From Trustworthiness to Secular Beliefs: Changing Concepts of xin 信 from Traditional to Modern Chinese ed. by Christian Meyer and Philip Clart

This expansive volume brings together scholars in the study of Chinese religion, history, and philosophy to explore the rich semantic history of the term xin (信). Generally translated as "trust," xin represents a key element of social cohesion while also carrying political and religious meanings. The main focus of this volume is the discursive conditions of the latter connotation, which is invoked by the compound term xinyang ("belief" or "faith"). As editors Meyer and Clart note in their introduction, while significant conceptual work has been done in religious studies and related fields to trace the genealogies of the concept of "religion" and its lexical counterparts in non-Western languages (such as shūkyō, zongjiao, and dīn), less attention has been paid to the related terms that constitute its broader semantic field. By focusing on a Chinese concept often associated with, yet distinct from, the term zongjiao ("religion"), this volume makes an important contribution to the "global genealogy of religion."

Adopting the broad approach of semantic history, the contributors to this volume highlight the shifts in the connotations of xin that have resulted from various historical interactions between Buddhism and Daoism, Christianity, and indigenous traditions. The book's detailed genealogical analyses are complemented by reflections on the resonances of xin in contemporary China, whether as a key term in descriptions of moral decline (the "triple crisis of xin") or as an operative concept emerging from recent academic and public debates.

The book is divided into four chronologically segmented parts, tracing the semantic evolution of xin from antiquity to the present. The first half (which includes the Introduction and Parts I and II) broadly examines the circulation of xin prior to the Late Qing period and the introduction of Western knowledge categories into the modern Chinese lexicon. Essays in Part I focus on the "emic" meanings of xin within early Chinese philosophical and religious texts, drawing from Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religious traditions, and do so independently of or aside from interactions with Western monotheism. Part II explores how xin is used in encounters between Chinese traditions and Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam, focusing on the period before the eighteenth century. The second half of the book (comprising Parts III and IV) addresses the strong influence of Western categories on the Chinese religious and intellectual lexicon from the late nineteenth to the twentieth century, as well as the proliferation of contemporary discourses surrounding xin in Mainland China and Taiwan. This chronological structure reveals the semantic history of xin as a process of accretion and survival, where older meanings are incorporated into newer ones, alongside hegemonic impositions (such as Western global orders of knowledge) and their consolidation.

The studies presented in this volume attune readers to the complexities of xin in multiple historical and discursive contexts while still maintaining the Western genealogy of "faith/belief" as a central reference point for comparative analysis. The first chapter, by Chinese theologian and religious studies scholar Jiang Manke, sets the stage for this approach, offering an erudite mapping of Western concepts such as faith, belief, pistis, fides, and Glaube. Jiang traces the dynamic evolution of the concept of faith within the Western European historical context, showing how the early Christian church appropriated the ancient Greek understanding of "loyalty" and "certainty," and how this concept evolved during the Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation, and the secularization process. Jiang convincingly demonstrates that contestations over the meaning of "faith" were central to broader debates in Western society about reason and faith, knowledge and faith, and subjectivity and authority. This careful genealogy establishes a methodological model for a parallel systematic study of the Chinese development of xin as an "approximate counterpart" to the term "faith."

The essays in Part I illustrate the wide range of semantic functions xin has had in early Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, and popular religious texts. Joachim Gentz's analysis (Chap. 3) of early Chinese texts shows that, as an abstract term, xin is often contrasted with other ethical and philosophical concepts such as ren (仁) and li (礼), serving more as a component than a standalone term. Gentz observes that in compound usage, xin "functions as a term that creates semantic connotations rather than fully independent semantic fields" (p. 75), adding the value of "trustworthiness" to other concepts. While xin does not attain the semantic "weight" of an independent ethical term, it occupies a broader range of meanings (including that of "belief") in colloquial usage. Other essays in this section examine the use of xin in Buddhist and Daoist texts, further showing that xin, rather than merely correlating with European notions of faith or belief, assumes specific nuances in its context.

In one analysis, Friederike Assandri (Chap. 5) extends Michel de Certeau's observations about the contractual nature of "belief" in Indo-European languages to a reading of xin in early medieval Daoist texts. Assandri argues that the verb xin can be interpreted as the establishment of a contract or covenant between humans and divine beings; in some sectarian contexts, this relationship is even extended to Dao itself (expressed as xin dao). Tam Wai Lun (Chap. 6) argues that xin is foundational to Chinese Buddhism, bridging the common distinction between "orthodoxy" and "orthopraxy" by emphasizing both the cognitive and practice-oriented dimensions of faith. This conjunction of orthodoxy and orthopraxy is echoed in Esther-Maria Guggenmos's (Chap. 8) analysis of narratives of "amazement" (or miraculous experiences) associated with xin. Meanwhile, Vincent Goossaert (Chap. 9) and Christoph Klein (Chap. 7) argue for the conceptual significance of xin in both Pure Land Buddhism and popular morality texts.

In Part II, essays focus on xin's function in "channels of exchange" between Manichaeism, Christianity, and Islam. Translation emerges here as a key theme, as the essays illuminate how xin facilitated transcultural exchanges while also acquiring new semantic connotations. Max Deeg's essay (Chap. 10) on Manichaean, Christian, and Buddhist uses of xin in early medieval China highlights the term's adaptability in translating foreign concepts of belief and trust, particularly as Buddhism had already laid the conceptual ground for the term's widespread use. Nicholas Standaert's (Chap. 11) examination of Jesuit missionaries demonstrates how xin was employed to integrate Christian concepts with existing Chinese meanings but also decenters xin as the central preoccupation and highlights the concept of li 理 (reason, or principles) as an equally prominent mediating term. Dror Weil's contribution (Chap. 12) on Chinese Islamic texts demonstrates xin's multiple functions: first, as a socio-ethical term used to bring Islam into alignment with Confucian ethics; second, to translate Islam notions of monotheism; and third, to establish a framework that authenticated the authority of written sources of knowledge.

