Workshop on Mapping Christianity in China
The China Historical Christian Database (CHCD) is a website dedicated to discovering, preserving, and visualizing the presence of Christianity in China from 1550 to 1950. The CHCD is sponsored by BU’s Center for Global Christianity and Mission, which also supports projects such as the Chinese Christian Poster Project. Since its launch in 2018, the CHCD database has worked towards mapping the locations of and identifying workers from every Christian establishment in China from the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in the late-Ming period until the creation of the People’s Republic of China. A true exemplar of the digital humanities, CHCD uses the information it discovers to create interactive spatial maps and relational social networks.
On November 19-21, 2020, the Center for Global Christianity and Mission hosted a workshop called “Mapping Christianity in China 1550-1950” to mark the CHCD exiting its beta pilot phase. Two hundred sixty-six participants from twenty-eight countries in Asia, Europe, Australia and the Americas attended the virtual event, which was funded by the Boston University Center for the Study of Asia (BUCSA) and the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA). Together, these scholars, computer scientists, and archivists helped develop a plan for the future of the CHDC.
In the final roundtable, several groups worked on opportunities and challenges in the development of this project, including funding, partnerships, technical solutions, archival and printed sources, global and transnational dimensions, work-flow, pedagogical applications, fieldwork, and oral history. A core international group of enthusiastic supporters emerged, and several strategic partnerships with libraries, archives, and research institutes in the US, China, Taiwan and Europe were initiated. Together with this global enthusiasm, CHCD will need increased support from within BU and its growing digital initiatives, as well as from external grants in order to continue its work going forward.
In a recent interview with BU Today, BU History Professor Eugenio Menegon spoke to the importance of the China Historical Christian Database saying, “it shows how deep the US-China connection is, and that the present crisis in relations can and must be overcome in the long run.” Those who attended the November workshop recognize the significance of this task, and their input will aid the database in taking its next step in this critical mission.