368. Sacrificing for the Nation and Beyond: Recentering the Religious in the Modern Chinese Revolution

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

This panel questions the secularist myopia underlying the received narrative of the modern Chinese revolution. Taking martyrdom as the focal theme, the panel samples four episodes of spiritually inspired self-sacrifice in the period from the late Qing to the newly established People’s Republic. From individual resolutions to collective proposals, the cases encompass a broad spectrum of traditions including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity. In recontextualizing China’s national salvation, the four papers illuminate the soteriological dimension of this quest for “salvation” and highlight the religious imaginaire in fostering the revolutionary commitments of individuals and faith communities. The variegated religious motivations and justifications for violence and self-sacrifice demonstrate the complex negotiations between nation building, church restructuring, and modern spirituality in an emerging new secular order. Keren He’s paper reveals an idiosyncratic combination of evolutionary science and spiritual regeneration in the revolutionary radicalism of Wu Yue (1878-1905), the first Chinese suicide bomber. Reading the dramatist Tian Han's (1898-1968) defense of Christian patriotism, Ya-pei Kuo unpacks the ambivalence toward secularism in the preceding years of the Anti-Christian Movement in the 1920s. Lei Ying’s study situates the eminent monk Shi Hongyi's (1880-1942) intensified yearning for an impeccable Buddhist death in 1937 in a crisis concerning the place of Buddhist monastics in warfare. Chloe Starr investigates the tension between violent nationalism and Protestant duty in the formative period of the PRC church through its militarization campaign for the Korean War. The chair, distinguished historian Rudolf Wagner, will discuss the dynamics between religion and politics in modern China.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizers

• Keren He, Oberlin College

• Lei Ying, Harvard University

Chair

• Rudolf G. Wagner, University of Heidelberg

Individual Presentations

• From Fatality to the Future: Spiritual Evolution and Suicide Bombing in Late Qing China - Keren He, Oberlin College

• Religion, Revolution, and Sacrifice: Ambivalence toward Secularism in the Early 1920s - Ya-pei Kuo, University of Groningen

• The Bodhisattva Longed to Die: Locating the Pure Land in the Chinese National Crisis - Lei Ying, Harvard University

• 1951: An Invitation to Sacrifice - Chloe Starr, Yale University

Discussant

• Rudolf G. Wagner, University of Heidelberg