About the Author

Vincent Goossaert is deputy director of the Groupe Societes, Religions, Laicites at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris. He is the author of The Taoists of Peking, 1800-1949: A Social History of Urban Clerics, among other books. David A. Palmer is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. He is the author of Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China, among other books.

Reviews

"The Religious Question is an excellent work, and it makes an ideal textbook for both undergraduate and postgraduate classes on Chinese religion."-- "Etudes chinoises"

"[Goossaert and Palmer's] book takes into account the huge wealth of insights into Chinese religion accumulated by the new research, and gives a very clearly written account of a truly remarkable event: the destruction of one of the world's richest religious traditions and its replacement by a congress of competing traditions, faiths, and beliefs."-- "New York Times Book Review"

"A brilliant synthesis and update of the research undertaken by Chinese and Western scholars over the past two decades on the relationship between the political and the religious spheres in China since the Hundred Day Reform. . . . This book represents a masterful introduction to the complexity of Chinese religiosity, but it will also constitute a source of inspiration for many research agenda."-- "China Perspectives"

"Indispensible for anyone seeking to understand the religious landscape and state-religion interactions in modern and contemporary China."-- "Choice"

"The sheer scope of [the authors'] research and their ability to channel formidably diverse material into a cogent narrative make for a masterly summation of the changes in China's religious landscape over the past century."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"This outstanding book provides valuable findings and insights on the centrality of religion in modern China."-- "Journal of Asian Studies"

"Those who want to learn about the situation of religion in modern China should start here."-- "The China Quaterly"

"Goossaert and Palmer give us a holistic, comprehensive analysis of the religious system in modern China, along with the trajectory of religion-modernity-secularism. . . . With its broad scope and comprehensive analysis, [The Religious Question in Modern China] is especially inspiring to scholars based in mainland China. The socio-historical approach is highly appreciated."-- "Ching Feng"

"The Religious Question in Modern China is a timely contribution to a maturing field of inquiry. Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer assemble a comprehensive overview of the role of religion in Chinese society from the late nineteenth century to the present. This milestone work simultaneously represents the state of the field and defines the agenda for future studies."--Philip Clart, University of Leipzig, Germany

"Building on a burgeoning wave of scholarship on Chinese religion over the past fifteen years, Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer offer a highly convincing narrative framework for understanding what religion was in late imperial China, what it became under the secularizing agendas of China's twentieth-century governments, and what it might become in the global world of the future. In The Religious Question in Modern China, we are in the ring with religions and the secularized states that would like to remodel or rid themselves of them--and we get to watch them flail away at each other. This is a tremendous scholarly achievement."--David Ownby, University of Montreal

"This is a pioneering and original work of scholarship that redefines the role of religion in modern Chinese history. With significant new data that provide a powerful challenge to conventional secularist narratives of China's modernization, this book will contribute to a major rethinking of religion's importance in Chinese modernity. Experts and casual readers alike will benefit immensely from its publication."--Paul R. Katz, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan