Overview
- Confronts the turbulence of mid-twentieth century life in China through the witness of American missionary Charles McCarthy
- Follows the missionary ventures of Charles McCarthy in China and the Philipines as he fought for Christinaity and equal citizenship rights for Chinese
- Provides a unique perspective on Maoist China through previously un-consulted letters from McCarthy to family and friends
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: Christianity in Modern China (CMC)
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Table of contents (5 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This pivot chronicles the life of Charles McCarthy, a San Francisco native and Jesuit missionary to China, and tells the unique and compelling story of a young man who experienced confinement under the Japanese occupation, followed shortly by imprisonment by the Chinese Communists in the 1950’s. Through a study of McCarthy’s unique epistolary exchanges, it considers the intellectual life of a Catholic missionary, his ongoing fight for equal citizenship rights, illustrating how American Catholic missionaries in Maoist-era Shanghai navigated the social tensions of a nation-state in turbulent transition. This narrative explores Jesuit strategies of resistance and persistence in an era of oppression, and ideological and religious conflict as those sent to fill the missionary spots left by European men lost in the World Wars were caught up in China’s mid-century political upheavals.
Reviews
“China’s Last Jesuit by Amanda Clark’s is a lovingly crafted biography of a great and unsung hero of the Church in Maoist China. In a work that draws almost entirely on the personal correspondence of its subject, Fr. Charles J. McCarthy, S.J. (1911-91), Clark provides us with an in-depth portrait of a missionary priest whose career spanned the critical decades of the mid-twentieth century, and served as a living record of its violent and perverse upheavals.” (Eric Cunningham, Professor of History, Gonzaga University and Author of: Zen Past and Present (2011) and Hallucinating the End of History (2007))
“Dr. Amanda C. R. Clark should be praised for having written this insightful, often moving, account of the ministry of Father Charles McCarthy (1911–1991), the last American Jesuit to be released from Maoist prison and expelled from China in 1957. By tracing Father McCarthy’s journey from boyhood on to becoming a missionary in Shanghai and later in Manila, Dr. Clark adds a personal voice to the trans-Pacific links of Chinese Catholicism. Her masterly narrative throws light on the major revolutionary events that had shaped the Chinese Church in an era of great upheaval.” (Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, Professor of History, Pace University, New York, US and Author of: The Bible and the Gun: Christianity in South China, 1860-1900 (2014))
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: China’s Last Jesuit
Book Subtitle: Charles J. McCarthy and the End of the Mission in Catholic Shanghai
Authors: Amanda C. R. Clark
Series Title: Christianity in Modern China
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5023-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-10-5022-0Published: 21 July 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-981-13-5295-9Published: 12 December 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-981-10-5023-7Published: 08 July 2017
Series ISSN: 2730-7875
Series E-ISSN: 2730-7883
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXV, 122
Number of Illustrations: 20 b/w illustrations
Topics: History of Religion, History of China, Politics and Religion