Catholic Witness and Chinese Religion in Republican Era China

Abstract This chapter introduces the Belgian-born priest and naturalized Chinese citizen Vincent Lebbe amid the ecclesial, governmental, and military relationships through which he tried to support the indigenization of the Catholic Church in China. It foregrounds the historical and theological stakes of studying the pro-indigenization movement, seeking to remedy the lack of Catholic representation in historical studies of Chinese modernity and to address the weaknesses of the inculturation paradigm in Catholic ecclesiology. This book will combine socio-historical analysis and theological reflection to stress that the measure of indigenization—as either an emic ideal of its Christian proponents, or an etic descriptor employed by scholars to assess the extent to which Christianity has ever been “of China”—lies in the habits of Chinese religiosity.