Text and Context in the Modern History of Chinese Religions

Text and Context in the Modern History of Chinese Religions
Author: Philip Clart
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-02-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004424164

Text and Context in the Modern History of Chinese Religions is an edited volume (Philip Clart, David Ownby, and Wang Chien-ch’uan) offering essays on the modern history of redemptive societies in China and Vietnam, with a particular focus on their textual production.

The People and the Dao

The People and the Dao
Author: Philip Clart
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 620
Release: 2020-12-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000156567

The papers in this volume go back to a conference held September 14-15, 2002, at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C., in honour of Prof. Daniel L. Overmyer on his retirement. The contributions pay tribute to this renowned scholar of Chinese religious traditions, whose work is a constant reminder to look beyond text to context, beyond idea to practice, to study religion as it was and is lived by real people rather than as an abstract system of ideas and doctrines. Contents PHILIP CLART: Introduction RANDALL L. NADEAU: A Critical Review of Daniel L. Overmyer’s Contribution to the Study of Chinese Religions. I. Popular Sects and Religious Movements HUBERT SEIWERT: The Transformation of Popular Religious Movements of the Ming and Qing Dynasties: A Rational Choice Interpretation SHIN-YI CHAO: The Precious Volume of Bodhisattva Zhenwu Attaining the Way. A Case Study of the Worship of Zhenwu (Perfected Warrior) in Ming-Qing Sectarian Groups CHRISTIAN JOCHIM: Popular Lay Sects and Confucianism: A Study Based on the Way of Unity in Postwar Taiwan SOO KHIN WAH: The Recent Development of the Yiguan Dao Fayi Chongde Sub-Branch in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand PHILIP CLART: Merit beyond Measure. Notes on the Moral (and Real) Economy of Religious Publishing in Taiwan JEAN DEBERNARDI: "Ascend to Heaven and Stand on a Cloud." Daoist Teaching and Practice at Penang’s Taishang Laojun Temple. II. Historical and Ethnographic Studies of Chinese Popular Religion JOHN LAGERWEY: The History and Sociology of Religion in Changting County, Fujian KENNETH DEAN: The Growth of Local Control over Cultural and Environmental Resources in Ming and Qing Coastal Fujian PAUL R. KATZ: Religion, Recruiting and Resistance in Colonial Taiwan: A Case Study of the Xilai An Incident, 1915 WANG CHIEN-CH’UAN. Transl. PHILIP CLART: The White Dragon Hermitage and the Spread of the Eight Generals Procession Troupe in Taiwan TUEN WAI MARY YEUNG: Rituals and Beliefs of Female Performers in Cantonese Opera JORDAN PAPER: The Role of Possession Trance in Chinese Culture and Religion: A Comparative Overview from the Neolithic to the Present. III. The Religious Life of Clerics, Literati, and Emperors JUDITH BOLTZ: On the Legacy of Zigu and a Manual on Spirit-writing in Her Name STEPHEN ESKILDSEN: Death, Immortality, and Spirit Liberation in Northern Song Daoism. The Hagiographical Accounts of Zhao Daoyi ROBERTO K. ONG: Chen Shiyuan and Chinese Dream Theory BAREND J. TER HAAR: Yongzheng and His Buddhist Abbots. Glossary – Index

Intellectual History of Key Concepts

Intellectual History of Key Concepts
Author: Gregory Adam Scott
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110547821

The three-volume project 'Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions' is a timely review of the history of the study of Chinese religions, reconsiders the present state of analytical and methodological theories, and initiates a new chapter in the methodology of the field itself. The three volumes raise interdisciplinary and cross-tradition debates, and engage methodologies for the study of East Asian religions with Western voices in an active and constructive manner. Within the overall project, this volume addresses the intellectual history and formation of critical concepts that are foundational to the Chinese religious landscape. These concepts include lineage, scripture, education, discipline, religion, science and scientism, sustainability, law and rites, and the religious sphere. With these topics and approaches, this volume serves as a reference for graduate students and scholars interested in Chinese religions, the modern cultural and intellectual history of China (including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese communities overseas), intellectual and material history, and the global academic discourse of critical concepts in the study of religions.

Paradigm Shifts in Early and Modern Chinese Religion

Paradigm Shifts in Early and Modern Chinese Religion
Author: John Lagerwey
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2018-10-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 900438572X

From the fifth century BC to the present and dealing with Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religion, this book explores the four periods of paradigm shift in the intertwined histories of Chinese religion, politics, and culture. It serves as the introduction to the eight-volume Early and Modern Chinese Religion.

