Abstract
In this chapter, the editors introduce the purpose of the volume: to examine how the dynamic growth of religion, coupled with dramatic social and economic change, is reshaping the place of religion in Chinese public life. Te editors give special attention to the broad themes of religion in civil society, religion as a force for social capital development and democratization, and the emerging tensions between religion and the state that have led to increasing calls for rule-of-law reform to foster religious freedom.
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Notes
Conrad Hackett and Brian J. Grim, The Global Religious Landscape (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2012), 46. This number does not include an additional 20 percent of the population that practices some form of folk religion.
Quoted in Liu Peng, “Religious Legislation in China: Historical Evolution and Recent Developments,” Religious Studies Review 1:1 (January 2007): 63.
Carol Lee Hamrin, “New State Regulations on Religion: The Bargaining Begins,” presentation at conference, “Religion and Cultural Change in China,” February 1, 2005, The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. For additional background, see Pitman B. Potter, “Belief in Control: Regulation of Religion in China,” The China Quarterly 174 (June 2003): 317–337;
and Mickey Spiegel, “Control and Containment in the Reform Era” in Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin, eds, God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Relations (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2004), 40–57.
Liu Peng, “A Crisis of Faith,” China Security 4:4 (Autumn 2008): 30.
Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke, The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), ch. 7
Bruce Dickson, “Dilemmas of Party Adaptation: The CCP’s Strategies for Survival,” in Peter Hays Gries and Stanely Rosen, eds, Chinese Politics: State, Society, and the Market (London: Routledge, 2010), 22–40.
For a journalistic account of the party leadership, see Richard McGregor, The Party: The Secret Work of China’s Communist Rulers (New York: Harper, 2011).
See the summary of this position in Randall Peerenboom, China Modernizes: Threat to the West or Model for the Rest? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 31–32.
Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, “How Development Leads to Democracy: What We Know About Modernization,” Foreign Affairs 88:2 (March/April 2009): 38.
Inglehart and Welzel give a fuller treatment of this sequence in Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Robert Putnam, the most important contemporary scholar of social capital, developed his ideas through comparative analysis of political cooperation and conflict. See Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
A classic statement of civil society as a set of “mediating structures” is Peter L. Berger and Richard John Neuhaus, To Empower People: The Role of Mediating Structures in Public Policy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1977).
Robert D. Woodberry, “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy,” American Political Science Review 106:2 (May 2012): 244–274.
Monica Duffy Toft, Daniel Philpott, and Timothy Samuel Shah, God’s Century: Resurgent Religion and Global Politics (New York: WW Norton, 2011), 49.
Fenggang Yang, “Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China,” Sociological Quarterly 47 (2006): 93–122.
Fenggang Yang, “Oligopoly Dynamics and the Triple Religious Markets in China,” in Allen Hertzke, ed., The Future of Religious Freedom: Global Challenges (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 128–156.
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© 2014 Joel A. Carpenter and Kevin R. den Dulk
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Carpenter, J.A., den Dulk, K.R. (2014). Introduction. In: Carpenter, J.A., den Dulk, K.R. (eds) Christianity in Chinese Public Life: Religion, Society, and the Rule of Law. Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137410184_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137410184_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49125-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-41018-4
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