Liang Fa holds a unique place in the history of Christianity in China. Baptized and ordained by the first Protestant missionaries to China, Liang aided the first two generations of missionaries and conducted his own work as an evangelist and writer. Liang alone in the first generation wrote and published under his name, and his most famous tract is believed to have influenced the Taiping Rebellion. While George McNeur's biography of Liang has been republished regularly in Chinese, this is the first republication in English since the 1930s. It remains the best work on an influential but little-studied figure. Annotated and with a critical introduction, this work seeks to revive scholarship on Liang as we approach the two-hundredth anniversary of his baptism.
Liang Fa holds a unique place in the history of Christianity in China. Baptized and ordained by the first Protestant missionaries to China, Liang aided the first two generations of missionaries and conducted his own work as an evangelist and writer. Liang alone in the first generation wrote and published under his name, and his most famous tract is believed to have influenced the Taiping Rebellion. While George McNeur's biography of Liang has been republished regularly in Chinese, this is the first republication in English since the 1930s. It remains the best work on an influential but little-studied figure. Annotated and with a critical introduction, this work seeks to revive scholarship on Liang as we approach the two-hundredth anniversary of his baptism.
Occupying much of imperial China’s Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) was no ordinary peasant revolt. What most distinguished this dramatic upheaval from earlier rebellions were the spiritual beliefs of the rebels. The core of the Taiping faith focused on the belief that Shangdi, the high God of classical China, had chosen the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. How were the Taiping rebels, professing this new creed, able to mount their rebellion and recruit multitudes of followers in their sweep through the empire? Thomas Reilly argues that the Taiping faith, although kindled by Protestant sources, developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion whose conception of its sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese empire. The Taiping rebels denounced the divine pretensions of the imperial title and the sacred character of the imperial office as blasphemous usurpations of Shangdi’s title and position. In place of the imperial institution, the rebels called for restoration of the classical system of kingship. Previous rebellions had declared their contemporary dynasties corrupt and therefore in need of revival; the Taiping, by contrast, branded the entire imperial order blasphemous and in need of replacement. In this study, Reilly emphasizes the Christian elements of the Taiping faith, showing how Protestant missionaries built on earlier Catholic efforts to translate Christianity into a Chinese idiom. Prior studies of the rebellion have failed to appreciate how Hong Xiuquan’s interpretation of Christianity connected the Taiping faith to an imperial Chinese cultural and religious context. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom shows how the Bible--in particular, a Chinese translation of the Old Testament--profoundly influenced Hong and his followers, leading them to understand the first three of the Ten Commandments as an indictment of the imperial order. The rebels thus sought to destroy imperial culture along with its institutions and Confucian underpinnings, all of which they regarded as blasphemous. Strongly iconoclastic, the Taiping followers smashed religious statues and imperially approved icons throughout the lands they conquered. By such actions the Taiping Rebellion transformed--at least for its followers but to some extent for all Chinese--how Chinese people thought about religion, the imperial title and office, and the entire traditional imperial and Confucian order. This book makes a major contribution to the study of the Taiping Rebellion and to our understanding of the ideology of both the rebels and the traditional imperial order they opposed. It will appeal to scholars in the fields of Chinese history, religion, and culture and of Christian theology and church history.
From 1807, when the first Protestant missionary arrived in China, to the 1920s, when a new phase of growth began, thousands of missionaries and Chinese Christians labored, often under very adverse conditions, to lay the groundwork for a solid, healthy, and self-sustaining Chinese church. Following an Introduction that sets the scene and surveys the entire period, Builders of the Chinese Church contains the stories of nine leading pioneers--seven missionaries and two Chinese. Here we meet Robert Morrison, the heroic translator; Liang Fa, the first Chinese evangelist; missionary-scholar James Legge; J. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission; converted opium addict Pastor Hsi ("Overcomer of Demons"); Griffith John and Jonathan Goforth, both indefatigable preachers; and the idealistic advocates of education and reform, W. A. P. Martin and Timothy Richard. Readers will be inspired by their courage, devotion, and sheer perseverance in arduous work, and will gain an understanding of the roots of the two "branches" of today's Chinese Protestantism.
