Beyond the Binary of East and West
However hard it tries, scholarship in world Christianity does not find it easy to escape the grip of the long-standing historical binary of East and West. The Christianities of Asia, Africa, and even Latin America are still often labelled as ‘non-Western’, as if their multiple identities consist primarily in their shared departure from the implicit default setting of European or North American Christianity. The four articles in this issue of Studies in World Christianity analyse aspects of Asian Christianity – three relating to China, and one to Burma. In their different ways each of the articles wrestles with the problem of Christianity being widely regarded in Asia as a Western religion, yet each suggests that the reality of Christian identity in Asian contexts has been more ambiguous than that received notion implies.
- Stephanie Marie Wong, A Society Apart: Rural Chinese Catholics and the Historiography of ‘Otherness’
- Danny Hsu, Contextualising ‘Sin’ in Chinese Culture: A Historian’s Perspective
- David Woodbridge, Watchman Nee, Chinese Christianity and the Global Search for the Primitive Church
- Pum Za Mang, Buddhist Nationalism and Burmese Christianity