Search Results (12)

Walter Henry Medhurst’s translation of The Shoo King (尚書/書經) represents the first complete English rendering of this classic Chinese text. However, limited attention has been given to how Medhurst navigated the tension between Confucian thought in The Shoo King and his own religious beliefs, as well as his treatment of this tension in comparison to James Legge, Joseph de Prémare, Walter Gorn Old, and his interpretation in contrast to Cai Shen’s annotated edition of The Shoo King. This study adopts a “history of the book” approach to examine how Medhurst, as a Protestant missionary, translated key Confucian anthropocentric concepts, including “Ren” (仁), the Doctrine of Mind-Nature, people-centered governance, and religious ideas related to the divine. Through extensive textual analysis and comparison with other scholars’ translations, this study finds that Medhurst adhered to the principle of textual fidelity, striving to minimize the interference of his religious stance with the original meaning of Confucian philosophy. His translation of terms varied according to the context, especially reflecting the shift in The Shoo King from the idea of “Heaven’s mandate is inviolable” to “Heaven is not trustworthy.” Additionally, he enhanced the communication of the original text’s meanings through paratextual elements such as illustrations and footnotes, while retaining Cai Shen’s historical background interpretations and significantly reducing the philological commentary, presenting a “concise and focused” annotation approach. These findings highlight Medhurst’s unique contribution to the cross-cultural transmission of the Confucian canonical text. Full article

This article draws on political theology to provide a history of sovereignty (law-generating power) and legality (law-maintaining power) across an overlooked early modern trilogy of historical events. (1) The Kingdom of Kongo voluntarily adopted Catholicism in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Catholicism became a core part of its political identity and a major way through which Kongo resisted Portuguese exploitation and enslavement. However, Kongo’s compromises with Portuguese power gave rise to a heretical movement that triggered conflict, reforms, and mass enslavement and deportation. Some of those deported found themselves in South Carolina. (2) Deportees may have been part of a ditch-cutting crew at Stono that led the largest slave uprising in England’s mainland American colonies. Their Rebellion has many Kongolese characteristics and may have partly been a Kongolese Catholic response to English Protestantism. This is especially so because the rebels apparently meant to reach sanctuary in Spanish Florida. (3) Escapees from enslavement by Protestant rivals inspired Spain to offer freedom to fugitive slaves who converted to Catholicism. While Florida had a racial hierarchy and practiced slavery, its versions of these was somewhat milder due to religious and legal influences. Free Black people, especially escapees from the English, proved loyal subjects and militiamen—and Spain reciprocated with protection and inclusion. Chronicling sovereignty and legality across these three episodes is important for telling the history of how early Americans found the heart they needed to make their world less heartless. Full article

In most of the twentieth century, the Enlightenment was seen as a time when religious belief was incompatible with Enlightenment values of reason, toleration, and science. David Sorkin maintains that many religious Protestants, Catholics, and Jews emphasized toleration and reason while participating in the secular public sphere. Sorkin asserts that these people were part of the religious Enlightenment. This article focuses on a group of ten English deists who identified themselves as deists, claimed to be Christian, and devoted their writings to explaining their concept of true Christianity. This article argues that these ten deists, whom I label “Jesus-centered deists”, were much more religious than other deists. Like the Protestants, Catholics, and Jews that Sorkin considers part of the religious Enlightenment, these deists emphasized toleration and used reason to defend their conception of God and genuine Christianity. Furthermore, these deists participated in discussions in the public sphere about secular Enlightenment concerns. Unlike stereotypical Enlightenment deists, these Jesus-centered deists did not believe in an inactive and impersonal God. Instead, they believed in a loving and kind God who performed miracles and made revelations. They also emphasized developing a closer relationship with God through prayer. These deists should be included in the religious Enlightenment. Full article

The Harrist Church in Ivory Coast, West Africa, emerged from the ministry of Liberian William Wadé Harris who baptized between 100,000 and 200,000 people during his eighteen-month evangelistic tour, 1913–1915. This story is full of linguistic complexities and anomalies. Harris himself spoke only English and his own local Liberian Glebo language. He was therefore compelled to work through expatriate English-speaking merchants, knowledgeable of and conversant in local languages, as interpreters and translators in addressing the twelve ethnic groups who heard and accepted his message. Harris encouraged new converts to compose hymns in their own indigenous languages by transforming musical genres embedded in their local musical traditions. Additionally fascinating is that during this early colonial period, the twelve ethnic groups impacted by Harris’s ministry lived in almost total isolation from each other and developed their own hymn traditions for thirty-five years (1914–1949), unaware of the existence of churches and worship patterns in neighboring ethnic districts. Only in 1949 did they suddenly become acquainted with the broader, multi-musical, multilingual reality of the Harrist movement. Since then, individual musicians and choirs from local congregations have gradually begun to sing a few of each other’s songs, though the challenge of becoming a truly multicultural, multiethnic church remains a work in progress. Documentation of these developments include written colonial and early Protestant and Catholic missionary sources and a large number of eye-witness interviews. Primary research methods employed here come from four intersecting disciplines and theoretical frameworks: orality studies, with particular focus on oral sources in constructing historical narrative; religious phenomenology; mission history; and ethnodoxological research. Full article

