The conflict of identities? The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and its fight for national Taiwanese identity
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The aim of this study is to answer how can the Christian identity be united with the Taiwanese national identity? How does the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan try to make the Christian faith in context of Taiwan's cultural and historical background? Why is the Presbyterian Church as religious group so active in reaching the own Taiwanese identity. For many people in Taiwan, conversion to Christian faith could be the problem of identity, because Christianity can be understand as foreign religion system. Presbyterian's missionaries brought advanced Christianization and accepting such foreign system meant for the Taiwanese to betray they ancestors, and to leave their own historical and social identity. The Presbyterian Church can be seen as movement for social change and political rights. The church is very active in many different social events, as charity, education, health care... It built up highly-focused social welfare designed to help different communities. And, the most important for this study, the Presbyterian Church is very active in the fight for Taiwanese national identity. This support is very interesting as outsides viewer can see slide difference between the identity that the Presbyterian Church represents and the identity, that supports. This study is based on text analysis and interpretation – it analyzes some of the official documents and letter of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, and tries to interpret them in historical and cultural context of their origin. Afterwords the answers of this study are extracted from this interpretation. |