RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241
204

BOOK REVIEWS

because there is a much greater body of pre-war material than the items included here. This criticism could have been turned away by an indication, beyond the qualifications already made in the introduction, that this was a selected bibliography.

The introduction is a useful and stimulating part of the work. Besides explaining how the bibliography has been brought together, and why, it draws attention to some of the lacunae in Hong Kong studies, especially in the social science field. However this is surely as much due to the lack of a social science faculty at the University of Hong Kong until recently and the small size of the faculties in the colleges of the Chinese University, than, as the writers suggest, to 'purposive decisions..... to avoid issues with important policy overtures'. The complaint that nowhere in Hong Kong is there a full collection of Hongkongiana is still, I believe, justified and should be remedied... perhaps to the extent of compiling a master list of books on the subject available in the main Hong Kong libraries.

As a publication, it is well produced and printed, though it bears many marks of hasty compilation and checking that were probably due to its issue coinciding with the departure of the joint compilers from Hong Kong. These should be put right on a second issue. And, if I may end on a personal note, I always like to see titles and authors on the spine - it is so much more convenient when looking for a book.

Hong Kong, 1970.

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JAMES HAYES

FOLK RELIGION IN AN URBAN SETTING. A STUDY OF HAKKA VILLAGERS IN TRANSITION. Morris I. Berkowitz, Frederick P. Brandauer, John H. Reid. Hong Kong, Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1969.

As the first book-length study of Chinese religious practices in Hong Kong, this report deserves our careful consideration. Studies of Chinese folk religious practices are rare enough, and those of Hakka villagers are still rarer; therefore this general study of Hakka religion is very welcome indeed. The book represents the first of a series of research projects to be conducted by the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture.
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572
316

HUGH WITT

Sverre Holth, a leading authority on Reichelt, wrote: “His vision of the cosmic Christ had opened his eyes to the need for a special type of missionary work in the Far East, namely to reach with the gospel those religious people whose hearts had already been prepared by God's logos. His experience had convinced him that Christ had been there before him and that his footprints were to be seen even in the non-Christian religious systems, or even specially there. He also believed that it had been one of the gravest blunders of modern missionary endeavour that these divinely prepared points of contact had been neglected.”

Did this belief in "preaching to the converted" conflict with the traditional approach of missionaries to preach to the Godless?

Dr. Lee commented: "Chinese are not really secular people. In Hong Kong today religion is there much more than it appears on the surface. Most Chinese people have some kind of religious influence. Reichelt's approach was not a denial of the truth of other religions but an affirmative statement that Christianity fulfils other religions."

After Reichelt's death his followers did not have the same outlook and there were inevitable changes of course. The Christian Mission to Buddhists became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Institute.

"That Reichelt's followers did not have the same outlook was partly due to his unique personality. There was also a gradual growth in resistance to Western influences during the years after his death," said Dr. Lee. Buddhists coming from China in the late 1940s found hospitality here but by the mid-1950s not so many people were coming out."

A transitional period followed, when in 1957 the institute became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture. Reichelt's son became its first director and the Right Reverend R. O. Hall, then Bishop of Hong Kong, who lived at Shatin and had been a friend of Reichelt, became its first chairman.
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