Thammasat University students interested in comparative religion, history, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 10 October Zoom webinar on Asian Pacific Christianity and Globalization: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Challenges.
The event, on Thursday, 10 October 2024 at 3pm Bangkok time, is presented by the Department of History, National University of Singapore (NUS).
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of Christianity in Asia.
Students are invited to register at this link.
https://ari.nus.edu.sg/events/20241010-christianity-and-globalization/#form
The event announcement states:
Since the sixteenth century, Christianity has contributed significantly to global connectivity. Except for the Philippines and Timor-Leste, Christianity in Asia is, and is likely to remain, a minority religion which actively contributes to the making of contemporary Asia. For this reason, it stands as a unique prism to look at the processes of globalization in Asia and beyond.
This seminar discusses the work of Spanish sociologist of religion, José Casanova, and Vietnamese-born American theologian, Peter Phan. In their most recent collaborative project, they have explored how the development of Christianity in Asia and later in the Oceania-Pacific region is closely associated with three different phases of globalization: early modern (sixteenth-eighteenth centuries), modern Western hegemony (1780s-1960s), and the contemporary (1960s-present).
As each period provides unique insights on the intersection of Christianity and globalization, Casanova and Phan offer to approach the historical processes of globalization not as structural agencies or causal forces, but rather as the historical contexts that condition possibilities for human action and reaction in the world.
In dialogue with NUS historian, Bruce Lockhart, and anthropologist, Michel Chambon, this seminar will discuss this reconceptualization of globalization with a special attention to Catholic-Protestant relations.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
José Casanova is Senior Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and Emeritus Professor of Sociology, and Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University. […]
Peter C. Phan, who has earned three doctorates, is the inaugural holder of the Ignacio Ellacuría Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University, United States. […]
Bruce Lockhart‘s teaching and research focuses on the countries of mainland Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos – the three places he lived in before moving to Singapore. […]
Michel Chambon is a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute in National University of Singapore and he has a PhD in Anthropology from Boston University. […]
An article published earlier this year in Christianity Today states:
East Asians Leave Childhood Religion Most in World, but Remain Spiritual
The rate of religious conversion in East Asia is among the highest in the world: Half of adults in Hong Kong and South Korea have left the religion they were brought up in for another religion or no religion. Among Christians, substantially more adults in those two places left the faith than those who converted to Christianity. The region also has the highest levels of deconversion. More than a third of adults in Hong Kong and South Korea say they now no longer identify with any religion.
Yet at least 4 in 10 adults in East Asia and Vietnam who are religiously unaffiliated still believe in unseen beings or a god.
And about 80 percent of Taiwanese and Japanese adults say they burned incense to honor their ancestors in the past year.
These are among the findings of “Religion and Spirituality in East Asian Societies,” a massive report released today by Pew Research Center. While few people in the region pray daily or say religion is very important in their lives, many “continue to hold religious or spiritual beliefs and to engage in traditional rituals,” said Pew researchers.
Surveys of 10,390 adults in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—defined here as East Asia—and Vietnam were conducted between June and September last year.
Although Vietnam is located in Southeast Asia, Pew included the nation in this survey due to its adoption of Confucian traditions, its historic ties to China, and its embrace of Mahayana, a branch of Buddhism common across East Asia. (Last September, Pew released an in-depth survey on religion in Southeast Asia, highlighting six nations.)
Researchers acknowledged the complexity of measuring “religion” in the region, as this word often denotes organized, hierarchical forms of worship rather than more “traditional Asian forms of spirituality.” Translators of the surveys, which were conducted in seven languages through phone calls in the East Asian countries and face-to-face interviews in Vietnam, were also asked to choose the most generic possible word for “god” and to avoid terms that referred exclusively to a divine entity from a particular religion.
Pew found that adults with no religious affiliation make up the largest share of the population in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Vietnam. In Japan and Taiwan, Buddhism closely beat out the nones.
Christians make up 32 percent of the population in South Korea, 20 percent in Hong Kong, 10 percent in Vietnam, 7 percent in Taiwan, and 2 percent in Japan. (Because the sample size of Japanese Christians is so small, Pew did not include the attitudes of this group in its findings.)
Pew researchers concluded that, while people say religion is not important in their lives, “when we measure religion in these societies by what people believe and do, rather than whether they say they have a religion, the region is more religiously vibrant than it might initially seem.”
Religion’s fluidity in East Asia was the report’s “most striking characteristic,” said Fenggang Yang, founding director of Purdue University’s Center on Religion and the Global East. Yang was an expert adviser to the Pew report.
“When they must choose a single [religious identity] … many East Asians report no religious identity, even though they may hold religious beliefs and practices,” Yang said. “The beliefs and practices may be provided by more than one institutionalized religion. This has been the East Asian norm for a long time.”
Christianity in East Asia
In the region, South Korea has the largest share of Christians who identify as born-again or evangelical at 51 percent. Christians over the age of 35 are more likely to identify as such compared to younger believers (54% versus 38%). South Korean women and Christians without a college degree are also more likely to describe themselves as evangelical.
Meanwhile, 44 percent of Vietnamese Christians, 36 percent of Hong Kong Christians, and a mere 8 percent of Taiwanese Christians describe themselves as born-again or evangelicals.
The low percentage of evangelicals in Taiwan may not provide a fully accurate picture as “a lot of Christians in Taiwan … don’t really know the theological or denominational differences” between labels like “evangelical” or “charismatic,” said Shirley Lung, sociology professor at the University of Denver. […]
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)