Liu Institute Series on Chinese Christianities: Series Launch at the AAR

The AAR Chinese Christianities Unit is pleased to host the AAR launch of the Liu Institute Series on Chinese Christianities at Notre Dame Press. In collaboration with the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, this series is an outgrowth of the AAR Chinese Christianities Unit, which began as the Chinese Christianities Seminar in 2015, and publishes books that push the boundaries of the terms ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Christianities.’ As of the AAR in 2024 in San Diego, five books will have been published -- four out, and one forthcoming – with more manuscripts submitted so that books are projected to be published in the series at the rate of at least one per year, with at least nine books composing the series. In this roundtable launch of the series, we will cover the first five books in the series. We hope that the panel will also serve as a state-of-the-field reflection on the development of Chinese Christianities as an academic field and its robust activity in the last nine years. As series editor, Alexander Chow (University of Edinburgh) has agreed to speak on behalf of the first three books, as the authors of each of them cannot make it to the AAR and will instead be launching their books in April at Taiwan Theological Seminary, in an event hosted by Notre Dame Press. Those books are: Christie Chow’s Schism: Seventh-Day Adventism in Post-Denominational China (2021), Christopher Payk’s Following Christ and Confucius: Wang Mingdao and Chinese Christianity, and Jonathan Seitz’s Protestant Missionaries in China: Robert Morrison and Early Sinology. Chow will make the argument that each of books addresses and presents challenges to core issues in Chinese Christianities, such as the ideology of ‘post-denominationalism’ in modern China, the question of ‘Confucianism’ in a popular revivalist tradition that has long been read as purifying Chinese Christianity from extra-biblical influence, and the significance of missionary work in developing incipient forms of what we now know as ‘China studies.’ In these ways, the study of Chinese Christianities unveils how the study of Chinese Christianities goes beyond the aims of World Christianity in understanding Chinese inculturations of Christian messaging and moves to understand how ‘Christianities’ have been constitutive of the many meanings that ‘China’ as a signifier has taken on. Justin Tse’s (Singapore Management University) Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim will be published in the series’s Fall 2024 catalogue. Tse’s book moves beyond considerations of Chinese Christianities in ‘China’ proper and relocates Chinese Christianities in the migration context of the Pacific Rim from 1989 to 2012. Taking Cantonese Protestants as his main focus of inquiry, Tse also opens up the significance of Chinese Christianities for addressing questions in Hong Kong studies and transpacific studies. Tse will speak about how he hopes that the series will move beyond its stated aims to examine Christianities in ‘modern China’ and will include critical examinations of ‘Chineseness’ from throughout the worlds that literary scholar Shu-Mei Shih has dubbed the ‘Sinophone,’ which refers to communities whose speaking of ‘Sinitic’ languages burdens them with the political association of ‘Chineseness’ too. In particular, he hopes that his book will be an invitation to scholars of Chinese American Christianities and Sinophone Christianities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, as well as other sites of Sinophone Christian migration, to submit to the series. Jin Lu (Purdue University Northwest) will speak on Translingual Catholics: Chinese Theologians before Vatican II. Lu contends that while Chinese Catholics did not appear to have played a prominent role at the Vatican II sessions, some of their multilingual members were part of the global movement that paved the way to the Council. Weaving together archival resources (letters, manuscripts, notebooks, drafts, interview transcripts, newspaper clips) and printed primary as well as secondary materials in Chinese, English and French, this book examines the contribution of a group of translingual (authors writing in a language other than their primary one) Chinese Catholic intellectuals who were connected to various intersecting global Catholic networks, especially the Jesuit enclave of Xujiahui in Shanghai, the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-André in Bruges, Belgium, the Jesuit Theologate in Lyon-Fourvière, and the ecumenical Cercle Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Paris. Those global networks included Chinese Catholic intellectuals as well as pivotal Catholic figures worldwide. The linguistic and cultural crossroads in which the translingual protagonists of this book lived enriched their theological ideas. The book argues that inculturation is necessarily a translingual process. We will have Kwok Pui-lan as our respondent to engage the five books being launched on the panel from a postcolonial theological perspective. In this way, we hope to underscore the critical edge of the series in questioning the boundaries of ‘Chineseness’ and ‘Christianities’ together, so as to examine the constitutive impact of Chinese Christianities on multiple political, social, and religious formations, be they ‘Chinese,’ ‘Christian,’ or otherwise.