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Heaven in Conflict: Franciscans and the Boxer Uprising in Shanxi
Anthony E. Clark
One of the most violent episodes of China’s Boxer Uprising was the Taiyuan Massacre of 1900, in which rebels killed foreign missionaries and thousands of Chinese Christians. This first sustained scholarly account of the uprising to focus on Shanxi Province illuminates the religious and cultural beliefs on both sides of the conflict and shows how they came to clash. Although Franciscans were the first Catholics to settle in China, their stories have rarely been explored in accounts of Chinese Christianity. Anthony Clark remedies that exclusion and highlights the roles of Franciscan nuns and their counterparts among the Boxers―the Red Lantern girls―to argue that women’s involvement was integral on both sides of the conflict. Drawing on rich archival records and intertwining religious history with political, cultural, and environmental factors, Clark provides a fresh perspective on a pivotal encounter between China and the West.
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Outsiders in a promised land : religious activists in Pacific Northwest history
Dale E. Soden
Outsiders in a Promised Land explores the role that religious activists have played in shaping the culture of the Pacific Northwest, particularly in Washington and Oregon, from the middle of the 19th century onward. The region’s earliest settlers came to work in the mines and forests, and a culture of saloons, gambling halls, and brothels grew up to serve them. When migration to the region intensified, newcomers with families and religious traditions often saw themselves as outsiders in opposition to the prevailing frontier culture. As communities grew in population, early activists found common ground in a desire to protect women and children, and make their towns more hospitable to religious values. Protestants, Catholics, and Jews worked together to transform communities. Together they introduced public and private schools, health care institutions, libraries and orphanages, and lobbied for the prohibition of alcohol. Beginning in the 1930s, religious activism played a crucial role in the emerging culture wars between liberals and conservatives. Liberals rallied around the protection of civil rights and the building of social safety nets, while conservatives decried the rise of secularism, liberalism, and communism. Today, religious activists of many faiths are deeply engaged in matters related to women’s and gay rights, foreign policy, and environmental protection. Outsiders in a Promised Land is a meticulously researched, comprehensive treatment of religion in Pacific Northwest public life from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present. The first book of its kind, it is destined to be an essential reference for scholars, activists, and religious leaders of all faiths.
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A Voluntary Exile: Chinese Christianity and Cultural Confluence since 1552
Anthony E. Clark
Western missionaries in China were challenged by something they could not have encountered in their native culture; most Westerners were Christian, and competitions in their own countries were principally denominational. Once they entered China they unwittingly became spiritual merchants who marketed Christianity as only one religion among the long-established purveyors of other religions, such as the masters of Buddhist and Daoist rites. A Voluntary Exile explores the convergence of cultures. This collection of new and insightful research considers themes of religious encounter and accommodation in China from 1552 to the present, and confronts how both Western Europeans and indigenous Chinese mitigated the cultural and religious antagonisms that resulted from cultural misunderstanding. The studies in this work identify areas where missionary accommodation in China has succeeded and failed, and offers new insights into what contributed to cultural conflict and confluence.
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China's Saints: Catholic Martyrdom During the Qing (1644-1911)
Anthony E. Clark
While previous works on the history of Christianity in China have largely centered on the scientific and philosophical areas of Catholic missions in the Middle Kingdom, China's Saints recounts the history of Christian martyrdom, precipitated as it was by cultural antagonisms and misunderstanding. Anthony Clark shows that Christianity in China began and grew under similar circumstances to those during the Roman Empire, with the notable exception that Catholic missionaries were not successful at producing a "Chinese Constantine." One of the principal results of Catholic martyrdom in China was the increased indigenization of Christianity.This book contributes to a deeper understanding of cultural and religious interaction, and provides an account of an heretofore unstudied chapter in the history of Christianity on the global landscape.
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Beating Devils and Burning Their Books Views of China, Japan and the West
Anthony E. Clark
Beating Devils and Burning Their Books considers several topics germane to today's social and intellectual climate. Is religio-cultural conflict innate in religious belief? Is "difference" necessarily an antecedent of conflict? And on a purely expository level, how have governments, intellectuals, and religious devotees represented Asia or the West, and how did they distort those images in order to present diminutive representations of "the Other"? Following works such as Edward Said's "Orientalism" and John Dower's "War Without Mercy," this important volume seeks to continue needed dialogue regarding how China, Japan, and the West have historically viewed and represented each other.
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Enduring venture of mind & heart : an illustrated history of Whitworth University
Dale E. Soden
An inspirational history of Whitworth University, along with a just as inspiring biography of it's founder, George Whitworth.
