The Protestant Community On Modern Taiwan

Religion in Modern Taiwan takes a new look at Taiwan's current religious traditions and their fortunes during the twentieth century. Beginning with the cession of Taiwan to Japan in 1895 and the currents of modernization that accompanied it, the essays move on to explore the developments that have taken place as Buddhists, Daoists, Christians, non-Han aborigines, and others have confronted, resisted, and adapted to (even thrived in) the many upheavals of the modern period. An overview of Taiwan's current religious scene is followed by a comprehensive look at the state of religion in the country prior to the end of World War II and the return of Taiwan to Chinese sovereignty. The remaining essays probe aspects of change within individual religious traditions. The final chapter analyzes changes that took place in the scholarly study and interpretation of religion in Taiwan during the course of the twentieth century. Religion in Modern Taiwan will be read with interest by students and scholars of Chinese religion, religion in Taiwan, the modern history of Taiwan, and by those concerned with issues of religion and modernization. Contributors: Chang Hsun, Philip Clart, Shiun-wey Huang, Christian Jochim, Charles B. Jones, Paul Katz, André Laliberté, Lee Fong-mao, Randall Nadeau, Julian Pas, Barbara Reed, Murray A. Rubinstein.

This book examines the transformation of values in China since 1850, first in the “secular” realms of economics, science, medicine, aesthetics, media and gender, and then in each of the major religions (Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity) and in Marxist discourse.

Although Christianity has been a minority religion in Chinese societies, Christians have been powerful catalysts of social activism in seeking to establish democracy and rule of law in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and diasporic communities. The chapters gathered in this collection reveal the vital influence of Christian individuals and groups on social, political, and legal activism in Chinese societies. Written from a range of disciplinary and geographical perspectives, the chapters develop a coherent narrative of Christian activism that illuminates its specific historical, theological, and cultural contexts. Analyzing campaigns for human rights, universal suffrage, and other political reforms, this volume uncovers the complex dynamics of Christian activism, highlighting its significant contributions to the democratization of Greater China.

The missional church conversation continues to make a vital contribution to thinking about congregations and their contexts, addressing the essential question What does it really mean to be church? This book offers substantial, clarifying insights into that ongoing dialogue. Contributors: Mark Lau Branson James Tzu-Kao Chai Mary Sue Dehmlow Dreier Terri Martinson Elton Scott Frederickson Joon Ho Lee Gary M. Simpson Craig Van Gelder

An illustrated A to Z reference containing over 600 entries providing information on the theology, people, historical events, institutions and movements related to Protestantism.

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan offers a comprehensive overview of both contemporary Taiwan and the Taiwan studies field. Each contribution summarises the major findings in the field and highlights long-term trends, recent observations and possible future developments in Taiwan. Written by an international team of experts, the chapters included in the volume form an accessible and fascinating insight into contemporary Taiwan. Up-to-date, interdisciplinary, and academically rigorous, the Handbook will be of interest to students, academics, policymakers and others in search of reliable information on Taiwanese politics, economics, culture and society.

George Leslie Mackay (1844–1901), the famous Canadian Presbyterian missionary who came to northern Formosa (Taiwan) in 1872 and preached specifically with aborigines in mind, is the subject of an interdisciplinary study by seven independent scholars interested in the nineteenth-century imperial project and Christian mission to China. Importantly, Mackay’s mission defies such binary opposites as East and West: the missionary a conduit of an earlier Scottish-Canadian spirituality adapted to Taiwan that allowed converts to appropriate the Presbyterian faith on their own terms; the mission field in which he operated a “biculture” of foreign initiative and aboriginal agency working hand in hand. Mackay’s ordination of aboriginal ministers, giving us the Northern Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan (PCT), was a bold departure from the imperial, Anglo-Canadian, Presbyterian norm. So, too, his marriage to a Taiwanese slave-girl, Chhang-mia, and the arranged interracial marriages that he performed between select Chinese ministers and female Taiwanese graduates (which included his two daughters). Mackay’s missionary writing and famous autobiography From Far Formosa—a fine specimen of the nineteenth-century heroic memoir genre—is notable for its defense of both gender and racial equality, and despite its unmistakable patriarchal leanings. Mackay’s repudiation of Darwinism and belief in an early type of creation science therein also locates the so-called “Barbarian Bible Man” opposite such virulent, racist theorizing as Social Darwinism and Eugenics. He was a dentist not an abortionist. A relative unknown to most Western scholars of religion, Mackay is Taiwan’s most famous native son, represented on the national stage in 2008 as a sky god and Taiwanese animistic deity of supernatural power and political influence par excellent. Although a product of the colonial times in which he lived, post-colonial scholars who ignore Mackay, his life and legacy, clearly do so at some peril.