Let Your Light Shine: The Convergence and Divergence of Christianity and Chinese Culture

Let Your Light Shine: The Convergence and Divergence of Christianity and Chinese Culture

Curie Li QU

In Christ and Culture, Richard Niebuhr sorts out five ways Christians have approached Western culture throughout history, ie, (1) Christ against Culture, (2) the Christ of Culture, (3) Christ above Culture, (4) Christ and Culture in Paradox, and ( 5) Christ the Transformer of Culture. Although Niebuhr's own cultural context is mid-20th century America, his five models can largely be counted as valid when we examine the relationship between Christianity and Chinese culture.
Since Robert Morrison's time, missionaries, Chinese theologians, Cultural-Christians and ordinary Christians hold different attitudes toward Chinese culture: from extreme divergence to total convergence. This paper discusses the success and failure of significant attempts at accommodating Christianity with Chinese culture in the last two centuries, arguing that Niebuhr's type 4 (paradoxically co-existing), rather than type 5 (transforming) though favored by Niebuhr himself and most Chinese Christian scholars, is probably the most viable way.