Christianity ​and Japan 0 csillagozás

The ​Christian influence in Japan has been great. Over the past century, many of the nation’ leaders in the fields of politics, education, social work, charity, medicine, and women’s rights have been Christians. Christian organizations continue today to play an active role in peace and antinuclear movements and in shaping postwar democratic ideals.
As a religion, however, Christianity still seems to be struggling for acceptance. Today the Christian population of Japan does not exceed one percent, and conversion frequently demands that the believer overcome numerous personal conflicts and social pressures. There appear to be no unfilled areas int he Japanese spiritual psyche into wich Christianity can enter. Shinto celebrates the natural world and fills daily life with festivity and ritual. Buddhism is otherwordly, philosophical. The Confucian tradition has molded behavior, ethics, and the social structure. For many Japanese, Christianity is too intellectual, acondition not… (tovább)

The ​Christian influence in Japan has been great. Over the past century, many of the nation’ leaders in the fields of politics, education, social work, charity, medicine, and women’s rights have been Christians. Christian organizations continue today to play an active role in peace and antinuclear movements and in shaping postwar democratic ideals.
As a religion, however, Christianity still seems to be struggling for acceptance. Today the Christian population of Japan does not exceed one percent, and conversion frequently demands that the believer overcome numerous personal conflicts and social pressures. There appear to be no unfilled areas int he Japanese spiritual psyche into wich Christianity can enter. Shinto celebrates the natural world and fills daily life with festivity and ritual. Buddhism is otherwordly, philosophical. The Confucian tradition has molded behavior, ethics, and the social structure. For many Japanese, Christianity is too intellectual, acondition not helped by the orthodox theological approach of the Japanese churches.
In this beautifully illustrated book, Stuart D. B. Picken continues his exploration of Japan’s religious heritage that began with his two much-admired works on Shinto and Buddhism. He looks at Christianity’s early successes – soon stifled by the forced apostasies and martyrdoms of the seventeenth century – and then examines the obstacles wich faced the Protestant foreign missionaries some 250 years later.
The central question the author asks throughout is whether there can truly be a place for Christianity in Japan unless that faith refreshes itself with Japanese values, particularly the abiding love of nature, belief int he virtue of spiritual self-discipline, and an emphasis on communalism instead of rectitude. Picken finds that int he contemporary resolution of the fundamental conflict between Japanese and Christian cultures lies perhaps the most exciting and hopeful of all of Japan’s Christian encounters: a new basis for human relations and the rededication of Japanese Christians to embracing a faith that is at once more Christlike and more Japanese.