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Laamann, Lars (2018) 'Torch-Bearers of Modernity? Western Missionaries, Demonism and Exorcism in Modern China (1860s–1930s).' In: Laamann, Lars and Lee, Joseph Tse-Hei, (eds.), The Church as Safe Haven: Christianity and Community Governance in Modern China. Chicago, IL; Leiden: Brill, pp. 33-90. (Studies in Christian Mission)

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Abstract

Focusing on Chinese Christians’ engagement with popular religions, this chapter explores the complexity of indigenization as a window onto larger intellectual, cultural and religious issues confronting China during a time of rapid change. In particular, popular religious traditions of millenarian Buddhist and Daoist origins and which predated the teachings of foreign missionaries greatly impacted the indigenization of the Chinese Church. This study investigates the culture of fear and insecurity in rural China by reviewing the spiritual responses of both Catholic and Protestant missions towards demon possession and exorcism from the end of the Taiping wars to the Japanese invasion. Such a popular and often subconscious form of syncretism still characterizes many Catholic and Protestant communities in China today.

Item Type: Book Chapters
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > School of History, Religions & Philosophies > Department of History
Legacy Departments > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Department of History
ISBN: 9789004383722
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004383722_003
Date Deposited: 21 Jan 2017 15:39
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/23531

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