及民国基督徒对福音书文本的诠释和使用，又与他们所身处的思想氛围、宗教-文化处境以及社会-政治处境紧密相关。民国基督徒笔下的“诗人耶稣”，主要延续了18世纪末以降西方的浪漫主义思想氛围，而民国基督徒笔下的“诗中耶稣”，则在延续西方传统的同时，拥有更多本色化或处境化的特质。
「聖言」與「靈性」之間的相互關係，向來是基督徒靈修的最重要根基。本文作者以約翰．衛斯理的《日記》為例，探討這兩者間的相互作用，並特以提後三16、羅十五2兩段經文為線索，說明聖言如何滋養約翰．衛斯... more 「聖言」與「靈性」之間的相互關係，向來是基督徒靈修的最重要根基。本文作者以約翰．衛斯理的《日記》為例，探討這兩者間的相互作用，並特以提後三16、羅十五2兩段經文為線索，說明聖言如何滋養約翰．衛斯理的靈性。
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Papers by Jordan Zhixi WANG
First of all, originating from the reflection upon the older Western-centered historiography, “global history of Christianity” emphasizes the significance of non-Western histories of Christianity and the local responses to the Christian messages. “Glocalization”, “indigenization” and “contextualization” become key words of “global history of Christianity”, and some historians even advocate researching Christian history from the perspective of “the translation principle”.
Secondly, Christian studies, especially biblical studies, have been influenced over the past few decades by “effective history” theory of Hans-Georg Gadamer and “reception history” theory of Hans Robert Jauss. The principle of “effective history” challenges the objective assumption of the previous “historicism”; Gadamer argues for “the historicity of understanding”, and draws one's attention to the effects of “prejudice” and “tradition”. And it is asserted that the true historical thinking should always consider the “effect” or “impact” of a historical phenomenon or text in later time. Basing on the concept of “effective history”, Jauss's concept of “reception history” shifts the emphasis from the “effect” of a text to its “reception” by different readers in history.
Thirdly, unlike biblical scholars, not so many historians of Christianity discuss the methodological issue of “reception history”; however, two inaugural addresses respectively by Gerhard Ebeling and Karlfried Froehlich have already contained the hermeneutical implication of “reception history”. Continuing their arguments, we may, through the insights from “global history of Christianity”, enlarge the scope of “reception history of the Bible” to include the non-Western worlds; and the introduction of “reception history” may also supplement, advance and refine the research of “global history of Christianity”. Three case studies of history of Christianity in China by the author demonstrate the preliminary outcomes of the encounter of “global history of Christianity” and “reception history”.
十九世紀新教傳教士入華後，在翻譯聖經的同時，亦開始在晚清中國的歷史處境之中對聖經文本進行「詮釋」與「使用」。德國傳教士花之安（ Ernst Faber ， 1839-1899 年）出版於 1875 年的《馬可講義》，便是一個重要典範。本文擬探討花之安在《馬可講義》之中如何因應晚清中國的社會文化處境，來「詮釋」與「使用」馬可福音文本，使該文本與中國發生聯繫，以致在某些晚清華人看來，簡直將「腐朽」的馬可福音「化為神奇」。
耶稣、诗人与诗，这三者有什么样的关系？从民国基督教文化史的角度出发，一方面，耶稣在一些民国基督徒的笔下成为一位诗人，即“诗人耶稣”；另一方面，民国基督徒也以诗歌的形式，塑造他们眼中的耶稣形象，即“诗中耶稣”。而无论是“诗人耶稣”，还是“诗中耶稣”，都既涉及民国基督徒对福音书文本的诠释和使用，又与他们所身处的思想氛围、宗教-文化处境以及社会-政治处境紧密相关。民国基督徒笔下的“诗人耶稣”，主要延续了18世纪末以降西方的浪漫主义思想氛围，而民国基督徒笔下的“诗中耶稣”，则在延续西方传统的同时，拥有更多本色化或处境化的特质。