Chinese Christianities through the Eyes of Master Taixu, a Corpus Analysis

Within the call for proposals of the Chinese Christianities Unit at the AAR, crossing boundaries seems to be a prominent notion. The present paper aims to respond to this call by analyzing how Chinese Christianities crossed religious borders and entered the discussions of Chinese Buddhists. More specifically, how it entered the discussions of leading reformer Master Taixu in the early 20th century. Through this inquiry, the paper aims to expand our understanding of Christianity’s reception in early 20th century China, as well as the contemporaneous trends of Chinese Christianity, which may become visible through the topics and emphases found within the Buddhist Master’s discussions.

During the last decades, several analyses have discussed Master Taixu’s relationship to Christianity. The seminal works of Chen and Welch touch upon this question in their broad presentation of the era (Ch’en 1972; Welch 1968), and in his comprehensive monograph of Taixu, Don Pittman also highlights the Master’s connections to Christianity, especially his correspondence with Norwegian missionary Karl Ludwig Reichelt (Pittman 2001). Besides these general discussions, some works have also been written, that specifically target Taixu’s relations to Christianity. Darui Long provided the first in-depth analysis in English, discussing a few of Taixu’s central speeches regarding Christianity, and providing some translated excerpts as well (Long 2000). Carrying his work further, Yao and Gombrich drew a picture of Christian influences within the Master’s Buddhist reforms (Yao and Gombrich 2017). Additionally, among academic works written in Chinese, the articles of Wang Ying, and Chang Kai discussed the Master’s views based on a few of his speeches, and Zhang Jingde’s MA thesis analyzed Taixu’s criticism of Christianity (王鹰 2017; 常凯 2020; 張金德 2007).

Nevertheless, no research so far has attempted to provide a comprehensive analysis of Taixu’s views regarding Christianity in its entirety. Therefore, the author’s Ph.D. dissertation in progress aims to fill this crucial gap within the literature. It sets out to locate all texts where Taixu discusses Christianity, to provide English translations of the most important texts, and to piece together a complete picture of how Taixu viewed Christianity during his life, how his views evolved, and where he received information regarding Christianity from, which necessarily shaped his understanding of the religion.

So far, the author has located most of the relevant texts and conducted a first analysis of the time period between 1924–1938, in the middle of which Taixu’s yearlong European and North American journey took place. The analysis focused on the Master’s four speeches, which are among the richest in terms of references to Christianity. These are ‘My Views on Religions’ (Wo zhi zongjiaoguan 我之宗教觀) from 1924, ’The Adoration of Love’ (Ai zhi chongbai 愛之崇拜) from 1926, ‘Religions’ benefits for modern humanity’ (Zongjiao duiyu xiandai renlei de gongxian  宗教對於現代人類的貢獻) from 1931, and ‘China Needs Christianity, and Europe and America Need Buddhism (Zhongguo xu Yejiao yu Ou-Mei xu Fojiao 中國需耶教與歐美需佛教) from 1938. Especially through analyzing the last speech, this part of the research aimed to follow in the footsteps of Long, and Yao and Gombrich, who have discussed that particular talk as well. Nevertheless, it aimed to proceed further through a more detailed analysis, and providing a complete English translation of that significant speech. Besides highlighting some key aspects of Taixu’s views regarding Christianity, such as the appreciation of the practical achievements of Christianity, like the development of Western society’s organizational ability, and his critique of the theological aspects of the religion, the results also displayed an amelioration of Taixu’s views, especially after his journey to the West. However, the small sample of analyzed texts prohibited the research from drawing large-scale conclusions.

Therefore, the next step of the research, which the author proposes to present at the annual American Academy of Religion conference in November, is to conduct an overarching corpus analysis of Taixu’s Classical Chinese language Collected Works (Taixu Dashi Quanshu 太虛大師全書) to locate general trends within the corpus. This research is being conducted jointly with a data scientist colleague, and it aims to answer questions such as the following. How did the frequency of Taixu’s discussion of Christianity change during his life? What were the main topics he discussed in relation to Christianity? What was the tone of his treatment of the religion? What names did he use to refer to Christianity? Did he differentiate between various branches of the religion? Did his usage of terms change over time? Who were his main dialogue partners from the Christian side? The initial results of the analysis display that numerous changes took place in Taixu’s treatment of Christianity regarding both terminological, and topical, attitudinal aspects, which seem to correspond to the increase in his exposure to different representatives of the religion. The complete results, including how these trends can inform our understanding of contemporaneous Chinese Christianities would be presented at the AAR conference.

Thus, responding to the call of the Chinese Christianities Unit, the present paper aims to introduce a novel method into the field of research analyzing Taixu’s views of Christianity by utilizing corpus analysis to conduct inquiries in the entirety of Taixu’s voluminous Collected Works. Through this method, it aims to ask questions that could not be posed before and discern trends arching over multiple decades. In conjunction with the author’s earlier qualitative research, this analysis aims to enlighten new aspects of Taixu’s approach to Christianity, as well as the trends within Chinese Christianities in the early 20th century.