Christianity: How the West Changed the East
Christianity, being the largest religion in the world is practiced in countless countries due to its following of over two billion people. As Christianity is often said to have developed along with western culture, it is often an integral part of being considered “Western”. This paper establishes how Christianity spread to the East and why this happened.
Often, it is hard to imagine how religious conversions happen in history. In the case of Christian converts in eastern Asia, it was common practice for European merchants to take Jesuits with them. The Jesuits specifically aimed to convert elite scholars so that they would help spread the word of Christianity in their own country. Also, unlike normal inhabitants of a society, these elite scholars, once converted, would be able to defend their beliefs when explaining their reason for conversion.
Establishing a causal relationship between the presence of Christianity and the western influence in an eastern Asian country would allow us to have a way of easily grasping the cultural independence of one of these countries. As Christian scholars documented their activities arguably more than the average Confucian or Buddhist scholar, the detection of an eastern Asian state with high western influence should be simpler to establish through western documentation.
Intuitively, it seems likely for there to be a correlations. However, this is mainly because religion is a subset of culture, thus having Christianity as a dominant religion would imply that at least part of that state's culture has western influence. As a consequence, this also means that even though the presence of Christianity is likely to imply a high level of western influence, the converse is not necessarily true. Namely, the absence of Christianity should not imply the absence of western influence in the culture of an eastern Asian state.
It is also worthwhile to keep in mind that many Catholic Christian teachings conflict with Confucian or Buddhist teachings. Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit priest who was one of the founding fathers of the Jesuit China Mission realized that this moral conflict existed. So, as a result of trying to harmonize Christianity with Confucianism, he revised several Catholic doctrines. For example, Confucianism included a ritual that is performed four times a year, where a literati kills an animal as sacrifice. Matteo Ricci claimed, however, that these sacrifices had no religious meaning, and so were not a real offering. So, it stopped being a problem for Jesuit missionaries, making their mission to convert Confucians and Buddhists easier than it should have been.
The Japanese have documents that clearly reject Christian values. This implies that Christianity, at least for a decent amount of time in its pre-modern era, was shunned in Japan. In Yang Guangxian’s document “I cannot do otherwise”, he explains in great detail why Christianity cannot be accepted in Japanese culture. As stated in the introduction to that document, “while welcomed by the late Ming and early Qing emperors for their expertise in areas such as astronomy, calendar-making, cannon and other firearms, and mathematics, the Jesuits made relatively few converts”. Generally speaking, the Jesuits tried to argue that only God and Jesus deserve praise. Considering that Confucian values are strongly earth-bound, arguments from Matteo Ricci such as “(...) Heaven and Earth are not at all to be revered” played a large part in decreasing Jesuit popularity in Japan. On the other hand, the fact that there is documentation of the refusal to accept Christianity may emphasize the influence of Christianity. Although it did not catch on as a popular religion, it must have been powerful enough to induce Japanese scholars to write negatively about it. To support this point, the Shimabara Christian rebellion of 1637 “was suppressed with the slaughter of approximately ten thousand men, women, and children”, showing a very large Christian influence.
Korea, unlike the other two countries, seemed to have been a more successful target for Jesuits. “Korean scholars in residence at the Chinese court read the Jesuits’ religious, scientific, and mathematical texts and took them back to Korea, where they attracted a small following for Catholic Christianity.” However, even though Korean scholars adopted several Christian doctrines, the common populous of Korea was reluctant to abandon their already established religions.
Out of all pre-modern Chinese dynasties, the Qing were arguably most connected with European countries. They set up a similar heliocentric tributary system, where Europe was allowed to join. Although Europeans were only permitted to trade in a more limited fashion than China’s more familiar tributaries, it still resulted in a western influence establishing itself in Manchu culture. Particularly, the East India Trading company had very profitable trading agreements with China at the time. The fact that English representatives met the Chinese emperor in 1793 shows the value of Qin Chinese trade to the East India Trading Company. Interestingly, it seems that even though China experienced the largest amount of exposure to European culture, its religious integrity was left untouched. China, therefore, should be used as an example of a country whose lack of Christian influence did not lead to a lack of western influence in general.
In a sense, it seems that the Christian influence in each of these countries is a consequence of the Catholic need to spread its religion as far across the globe as possible. In each of these countries, during their pre-modern times, Christianity only gained popularity temporarily. In a sense this is an issue because a temporary surge in the popularity of Christianity would have to be matched with a general increase in western culture at the same time, in order for the thesis question to be supported. Although such a scenario seems like the natural course of things, it is less probable than it really seems and is not a common occurrence in historical texts.
Japan, Korea and China have all had (and still do) a Christian presence in their population. Christianity, as previously established, naturally enforces western ideals. This means that an increased presence of Christianity in one of these countries should mean an increased western influence. Although it may be intuitively sound to believe this, the example used for Japan refutes it. As stated above, Japan’s increased following of Christianity eventually caused it to backfire with a massacre and increased restrictions towards their practices.
Therefore, it is not advisable to assume that there was a strong western influence in a country solely because of Christian presence in its religious circles. Although it may be useful for faster identification, in most cases there are too many factors involved to draw such clear-cut conclusions.