Ancestors, virgins, & friars : Christianity as a local religion in late Imperial China

Resource Information

The work Ancestors, virgins, & friars : Christianity as a local religion in late Imperial China represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Bowdoin College Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Ancestors, virgins, & friars : Christianity as a local religion in late Imperial China

Title remainder

Christianity as a local religion in late Imperial China

Statement of responsibility

Eugenio Menegon

Title variation

Ancestors, virgins, and friars

Creator

• Menegon, Eugenio, 1966-

Subject

• China -- Church history
• China -- Missions | History
• Christianity -- China
• Geschichte 1630-1840

Language

eng

Summary

"Christianity is often praised as an agent of Chinese modernization or damned as a form of cultural and religious imperialism. In both cases, Christianity's foreignness and the social isolation of converts have dominated this debate. This book aims to uncover another story. In the sixteenth century, European missionaries brought a foreign and global religion to China. Converts then transformed this new religion into a local one." "Focusing on the still-active Catholic communities of Fuan county in northeast Fujian, this project addresses three main questions. Why did people convert? How did converts and missionaries transform a global and foreign religion into a local religion? What does Christianity's localization in Fuan tell us about the relationship between late imperial Chinese society and religion?" "The study's implications extend beyond the issue of Christianity in China to the wider fields of religious and social history and the early modern history of global intercultural relations. The book suggests that Christianity became part of a pre-existing pluralistic, local religious space and, the author argues, that we underestimate late imperial society's tolerance for "heterodoxy." The view from Fuan offers an original account of how a locality created its own religious culture in Ming and Qing China."--BOOK JACKET

Member of

• Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series, 69

Cataloging source

DLC

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

• dictionaries
• bibliography

Series statement

Harvard-Yenching Institute monograph series

Series volume

69