Christianity In Asia Research Paper

1. South Asia

There is evidence of Christian activity in South India and Sri Lanka from the sixth century. Kerala is the region where most activity was concentrated, and Christians are still strong there, comprising 20 percent of the population. Christians also comprise a significant proportion of the population of Tamil Nadu. Portuguese colonisers saw a connection between trade and religion and, with the aid of the Jesuit order, encouraged the majority of the population of their settlement in Goa to convert to Christianity by the end of the sixteenth century. Under British rule the East India Company resisted the deployment of missionaries, judging that their presence would exacerbate existing religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims. But in the nineteenth century missionaries were allowed into most of British India. Converts were few and most were from marginal tribal groups, or from untouchables who have much to gain by abandoning Hinduism for Christianity. Since the 1980s a vocal Dalit (untouchable) movement has emerged which is radically anticaste and draws on Latin American-style liberation theology for its inspiration. With the rise of religious politics in India since the Premiership of Mrs Gandhi, religious conflict has become endemic in many parts of India and this has had an increasing impact on Christians. In Sri Lanka Christians are most prominent in the West and make up 30 percent of Colombo’s population.

2. Christianity In China

Christianity in China goes back to the migration of Nestorian Christians from Iraq to China along the trade routes in the seventh century CE. The Jesuits arrived in China in the sixteenth century under the leadership of Matteo Ricci who experimented with a radical indigenisation of Christianity to Chinese culture. His efforts at cultural translation were controversial in Rome and the Pope insisted on a reversion to Roman rituals and traditions in 1744. After the opium wars and the Nanking treaty of 1842, Catholic and Protestant missionaries settled in many parts of China. The association between Christianity and Imperialism was strong and conversions were few until the failure of the Boxer rebellion at the end of the nineteenth century when many, especially young, Chinese turned to Christianity as a potential source of social and spiritual restoration. With the advent of Communist government in 1949 all foreign missionaries were removed from China and churches closed. Ironically the exclusion of foreign missionaries allowed Chinese Christianity to flourish in a way it had not before and the Christian presence in China today is much greater than it was at the time of the Communist revolution. Most of the officially recognized churches in China, whether Catholic or Protestant in origin, are known as ‘three-self’ churches, which means that they are not dependent on extra-Chinese ecclesiastical authority, nor do they rely on funds from overseas. There are also a large number of unofficial churches and congregations in China whose leaders try to circumvent controls on officially recognized churches, and in particular controls on proselytism. Evangelistic and worship meetings are held in secret, in apartments, or in open spaces away from city or town centres. The mass migration of many tens of millions of rural migrants into towns and cities in China since the 1980s, the largest contemporary movement of people on the planet, has occasioned conversions to new religions, including Christianity, as migrants seek to find a substitute for village-folk religion. Churches in urban areas, and especially in southern China, are currently growing very fast, fuelled by the spiritual and ritual vacuum occasioned by the Cultural Revolution and the enforced break-up of traditional Chinese religions, and by intellectual and popular dissatisfaction with secular Communist ideology.

3. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, And Korea

One fifth of the population of Hong Kong are Christian and just under half are Catholics. The principal Protestant and Catholic traditions are represented and there are also a large number of independent and Pentecostal churches which have become established since the 1970s. The majority of Christians in Taiwan are Presbyterian, reflecting a missionary drive in the nineteenth century. Many new Christian groups emerged after the emigration of supporters of the government of Chian Kai-sheck to Taiwan from mainland China. The Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier introduced Christianity to Japan in 1549, after his initial mission to India who converted the Japanese court to Christianity. More than 300,000 Japanese followed their rulers and converted by the end of that century. However, Christianity was later proscribed, though small pockets of Christian activity remained. In the twentieth century Japan has been characterized by remarkable religious innovation, and many New Religious Movements have emerged, particularly since the Second World War. Parallel developments have occurred in Japanese Christianity. New indigenous styles of Christianity have emerged, and Pentecostal groups have also proliferated.

