Shamanism and Christianity: models of religious encounters in East Asia / Yang Li

Religions 16 (2025)

Local access dig.pfd [Li-Shamanism and Christianity.pdf]

Abstract: When exploring interactions between Christianity and other religions in East Asia, the place given to the shamanic tradition remains ambiguous and marginal. This ar‑ ticle analyzes the religious encounters between shamanism and Christianity in East Asia through specific and representative case studies. This article is divided into three main parts. Section 1 introduces the core terms “shamanism” and “diffusionism”, explaining their general meanings and the specific ways they are used in this study, and provides a regional overview of the cases analyzed in this paper. Sections 2–4 present the historical context and analysis of religious encounters in regions such as Siberia, Mongolia, China (including Taiwan, Southwest China, and Northeast China), Korea, etc. Sections 5 and 6 seek to demonstrate that shamanism operates according to two models: the first character‑ ized by “segregation” and the second by “diffusion”, noting that these models exist on a dynamic continuum. In most historical situations, this study argues that shamanism ini‑ tially encountered Christianity in a segregation mode, often leading to significant conflicts between the two. Over time, as shamanism’s religious attributes weakened, it paradox‑ ically adapted to a diffusion model, integrating its ethos into other religions, including Christianity. The diffusion model has thus become an appropriate way to understand the current existent form of shamanism in East Asia.

Tangible whispers, neglected encounters : histories of East-West artistic dialogues, 14th-20th century / Marco Musillo.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-266).

The relationship between East and West remains a topic of burning timeliness, particularly in its political dimension. Yet, we can gain a complete understanding of the current tensions only if we consider them within a broader historical framework, spanning from art to diplomacy, from religion to ethnography. The present volume tackles precisely this complex task, offering its reader a rich mosaic of case studies and scholarly research, relating to the mutual approaches between the Euro-American ‘West’, and the Sino-Japanese ‘East’. In the first part of the book, art historian Marco Musillo uses the depictions of Tartars in fourteenth-century Italian frescoes as the starting point of a trajectory leading to eighteenth-century European literature on China. In the second part, the reader is introduced to two cases of diplomatic encounter, one in sixteenth-century Italy between Japanese subjects and local courts, and the other one between Qing China and twentieth-century United States, in the space of the universal exhibition in St. Louis. Finally, the last section proposes three interconnected art historical explorations: the screen design of Chinese origin in colonial Mexico, Medieval Christian tombstones in China, and early-modern Filipino sacred sculpture.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Hot Air and Flying Dragons: Historiographical Fractures and Interpretation

Part I: Ethnography
1. From Tartar Faces to Chinese Bodies: the Transformation of Identities

Part II: Diplomacy
2. Dancing Venues and Theatrical Receptions: Early Modern Diplomacy and the Japanese Legation to Europe
3. American Entertainment and Display: Qing Empress Cixi in the St. Louis Exposition

Part III: Materiality
4. The Routes of the Screen: Local Forms and Transcultural Designs
5. Tombstones and “Anomalous” Canons
6. Filipino Sculptures as Eventful Art