R. G. Tiedemann | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 8 February 1941 |
| Died | 1 August 2019 (aged 78) |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Known for | Christianity in China |
| Spouse | Liliana |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | |
| Institutions | |
Rolf Gerhard Tiedemann (8 February 1941 –1 August 2019),better known as R. G. Tiedemann or Gary Tiedemann (Chinese :狄德滿; pinyin :DíDémǎn),was a German historian of Christianity in China. [1]
Born in Hartenholm,Schleswig-Holstein in wartime Germany,Tiedemann left school as a teenager. At 21 he settled with family in Wisconsin,and was later drafted to train in the US army's Medical Training Unit in Texas during the Vietnam War. He completed a BA at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee,followed by an MA and a PhD at SOAS University of London. After taking several part-time posts,Tiedemann spent twenty years teaching Modern History of China in SOAS's Department of History,including a sabbatical at the Ricci Institute,University of San Francisco. After his retirement,he maintained a post as Professorial Research Associate at SOAS and as Professor of Chinese History,Shandong University,Jinan. [2] [3]
His research mainly concerned the history of Christianity in China,with a particular focus on Shandong and the Boxer Rebellion. He also edited the second volume of the Handbook of Christianity in China , [4] which totalled over a thousand pages;about half of the entries he wrote himself. [5] Tiedemann was also a review editor of Journal of Peasant Studies . [6]
A festschrift was published in honor of Tiedemann,edited by two of his former students,entitled The Church as Safe Haven (2018). [7]
Tiedemann died on 1 August 2019,after suffering from illness for many years. [3] [8]
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist, and anti-Christian uprising in North China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, a group known as the "Boxers" in English due to many of its members having practised Chinese martial arts, which at the time were referred to as "Chinese boxing". It was defeated by the Eight-Nation Alliance of foreign powers.
The White Lotus Rebellion was a rebellion initiated by followers of the White Lotus movement during the Qing dynasty of China. Motivated by millenarian Buddhists who promised the immediate return of the Buddha, it erupted out of social and economic discontent in the impoverished provinces of Hubei, Shaanxi, and Sichuan. The rebellion began in 1794, when large groups of rebels claiming White Lotus affiliations rose up within the mountainous region that separated Sichuan province from Hubei and Shaanxi provinces. A smaller precursor to the main rebellion broke out in 1774, under the leadership of the martial-arts and herbal-healing expert Wang Lun in Shandong province of northern China.
Peter Parker was an American physician and a missionary who introduced Western medical techniques into Qing dynasty China, at the city of Canton. It was said that Parker "opened China to the gospel at the point of a lancet."
Marie Melchior Joseph Théodose de Lagrené, was a French legislator and diplomat.
Since the arrival of Christianity in China, the Bible has been translated into many varieties of the Chinese language, both in fragments and in its totality. The first translations may have been undertaken as early as the 7th century AD, but the first printed translations appeared only in the nineteenth century. Progress on a modern translation was encumbered by denominational rivalries, theological clashes, linguistic disputes, and practical challenges at least until the publication of the Protestant Chinese Union Version in 1919, which became the basis of standard versions in use today.
This is a list of selected references for Christianity in China.
Tzu-ch'en Chao, also known as T. C. Chao, was one of the leading Protestant theological thinkers in China in the early twentieth century.
Wu Leichuan (1870–1944) was a leading Chinese theologian in the early 20th century and Chancellor of Yenching University.
The Bread of Life Church is an independent Chinese church founded in Shanghai, Republic of China in 1942, which now has churches in Asia, Australia, and North America.
Ephrem Giesen was a missionary priest of the Dutch Franciscan order of the Roman Catholic church who served in northern Shandong province and as a member of the Dutch Fransciscan mission of south [Shanxi], in the late Qing and early republican China. He served as vicar apostolic of North Shandong from 1902 until his death in 1919 and was also made titular Bishop of Paltus in 1902.
Marc Hideo Miyake is an American linguist who specializes in historical linguistics, particularly the study of Old Japanese and Tangut.
Yuxian (1842–1901) was a Manchu high official of the Qing dynasty who played an important role in the violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian Boxer Rebellion, which unfolded in northern China from the fall of 1899 to 1901. He was a local official who rose quickly from prefect of Caozhou to judicial commissioner and eventually governor of Shandong province. Dismissed from that post because of foreign pressure, he was soon named governor of Shanxi province. At the height of the Boxer crisis, as Allied armies invaded China in July 1900, he invited a group of 45 Christians and American missionaries to the provincial capital, Taiyuan, saying he would protect them from the Boxers. Instead, they were all killed. Foreigners, blaming Yuxian for what they called the Taiyuan Massacre, labeled him the "Butcher of Shan-hsi [Shanxi]".
The Juye Incident refers to the killing of two German Catholic missionaries, Richard Henle and Franz Xaver Nies, of the Society of the Divine Word, in Juye County Shandong Province, China in the night of 1–2 November 1897. The target of the attack, Georg Maria Stenz, survived unharmed.
The Bible has been translated into many of the languages of China besides Chinese. These include major minority languages with their own literary history, including Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian and Uyghur. The other languages of China are mainly tribal languages, mainly spoken in Yunnan in Southwest China.
Stephen Johnson was an American Presbyterian missionary in China. He graduated Amherst College in 1827, then Auburn Theological Seminary 1829-1832. In 1847 he founded the first Christian mission in Fuzhou where he remained till 1853 when he returned to America.
Zeng Baosun or Tseng Pao Swen was a Chinese feminist, historian, and Christian educator.
The Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity (BDCC) is a biographical dictionary which focuses on the lives of Chinese Christians and foreign Christian missionaries to China. It is published in both Chinese and English.
Jennie V. Hughes was an American Methodist missionary in China. She co-founded the Bethel Mission in Shanghai with Chinese doctor Shi Meiyu.
Aspidytidae is a family of aquatic beetles of the suborder Adephaga, described in 2002 from specimens in South Africa and China. There are only two known species in the family and these were originally described in the genus Aspidytes, but later the new genus Sinaspidytes was erected for the species found in China. The family can also be referred to by its trivial name cliff water beetles.
The Handbook of Christianity in China is a two-volume series on the history of Christianity in China, edited respectively by Nicholas Standaert and Gary Tiedemann. It is a part of the Handbook of Oriental Studies series published by Brill.
