This volume includes selected papers (in English and Chinese) from an international conference held in Beijing in 2001, the year that marked the 400th anniversary of Matteo Ricci's arrival in Beijing. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Ricci Institute for Chinese Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco and the Institute of World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

This collection offers fresh perspectives on Sino-Western cultural relations, with particular regard to the experience of Christianity in China. The contributors include authorities from China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Europe (including Russia and Eastern Europe), and North America.

School Choice in China explores the major characteristics of schooling options in China, highlighting how largely middle-class parents exploit their cultural, economic and social capital for their children's admission into choice schools. It highlights how payments such as choice fees, donations, prize-winning certificates and awards, as well as the use of guanxi, result in Chinese school choice as a parent-driven, bottom-up movement. The author also explores how schools ...

Now revised and updated to incorporate numerous new materials, this is the major source for researching American Christian activity in China, especially that of missions and missionaries. It provides a thorough introduction and guide to primary and secondary sources on Christian enterprises and individuals in China that are preserved in hundreds of libraries, archives, historical societies, headquarters of religious orders, and other repositories in the United States. It includes data from...

Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), the first of the early Jesuit missionaries of the China mission, is widely considered the most outstanding cultural mediator of all time between China and the West. This engrossing and fluid book offers a thorough, knowledgeable biography of this fascinating and influential man, telling a deeply human and captivating story that still resonates today.Michela Fontana traces Ricci's travels in China in detail, providing a rich portrait of Ming China and the g...

At the turn of the twentieth century, William Irvine, a Scotsman, embarked on an experiment to restore the first century primitive New Testament ministry and church, using Matthew 10 as his model. The revolutionary movement caught on rapidly in the British Isles. Irvine's charismatic preaching inspired hundreds of young men and women to become itinerant, celibate, homeless missionaries traveling in pairs (2 by 2), sustained only by faith, freely spreading the nameless sect worldwide. Follo...

In contrast to the economic and cultural dominance by the south and the east coast over the past several centuries, influence in China in the early Middle Ages was centered in the north and featured a significantly multicultural society. Many events that were profoundly formative for the future of East Asian civilization occurred during this period, although much of this multiculturalism has long been obscured due to the Confucian monopoly of written records. Multicultural China in the...

On this day in history. . .something amazing happened in the Christian world. Find out just what with This Day in Christian History. Every day for an entire year, you’ll find a brief, easy-to-read highlight of church history, from the birth of modern Pentecostalism (January 1, 1901) to the first Salvation Army meeting (July 5, 1865) to one of the presumed endings of the world (December 31, 999). You’ll see the amazing panorama of Christian belief and practice over the course of th...

A 16th century Italian Jesuit, Matteo Ricci was the founder of the Catholic Mission in China and one of the most famous missionaries of all time. A pioneer in bringing Christianity to China, Ricci spent twenty eight years in the country, in which time he crossed the cultural divides between China and the West by immersing himself in the language and culture of his hosts. Even 400 years later, he is still one of the best known westerners in China, celebrated for introducing western scientif...

The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History tells the story of Christians from around the globe and across time who have sought to witness faithfully to the gospel of reconciliation. Transcending theological differences by drawing from all the major streams of the movement, this foundational book documents the movement’s humble beginnings on the American frontier and growth into international churches of the twenty-first century.

For the Chinese, the drive toward growing political and economic power is part of an ongoing effort to restore China's past greatness and remove the lingering memories of history's humiliations. This widely praised book explores the 1500–1800 period before China's decline, when the country was viewed as a leading world culture and power. Europe, by contrast, was in the early stages of emerging from provincial to international status while the United States was still an uncharted wilderness...

The eighteen missionaries who traveled to Shansi were dedicated, pious, hard-working clerics. Ernest Atwater; the young minister Francis Ward Davis and his wife Lydia; Charles Wesley Price and his family; and Susan Rowena Bird; to name a few, were all spurred by their strong beliefs, but they were also quite ignorant of other countries and cultures. Often having to live in disease-ravaged area of China and under harsh conditions, they were repulsed by the native lifestyle and saw further n...