This paper aims to uncover a hidden history of Cantonese Christian literature. Written Cantonese has been present since the late Ming dynasty in parallel to the emergence of a distinct Cantonese identity. Western missionaries, for the sake of evangelism, facilitated the development of written Cantonese in South China since the mid-nineteenth century. At that time, missionaries put a lot of effort into translating religious leaflets and booklets, the Bible, the book of prayers, and even Cantonese–English dictionaries. These works contributed to standardizing written Cantonese and indirectly helped to develop Cantonese identity. I will critically examine how Cantonese Christian literature declined for the sake of nationalism, as the first publication of Heheben 和合本 (Mandarin Union Version) in Protestant Christianity in 1919 represented the unification of the Church by using written Mandarin. After elaborating on the unintentional alliance of missionaries with Cantonese in the nineteenth century, in conclusion, I will make a brief comparison of Hong Kong Church in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which is inactive in the continuous written Cantonese movement in Hong Kong. Full article

The Sino–U.S. Treaty of Tientsin (1858), for the first time in history, included an article to ensure the toleration of Protestantism in China, i.e., the Toleration Article. The man behind the article was S. Wells Williams (1812–1884), an interpreter of the U.S. Legation and a former missionary, who negotiated with Chinese officials directly. Williams produced the Chinese version of the clause and its official English translation which led to controversies, for it was deemed unfaithful and humiliating to the Christian communities. This paper revisits this important episode in the history of Protestantism in China. Using first-hand archival materials, it reveals how Williams was forced to “mistranslate” the article in order to satisfy both parties. It further discusses the reasons behind the missionaries’ criticism, which placed Williams in the center of clashes between religious and political interests. Through Williams’ case, the paper foregrounds the crucial roles and difficult situations of missionary translators in diplomatic incidents that shaped the history of Christianity in China. More importantly, it highlights the conflicting interests and ideas in early Sino–U.S. diplomacy and shows how missionary translators worked to mediate the dilemma between evangelism and politics in 19th-century China. Full article

The relationship of wu (巫) to shamanism is problematic, with virtually all mentions of historical and contemporary Chinese wu ritualists translated into English as shaman. Ethnological research is presented to illustrate cross-cultural patterns of shamans and other ritualists, providing an etic framework for empirical assessments of resemblances of Chinese ritualists to shamans. This etic framework is further validated with assessments of the relationship of the features with biogenetic bases of ritual, altered states of consciousness, innate intelligences and endogenous healing processes. Key characteristics of the various types of wu and other Chinese ritualists are reviewed and compared with ethnological models of the patterns of ritualists found cross-culturally to illustrate their similarities and contrasts. These comparisons illustrate the resemblances of pre-historic and commoner wu to shamans but additionally illustrate the resemblances of most types of wu to other ritualist types, not shamans. Across Chinese history, wu underwent transformative changes into different types of ritualists, including priests, healers, mediums and sorcerers/witches. A review of contemporary reports on alleged shamans in China also illustrates that only some correspond to the characteristics of shamans found in cross-cultural research and foraging societies. The similarities of most types of wu ritualists to other types of ritualists found cross-culturally illustrate the greater accuracy of translating wu as “ritualist” or “religious ritualist.” Full article

This article offers an English translation of an essay published in 1946 by Jacob Gordin (1896–1947), a Russian-Jewish philosopher of religion, who is considered the founding figure of the postwar Paris School of Jewish Thought (École de pensée juive de Paris). In “The Religious Crisis in Jewish Thought”, Gordin presented a sweeping meta-narrative of the history of Jewish thought, formulated as a history of repeated “religious crises”, both existential and intellectual. In Gordin’s condensed narrative, these crises could be detected in the life and philosophy of the most canonical Jewish thinkers inside and outside the tradition: from Abraham the biblical patriarch to Hermann Cohen, through a diverse list including the rabbinical sage Elisha Ben-Abuyah, Philo, Halevi, Maimonides, and Spinoza. In an introduction to Gordin’s text, I provide a brief biography, locate Gordin in existentialist discourse of the early postwar years, and discuss the affinities between Gordin’s “The Religious Crisis” and Levinas’s and Sartre’s early reflections on the Jewish question. Full article

