Christianity is one of the fastest growing religions in China. Despite its long history in China and its significant indigenization or intertwinement with Chinese society and culture, Christianity continues to generate suspicion among political elites and intense debates among broader communities within China. This unique book applies socio-cultural methods in the study of contemporary Christianity. Through a wide range of empirical analyses of the complex and highly diverse experience of Christianity in contemporary China, it examines the fraught processes by which various forms and practices of Christianity interact with the Chinese social, political and cultural spheres. Contributions by top scholars in the field are structured in the following sections: Enchantment, Nation and History, Civil Society, and Negotiating Boundaries. This book offers a major contribution to the field and provides a timely, wide-ranging assessment of Christianity in Contemporary China.

This book addresses the historical relationship that has arisen between the concept of capitalism and the idea of China. Formulated by European intellectuals in order to identify the social formation in which they found themselves, capitalism was portrayed as unique to Europe and as an organic outgrowth of Western civilization. In this way, China was rejected as a model of civilization, and seen merely as despotic, feudal or stagnant. This Eurocentric judgement has hung over all subsequent thinking about China, even influencing Chinese perceptions of their own history. The aim of this collaborative project is to examine how the experience of capitalism as a European social formation and as a world-system has shaped knowledge of China. In addition the volume aims to establish new foundations on which a theory of Chinese society might be built, in order to perceive and understand Chinese development in less Eurocentric terms.

From a unique Global South Political Economy perspective, this volume showcases outstanding works on the economic, social, and political development of China. It covers topics such as the Chinese development model, the evolution of social classes, the country's projection on the global stage, and the recent technological dispute with the United States. It does so by avoiding the trap (particularly perilous in the case of China) of isolating the economy from politics. The authors demonstrate that without understanding the contradictory movements of these two dimensions in their historical evolution, it is impossible to grasp contemporary China. Contributors are: Esther Majerowicz, Carlos Aguiar de Medeiros, Isabela Nogueira, Edemilson Paraná, Valéria Lopes Ribeiro and Hao Qi.

This pathbreaking volume will force a reassessment of many common assumptions about the relationship between Christianity and modern China. The overall thrust of the twenty essays is that despite the conflicts and tension that often have characterized relations between Christianity and China, in fact Christianity has been, for the past two centuries or more, putting down roots within Chinese society, and it is still in the process of doing so. Thus Christianity is here interpreted not just as a Western religion that imposed itself on China, but one that was becoming a Chinese religion, as Buddhism did centuries ago. Eschewing the usual focus on foreign missionaries, as is customary, this research effort is China-centered, drawing on Chinese sources, including government and organizational documents, private papers, and interviews. The essays are organized into four major sections: Christianity’s role in Qing society, including local conflicts (6 essays); ethnicity (3 essays); women (5 essays); and indigenization of the Christian effort (6 essays). The editor has provided sectional introductions to highlight the major themes in each section, as well as a general Introduction.

Studying Christianity in China introduces an emerging academic trend in contemporary Chinese scholarship. Through qualitative interviews with leading experts in Chinese Christian studies, Naomi Thurston has investigated the ongoing conversation between China and Christianity. Since the 1980s, this conversation has given rise to an interdisciplinary academic field that is quickly gaining traction as a cutting-edge, cross-cultural discourse. The Chinese intellectuals driving this field are encountered as unique transmitters of cultural knowledge: they are cultural mediators working in a range of humanities and social science disciplines who are not only re-interpreting Western theology, but are also lending a new voice to Chinese expressions of the Christian faith. As such, they are at the forefront of a novel force in World Christianity.

Prominent political theorist considers the intertwined relationship between capitalism and Christianity and its effects on contemporary U.S. politics.

Most ecotheologies build their arguments on the Bible’s creation-story and resurrection-narrative in the hope to save the ecology through spiritual meditation, reforming capitalism, and/or deliberative democracy. However, based on a Chinese Christian social scientist’s perspective, this book argues that few of these ecotheologies are theologically and empirically valid. Instead, it proposes a neuro-institutional post-ecology theology that builds on the major themes of the Last Judgment to refocus ecotheology toward evangelism and to adapt ecotheology to capitalism and democracy in order to embrace the “already but not yet” impacts of the inevitable total destruction of the ecology in the near future. The vanities in current ecotheologies are divided into religious, economic, and political categories. Among the major ones discussed in this book are the vanities of ecological meditation theology, leftist and rightist economic theologies, as well as ecotheologies of green authoritarianism and deliberative democracy. Even if these ecotheologies work perfectly as they were intended to, global ecological crises have passed the point of no return (i.e., post-ecology) and rendering all of them a global vanity. Based on a Chinese Christian social scientist’s perspective, this book proposes a moderate course of ecological spirituality, economic behaviors, and democratic actions, but with a radical devotion to crisis management and evangelism in preparation for the Doomsdays. This book is unique in its balanced interdisciplinary composition, employing theories from cognitive science, Christian theology, economics, and political science.

The first work of its kind, this strategic assessment of China's national security reveals the nation's intentions, capabilities, and threats—and their implications for the United States and the world. As China continues to develop the strategic means to advance its national interests in Asia and around the world, assessing its role in international security is the greatest strategic challenge now faced by the United States and its allies. China and International Security facilitates this critically important understanding, analyzing topics that range from strategic geography and orientation to gender ratios. Using detailed case studies and sharing expert insights, the work provides historical, internal, and contemporary analyses that reveal the nature and character of China's national security. This three-volume set is written for scholars, students, and policymakers. The volumes offer in-depth articles penned by intelligence professionals and journalists, as well as entries by scholars in fields as diverse as international politics, history, and strategic studies. While other works may attempt to predict the future of China's rise or the nature of China's future bilateral relationships, none so thoroughly examines the totality of China's domestic, regional, and international security—and their implications.

For this important selection from Weber, sections of text from Weber's major works (Gesammelte, Aufsatze Zur Religionssoziologie, including The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; General Economic History; and The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilisations) have been carefully edited and substantially translated to form a coherent and integrated volume. Professor Andreski's aim has been to use Weber's own works to explain crucial turns in the evolution of societies and cultures, while eliminating the difficulties of language and frequent mistranslation which have previously made Weber so difficult and baffling for students new to his work. An essay by Andreski introduces the selections, which are centred on Weber's principal interest, the relationship between capitalism, religion and bureaucracy. He seeks to correct those misinterpretations of Weber's work which have stressed his classification, rather than his attempts to theorise and explain social phenomena on the basis of a comparitive analysis of universal historical trends. This book was first published in 1983.