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August 12, 2013

Authenticity, Sincerity and Spontaneity

By: James Miller

James Miller. 2013. “Authenticity, Sincerity and Spontaneity: The Mutual Implication of Nature and Religion in China and the West.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 25: 283-307 Abstract Fundamental approaches to ethics and morality in both China and the West are bound up not only with conceptions of religion and ultimate truth, but also with […]

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August 16, 2010

Religion, Nature and Modernization in China

By: James Miller

 James Miller. 2010. Religion, Nature and Modernization in China. Pp. 107-122 in Technology, Trust and Religion: Roles of Religion in Controversies on Ecology and the Modification of Life edited by Willem B. Drees. Leiden: Leiden University Press. One of most important concepts in the Weberian theory of modernity is summed up in the German term Entzauberung, usually […]

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June 25, 2010

daoism’s quest for relevance

By: James Miller

In a Wall Street Journal blog today, Christopher Carothers asks, “Is Daoism is losing its way?” He writes: Today, Buddhism is regaining its traditional place as the largest religion in Chinese society. Islam is expanding through the growth of Muslim families in the Hui and Uyghur minority ethnic groups. Protestantism and Catholicism are winning new […]

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August 25, 2009

what climate change means for religion in china

By: James Miller

Much intellectual discourse about Chinese philosophical and religious views of nature focuses on ideals such as harmony between humans and the natural world, or “forming one body with heaven and earth” (tian ren he yi). But when it comes to historical studies of Chinese environmental history, it’s hard to find instances of where this ideal […]

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January 29, 2009

did china’s dams trigger the sichuan earthquake?

By: James Miller

China’s massive system of hydroelectric dams and water distribution has come under fire once again. Right after the devastating Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008, in which over 70,000 people lost their lives, officials rushed to deny that the massive Three Gorges Dam complex hundreds of kilometres downstream could have played any role in triggering […]

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