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Confucians and Christians in historic China meet
Source: Xinhua |
September 30, 2010, Thursday
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SAMUEL Huntington, author of "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" (1996) died almost two years ago, but his prophecy of conflict between Western Christianity and Islam and Confucianism in the East lives on in talks between Christians and Confucianists in China.
At an evening seminar Sunday during an international forum to ease cultural misunderstandings, the discussion revolved around why Christianity's global expansion had been linked with violence and war, in contrast to the teachings of Jesus Christ to love thy neighbor.
Yang Sung Moo, from Chung Ang University of the Republic of Korea, said Christianity had come to his country "very violently" in the 1880s when missionaries disregarded local Confucian rituals by forbidding believers to kowtow to their enshrined ancestors and destroying Buddhist statues.
"If Christianity wants to spread across the world, its preaching must respect cultures and cater to the needs of local people," said Yang.
His opinion echoed that of Robert H. Schullar, a US Christian minister famous for his TV program, "Hour of Power," and funding of the Crystal Cathedral ministries. Asked if Christianity could save the world, the 84-year-old said: "My goodness, no. Because each person is an individual thinker, they react possibly negatively."
"Do you need help? Can I help you? That has to be the way, to give people encouragement," he said during a morning dialogue of the first Nishan Forum on World Civilizations in east China's Shandong Province.
Epochal meeting
The forum was initiated by Xu Jialu, a retired vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. Xu has spent nearly three years working to have this first forum in China as a dialogue between Confucianism and Christianity and watched it grow from a distant idea into a reality. The organizers chose Nishan Mountain, the birthplace of Confucius, as the venue to hold the epochal meeting.
In an interview with Xinhua, Wolfgang Kubin, a sinologist at Bonn University in Germany, saw historical significance in the ongoing dialogue between Confucianists and Christians. "This kind of dialogue was started some 400 years ago, but because of a lot of misunderstandings, it ended up with frustration on both sides. Now we come back again and try to continue what began between the Confucians and Catholics in the 16th or 17th century," he said.
Historical records show the exchanges started with the arrival of the first two Jesuits, Michele Ruggeri and Matteo Ricci, who dedicated themselves to understanding Chinese culture by translating Confucian texts into Latin and other European languages, while Christian texts were published in Chinese. But the so-called "Controversy on the Rites," due to internal Christian divisions and misunderstandings of the true cultural values of Confucian rites and tradition, finally led to the Papal condemnation of the Jesuits' dialogue-based approach and expulsion of the missionaries by Qing Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722).
Missionaries returned during World War I, when China was mired in a crisis of identity as a feudal Confucian country that had prospered for more than 2,000 years and collapsed before Western powers dominated by Christian culture. "As the Chinese people were in extremely feeble and destitute circumstances, Christian missionaries who prized open China's doors with opium profiteers under the shield of gunpowder were often associated with scars on the national pride," said Yan Binggang, director of the Advanced Institute for Confucian Studies of Shandong University.
"The world we face is closely connected by globalization, but cultural diversity is the direction we must strive to preserve," said Xu Jialu.
Jesus and Confucius both died more than 2,000 years ago, but, to their followers, their teachings always sound fresh and helpful. At the forum, Confucius's famous doctrine "Don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you" has been repeatedly cited by both Confucianists and Christians to encourage dialogue, as Jesus gives a similar instruction, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."
But the practice of these teachings is not easy. Yan Binggang thought Hungtington's predictions not completely unjustified. While events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chechnya, the Middle East, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan all seemed to confirm his predictions, people were paying more attention to the assertion of Hans Kuhn, the German liberal theologist, that there was no peace among nations without peace among religions, and no peace among religions without dialogue between religions.
China's growing influence made it imperative for the country to explain itself to the world, said Wu Jianmin, executive director of the presidium of the forum's organizing committee. Professor Du Weiming, of Harvard University, summarized Chinese civilization as "a tolerant civilization constantly learning from others."
At an evening seminar Sunday during an international forum to ease cultural misunderstandings, the discussion revolved around why Christianity's global expansion had been linked with violence and war, in contrast to the teachings of Jesus Christ to love thy neighbor.
Yang Sung Moo, from Chung Ang University of the Republic of Korea, said Christianity had come to his country "very violently" in the 1880s when missionaries disregarded local Confucian rituals by forbidding believers to kowtow to their enshrined ancestors and destroying Buddhist statues.
"If Christianity wants to spread across the world, its preaching must respect cultures and cater to the needs of local people," said Yang.
His opinion echoed that of Robert H. Schullar, a US Christian minister famous for his TV program, "Hour of Power," and funding of the Crystal Cathedral ministries. Asked if Christianity could save the world, the 84-year-old said: "My goodness, no. Because each person is an individual thinker, they react possibly negatively."
"Do you need help? Can I help you? That has to be the way, to give people encouragement," he said during a morning dialogue of the first Nishan Forum on World Civilizations in east China's Shandong Province.
Epochal meeting
The forum was initiated by Xu Jialu, a retired vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. Xu has spent nearly three years working to have this first forum in China as a dialogue between Confucianism and Christianity and watched it grow from a distant idea into a reality. The organizers chose Nishan Mountain, the birthplace of Confucius, as the venue to hold the epochal meeting.
In an interview with Xinhua, Wolfgang Kubin, a sinologist at Bonn University in Germany, saw historical significance in the ongoing dialogue between Confucianists and Christians. "This kind of dialogue was started some 400 years ago, but because of a lot of misunderstandings, it ended up with frustration on both sides. Now we come back again and try to continue what began between the Confucians and Catholics in the 16th or 17th century," he said.
Historical records show the exchanges started with the arrival of the first two Jesuits, Michele Ruggeri and Matteo Ricci, who dedicated themselves to understanding Chinese culture by translating Confucian texts into Latin and other European languages, while Christian texts were published in Chinese. But the so-called "Controversy on the Rites," due to internal Christian divisions and misunderstandings of the true cultural values of Confucian rites and tradition, finally led to the Papal condemnation of the Jesuits' dialogue-based approach and expulsion of the missionaries by Qing Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722).
Missionaries returned during World War I, when China was mired in a crisis of identity as a feudal Confucian country that had prospered for more than 2,000 years and collapsed before Western powers dominated by Christian culture. "As the Chinese people were in extremely feeble and destitute circumstances, Christian missionaries who prized open China's doors with opium profiteers under the shield of gunpowder were often associated with scars on the national pride," said Yan Binggang, director of the Advanced Institute for Confucian Studies of Shandong University.
"The world we face is closely connected by globalization, but cultural diversity is the direction we must strive to preserve," said Xu Jialu.
Jesus and Confucius both died more than 2,000 years ago, but, to their followers, their teachings always sound fresh and helpful. At the forum, Confucius's famous doctrine "Don't do to others what you don't want others to do to you" has been repeatedly cited by both Confucianists and Christians to encourage dialogue, as Jesus gives a similar instruction, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."
But the practice of these teachings is not easy. Yan Binggang thought Hungtington's predictions not completely unjustified. While events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chechnya, the Middle East, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan all seemed to confirm his predictions, people were paying more attention to the assertion of Hans Kuhn, the German liberal theologist, that there was no peace among nations without peace among religions, and no peace among religions without dialogue between religions.
China's growing influence made it imperative for the country to explain itself to the world, said Wu Jianmin, executive director of the presidium of the forum's organizing committee. Professor Du Weiming, of Harvard University, summarized Chinese civilization as "a tolerant civilization constantly learning from others."
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