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Between Adaptation, Persecution and Modernity: Christianity in East Asia in the 18th and 19th century

by Giulia PORCU and Anish PARCHA

Intro: The afternoon turned thoughtful on 16 September, as students trickled into the Petit Amphitheatre with notebooks in hand and quiet curiosity in the air. Professor Pierre Emmanuel Roux, Co-editor-in-chief of the magazine Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident and senior lecturer of history at Universitè Paris Citè,  took the floor for a talk titled “Between Adaptation, Persecution and Modernity in East Asia in the 18th and 19th Centuries.” Minds eager to learn and pens ready to chase his words set the stage for an engaging session. The session was brief yet intuitive, insightful and packed with value. What was the discussion about? What were the most significant insights and how do they correlate to our 21st century understanding of the modern world?
A brief breakdown of the lecture and the subsequent interview is as follows:
A recap of the lecture: Accepting the unacceptable 

Covering the history of Christianity in East Asia through the 18th and 19th century, professor Roux gave us essential historical context starting from the 16th century. Further highlighted the importance of three key terms when analyzing local context: proscription, adaptation and modernity. Starting with the idea of persecution between the 16th and 18th centuries,, he stated that local Christian communities had to deal with constant repressions and tensions caused by the contrapposition of Christian preaching and Confucianism order. These were, for example, revealed by debates over practices like ancestor worship. Despite being a minority, Christians sustained their faith through a lineage of personal connections, preexisting networks and local religious figures. These local challenges reveal that Christianity’s survival relied as much on East Asian networks as on Western missionaries. This challenges the common assumption that East Asian conversions were based on the mere arrival of missionaries in local territories, hence the traditional vision which attributes great importance to the West in the making of Christianity in Asia. 

Upon this, the focus of this lecture was on the recent reverse theory in academia: ‘‘Are we ready to accept the unacceptable by fully recognizing Asia’s role in the making of world Christianity?’’. As a starting point “Inculturation” is the term used by many historians to describe Matteo’s Ricci ambitious but failing project. He was the first to realize the importance of finding shared knowledge between the two civilizations, using Chinese concepts adaptable to Christianity, specifically the Confucianist ambition to a virtuous society and inner self, so as to allow reciprocal comprehension and common grounds. Despite the failure of his project, as demonstrated by the 1724 expulsion of Christian missionaries, the greatness of Ricci’s work lies in highlighting how impossible it would have been for the West to be the only factor in the spread of Christianity in the East.

As stated by Nazarudin in ‘Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde’: 

‘When something is transmitted, it is received in the mode of the receiver rather than the transmitter. Thus, what has been transmitted as Western Christianity has been received as Asian Christianity. Therefore the ownership of the Christian tradition — both for East and Southeast Asian people — grows stronger when it’s passed on intergenerationally’.

After the address by Professor Roux, we had the opportunity to speak with him via a Zoom interview.  This was done not only to build a deeper understanding of his work but also to cultivate a new sense of curiosity around Christianity’s central role in shaping Asian societies. The interview was carried out through three main questions, the first one being:

  1. As you presented during the lecture, many Western books acted as the major means of spreading Christianity among the elites in China, Vietnam and Japan. Considering the fact that they were based on European ideas of utopia, how were they received  by their audience?

It is important to keep in mind that there were different categories of books, specifically scientific and religious. In the Jesuits missions, especially, both were used. Given the importance of Jesuits in Beijing and their knowledge, it is only natural to conclude that Asian scholars were curious to meet them and grateful to receive their books. 

Missionaries were scarce in East Asia, so it was religious and catechetical books that were diffused among the faithful. Qing China is emblematic in this matter: in the early 19th there were 100 missionaries spread among the territory, while in the early 18th century only 20-30. Missionaries and local priests visited the main local villages once a year, hence the importance of books for conversion, maintenance of faith and continuity of prayers. “In many places it still works like this,” commented Professor Roux. “You can’t imagine the number of Bibles I received in Chinese and Korean because of this strong desire to spread faith!”

(2) What events led to the ban on Christianity in East Asia?

Fundamentally, the main common denominator for the ban of Christianity in East Asia was political.

Korea, Japan and Vietnam were small countries that embodied the idea of protonations state. Hence, when Christianity arrived as a new phenomenon, it was perceived as a possible threat to the social order. Obviously, this was not the case in China as it was a huge multiethnic empire, so the spreading of new ideas and beliefs was slow and further minimized by the ridiculously low number of missionaries in loco. 

(3) “The elaboration of this ‘European Utopia’ first took form in Matteo Ricci’s world map. Given the diverse perceptions around his work and that of other figures, how far did they actually influence the perception that the West had of the East and vice versa?”