Together, the essays in Parts I and II challenge simplistic narratives that either see belief/faith as an "imported" Western monotheistic concept grafted onto Chinese terms or ones that establish a reductive equivalency between xin and faith/belief. Xin's semantic flexibility grew as it transitioned from colloquial uses to more abstract and doctrinal meanings in the context of Chinese Buddhism and Daoism, and both facilitated exchanges with Western monotheism and incorporated elements of monotheistic traditions into its unfolding semantic field.

As the book turns more firmly toward Western and Chinese encounters in Parts III and IV, xin is shown to become a site of ideological negotiation and contestation. Part III provides a sweeping overview of social and political transformations in the late nineteenth to twentieth century, with essay topics spanning Christian missionary influences on China, Buddhist reception of xin in Japan and Taiwan, and the circulation of xin as a universalizing concept-category in religious studies, political discourse, and popular religious movements. Chloë Starr's chapter (Chap. 14) shows how the indigenous Chinese church sought to create a new Apostles' creed as an active process of developing a "mature Chinese faith," aspiring to go beyond Western missionaries' use of xin as a tool for religious propagation toward a more robust development of its philosophical and theological potential. Xin also brought new connotations from Western discourse—namely, the emphasis on "inner belief"—into circulation in Buddhist spheres. Hans Martin Kramer (Chap. 15) illustrates the use of a premodern term "faithful mind" (shinjin) as a marker for modern identity for Japanese, while Stefania Travagnin (Chap. 16) explores "xin's institutionalization" in labeling lay Buddhist associations in China and Taiwan. As Travagnin argues, xin took on a political character as a key word in debates about "correct faith" (zhengxin 正信), particularly invoked in new Nationalist campaigns targeting "superstition" (mixin).

Essays in Part III also address the politics of xin as it circulated well beyond established religious traditions. Thomas Fröhlich (Chap. 17) traces emergent senses of xinyang in the work of Liang Qichao, an influential public intellectual who was instrumental in adopting Western knowledge categories into the Chinese vernacular; he argues that Liang attempted to disassociate xiyang from zongjiao's associations with the irrational and introduced a newly positive evaluation of xinyang as "views of death and life" that would subsequently be adopted by other intellectuals such as Hu Shi. Christian Meyer (Chap. 18) helpfully highlights the way xinyang was adopted in the newly emergent field of religious studies as indicating a universal human capacity. Thoralf Klein's essay (Chap. 19) emphasizes the Guomindang's use of xin(yang) to produce emotional attachments to its party doctrines as a form of political religion. Despite the increasing secularization of xin in political and academic parlance, Nikolas Broy (Chap. 20) demonstrates that some sectarian religious groups (such as Yiguandao) have retained older connotations of xin that emphasize efficacy and practice over belief or conviction.

Finally, Part IV addresses xin's capacious semantic functions in contemporary contexts in China and Taiwan, carrying the more textually focused analyses of the previous chapters into examinations of lived religion in early twenty-first-century contexts. Huang Weishan and Johanna Lüdde (Chaps. 21 and 22) take on ethnographic explorations of Buddhist practitioners, with Huang demonstrating the multi-layered interpretations of xin as part of Tzu Chi practitioners' conversion narratives, and Lüdde presenting a case study of Buddhist nuns seeking to cultivate xinxin 信心, or a sense of confidence connected to Buddhist notions of heroic masculinity. Adam Yuet Chua (Chap. 23) offers a similarly nuanced and localized reading of religious practices in northern Shaanxi Province, arguing that presuppositions of belief underlie ritual expressions of thanksgiving to deities even without the explicit invocation of xin(yang). Gerda Wielander (Chap. 24) focuses on the Chinese Communist Party's recent efforts to create a political education campaign that fixes the "floating signifier" of xin(yang) within party discourse. Wielander argues that this strategy of co-opting xin(yang) for political allegiance takes on an urgency for the Party in the face of other appeals for popular belief, including Christianity and resistance movements for human rights.

One of the book's major strengths lies in its sprawling quality; with a large variety of topics covered and the multidisciplinary scope of its authors' approaches, it offers a comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the history of xin. Overall, the volume editors have gathered together essays with some major through lines, synthesized in Christian Meyer's Epilogue, in which he returns to the site of comparison between xin and belief/faith. Meyers, as a conclusion, forwards four final theses: (i) modern Western terminologies transformed but did not completely replace Chinese religious concepts; (ii) different sets of vocabularies exist concomitantly and mutually permeate each other; (iii) modern vocabulary on religion has become dominant in secular contexts, but traditional terminologies have also survived and adapted in their midst; and (iv) Chinese academia plays a crucial mediating role in translating between local and globalized religious terminologies.

Despite its breadth, there remain some perspectives that are conspicuously missing—namely, the use or reception of xin by non-Han populations in China and the larger Sinophone world. These gaps are not foreclosing but rather invite more scholarly interrogation of the discursive conditions under which xin comes to operate as a term of difference—between "religion" and "superstition," institutionalized churches and "evil cults," and other sites of distinction that govern religious life. As a cohesive overview as well as an in-depth provocation into many seeming "fixed" meanings of xin, this volume will be indispensable for any scholars interested in the dynamic global history of religious concepts.