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“What Has Jesus to Do with Socialism”? Protestant Intellectuals, Political Use of the Mandarin Union Version, and the Remaking of a Socialistic Jesus in Republican China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2019

ZHIXI WANG
ZHIXI WANG*
Affiliation:
College of Liberal Arts, Shantou Universityzxwang@stu.edu.cn
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Abstract

This article explores the ways Chinese Protestant intellectuals, when facing up to the challenge of socialism, interpreted and appropriated Chinese Gospel texts to refashion the image of Jesus. It argues that Protestant intellectuals’ political use of the Chinese Bible remade a socialistic Jesus with some religious qualifications. Both the reading of the Chinese Bible and the interaction of Chinese biblical texts with the socio-political milieus dramatically influenced the textual practice of Chinese Protestant communities in the Republican era.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 105 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2019

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Footnotes

This work has been supported by the STU Scientific Research Initiation Grant 汕頭大學科研啟動基金資助項目 (Project No. STF19002).

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