Religion and the State in China and Russia: Suppression, Survival, and Revival. By Christopher Marsh. Bloomsbury Academic, January 20, 2011. 288 pages. ISBN-10: 1441102299 ISBN-13: 978-1441102294
摘要
At the time of writing, Marsh was a professor of political science at Baylor University. The book's premise is that the revival of religion in China and Russia, after decades of religious suppression under militant atheist regimes, demonstrates the futility of the forced secularization of homo religiosus. The greatest strength of this book is its treatment of Christianity under Communist regimes in Russia and China. It is also a good guide to those regimes' specific policies related to religion and their implementation. His discussions of the formation of the policy toward religion in China, however, suffer from apparently not having read the most pertinent scholarship (e.g., Nedostup 2009, Ashiwa and Wank 2009, Yang 2008, Kindapp and Harmin 2004), and his handling of Chinese religious history before the Communist period is a mixed‐up retelling of accounts in secondary literature marred by misleading information (e.g., his account of the term zongjiao, lack of understanding of xiejiao, no mention of the New Culture Movement, and claims like Bodhidharma led to Buddhism's rapid ascent). If readers are aware of its limitations, however, it remains a useful account and comparison of religious policies and implementation under two Communist regimes and examples of “heroic” resistance.
