Western missionaries in China were challenged by something they could not have encountered in their native culture; most Westerners were Christian, and competitions in their own countries were principally denominational. Once they entered China they unwittingly became spiritual merchants who marketed Christianity as only one religion among the long-established purveyors of other religions, such as the masters of Buddhist and Daoist rites. A Voluntary Exile explores the convergence of cultures. This collection of new and insightful research considers themes of religious encounter and accommodation in China from 1552 to the present, and confronts how both Western Europeans and indigenous Chinese mitigated the cultural and religious antagonisms that resulted from cultural misunderstanding. The studies in this work identify areas where missionary accommodation in China has succeeded and failed, and offers new insights into what contributed to cultural conflict and confluence. Each essay responds in some way to the "accommodationist" approach of Western missionaries and Christianity, focusing on new areas of inquiry. For example, Michael Maher, SJ, considers the educational and religious formation of Matteo Ricci prior to his travels to China, and how Ricci's intellectual approach was connected to his so-called "accommodationist method" during the late Ming. Eric Cunningham explores the hackneyed assertion that Francis Xavier's mission to Asia was a "failure" due to his low conversion rates, suggesting that Xavier's "failure" instigated the entire Chinese missionary enterprise of the 16th and 17th centuries. And, Liu Anrong confronts the hybridization of popular Chinese folk religion with Catholicism in Shanxi province. The voices in this work derive from divergent scholarly methodologies based on new research, and provide the reader a unique encounter with a variety of disciplinary views. This unique volume reaches across oceans, cultures, political systems, and religious traditions to provide important new research on the complexities of cultural encounters between China and the West.

While Protestant Christians made up only a small percentage of China's overall population during the Republican period, they were heavily represented among the urban elite. Protestant influence was exercised through churches, hospitals, and schools, and reached beyond these institutions into organizations such as the YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association) and YWCA (Young Women's Christian Association). The YMCA's city associations drew their membership from the urban elite and were especially influential within the modern sectors of urban society. Chinese Protestant leaders adapted the social message and practice of Christianity to the conditions of the republican era. Key to this effort was their belief that Christianity could save China - that is, that Christianity could be more than a religion focused on saving individuals, but could also save a people, a society, and a nation. Saving the Nation recounts the history of the Protestant elite beginning with their participation in social reform campaigns in the early twentieth century, continuing through their contribution to the resistance against Japanese imperialism, and ending with Protestant support for a social revolution. The story Thomas Reilly tells is one about the Chinese Protestant elite and the faith they adopted and adapted, Social Christianity. But it is also a broader story about the Chinese people and their struggle to strengthen and renew their nation - to build a New China.

Occupying much of imperial China's Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) was no ordinary peasant revolt. What most distinguished this dramatic upheaval from earlier rebellions were the spiritual beliefs of the rebels. The core of the Taiping faith focused on the belief that Shangdi, the high God of classical China, had chosen the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. How were the Taiping rebels, professing this new creed, able to mount their rebellion and recruit multitudes of followers in their sweep through the empire? Thomas Reilly argues that the Taiping faith, although kindled by Protestant sources, developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion whose conception of its sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese empire. The Taiping rebels denounced the divine pretensions of the imperial title and the sacred character of the imperial office as blasphemous usurpations of Shangdi's title and position. In place of the imperial institution, the rebels called for restoration of the classical system of kingship. Previous rebellions had declared their contemporary dynasties corrupt and therefore in need of revival; the Taiping, by contrast, branded the entire imperial order blasphemous and in need of replacement. In this study, Reilly emphasizes the Christian elements of the Taiping faith, showing how Protestant missionaries built on earlier Catholic efforts to translate Christianity into a Chinese idiom. Prior studies of the rebellion have failed to appreciate how Hong Xiuquan's interpretation of Christianity connected the Taiping faith to an imperial Chinese cultural and religious context. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom shows how the Bible--in particular, a Chinese translation of the Old Testament--profoundly influenced Hong and his followers, leading them to understand the first three of the Ten Commandments as an indictment of the imperial order. The rebels thus sought to destroy imperial culture along with its institutions and Confucian underpinnings, all of which they regarded as blasphemous. Strongly iconoclastic, the Taiping followers smashed religious statues and imperially approved icons throughout the lands they conquered. By such actions the Taiping Rebellion transformed--at least for its followers but to some extent for all Chinese--how Chinese people thought about religion, the imperial title and office, and the entire traditional imperial and Confucian order. This book makes a major contribution to the study of the Taiping Rebellion and to our understanding of the ideology of both the rebels and the traditional imperial order they opposed. It will appeal to scholars in the fields of Chinese history, religion, and culture and of Christian theology and church history.

