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Chinese practices related to ancestors have long been the subject of conflicting interpretations. These practices are rooted in the lived experience of practitioners, and therefore need to be considered as embodied expressions of the quest for existential meaning. For practitioners, the achievement of existential meaning requires the inclusion, implication, and mediation of the ancestors. When gestures in ancestor rites are analyzed from this perspective it is possible to appreciate their essence as constitutive of "ancestor religion." This book uses an inquisitive method that investigates the discrepancies between foreign and local explanations, and proposes another hermeneutic framework for ancestor related praxes.

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CH 1 Introduction: Are Ancestors a Problem?

CH 2 The Hermeneutic Problem within Ancestor Related Practices

CH 3 The Conflict of Interpretation of Chinese Ancestor Rites

CH 4 "Our " Perspective: Indigenous Explanation of Ancestor Rites

CH 5 Existential Practical Hermeneutic of Ancestor Religion

CH 6 Conclusion

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"This book is well written and edited. Part of Palgrave´s ´Asian Christianity in the Disapora´ series, it indeed demonstrates the significance of the ancestors in Chinese Christianity and has relevance for many communities. By developing the study of Chinese ancestor religion, Batairwa Kubuya provides focus and punch, proposing a new way of interpreting the ancestors for Christians and others." (Jonathan A. Seitz, Reading Religion, readingreligion.org, September, 2018)

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Paulin Batairwa Kubuya is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fu Jen Catholic University and Executive Secretary of Taiwan Regional Bishops´ Conference-Commissions for Interreligious Dialogue and Ecumenism.

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