| Volume 6, Number 3, July 2009 |
Cultural Contact, Science
and the Empire of Salvation
by Eugenio Menegon 梅欧金 |
Jan Mikołaj Smogulecki (1610 – 1656)
Pioneer of the Intercultural Dialogue
by Leszek Gesiak
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SINCE the 1920s, the story of Christianity in China has mainly been recounted as one of cultural imperialism and aggression. The revolutionary winds that swept the country fuelled a firm anti-imperialist stance, justified by the dire straits of the Chinese Republic, faced with intrusive foreign economic and military control. The historical narratives created in the crucible of the Nationalist and Communist revolutions have remained dominant to this day in the collective imagination of the Chinese public, and still frame the analysis of many Western and Chinese scholars.
The undeniable links of Christian churches with foreign powers, and the close intellectual relationship forged at the end of the nineteenth century between the discourse of “Western civilization” and Christian conversion are historical facts. The Boxer Uprising and the consequent suppression led by foreign imperial powers was perhaps the bloodiest and most tragic consequence of such a perverse marriage. Decades of solid scholarship, however, have by now...
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THE beginning of the twenty-first century opened a time for very intensive emigration movements in the world. The main reason for this was the modern way of transportation, which permitted many people to go easily from one place to another. Of course there are still other kinds of obstacles of an administrative or formal nature which are connected to the maintenance of borders and keeping them against the illegal immigrants. But it is also true that history has not seen such huge waves of emigration as it is now witnessing at the turn of the twenty-first Century.
Due to the contemporary possibilities of communication like the internet, cell phones or satellite transmissions, the world has become a “global village” and the international cultural exchange nowadays has, in the international context, unparallel dimensions in history. We are continuously experiencing the interaction among different cultures, nations, languages, religions and systems of values. But it was not always like that...
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| Issue 6.3 |
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Remembering—
A Shared Duty
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