Chloe Starr – författare

The quest for gentility has shaped Chinese civilization and the formation of culture in China until the present day. This book analyzes social aspirations and cultural practices in China from 1550 to 1999, showing how the notion of gentility has evolved and retained its relevance in China from late imperial times until the modern day. Gentility denotes the way of the gentleman and gentlewoman. The concept of gentility transcends the categories of gender and class and provides important new insights into the ways Chinese men and women lived their lives, perceived their world and constructed their cultural environment. In contrast to analyses of the elite, perceptions of gentility relate to ideals, ambitions, desires, social capital, cultural sophistication, literary refinement, aesthetic appreciation, moral behaviour, femininity and gentlemanly elegance, rather than to actual status or power. Twelve international leading scholars present multi-disciplinary approaches to explore the images, artefacts and transmission of gentility across the centuries in historical and literary situations, popular and high culture, private and official documents, poetry clubs, garden culture and aesthetic guidebooks. This volume changes the ways we look at Chinese cultural history, literature, women and gender issues and offers new perspectives on Chinese sources.

The quest for gentility has shaped Chinese civilization and the formation of culture in China until the present day. This book analyzes social aspirations and cultural practices in China from 1550 to 1999, showing how the notion of gentility has evolved and retained its relevance in China from late imperial times until the modern day. Gentility denotes the way of the gentleman and gentlewoman. The concept of gentility transcends the categories of gender and class and provides important new insights into the ways Chinese men and women lived their lives, perceived their world and constructed their cultural environment. In contrast to analyses of the elite, perceptions of gentility relate to ideals, ambitions, desires, social capital, cultural sophistication, literary refinement, aesthetic appreciation, moral behaviour, femininity and gentlemanly elegance, rather than to actual status or power. Twelve international leading scholars present multi-disciplinary approaches to explore the images, artefacts and transmission of gentility across the centuries in historical and literary situations, popular and high culture, private and official documents, poetry clubs, garden culture and aesthetic guidebooks. This volume changes the ways we look at Chinese cultural history, literature, women and gender issues and offers new perspectives on Chinese sources.

The majority of Christians in China over the course of the last century have worshipped not in missionary-founded churches or in congregations affiliated with the contemporary Three-Self Patriotic Movement or Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, but in independent and unregistered churches, often labeled ""house churches."" From the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements within the mission-church landscape of the early twentieth century, to the Calvinist Reformed movement in the present-day Protestant church, the vibrant faith life and extraordinary church growth of this sector of Chinese Christianity offer a fascinating witness and lesson to the world church. Yet despite the size of their congregations and the spread of their teachings, the theologies of these independent and unregistered churches have drawn much less academic attention than those of mission-church or ""state church"" theologians.

This volume presents a selection of new studies on ""house church"" theologians and theologies. These begin in the early twentieth century with studies of the Spiritual Gifts movement in Shandong and the nature of Pentecostalism in Hong Kong, and arrive in the present with essays on the changing role of women's leadership in the church, given the spread of Reformed thought and the theological implications of Westminsterian Neo-Calvinism in China. The second section of the volume is devoted to the theological writings and lives of the two most prominent independent church figures of the twentieth century: Wang Mingdao and Ni Tuosheng (Watchman Nee). These chapters include studies of spiritual theology; of Ni's doctrine of humanity, his views on salvation, and his prison letters; and of Wang Mingdao's life and moral thought, his Confucian beliefs, and his understanding of the relationship of Christians to the state. The third section of the volume foregrounds church voices like the fundamentalist Samuel Lamb and the mediating figure Yang Shaotang, and considers local developments in Roman Catholicism in light of Vatican reforms.