TY - BOOK AU - Trakulhun,Sven TI - Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand SN - 9780824895747 AV - BV3315 .T73 2024 U1 - 266/.209593 23/eng/20240208 PY - 2024///] CY - Honolulu PB - University of Hawaii Press KW - Buddhists KW - Thailand KW - History KW - 19th century KW - Missionaries KW - HISTORY / Asia / Southeast Asia KW - bisacsh KW - Buddhism history KW - Protestant mission KW - Thailand Buddhism KW - Thailand history KW - Thailand religion KW - modern history N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; Notes on Transliteration --; Introduction --; Chapter One The Origins of Buddhist Reformism --; Chapter Two Christianity in Siam --; Chapter Three Translating Christianity --; Chapter Four The Siamese Response --; Chapter Five The Making of Modern Buddhism in Siam and the West --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index --; About the Author; restricted access N2 - Confronting Christianity explores the history of religious encounters between Christian missionaries and Thai Buddhists during the nineteenth century, a period of Western imperialism in Southeast Asia that fundamentally transformed Siamese society and religious institutions. From about 1830 onward, discussions on religion became a central arena of conflict between rival regimes of knowledge in Thailand, confronting traditional Buddhist views on nature and man’s existence with the ideals and practices of science and rationalism coming from the West. Protestant missionaries, mostly from the United States, became important brokers of knowledge, as one of their strengths was the ability to offer religion in tandem with modern science and technology. Historian Sven Trakulhun explains why the intrusion of evangelical Christianity strengthened the position of Theravāda Buddhism rather than undermining people’s belief in traditional forms of worship. Based on a wide range of Thai and Western primary sources, the volume describes how Christian missionaries unwittingly contributed to the making of what scholars of Buddhism have later rendered as “Buddhist modernism.” In response to Christian assaults on the traditional cosmology, Buddhist reformers fashioned an orthodox version of Buddhism that acknowledged the findings of modern science and at the same time deemed even more rational than Christianity. This new orthodoxy became a major source of moral authority for Thai kings and an important ideology for pushing their claims for religious leadership in the Theravāda Buddhist world. Trakulhun offers a thorough study of the encounter between Christianity and Buddhism and places the history of Siamese Theravāda Buddhism within the broad context of global intellectual history UR - https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824897987?locatt=mode:legacy UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780824897987 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780824897987/original ER -