1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910825659403321

Autore

Keith Charles <1977->

Titolo

Catholic Vietnam : a church from empire to nation / / Charles Keith

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, 2012

ISBN

1-283-59444-7

0-520-95382-7

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (329 p.)

Collana

From Indochina to Vietnam: Revolution and War in a Global Perspective ; ; 5

Disciplina

282/.597

Soggetti

HISTORY / Asia / General

Vietnam Church history

Vietnam History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University, 2008.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Foreword -- Introduction -- 1. A Church between the Nguyễn and the French -- 2. A Colonial Church Divided -- 3. The Birth of a National Church -- 4. Vietnamese Catholic Tradition on Trial -- 5. A National Church Experienced -- 6. The Culture and Politics of Vietnamese Catholic Nationalism -- 7. A National Church in Revolution and War -- Epilogue. A National Church Divided -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

In this important new study, Charles Keith explores the complex position of the Catholic Church in modern Vietnamese history. By demonstrating how French colonial rule allowed for the transformation of Catholic missions in Vietnam into broad and powerful economic and institutional structures, Keith discovers the ways race defined ecclesiastical and cultural prestige and control of resources and institutional authority. This, along with colonial rule itself, created a culture of religious life in which relationships between Vietnamese Catholics and European missionaries were less equal and more fractious than ever before. However, the colonial era also brought unprecedented ties between Vietnam and the transnational institutions and culture of global Catholicism, as Vatican reforms to create an independent national Church helped Vietnamese Catholics to reimagine



and redefine their relationships to both missionary Catholicism and to colonial rule itself. Much like the myriad revolutionary ideologies and struggles in the name of the Vietnamese nation, this revolution in Vietnamese Catholic life was ultimately ambiguous, even contradictory: it established the foundations for an independent national Church, but it also polarized the place of the new Church in post-colonial Vietnamese politics and society and produced deep divisions between Vietnamese Catholics themselves.