Albert Wu Meng-hsuan 吳孟軒
Recent Trends in the History of Christianity in China
This paper offers a survey of recent works in the history of Christianity in China. In 1982, Jacques Gernet’s Chine et christianisme, action et réaction catalyzed a shift in the ways scholars wrote about Christian missions in China. Since the end of World War II, much of the histories had focused on the history of conflict between Jesuit missionaries and the Chinese they sought to convert, and Gernet’s book represented a culminating statement on the philosophies that underpinned an opposition between “Chinese” and “Western” civilizations. Since Gernet’s work, however, scholars have produced excellent works that have challenged the view of Sino-Christian contact as one of failure. Rather, they have argued that Chinese Christianity was a “Chinese” religion, one that drew upon, incorporated, and deployed indigenous creative energies. This paper reflects on this paradigm shift, seeking to situate it within the broader geo-political, cultural, social changes from the 1980s to the present. It also engages both with the pitfalls and the challenges of how an engagement with the “global turn” in historical studies can contribute to the study of the history of Christianity in China.