Liu Xiaofeng (Chinese:刘小枫; born 1956) is a Chinese scholar and a professor atRenmin University of China. He has been considered the prototypical example of acultural Christian (Chinese:文化基督徒;pinyin:wénhuà jīdūtú), a believer who may lack a specific church identification or affiliation, and was, along withHe Guanghu, one of the main forerunners of the academic field ofSino-Christian Theology (simplified Chinese:汉语神学;traditional Chinese:漢語神學;pinyin:hànyǔ shénxué).[1]
Liu Xiaofeng was born to apetite bourgeois family inChongqing,China, in 1956.[2]: 178 After graduating from high school, Liu was sent to labor in a nearby village as part of theDown to the Countryside Movement.[2]: 179
He completed his Bachelor of Arts degree in German language and literature atSichuan International Studies University before beginning hisMaster of Arts inaesthetics atPeking University in 1982, completing it in 1985. At Peking University, Liu's studies focused onGerman philosophy.[2]: 167
Liu's earliest academic writing focused onGerman Romanticism.[2]: 167
He later received a scholarship to study at theUniversity of Basel inSwitzerland in April 1989, where he completed hisPh.D inChristian theology in 1993 on a theological investigation intoMax Scheler'sphenomenology and critique of modernity.[3] He also undertook an extensive translation effort of historical and contemporary Christian texts. He returned to Hong Kong in 1993 as a research fellow at theChinese University of Hong Kong.[2]: 185 Describing himself as acultural Christian, Liu advocated Christian ethics as moral instruction for contemporary Chinese society.[2]: 185
By the late 1990s, Liu concluded that his seeking of a Christian transcendence beyond politics risked becoming asecular liberalism.[2]: 168 Liu changed his stance and focused on the conservative political theology ofCarl Schmitt andLeo Strauss and their exchanges on the theological basis of political authority.[2]: 168 On the basis of their work, Liu contended that reasserting a Confucian religion against secular Western enlightenment could guide moral conduct and national politics in China.[2]: 168
In the 2000s, supporters of this position gravitated towards Liu and circles of ChineseStraussians became active in Guangzhou and Beijing.[2]: 168 These Chinese Straussians sought to promote classical learning, create elite liberal arts educational institutions, and opposed what they deemed as the harmful influence of Western liberal values in Chinese academia.[2]: 168 In 2009, Liu created the Center for Classic Studies atRenmin University.[2]: 199
In 2013, Liu stated that the Confucian roots of theChinese Communist Revolution should be studied, and thatMao Zedong should be regarded as a "sage-king" and "founding father" of the socialist republic.[2]: 168 Liu contended that the "spiritual trauma" of 20th Century China was attributable to the harmful influence of republicanism which diminished spiritual solidarity and led to civil war.[2]: 201
Liu's work encompasses the disciplines of theology, political philosophy, and aesthetics.[2]: 167
Liu's second published monograph,Salvation and Easiness (1988), called to cast off Sino-Western cultural differences to confront the fundamental question of ultimate values.[2]: 182
Liu's works played an important role in the development of theSino-Christian theology movement.[2]: 167–168 Liu became well known for his critique of Confucian ethics as inferior to the other-worldly focus of the Judeo-Christian tradition.[2]: 167 Liu was widely viewed as one of the most prominent cultural Christians.[2]: 168
Liu's essaySino-Christian Theology and the Philosophy of History advocated thatChinese Christians should abandon their "obsession with 'indigenization' and 'Sinicization'" to accept the miraculous birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a divine revelation which "transcends all national-historical categories".[2]: 186–187 According to this essay, any culturalist trend to illustrate the Christ Event with Chinese examples would collapse the boundary between "the word of God" and "the word of man".[2]: 187
A modern writer commented, "Liu's writings have had a major impact in China not only on those Chinese who think of themselves as Christian, but on those who are interested in broad analysis of China in the context of the world's current cultural and philosophical era."[4] However, his interpretation of Strauss and other modern Western thinkers has been criticized as one-sided and even deeply flawed, with critics claiming that his defense of the Chinese Communist Party, and Mao Zedong in particular, does not go well together with Christianity, nor with Classical Western civilization as described by Strauss and his disciples.[5]
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