Occupying much of imperial China's Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) was no ordinary peasant revolt. What most distinguished this dramatic upheaval from earlier rebellions were the spiritual beliefs of the rebels. The core of the Taiping faith focused on the belief that Shangdi, the high God of classical China, had chosen the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. How were the Taiping rebels, professing this new creed, able to mount their rebellion and recruit multitudes of followers in their sweep through the empire? Thomas Reilly argues that the Taiping faith, although kindled by Protestant sources, developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion whose conception of its sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese empire. The Taiping rebels denounced the divine pretensions of the imperial title and the sacred character of the imperial office as blasphemous usurpations of Shangdi's title and position. In place of the imperial institution, the rebels called for restoration of the classical system of kingship. Previous rebellions had declared their contemporary dynasties corrupt and therefore in need of revival; the Taiping, by contrast, branded the entire imperial order blasphemous and in need of replacement. In this study, Reilly emphasizes the Christian elements of the Taiping faith, showing how Protestant missionaries built on earlier Catholic efforts to translate Christianity into a Chinese idiom. Prior studies of the rebellion have failed to appreciate how Hong Xiuquan's interpretation of Christianity connected the Taiping faith to an imperial Chinese cultural and religious context. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom shows how the Bible--in particular, a Chinese translation of the Old Testament--profoundly influenced Hong and his followers, leading them to understand the first three of the Ten Commandments as an indictment of the imperial order. The rebels thus sought to destroy imperial culture along with its institutions and Confucian underpinnings, all of which they regarded as blasphemous. Strongly iconoclastic, the Taiping followers smashed religious statues and imperially approved icons throughout the lands they conquered. By such actions the Taiping Rebellion transformed--at least for its followers but to some extent for all Chinese--how Chinese people thought about religion, the imperial title and office, and the entire traditional imperial and Confucian order. This book makes a major contribution to the study of the Taiping Rebellion and to our understanding of the ideology of both the rebels and the traditional imperial order they opposed. It will appeal to scholars in the fields of Chinese history, religion, and culture and of Christian theology and church history.

Western missionaries in China were challenged by something they could not have encountered in their native culture; most Westerners were Christian, and competitions in their own countries were principally denominational. Once they entered China they unwittingly became spiritual merchants who marketed Christianity as only one religion among the long-established purveyors of other religions, such as the masters of Buddhist and Daoist rites. A Voluntary Exile explores the convergence of cultures. This collection of new and insightful research considers themes of religious encounter and accommodation in China from 1552 to the present, and confronts how both Western Europeans and indigenous Chinese mitigated the cultural and religious antagonisms that resulted from cultural misunderstanding. The studies in this work identify areas where missionary accommodation in China has succeeded and failed, and offers new insights into what contributed to cultural conflict and confluence. Each essay responds in some way to the "accommodationist" approach of Western missionaries and Christianity, focusing on new areas of inquiry. For example, Michael Maher, SJ, considers the educational and religious formation of Matteo Ricci prior to his travels to China, and how Ricci's intellectual approach was connected to his so-called "accommodationist method" during the late Ming. Eric Cunningham explores the hackneyed assertion that Francis Xavier's mission to Asia was a "failure" due to his low conversion rates, suggesting that Xavier's "failure" instigated the entire Chinese missionary enterprise of the 16th and 17th centuries. And, Liu Anrong confronts the hybridization of popular Chinese folk religion with Catholicism in Shanxi province. The voices in this work derive from divergent scholarly methodologies based on new research, and provide the reader a unique encounter with a variety of disciplinary views. This unique volume reaches across oceans, cultures, political systems, and religious traditions to provide important new research on the complexities of cultural encounters between China and the West.