TY - JOUR
T1 - Anglican indigenization and contextualization in colonial Hong Kong
T2 - Comparative case studies of St. John's cathedral and St. Mary's church
AU - Ellis, James
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019.
PY - 2019/7/10
Y1 - 2019/7/10
N2 - The British Empire expanded into East Asia during the early years of the Protestant Mission Movement in China, one of history's greatest cross-cultural encounters. Anglicans, however, did not accommodate local Chinese culture when they built St. John's Cathedral in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. St. John's had a prototypical English style and was a gathering place for the colony's political and social elites, strengthening the new social order. The Cathedral spoke a Western architectural language that local residents could not understand and many saw Christianity as a strange, imposing, foreign religion. As indigenous Chinese Christians assumed leadership of Hong Kong's Anglican Church, ecclesial architecture took on more Chinese elements, a transition epitomized by St. Mary's Church, a Chinese Renaissance masterpiece featuring symbols from Taoism, Buddhism, and Chinese folk religions. This essay analyzes the contextualization of Hong Kong's Anglican architecture, which made Christian concepts more relevant to the indigenous community.
AB - The British Empire expanded into East Asia during the early years of the Protestant Mission Movement in China, one of history's greatest cross-cultural encounters. Anglicans, however, did not accommodate local Chinese culture when they built St. John's Cathedral in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. St. John's had a prototypical English style and was a gathering place for the colony's political and social elites, strengthening the new social order. The Cathedral spoke a Western architectural language that local residents could not understand and many saw Christianity as a strange, imposing, foreign religion. As indigenous Chinese Christians assumed leadership of Hong Kong's Anglican Church, ecclesial architecture took on more Chinese elements, a transition epitomized by St. Mary's Church, a Chinese Renaissance masterpiece featuring symbols from Taoism, Buddhism, and Chinese folk religions. This essay analyzes the contextualization of Hong Kong's Anglican architecture, which made Christian concepts more relevant to the indigenous community.
KW - Anglicanism
KW - Chinese parish church
KW - Chinese Renaissance architecture
KW - Christian contextualization
KW - Christian indigenization
KW - Hong Kong
KW - St. John's Cathedral
KW - St. Mary's Church
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85069207416&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1163/15733831-12341650
DO - 10.1163/15733831-12341650
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85069207416
SN - 0168-9789
VL - 36
SP - 219
EP - 246
JO - Mission Studies
JF - Mission Studies
IS - 2
ER -