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The Cost of Unity: African-American Agency and Education and the Christian Church, 1865-1914
Lawrence A. Q. Burnley
Like other Protestant organizations in the United States, the Christian Church was involved in the establishment of schools for African Americans in the South in the years following the end of the Civil War. The most widely read books offering an interpretation of the history of this church tend to relegate the role of black people to passive recipients of white benevolence and largesse in this process of education reform. This book examines the agency of African Americans in the founding of educational institutions for blacks associated with the Christian Church. The philosophical discourse within the Christian Church concerning the purpose, type, and control of these schools is examined as well as the prevailing racial assumptions and attitudes that informed each of these areas. The author argues that African Americans within the Christian Church played an active role, both in cooperating with Disciples' mission agencies, and acting independent of these agencies, in the conceptualization and founding of schools for their communities. In addition, contrary to Disciples' reformers claim of being motivated by their desire to 'elevate the Negro race', the nearly exclusive application of the industrial model of education in schools established by the Disciples of Christ mission agencies for African Americans reflects an intentional effort by whites within this movement to encumber African-American efforts to achieve socioeconomic and political advancement, autonomy, and self-determination. Finally, the conservative approach to schooling for African Americans was largely the result of northern Disciples' acquiescence to the demands of Southern members of the church for the sake of maintaining unity within the national church.
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Ban Gu's History of Early China
Anthony E. Clark
In this first book-length critical study of Ban Gu and his works, Anthony Clark provides both biographical and historical information about Ban Gu and his political context, while also reflecting on how that context formed his portrayal of history. Clark's book argues that the precarious position court scholars and ministers occupied motivated Ban Gu to restructure long-hallowed Confucian political ideas into an entirely new notion of Heaven's Mandate (tianming). Unlike the earlier model, which held that Heaven assigned or removed its sanction based upon moral merits, Ban's new Mandate model held that the ruling dynastic family's Mandate was permanently bestowed, and thus irrevocable, regardless of the ruler's good or bad behavior. This book offers new insight to previous scholarly assumptions regarding the ancient Chinese idea of Heaven's Mandate, while also providing historical information about Ban Gu and his family during the Han dynasty. Ban Gu's History of Early China is an important book for anyone interested in the history, philosophy, and literature of early China.
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Historic Photos of Washington State
Dale E. Soden
Washington State has a rich history. Known for its stunning natural beauty and diversity, Washington was populated for centuries by a large number of Native American tribes. Explored by British sea captains in the late eighteenth century, the region was opened in the early nineteenth century with the aid of explorers Lewis and Clark. With the coming of the railroads, cities such as Seattle, Tacoma, and Spokane grew rapidly, while other communities sprouted up around the state. From coal mining in King County and logging in the deep forests, to farming in the Palouse and fishing on the Columbia, everyday men and women attempted to carve a living. Historic Photos of Washington State provides a compelling visual record of this past. Selected from several archival collections, these photographs include a number of images from two of Washington’s best-known photographers, brothers Edward and Asahel Curtis. Published in striking black-and-white, these images reveal the history of what has become one of the most intriguing states in the nation.
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To Make This Land Our Own: Community Identity and Social Adaptation in Purrysburg Township, South Carolina, 1732 – 1865
Arlin C. Migliazzo
On the banks of the lower Savannah River, the military objectives of South Carolina officials, the ambitions of Swiss entrepreneur Jean Pierre Purry, and the dreams of Protestants from Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, and England converged in a planned settlement named Purrysburg. This examination of the first South Carolina township in Governor Robert Johnson's strategic plan to populate and defend the colonial backcountry offers the clearest picture to date of the settlement of the colony's Southern frontier by ethnically diverse and contractually obligated immigrants. Arlin C. Migliazzo contends that the story of Purrysburg Township, founded in 1732 and set in the forbidding environment bounded by the Savannah River and the Coosawhatchie swamps, challenges the notion that white colonists shed their ethnic distinctions to become a monolithic culture. He views Purrysburg as a laboratory in which to observe ethnic phenomena in the colonial and antebellum South. Separated by linguistic, religious, and cultural barriers, the emigres adapted familiar social processes from their homelands to create a workable sense of community and identity. Migliazzo details the community's changing military and economic fortunes, the gradual displacement of its residents to neighboring communities, the role of African Americans in the region, the complex religious life of township settlers, and the quirky contributions of Purry's climatological speculations to the fateful siting of this first township.
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Reverend Mark Matthews : an activist in the progressive era
Dale E. Soden
When the Reverend Mark Allison Matthews died in February 1940, thousands of mourners gathered at a Seattle church to pay their final respects. The Southern-born Presbyterian came to Seattle in 1902. He quickly established himself as a city leader and began building a congregation that was eventually among the nation’s largest, with nearly 10,000 members. Throughout his career, he advocated Social Christianity, a blend of progressive reform and Christian values, as a blueprint for building a morally righteous community. In telling Matthews’s story, Dale Soden presents Matthews’s multiple facets: a Southern-born, fundamentalist proponent of the Social Gospel; a national leader during the tumultuous years of schism within the American Presbyterian church; a social reformer who established day-care centers, kindergartens, night classes, and soup kitchens; a colorful figure who engaged in highly public and heated disputes with elected officials. Much of the controversy that surrounded Matthews centered on the proper relationship between church and state ― an issue that is still hotly debated.
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