Be Pious and Patriotic: A Comparison of Chinese Christian and Muslim Teaching on Just War in the Early Stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937–1941

Wai Luen Kwok*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

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    Abstract

    This article will reconstruct how Chinese Christians and Muslims, as civilians, sought a sense of justice in the midst of war through their religious discourses in their magazines, The True Light Review and Yue Hua. It will firstly analyse the particular situation that Christianity and Islam in China faced in 1930s and will compare their characteristics in terms of hermeneutics of their respective sacred texts and the strategy of linking up social circumstance and religious thought. It will study how Yue Hua understood the Japanese aggression through the lens of the Islamic revival movement, focusing particularly on how it argued that Japanese pan-Asianism was not an option for the Islamic revival movement in China. With regard to The True Light Review, it will analyse how the Baptist pacifist position changed during the war and how the writers in the semi-occupied Shanghai International Settlement interpreted their religious teaching to understand the war of resistance as a just war. It will argue that linking literary creativity with deep spiritual piety and solidarity for compatriots is the key to differentiating the use of religious discourse as a mere political tool from religious political discourse.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)287-306
    Number of pages20
    JournalIslam and Christian-Muslim Relations
    Volume31
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jul 2020

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Religious studies
    • Political Science and International Relations

    User-Defined Keywords

    • Chinese Christians
    • Chinese Muslims
    • justice
    • theological hermeneutics
    • war

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