The second volume on Christianity in China covers the period from 1800 to the present day, dealing with the complexities of both Catholic and Protestant aspects.
First published in 1936, this work represents primary source material of ancient combat techniques designed in a time of occupation and war, when the threat of lethal hand-to-hand combat was an ever-present reality for soldiers, those involved in law enforcement, and very often for the ordinary citizen. This is the seminal work in the field, written by the form’s founders, Liu Jinsheng and Zhao Jiang, as a training manual for the Police Academy of Zheijiang province. The intent of this translation is to provide authentic historical documentation for martial arts techniques that have been modified for use today in both competition and self-defense. Submission grappling is a technique in which fighters use locks, chokes, and breaking techniques to defeat their challengers in no-holds-barred matches. Chi Na Fa remains the most comprehensive explanation available of these Chinese grappling techniques, from which derive many current techniques. Renowned author and Brazillian jiu jitsu champion Tim Cartmell presents the book in a clear, compelling new translation.
Now in its second edition, Christianity as a World Religion locates Christianity within its global context. Structured by geographical region, it covers Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, and Oceania. It deals with four dimensions of Christianity in each context: Christian history, churches and society, interreligious relations, and distinctive worship and theology. Study questions and further reading suggestions are provided in each chapter. Fully updated throughout, this second edition now includes: - A new chapter covering Christianity in Oceania - Further analysis of the early growth of Christianity in Asia and Africa - Coverage of research trends in migration, theologies of prosperity, and the role of local agents in evangelization - Coverage of global interconnections and networks, new movements, global Catholicism, Christian political engagement and persecution of Christian communities - A thorough revision of the conclusion, including reflection on the discipline of world Christianity and its implications for theology - 40 images and maps - Chapter summaries - Extra resources online including a timeline and weblinks - New text design and layout, making the text more student-friendly and accessible Christianity as a World Religion is ideal for courses on World Christianity, Christianity as a Global Religion, the History of Christianity and contemporary Christian theology.
Wilma Fairbank documents, from both a historical and a uniquely personal perspective, the professional and personal achievements of Lin Whei-yin and Liang Sicheng. Liang and Lin were born in early twentieth-century China, a time when the influences of modernism were slowly bearing down on the traditional culture. In the 1920s, they traveled together to the Beaux Arts universe of Philadelphia, where they both graduated with honors from the architecture department of the University of Pennsylvania. Married in 1928, they returned to their native land and became the first two professors at the newly founded school of architecture in Shenyang's Tung Pei University. Wilma Fairbank and her husband, John King Fairbank, Harvard University's eminent historian of modern China, were lifelong friends of Liang and Lin. This relationship allows the author, herself a noted researcher of art and architecture, to paint a vivid picture of the couple within the context of China's turbulent past. Fairbank recounts how Liang and Lin used their Western training to initiate the study of China's architectural evolution. She also documents—as seen through the eyes of Liang and Lin—the tragic events that ravaged the Chinese homeland and its people: the 1937 invasion and bombings by the Japanese military and the ensuing illness and poverty; World War II and the civil war; the rise to power of the Communist government in 1949; and the victimization of the scholar class during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76. Fairbank provides a highly readable, emotionally charged personal account of the couple's lives, and the numerous and sometimes horrific torments and humiliations they suffered. And, finally, when it was all too late, the posthumous praise and recognition.
This revised edition includes a complete redesign with an emphasis on reader usability and modern Chinese typography.Packed with over nine hundred photographs, this comprehensive text offers theory, martial applications, sequences, Qigong exercises, weapon training, and is an indispensable resource for those serious about Chinese martial arts.Translation of ancient Baguazhang documentsBaguazhang QigongBasic TrainingBody ConditioningEight Palms sequence and fighting setSwimming Body sequence and martial applicationsBagua Deer Hook Sword sequence and martial applications