There certainly were missionaries who had influence in China mainly at the national or regional level, but the majority of them had a local impact.

For example, Francis Xavier, who travelled all around Asia, is remembered as a great missionary, but there are some inaccurate narratives regarding the extent of his influence on conversions. Rather than influencing the East, his influence was far more prominent among young Jesuits who now dreamt of going to East Asia. Matteo Ricci, on the other hand, did have quite an influence in the 17th century, even though not as much as Francis Xavier did. That being said, it is important to note that Matteo Ricci’s influence was profound in East Asia itself, shaping local knowledge, religious practice, and cross-cultural exchange across China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. Unlike missionaries whose impact was measured by conversions abroad, Ricci’s legacy lies in his intellectual and cultural contributions within East Asia, from maps to catechisms. Since his catechism, books and map were dissaminated in Korea, Japan, Vietnam and China, he came to be known everywhere in East Asia. His map became the first world map shown in China, which continues to be used to this day. Institutes built in his honour are located all over the world (Paris, Boston, Taipei), proving the growth of his prestige after the major clash between Beijing and the Vatican. By nominating new Chinese saints in the early 2000s, the Vatican underscored Ricci’s enduring influence, indicating that his contributions continued to be respected despite historical tensions with Beijing.

The Asia-Pacific campus of Sciences Po Paris was arguably the most fitting venue for such a lecture. With its focus on the region, the campus offered not just an audience but a context where the intersections of faith, power, and society in East Asia and South Asia could be understood in a more nuanced way, where students could link theological insights to their cultural exposure. Sciences Po’s diversity is exemplified by lectures like these, where students from all around the globe seek genuine knowledge about the world that surrounds them — about the rise of religions, institutions and environments that shape modern history. As the lecture drew to a close, what lingered was not just a story of persecution and resilience, but also a reminder of how ideas travel, change, and survive across borders. Christianity in East Asia, as professor Roux emphasized, was never a simple tale of importation from the West — it was a dialogue shaped by local traditions, state power, and the challenges of modernity.

Is the House Black or Our Lens? Empathy, Confusion and The Stretched Moral Knot

by Krishiv Agarwal

Watching “The House Is Black” makes you do something awkward: you feel empathy, then you check that feeling and come to wonder whether empathy is a moral failure. Faith sits beside this confusion, the ‘victims’ are not angry at God; they pray, thank, accept. This steadiness is not a religious resignation but a dig at us: why do we imagine suffering as an external problem for God to fix rather than a politics for us to change? And if you help, with what gaze, who is looking up and who is being looked down on, on the ladder named empathy? The film attempts to resolve these questions by refusing clear answers.

“The House Is Black,” by Forugh Farrokhzad is a short documentary filmed in 1963 set in an Iranian leper colony. The film pairs stark images of daily life, children, rituals and chores with lyrical fragments that read like a diagnosis: the world looks away, and the ordinary lives of the afflicted become the measure of our moral imagination.

The film opens on a woman, hijab framing her face, staring into a mirror. The shot stays. That stare is the contract the film makes with the viewer: look with me, not at me. The mirror is literal and theological with the hijab suggesting God’s presence and concealment, as well as its inability to hide the fact of suffering. When the camera pushes in, the image is not sensationalized; you are made complicit in the act of seeing. Why does this matter? Think of global crises — refugee camps, bombed hospitals, pandemic wards — where televised images invite a burst of outrage that is soon recycled into a moral spectacle. Farrokhzad denies spectacle. The dry scene of a man walking along a wall towards us, then moving away as the audio fades in (Saturday, Sunday, Monday) is quietly savage. Time continues, the world rotates. That audio only fills the frame when distance returns. The ethical rhythm of modern life goes like: move closer, make it private; step back, give it a week; resume.

There is also an explicit moral address: “Oh Muslims, I am sad tonight” (lines from Forugh Farrokhzad’s own poetry), not just as a lament but as a commentary on faith itself. The sadness is not directed at God; it is about the unbearable strangeness of living in a world where suffering feels endless and the crescent moon hovers like a symbol of both fragility and endurance, reminding us that devotion can be inseparable from despair.


Artistically, the film is ruthless. The camera is often at household level — low angles, hands, utensils — leaving each one of us as an observer. Subtle editing stitches do not dramatize, it accumulates. When you place these formal choices parallel to current crises, some patterns emerge. First, the moral economy of pity can reproduce hierarchy. Pity often contains a quiet contempt, a desire to be relieved rather than to redistribute. Second, the film insists that structural questions like medicine, social exclusion, state neglect are not solved by feeling alone. The archives of war and pandemic now accumulate images to the point of numbness; Farrokhzad’s method counteracts this by reintroducing friction. No jingles intrude; no fundraising cutaway softens the image. Where TV would turn suffering into a charity proposition, Farrokhzad leaves you in a room with it. 

