Prof. Peng Yin to Visit Hong Kong to Deliver Lectures, Engage Churches
Assistant Professor of Ethics Peng Yin will visit Hong Kong from November 5-11 to give lectures on Chinese Christianity, queer theology, as well as religion and international politics.
His first public lecture is entitled “Christianity and Queerness: Affinities and Their Political Implications.” In it, Yin argues that despite the protracted opposition between Christianity and queerness, there exist fundamental affinities between being queer and being Christian. Both are interested in forging unnatural associations and putting a limit on human knowingness. Yin will use these affinities to think about the Janus-faced future of Christianity in East Asia. It can become complicit in compulsory heterosexuality, reproductive futurism, heteropatriarchal suppression of gender variation, and homosocial authoritarianism. Or it can become a challenge to them through Christian truth-telling.
With Chloë Starr of Yale Divinity School, Yin will deliver a joint lecture “Christianity: The Chinese Way.” The lecture will explore Chinese contributions to Christian thought. Yin will probe the difference Chinese philosophy makes for a Christian understanding of human nature.
Yin will give a third lecture in the “China and the World: Historical Interactions” series at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, “The Religious Origins of the New Cold War Discourse.” In this lecture, Yin traces the new Cold War discourse as a permutation of evolutionary and incompatible views of China based on three European imageries (China as Idealized Panacea in Leibniz, Bygone Same in Hegel, and Incompatible Other in Jacques Gernet) sustained by distorted treatment of Chinese religions. To disabuse us of the thesis of inevitable clash, Yin argues, requires us to diagnose the religious underpinnings of the new Cold War discourse. This lecture will be broadcasted live on Zoom.
On November 5, Dr. Yin will preach at the Kowloon Union Church. Began in 1842 by the renowned sinologist Rev. James Legge, Kowloon Union is now a vibrant, international, and urban church at the forefront of inclusive ministry in Hong Kong. On November 6, Yin will give a lunch talk, “Chineseness, Queerness, and Theological Negation: My Personal Journey” at the Divinity School of Chung Chi College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He will also reconnect with members of Amplify Asia, Queer Theology Academy, and Blessed Minority Christian Fellowship for future projects on queer religious activism in Asia.
The trip is sponsored by Faith and Global Engagement at the University of Hong Kong.