Religion in China and Its Modern Fate

Religion in China and Its Modern Fate
Author: Paul R. Katz
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2014-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1611685443

Paul R. Katz has composed a fascinating account of the fate of Chinese religions during the modern era by assessing mutations of communal religious life, innovative forms of religious publishing, and the religious practices of modern Chinese elites traditionally considered models of secular modernity. The author offers a rare look at the monumental changes that have affected modern Chinese religions, from the first all-out assault on them during the 1898 reforms to the eve of the Communist takeover of the mainland. Tracing the ways in which the vast religious resources (texts, expertise, symbolic capital, material wealth, etc.) that circulated throughout Chinese society during the late imperial period were reconfigured during this later era, Katz sheds new light on modern Chinese religious life and the understudied nexus between religion and modern political culture. Religion in China and Its Modern Fate will appeal to a broad audience of religionists and historians of modern China.

The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China

The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China
Author: Ying-shih Yü
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0231553609

Why did modern capitalism not arise in late imperial China? One famous answer comes from Max Weber, whose The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism gave a canonical analysis of religious and cultural factors in early modern European economic development. In The Religions of China, Weber contended that China lacked the crucial religious impetus to capitalist growth that Protestantism gave Europe. The preeminent historian Ying-shih Yü offers a magisterial examination of religious and cultural influences in the development of China’s early modern economy, both complement and counterpoint to Weber’s inquiry. The Religious Ethic and Mercantile Spirit in Early Modern China investigates how evolving forms of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism created and promulgated their own concepts of the work ethic from the late seventh century into the Qing dynasty. The book traces how religious leaders developed the spiritual significance of labor and how merchants adopted this religious work ethic, raising their status in Chinese society. However, Yü argues, China’s early modern mercantile spirit was restricted by the imperial bureaucratic priority on social order. He challenges Marxists who championed China’s “sprouts of capitalism” during the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries as well as other modern scholars who credit Confucianism with producing dramatic economic growth in East Asian countries. Yü rejects the premise that China needed an early capitalist stage of development; moreover, the East Asian capitalism that flourished in the later half of the twentieth century was essentially part of the spread of global capitalism. Now available in English translation, this landmark work has been greatly influential among scholars in East Asia since its publication in Chinese in 1987.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions
Author: Randall L. Nadeau
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2012-05-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1405190310

Comprising the most up-to-date, interdisciplinary research on the study of Chinese religious beliefs and cultural practices, this volume explores the rich and complex religious and philosophical traditions that have developed and flourished in one of the world's oldest civilizations. Covers the main Chinese traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism as well as Christianity and Islam Features a unique organizational structure, with groups of readings focused on historical, traditions-based, and topical elements of Chinese religion Explores a number of contemporary religious topics, including gender, nature, asceticism, material culture, and gods and spirits Brings together a team of authors who are experts in their sub-fields, providing readers with the latest research in a rapidly growing discipline

State of the Field and Disciplinary Approaches

State of the Field and Disciplinary Approaches
Author: André Laliberté
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2019-08-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110546965

The three-volume project 'Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions' presents a history of the study of Chinese religions. It evaluates the current state of scholarship, discusses a variety of analytical approaches and theories about methodology, epistemology, and the ontology of the field. The three books display an interdisciplinary approach and offer debates that transcend national traditions. It engages with a variety of methodologies for the study of East Asian religions and promotes dialogues with Western and Chinese voices. This volume covers successive historical stages in the study of religion in modern China, draws out the genealogy of major figures and intellectual achievements in a variety of research traditions, and highlights as well the challenges and evolutions experienced by the main disciplines in the last 30 years. This volume serves as a reference for graduate students and scholars interested by religions in modern Chinese societies (i.e., mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Chinese communities oversea). Using a wide range of methods, from textual analysis to fieldwork, it presents case studies via the disciplines of religious studies, anthropology, sociology, history, and political science.

Communicating with the Gods

Communicating with the Gods
Author: Matthias Schumann
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 672
Release: 2023-10-09
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9004677909

Few religious innovations have shaped Chinese history like the emergence of spirit-writing during the Song dynasty. From a divinatory technique it evolved into a complex ritual practice used to transmit messages and revelations from the Gods. This resulted in the production of countless religious scriptures that now form an essential corpus, widely venerated and recited to this day, that is still largely untapped by research. Using historical and ethnographic approaches, this volume for the first time offers a comprehensive overview of the history of spirit-writing, examining its evolution over a millennium, the practices and technologies used, and the communities involved.

Chinese Religions

Chinese Religions
Author: Christian Jochim
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Total Pages: 238
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN:

Covers Confucianism, Taoism, and Chinese Buddhism focusing on the interaction between religion and aspects of Chinese culture such as the family, the community, the arts, etc.