The Dove and The Politics of Hope

There is a voice in the film that wishes to become a dove, implicitly wondering whether an earth without suffering is conceivable. Distant things — moons, birds, future on Mars — become the only places where human hope can live, because they are tidy, one-dimensional and therefore palatable. When suffering is immediate and total, the mind prefers a far, digestible, horizon over an ugly, almost irresolvable, present. God, too, functions like that horizon for many: a promise so remote that injustice now feels slightly bearable.

But Farrokhzad complicates this consolation. The residents of the colony fold their suffering into ritual. They do not curse God in a way the privileged might expect. That is the moral sting: if those who suffer are not enraged, why are we? Are we compassionate because we imagine ourselves above them? Or because we are recognizing a shared humanity? 

The film refuses an easy ethic. In the end the film is deliberately, disturbingly unresolved. The director makes you sit with a confusion that feels almost criminal: you feel, you judge your feeling, you fail to act; you watch again and feel something else. That recursive discomfort is Farrokhzad’s point. Empathy here is not the end of ethics, it is the beginning of an interrogation. And that interrogation is, quietly, a little fucked up and gloriously necessary.

References and Time Stamps

The House is Black:

Time Stamps:

  • Hijab Scene: 00:45
  • Person walking along the wall: 02:49
  • ‘Oh Muslims I am sad today’ poem: 04:49

Echoes of 夏/ Été

by Elena Hayashi

Maybe it’s the cicadas

bustling in the air loudly, and proudly

presenting their voice, sparking curiosity.

Their melody—

not just a sign of the scorching summer sweat trickling down

my body—

but a reflection of the miscellaneous voices around me

that arise once the heat arrives.

Heat—Wind.

Cicadas—Seagulls.

Maybe it’s the seagulls

squawking by the docks loudly, and proudly

its cries carried by the restless wind.

Maybe it’s the cicadas, no—the seagulls

a new echo of curiosity,

adapting to the rhythm of this new life.

The Dual Nature of Reality

by Margherita Greco

We live in a world today that praises progress but trembles before crises. Heads of State invest in technological and scientific research but remain paralyzed when dealing with climate change, famine and genocide. Therefore, we should ask ourselves: “Is reality the story of human triumph or the story of our limits?”

This ambiguity in the perception of reality is not a new phenomenon. In the 19th century, two of the greatest philosophers of modern times offered two opposing  interpretations. On one hand, the German Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel viewed reality as humanity’s steady progression toward freedom, civilization and ultimate triumph. On the other hand, Søren Kierkegaard underlined how reality was the place of despair, anxiety and impossibility, in which hollow men wander aimlessly in the shadow.

Even if these clashing interpretations were expressed two centuries ago, they remain more relevant than we could ever have imagined. Today, as opulent wealth and selfishness collide with hunger and poverty, we find ourselves living in both worlds at once. This dogmatic relationship with reality mirrors the uncertainty we live in today, caught between optimism about progress and despair at seemingly insurmountable crises. 

The Hegel’s optimism remains woven into modern narratives. His idea that history tends toward triumph has shaped both liberal democracy and Marxism and persists in today’s faith in human progress. This triumphalist spirit is reflected in higher forms of social unity, specifically in the technological realm as artificial intelligence, renewable energy sources and medical advancements are developed.

In the “Phenomenology of Spirit,” Hegel argues about “the fight for life and death,” which, in symbolic terms, should be interpreted as a conflict involving all humanity, in which those who have not been afraid to die win. In contrast, those who are afraid of dying  — those who have given up — succumb.

Through this conflict, men will obtain inner freedom and gain emancipation through work. This concept becomes apparent when applied to contemporary society: the desire to prevail over others is always more disruptive, reducing social relations to mere relations of necessity and power. 

But despite this hierarchy of strength, there is always a glimmer of positivity that is evident in the necessary interdependence of the strongest with the weakest, giving all the possibility to hold power. 

If Hegel interpreted reality as the place to advance towards the best, Kierkegaard, however, cuts against this triumphalism. For the Danish thinker, reality was not a matter of rational progress but a confrontation with despair. Anxiety, failure and faith were not detours on the road to victory: they were the essence of being human. Kierkegaard would likely be anguished by the growing climate crisis, global inequality and political polarization. How can we resolve these types of issues when we are only humans trying to make our lives a bit more bearable? Our limits, which we cannot overcome, ultimately render reality a place of impossibility, clashing completely with Hegel’s optimism and trust in progress.  

