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1 The Early Catholic Search for the Name of God T he history of the faith that inspired the Taiping must begin with the work of Matteo Ricci and the early Jesuit missionaries to China. Their contribution is rightly called seminal, for it was the Jesuits who initiated the approach that proved so influential with Hong Xiuquan and the Taiping movement: they identified Christianity with the classical religion of China. Jesuit eªorts to portray Christianity in terms of the classical religion initially were persuasive to a number of the Confucian literati. Ricci spoke of his eªorts in two ways: of returning to an “original Confucianism” and of“completing Confucianism.”Believing that Confucianism needed a transcendental faith to complete its ethical teachings, Ricci argued that Christianity served as a more suitable basis for Confucianism than Buddhism, since Christianity was closer in character to the transcendental religion of Heaven, which was originally featured in the Five Classics. This collection of five books (Book of History,Book of Songs,Book of Changes, The Spring and Autumn Annals, and the Record of Rites) from the Zhou dynasty (1040?–256 b.c.e.) was edited and compiled by the Confucian school and served as Confucianism’s transcendental basis. Incongruous as it may seem,Ricci presented Christianity as a way for the Chinese to return to their ancient faith. This was Ricci’s strategy. However, by choosing to present Christianity as a complementary aspect of the classical religion and not as some new, foreign religion, Ricci failed to challenge the dominant paradigm of the Three Teachings (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). Instead he 19 worked within the paradigm,and so in eªect sanctioned it.Since he at first identified with and supported Confucianism,this approach won Christianity a share in the laurels of orthodoxy.But as time went on,and as the Confucian elite learned more about the metaphysical character of Christian doctrine and the redemptive and salvationist nature of its religious rituals,they came to define the religion in terms of the only transcendental religion they knew: Buddhism.1 This perception of Buddhist a‹nity was all the more justified in their view because the language and concepts the Jesuits employed in the translation of Catholic doctrine and rituals had largely been borrowed from Buddhism. If the language of Buddhism could so easily be used to translate these doctrines and rituals,how did Catholicism distinguish itself from the Indian religion? Some of these questions must have influenced Emperor Yongzheng (r.1723–35),for when he decreed in his elaboration of his father’s SacredEdict (a compilation of Confucian exhortations delivered to the people in twice monthly village lectures) that all religious associations outside of Confucianism were but varying shades of heterodoxy,Christianity was similarly categorized and proscribed.Thus, the Jesuit strategy in targeting the Confucian elite can be said to have ultimately failed. Nevertheless, contrary to how several studies of Christianity in China have portrayed the events, the history of early Chinese Christianity did not end with the proscription of the faith in 1724. The era of the imperial proscription was as important to the development of Chinese Christianity as was the era of Matteo Ricci and the early Jesuits. For it was during these years of persecution following the imperial decree that Chinese Catholicism developed into what,to all appearances,can be called an indigenous Chinese sect: the Heavenly Lord sect (or teaching).2 So while the Jesuit strategy may have failed,the overall Catholic mission to create a Chinese Christianity can be characterized as a success. Employing the word “indigenous” to describe a religion whose origins lay outside China may seem somewhat anomalous, but highlighting the developments that took place during the period of early Chinese Catholicism helps explain the use of the term. This chapter first examines early Jesuit eªorts at translating Christianity into the Chinese idiom and then looks briefly at the experience of the Heavenly Lord sect during the era 20 The Early Catholic Search for the Name of God of proscription and in the period surrounding the Opium War of 1839 to 1842. By the time of the Opium War and the treaties concluding that war, the Heavenly Lord sect had become indistinguishable in some of its language and in several of its rituals and practices from other ordinary Chinese sects. Because of this, Catholicism did not seem unfamiliar to the people; indeed the challenge for the Catholic missionaries...

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