Religion – Page 2 – Taiwan Insight

Taiwan’s Tibetan Buddhist Monk Dilemma and its Unintended Consequences

28 June 2023 Adrian Chiu

Written by Dolma Tsering. Taiwan is known as the beacon of democracy, and its competitive democratic principles and practices distinguish it from authoritarian China. Advocacy for promoting religious freedom is one of the important tasks undertaken by the government. For instance, as a part of this advocacy, in 2018, President Tsa Ing-Wen announced that Taiwan would donate US$200,000 per year for five years to the United States’ International Religious Freedom Fund as a part of Taiwan’s contribution to advancing global religious freedom. The government, annually in association with the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), hosts an international forum for religious freedom to establish a more inclusive society in Taiwan. However, on 6th June 2023, more than 112 Tibetan Buddhist centres in Taiwan joined a press conference which called for the government’s unfair treatment of visa restrictions for Tibetan Buddhist monks in Taiwan and therefore demanded an amendment to the existing visa restriction.

A sketch of Taiwanese Christianity

16 December 2022

Written by Wen-Hsu Lin. According to statistics from 2017, about 6% of the Taiwanese populace are Christian. Despite having a history dating back several centuries, Taiwan’s Christian community remains largely understudied and rarely discussed. Scholars have tried to better understand this group using survey data. Through the data, we first reveal the demographic characteristics of Taiwanese Christians. More importantly, under the well-documented trend that the country has become more secularized, we further investigate whether Christian faith still matters to Christians’ behaviour and attitude toward social issues.

Visualizing Transnational Christianity in Cold War Taiwan: Traces and Possibilities

14 December 2022

Written by Joseph W. Ho. Visual cultures – distilled in materials as granular as individual photographs or as broad as cross-cultural ways of seeing war and peace – mediated relationships between image-makers, subjects, and audiences. In the process, people and images constructed modern imaginations of the present while looking toward uncertain futures existing between nations and Christian groups as well as local and international histories.

Whiteness and Protestant Christianity in Taiwan

26 October 2022

Written by Yin-An Chen. The connection between Whiteness and Protestant Christianity does not simply result from its relation to Western missionaries but is consolidated by the power of Western Christianity in its theological language, ideology, and hierarchy. In other words, what Whiteness maintains in Protestant Christianity is not about whether white European and American people established Protestant churches—it is about who can talk about God and explain the doctrine. It is about the power of speech and authority instead of skin colour. Whiteness, in this sense, is a method of securing the power of speech and authority.

Falling Through the Cracks of Care: Southeast Asian Migrant Workers Navigating Through Healthcare in Taiwan

6 May 2022

Written by Shao-Yun Chang (張韶韻) and Hang-Tang Chen (陳翰堂). Since their labour was first viewed as a supplement to the domestic labour market, Southeast Asian migrants have become indispensable to the manufacturing, agricultural, fishing, and care industries over the last three decades. While the initial foreign population was primarily Thai and Filipino workers, Vietnamese and Indonesian workers are now taking over factory jobs, farm work, and caring for seniors and the disabled.

The Earth God and Personifying Climate Change

26 March 2021 Editor

Written by Natasha Heller. Rising global temperature increases and predictions about sea levels can be abstract, even for adults. How can the phenomena of global warming be visualized? How can climate change and environmental degradation be made understandable by young children? The earth’s round shape, as imagined from space, lends itself to the addition of eyes and a mouth to convey unhappiness or illness on a global level. Distressed or lonely polar bears also convey the negative effects of global warming but are still quite distant from most children’s everyday lives.

« 1 2 3 »