Chinese practices related to ancestors have long been the subject of conflicting interpretations. These practices are rooted in the lived experience of practitioners, and therefore need to be considered as embodied expressions of the quest for existential meaning. For practitioners, the achievement of existential meaning requires the inclusion, implication and mediation of the ancestors. When gestures in ancestor rites are analysed from this perspective it is possible to appreciate their essence as constitutive of 'ancestor religion'. This book uses an inquisitive method that investigates the discrepancies between foreign and local explanations, and proposes another hermeneutic framework for ancestor related praxes.--OCLC note.

Rites Controversy: An Illustration of Power Relations in InterpretationConclusion; Chapter 4: "Our" Perspective: The Indigenous Explanation of Ancestor Rites; Introduction; Church- or Christian-Related Native Responses; Chinese Catholic Converts' Contribution to the Rites Controversy; The Sacrifices Were Not Religious; A Lexicology; Apologetics; The Historical Impact of Chinese Converts' Writings; 祭天敬祖: A Chinese Catholic Response to a Crucial Point in the Rites Controversy; Protestant Responses to Ancestor Rites; Awareness of the Problem; Historical Development.

Intro; Preface; Acknowledgments; Contents; Chapter 1: Introduction: Are Ancestors a Problem?; Chapter 2: The Hermeneutic Challenge of Ancestor- Related Practices; Introduction; Conceptual Issues; Hermeneutics; Why Hermeneutics?; Ad hoc or Implicit Hermeneutics; Nicolas Standaert's Hermeneutics of Cultural Encounters; Ancestors; Plural Naming of the Celebrated Remembrance of the Dead; Ancestor Rites; Ancestor Ritual; Ancestor Worship: Ancestor Cult or Ancestor Veneration?; Traditional Religion? Why Not Ancestor Religion ... ; Built-In Structure of Ancestor Rites; Three Interpretative Ingredients.

Interpretation of Ancestor Rituals and Tradition Interpretation and Power; Salvation/Wholeness/Integrity; Conclusion; Chapter 3: The Conflict of Interpretation of Chinese Ancestor Rites; Introduction; Stages of Encounter between Christianity and Chinese Culture; Early Chinese Christianity and the Problem of Ancestor Rites; Ancestor Rites in the Stories of Christian Visitors to the Yuan Dynasty; Matteo Ricci's Perception and Appraisal of Ancestor Rites; Information Related to Ancestor Rites; The Methodological Ground of Ricci's Appraisal of Ancestor Rites.

Concluding Summary of Ricci's Appraisal of Ancestor Rites: One of the Points of the Chinese Rites Controversy; Sinology and the Quest for the Meaning of Chinese Ancestor Rites; An Interpretation in View of Mission; Ancestor Rites: An Attraction for Human Sciences; A Practical Answer to a Theoretical Problem; The Methodological Contribution; The Protestants' Assessment of and Responses to Ancestor Rites; Power Relations and the Appraisal of Ancestor Rites; Political and Institutional Power Relations; Conceptual and Ideological Conditioning.

A Three-Step Pattern in Indigenized Christian Responses-The Three-Step Structure at Work; Concluding Observations on the Protestant Indigenous Response; The Academic Environment; The Core of Chinese Religion (s); Chinese Mainland Scholars' Responses to Foreign Assessments of Ancestor Rituals; Direct Responses; Indirect Responses; A Critical Enrichment of Foreign Interpretations; Concluding Summary of Chinese Indigenous Responses; Chapter 5: Existential Practical Hermeneutics of Ancestor Religion; Introduction; Why Practical or Existential Hermeneutics?--[See OCLC #1020790434]