The Religious Question in Modern China

Recent eventsfrom strife in Tibet and the rapid growth of Christianity in China to the spectacular expansion of Chinese Buddhist organizations around the globevividly demonstrate that one cannot understand the modern Chinese world without attending closely to the question of religion. The Religious Question in Modern Chinahighlights parallels and contrasts between historical events, political regimes, and cultural movements to explore how religion has challenged and responded to secular Chinese modernity, from 1898 to the present. Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer piece together the puzzle of religion in China not by looking separately at different religions in different contexts, but by writing a unified story of how religion has shaped, and in turn been shaped by, modern Chinese society. From Chinese medicine and the martial arts to communal temple cults and revivalist redemptive societies, the authors demonstrate that from the nineteenth century onward, as the Chinese state shifted, the religious landscape consistently resurfaced in a bewildering variety of old and new forms. The Religious Question in Modern Chinaintegrates historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives in a comprehensive overview of China's religious history that is certain to become an indispensible reference for specialists and students alike.

Vincent Goossaert is professor of Daoist history at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris. His is the author of The Taoists of Peaking, 1800-1949: A Social History of Urban Clerics, among other books. David A. Palmer is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China, among other books.