Henrietta Harrison, The Missionary’s Curse

Harrison教授的新書粗讀畢。冷靜細致，文如其人。每章對應中國山西某村落流傳的有關天主教的傳說。傳說的敘述方式十足本土化，但每個傳說背後都是全球史。包括如今村裡天壇式的神龕和庑殿式的教堂，村民當是政府要求，其實是受梵蒂岡囑的台灣神父規劃。本土化的背後有太多被忽略的東西。”The great fire war” 沒能阻止天主教的大公性，作為一種強調歸宗和相通的宗教它終究是世界的一部分（尤其是梵蒂岡的一部份）。

這一段尤其有趣，特意抄來：

#書# “Predictions for the future of the Catholic church in China tend to be heavily influenced by the ideologies of those who make them. On the one hand are those who look at the many conversions that have taken place since the 1980s and see the inexorable rise of Christianity in China (Protestant evangelicals). On the other hand are those who believe that religion inevitably declines as societies modernize and expect Catholics in China to leave their religion as urbanization increases and old communities fall apart. This view is shared in principle by Chinese officials and with great sincerity by many Western academics. The story of Cave Gully suggests both views are far too sweeping. Catholicism has long been central to the villager’s identity and sense of community. It is surely likely to remain so. The large number of conversions that took place in Shanxi in the 1990s and 2000s, on the other hand, were the result of a particular combination of circumstances. As a global religion Christianity naturally appealed at a time of opening up to the outside world, the rise of global linkages, and popular aspirations for modern Westernized lifestyles. But the successful evangelism was also built on the passion generated in Catholic communities by the political oppression that they had suffered in the 1960s and 1970s. This created the commitment that funded and supported the evangelists. It also empowered men and women whose sufferings at that time now make them exceptionally effective preachers. Neither of these two phenomena is likely to continue for many more years. The first generation of lay evangelists are growing old, while the revival of the institutional church is imposing increasing control over them. Like the missionaries who took over in the mid-nineteenth century after an age of expansion, a new generation of clergy look likely to work towards consolidation and ever closer links with the global church. Henrietta Harrison, The Missionary’s Curse, 197-8.

「歷史」提供信仰和傳奇中「人」的向度（好比恐怖片最恐怖之處就在於將恐怖傳奇都變成活生生的歷史）。 Harrison教授的冷靜細膩通貫全書，結尾最後陳：”As the stories the villagers tell give the layers of their history, so their religious practice is made of those same layers. Both stories and religious practice belong in the villagers’ present-day lives, but in them the long history of their community is revealed.”

學術寫作訓練1.1。

近期讀的：

CAO Nanlai, Constructing China’s Jerusalem: Christians, Power, and Place in Contemporary Wenzhou (作者正聰明也。但覺得題目未免標題黨：沒有神學探討何談中國耶路撒冷。現在的研究缺的本土教會的人類學觀察，更缺語境神學或較為系統的神學思想剖析，或者就是當今中國各路學說想法脈絡的剖析)

Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan, 1937-1945: The Struggle for Survival (米特教授屬文采飛揚的作者類型，老少鹹宜)

Jason Kindop and Carol Lee Hamrin, editors, God and Caesar in China: policy implications of church-state tensions

Alan Hunter and Kim-Kwong Chan, editors, Protestantism in Contemporary China