Living in our modern society requires us to be light-footed, jumping between optimism and despair with ease.  In our daily lives, we face the decision to feel like Hegelians, focused on development and innovation. However, we often find ourselves in a state of anxiety and paralysis, as Kierkegaard expounded, as we confront the digital world and the fragmentation of our identity, as well as wars and biodiversity loss.

To navigate this dilemma, we need to treasure both visions: cooperating and trusting the collective progress, while accepting certain limitations and having faith in the community to make our existence more tolerable. 

2025 is composed of two intertwined essences: progress and despair. We worry about climate change but, at the same time, fall into the blindest consumerism; we fight for individuality and freedom to express our thoughts, yet we criticize others online.

Perhaps, to live today is to accept this paradoxical nature of reality. Our world cannot afford blind trust in progress, nor can it survive steeped purely in despair. It is fundamental to realize optimism and doubt are companions, not opposites — both are necessary to navigate and improve this fractured world. 

We should collectively stand in the gap between Hegel’s and Kierkegaard’s theories, recognizing that reality has a dual nature that demands both faith and carelessness. 

By embracing this duality, it is possible to act wisely: advancing with hope, yet being aware of our boundaries. Only by assimilating this equilibrium can we dream of a future where human progress goes hand-in-hand with human vulnerability, in which we act consciously about our limits for the greater good.

Jacques-Louis DAVID : When Eyes and Strokes Speak Better Than Words

by Nahia Onchalo-Meynard

Image Credit: Nahia Onchalo-Meynard

“One shouldn’t just look at the model, but should read it like a book.” This quote by the famous French painter Jacques-Louis David couldn’t be more opportune when it comes to characterize his own work. Indeed, a freshly set exposition at the Louvre, retracing his whole career as an artist and activist, is unveiling its captivating perspective on life and an undeniable talent, alongside a historical time-travel all the way to Antiquity where he drew his inspiration. However traditional, mainstream and excessively spoken of him and his work might appear, this exhibition did but prove this all wrong. The acknowledgment of him being a key figure in the French Revolution and a pre-romantic painter, as well as the popularity of very few of his compositions solely led to a well-known but unknown artist. Looking beyond the patriotic spirit that the Revolution and Napoleon stirred up in him, one can actually fully grasp the timeless aspect of his paintings. One discovers a touching sensitivity that resurfaces through the overwhelming gaze of Psyche and the teasing smirk of a cherub, or a die-hard humanity, be it in the dramatic astonishing fights between Romans and Sabins or the most discreet behaviors in the many portrayals he made. The latter brings a refreshing, lightening mood to the collection full of meaning. It does so by embellishing the most common day of one’s life, and picturing real, unfiltered and imperfect faces and realities, bringing not only a strangely comforting atmosphere to whoever looks at it, but also a deep realization of the very existence of these people, that once treaded upon the same ground.  Not only does he depict the “model,” but he indeed constantly strives for a deep understanding of it, well-conveyed to the observer, almost as a dialogue between people, eras, cultures and languages.This exchange, as one might call it, is in fact a leap backwards, a sneak peak into fascinating and foundational eras of history. Portraying myths and legends, representing real major events (or non-events), one does not only passively stare at the canvas, but actually learns alongside them. The observer knows from this point forward Brutus’ sons’ tragic fate, Romulus’ wife’s crucial role in the pacification of the Roman Empire, Socrates’ temper — and even reflects about dreaded dilemmas, such as the choice between the nation’s well-being or a close one’s life. These paintings appear indeed as heavily meaningful ornaments. Beauty is undoubtedly what comes to mind when contemplating most of the works. Nevertheless, it is merely a glimpse of what they contain. The eyes are pleased, but the soul is triggered, the heart flinching and the mind frozen. When picturing humanity with sensitivity, it also means picturing all of it: love, peace, courage, but also grief, terror, evil. It would be an understatement to say that it is hard not to shed a tear while looking at the portrait of a  13-year-old boy, dead because he enrolled in the revolutionary army to free people that never intended to do such for him. Its devastating impact on the spectator is enhanced by its unfinished state, highlighting a hardly sufferable violence, unrepresented,  maybe for the better. The death of Marat is not more comfortable to be around; made in three similar versions, they circle the visitor when he enters the dark room, conveying oppression, dread, horror and anxiety, underlining the price paid for peace.  So then, this exhibition did not allow only to readdress an influential yet unsung artist’s work, but also to dive back into an era, into feelings, into thoughts that one will probably judge as still relevant at any point of his life, be it academically, socially or personally. Even if the Crown jewels or the Joconde are worth your attention too, make the most of your passing at the Louvre to discover these gems and get a snippet of one unique mind in the revolutionary storm!