The Catholic Church has roots in Korea as far back as the sixteenth century but Protestantism has taken root in Korea in a manner it has nowhere else in Asia. Forty-one percent of the population are now Christian, and the majority belong to indigenous Korean and Protestant churches. The beginning of the twentieth century saw a particularly rapid influx of Koreans into the Protestant churches, and many Protestant churches have also experienced considerable growth since the Second World War. Seoul has some of the largest church buildings, and the largest congregations, anywhere in the world. Explanations for the strength of Protestantism in Korea are various. One theory is that there is a uniquely individualist strain to Korean Confucianism and that Protestantism individualism, with its more progressive conception of the role of the individual in the fast changing world of the twentieth century, proved particularly attractive to Koreans who were dissatisfied with Confucianism.

4. Southeast Asia

As a consequence of more than three centuries of settlement by the Spanish, and after the Spanish American war, by the United States, Christianity is the principal religion of the Philippines. Virtually the whole country was converted to Roman Catholicism under Spanish rule, though a Muslim minority remained, primarily in Mindanao. The Roman Catholic Church, however, was organized and run exclusively by foreign clergy and resentment at this resulted in an internal revolution whose outcome was the Philippine Independent Church which broke away from Catholicism after 1860. Protestant missionaries arrived with the Americans, including Episcopalians who set out to convert the mountain peoples in North Luzon as they had not been reached by the Catholics.

Roman Catholic missions were active in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and established churches in all three countries. Cambodia now has very few Christians indeed. After Year Zero Christians were totally purged from Cambodia. In Laos the Catholic Church has had most converts amongst tribal peoples on the border with Thailand but remains an insignificant presence elsewhere in the country. In Vietnam Christians, the great majority of whom are Catholic, constitute 7 percent of the population. The church was indigenized much more effectively in the North, whereas in the South local leadership was discouraged and there are far fewer adherents. Catholics have been close to political leadership in both North and South Vietnam and the Catholic Church in Rome and in Vietnam was a strong supporter of moves for peace during the war, and of subsequent North–South reconciliation efforts after the war.

Uniquely in Southeast Asia, Thailand has never been colonized by a foreign power and Thai Buddhism is particularly resistant to foreign, including Christian, influence. Strong Chinese communities in the large cities, and especially in Bangkok, are the main locus of Christian adherents. Myanmar Buddhists are also highly resistant to Christianity. Christians are most numerous amongst the Karen tribal group in the forests of the Northwest who are not Buddhist, and do not regard themselves as Burmese.

Christianity was introduced into the Indonesian archipelago by the Dutch in the sixteenth century. Christians are most numerous in Northern Sumatra where the non-Muslim Batak people converted to Christianity in large numbers. There are also churches in most areas of Java, and on some of the other islands. Indonesian Christianity has been subject to the State religious doctrine of Panchasilla which requires that all religious groups express loyalty to the state and tolerance of other religions. Indonesian Christians were active in the struggle for independence from the Dutch after the Second World War and their partnership in the birth of the new independent nation may partly explain why, almost uniquely in the Muslim world, there have in the past been a number of religious conversions. However, a peaceful interreligious climate characterized by neighborliness and dialogue between the religions recently has turned to conflict as the Suharto and Habibi governments have stirred up religious conflict as a way of maintaining a hold on the votes of the predominantly Muslim population.

Christians in Malaysia number around 7 percent of the population, and 15 percent in Singapore. Dating back to the Portugese settlement of Malacca in the fifteenth century, Malaysian Christianity has taken up a range of influences including Portugese Catholic, Dutch Presbyterian, American Methodist, Anglican, and Pentecostal. Christians are confined to Chinese and Indian minorities on the whole, though tribal peoples in East Malaysia have converted to Christianity in large numbers. The fastest growing forms of Christianity in both Singapore and Malaysia today are Pentecostal or Charismatic. This modern style of Christianity has spawned many independent churches and has also been very influential in mainstream Catholic and Protestant congregations. Both countries have experienced a surge in religious interest and affiliation in recent years, sparked in part by Islamic resurgence among the Malays. This is reflected in a range of religious innovations both within Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as in Christianity.

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