AHC: Nestorian China
- Thread starter Vingilótë
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scholar
Banned
Wait a century, on its current pace Christianity will become the dominant religion of China in that amount of time.
However, there was a good time when China could have become Catholic. The Ming Dynasty, and especially the Southern Ming, was rapidly being converted to Christianity amongst the nobility and merchant classes, with a significant peasant following. Eventually one of the fleeing would be Emperors and their entire court converted in an effort to secure support from the Portuguese and Spaniards. Have them hold out longer and have either of those two states more interested in keeping the Southern Ming around. All that's needed is a stalemate (something that happens plenty of times in the past) and from there conversion in the south can be completed and insidiously move northward.
A similar event was occurring under the Qing, but the moment a doctrinal dispute took hold between the various christian factions it was doomed. Some said that Confucianism was not incompatible with Christianity and that in all likelihood Confucius was saved. Others said that Confucianism was just as wrong and backward as Buddhism or Taoism and should be eliminated. Both sides appealed to the Pope, and even before the Pope made a decision the Qing court was annoyed. The religion was banned and outlawed by the Chinese Emperor because it challenged his temporal and religious authority. Christianity, which was only just beginning to recover from the fall of the Ming, was crushed once again.
Christianity would have moderate success in the later Qing years, being about as popular as Islam was, or even more so. Sun Yatsen even attended a christian school in china. That is, until the old Empire fell, and the Nationalists and the Communists fought each other. Both frowned pretty heavily upon the religion, and the group faced an existential threat in the form of the Japanese. The civil war left them a disenfranchised minority, and the Communist takeover saw them persecuted during the cultural revolution.
That being said, they've recovered better than most. Depending on who you talk to the numbers of Christians in china are hopelessly conservative (about 15 million) or stupidly excessive (over 100 million). Both numbers are growing at an extremely fast rate.
Three potential things could lead to Christianity becoming dominant much sooner than 2100:
- The Southern Ming Dynasty Holds Firm, if only for several more decades, or the Ming Dynasty remains strong for as long as it can.
- The doctrinal dispute never gets out of hand and both factions work within the Qing government until they are actually in a position to be petty.
- The Qing Dynasty lingers on for a few more decades and the Communist revolution fails.
scholar
Banned
It wouldn't differ much from the Catholicism and Protestantism that evolved in China.
scholar
Banned
The Ming court, or China in general, would never abandon Confucianism. Even now, the number of people who profess themselves to be Confucian is small, but the layers and influence of Confucianism still dominates the country to an extent.
It would be syncretic. The Portuguese and Spanish had aimed on co-opting the Confucian ethics systems in order to promote Christianity from within the system and the courts. It wasn't just pragmatism either, or else some of them wouldn't be trying to say that Confucius went to heaven (born half a millennium before Christ) while King Philip of Spain would not.
Political consequences? So long as they don't try to pull a later Tang purge, it might be minimized from causing too much societal upheaval. Buddhism was originally seen as a kind of "foreign Taoism", and Christianity was, for a time, viewed similarly in both China and Japan (a weird form of Buddhism/Taoism). The more the missionaries try to break their religion from Taoism and Buddhism, the more tension it will cause. I don't foresee anywhere near the same level of reaction against it in China as there was in Japan, but there is the potential for real societal turmoil when the bureaucracy, merchants, and gentry are converted, while the common people still cling to Buddhism or Taoism. The main issue will be making sure the religion can outlast the Ming, which requires the religion to diffuse properly and gain influence in potential rival's courts.
Probably not, Emperors of China rarely viewed themselves a reincarnations of other people and the idea of the emperor becoming the reincarnation of Jesus Christ wouldn't prove feasible on a practical or religious level. Tibet is an entirely different animal to the Han culture Chinese.
That's not to say that Christianity in China wouldn't be fundamentally different from Christianity outside of it, depending on when the conversion occurs. I have no doubt that the Emperor, even a nominally Catholic one, would try to sever the authority of the pope in China. Either by inviting the Pope to take up residence in the capital, or usurping the authority to appoint archbishops in his own lands.
Given Chinese ancestor worship, the notion that all of their pre-Christian predecessors are in Hell is not going to sit right with them.
Maybe a greater emphasis on the Harrowing of Hell or the passage about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison--that many damned aren't necessarily there anymore?
Or perhaps the Chinese Nestorians go full-bore Universal Reconciliation and teach that even the damned, even Satan, will be saved eventually. Tie it in with Chinese notions of the Middle Kingdom--someday all will be in harmonious submission to the Son of Heaven.
(Seriously, there were Eastern thinkers who were universalists and the doctrine might follow the Nestorians to China.)
Maybe a greater emphasis on the Harrowing of Hell or the passage about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison--that many damned aren't necessarily there anymore?
Or perhaps the Chinese Nestorians go full-bore Universal Reconciliation and teach that even the damned, even Satan, will be saved eventually. Tie it in with Chinese notions of the Middle Kingdom--someday all will be in harmonious submission to the Son of Heaven.
(Seriously, there were Eastern thinkers who were universalists and the doctrine might follow the Nestorians to China.)
Given Chinese ancestor worship, the notion that all of their pre-Christian predecessors are in Hell is not going to sit right with them.
Maybe a greater emphasis on the Harrowing of Hell or the passage about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison--that many damned aren't necessarily there anymore?
Or perhaps the Chinese Nestorians go full-bore Universal Reconciliation and teach that even the damned, even Satan, will be saved eventually. Tie it in with Chinese notions of the Middle Kingdom--someday all will be in harmonious submission to the Son of Heaven.
(Seriously, there were Eastern thinkers who were universalists and the doctrine might follow the Nestorians to China.)
Also if enough Chineese people start converting I expect the church leadership will come up with some theological way to start co-opting traditional Chineese religious teachings into a more christian mold.
I think a variant of Christianity that also believes in reincarnation will work.
Did the Nestorian canon include Hebrews or not? Hebrews uses the explicit phrase "die once and then face judgement."
There's making something more readable in the new language and then there's straight-up changing doctrine to make it more palatable, which some people aren't going to be cool with.
scholar
Banned
That didn't stop them, or the Japanese and Koreans, from converting in fairly significant numbers.Given Chinese ancestor worship, the notion that all of their pre-Christian predecessors are in Hell is not going to sit right with them.
Maybe a greater emphasis on the Harrowing of Hell or the passage about Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison--that many damned aren't necessarily there anymore?
Or perhaps the Chinese Nestorians go full-bore Universal Reconciliation and teach that even the damned, even Satan, will be saved eventually. Tie it in with Chinese notions of the Middle Kingdom--someday all will be in harmonious submission to the Son of Heaven.
(Seriously, there were Eastern thinkers who were universalists and the doctrine might follow the Nestorians to China.)
Confucius went to heaven, and possibly some others, according to some of the *Europeans* involved, so why not have natives expanding upon that?
Perhaps, but doubtful. You can easily see some kind of reconciliation between doctrines, but not a universal one.
That mostly stems from India rather than China, though there were some similar voices here and there.