A distinctive feature of the study of religion in Australia and Oceania concerns the influence of European culture. While often associated with private interiority, the European concept of religion was deeply reliant upon the materiality of printed publication practices. Prominent historians of religion have called for a more detailed evaluation of the impact of religious book forms, but little research has explored this aspect of the Australian case. Settler publications include their early Bible importation, pocket English language hymns and psalters, and Indigenous language Bible translations. As elsewhere in Europe, Australian settlers relied on print to publicize their understanding of religion in their new context. Recovering this legacy not only enriches the cultural history of Australian settler religion, it can also foster new avenues through which to appreciate Australia’s multireligious and Indigenous heritage. Full article

This paper explores the religious projection and ethical appeal in the art and literature of Leda and the Swan created from ancient times to the contemporary era, so as to make a comparative review and reading on it, providing religious reflection and ethical enlightenment to today’s society. From ancient Greek vase paintings to contemporary English poems, the investigation shows that the story of Leda and the Swan has been continuously rewritten and revalued by history, religion and social ethics. The interaction between Leda and the swan goes from divinity to humanity, increasingly out of the cage of eroticism, symbolizing the process of transforming into a secularized life. Besides, Leda, as a representative victim of traditional patriarchy and religious persecution, goes from bondage to liberation, signaling the awakening of feminine consciousness and the gradual collapse of patriarchy; while the swan, an incarnation of power and desire under patriarchy, becomes an object of condemnation. However, as for who is the victim and who should be condemned, there are different religious and ethical standards in different historical periods, which reflects the development and evolution of religious rules and ethical orders in the historical process. By highlighting the Trojan War or woman’s sufferings, Leda and the Swan, in fact, reveals that the tragedy results from the uncontrollable animal factor and free will, and that women should face their ethical or religious identities to make correct choices. Full article

Age-old fears and misconceptions about leprosy have flourished for centuries and the condition remains both a socially stigmatizing issue and a public health problem in many parts of the globe. In the context of Islam, only a few personal narratives by Muslims living with leprosy exist, and no one has systematically reviewed accounts of leprosy related disability from early or recent Islamic history, including the Prophet Muhammad’s interactions with individuals living with leprosy. In this article, we present previously untold stories about leprosy, from both English and Arabic sources strongly rooted in Islamic values and principles. After an introduction and brief history of Islam, this article is divided into three main sections: (1) The foundations of early Islamic values about illness, leprosy, and disability; (2) Leprosy and stigma in Islamic communities and/or places; and (3) Art, storytelling, and other expressions by people living with leprosy in various parts of the world. The authors also discuss some of the challenges of defining leprosy terminology based on early historic documents. The overall purpose of this article is to describe historical and religious accounts of leprosy and amplify the collective voices and experiences of Muslims who live with leprosy from a disability studies frame. The authors also introduce the ‘House is Black’, a short documentary that illustrates additional insights and commentary related to disability related leprosy. Full article

Commonly represented in contemporary texts and modern historiographical accounts as a dangerous and alien region, characterised by piracy and barbarism, the history of the early modern Maghreb and the cultural impact it had on British society is one highly limited by indirect sources, cultural, political, and religious biases, and the distorting influence of Orientalist and colonial historiography. Historians have drawn on a wide range of popular media and government-held archival material, each with its own limitations, but one important corpus has been neglected. Drawn from up-to-date and trusted sources and distributed to vast audiences from a wide range of social groups, periodical news publications provide a vast and fruitful body of sources for evaluating popular and elite English viewpoints on Maghrebi piracy. This paper draws upon a corpus of 3385 news items comprising over 360,000 words relating to the Maghreb and its people, drawn from Stuart and Republican English news publications, with a view towards examining the discourse and reality around Maghrebi maritime combat, diplomact and trade in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England. To what extent did maritime combat dominate coverage of the Maghreb, over other social, political and military events? Why did news writers use the word ‘pirate’ so infrequently to describe Maghrebi ships? Was Maghrebi piracy chaotic and unfettered, or did peace treaties and consular presence lead to stable trade relations? Were Maghrebi economies seen to be fundamentally built on naval predation, or was real benefit available from peaceful engagement with the Maghrebi states? Examining these and other questions from English news coverage, this paper argues that the material in English periodical news is generally consistent with what we know of the military, diplomatic and economic conditions of the time, surprisingly neutral in tone with a possible emphasis on positive stories when dealing with British–Maghrebi relations, and increasingly after the Restoration played a significant role in influencing British popular discourse. Full article