Abstract
This chapter starts with three questions with reference to the cross removal incidents in China in Zhejiang Province between 2014 and 2016: How did the Chinese authorities violate human rights in terms of freedom of religion and expression? How did Christians respond to what the Chinese authorities did to them? How did Christians view themselves, taking into account the treatment of the Chinese authorities? Apart from human dignity as a right, Christians in their resistance have displayed a dignified manner characterized by non-violence and forgiveness, and this is human dignity as a virtue. Christians in their resistance may have a little impact on the improvement of human rights conditions in China, but they witness to a dignity of life, which can never be deprived by violence and injustice.
This is a revised version of the original article entitled to ‘Human Dignity as a Right and Virtue in Practice: A Socio-Theological Reflection from and on the Cross Removal Incidents in China’, Religions, 2018, 9:138.
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Notes
- 1.
See Davis [8].
- 2.
Zhang [23, p. 200].
- 3.
Zhang [23, pp. 56–58].
- 4.
Sulmasy [16, pp. 937–944].
- 5.
Rosen [15].
- 6.
Cook [7, pp. 43–65].
- 7.
List of Affected Churches in Zhejiang and Wenzhou (2014–16), https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bx5XNC-WEt7EJ0zwpmvkrcPjeUbqCTEMFyqbeJINvmE/edit. Accessed 18 November 2019.
- 8.
Exclusive [5].
- 9.
Wang [18, at p. 795].
- 10.
Ying [22, at p. 29] (in Chinese).
- 11.
Cao [3, pp. 33–35].
- 12.
Cao [4, at p. 36].
- 13.
Wang [18, p. 795].
- 14.
China Change [6].
- 15.
Benney [1].
- 16.
Hung [11].
- 17.
Wielander [19, pp. 849–864].
- 18.
Initium [12].
- 19.
Yang [21, at p. 87].
- 20.
Nothingistic [14].
- 21.
Near the Cross, https://hymnary.org/text/jesus_keep_me_near_the_cross. Accessed 18 November 2019.
- 22.
Xiaobo [20].
- 23.
Lynch [13, p. 31].
- 24.
Bloch [2, p. 144].
- 25.
Schwöbel [17].
- 26.
Ho [9, at p. 870].
- 27.
Hu [10, at p. 61].
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Kung, L.Y. (2020). A Story of Defending Human Dignity as a Right and Virtue, with Reference to the Cross Removal Incidents in China. In: Xie, Z., Kollontai, P., Kim, S. (eds) Human Dignity, Human Rights, and Social Justice. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5081-2_5
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