Christianity Encountering Chinese Folk Religion and Buddhism

Asbjørn Aavik’s Dalen

Abstract

Asbjørn Aavik’s prize-winning missionary novel of 1949, Dalen, offered readers detailed glimpses into both polytheistic Chinese folk religion and popular Buddhism during the late nineteenth century when the Norwegian Lutheran Mission was gaining footholds in central China. The obvious purpose of the text is to bolster the conventional justification of missionary endeavours in that country. Aavik’s rhetorical strategy is based on a binary juxtaposition of deeply ingrained Chinese religious beliefs, fears, and practices on the one hand and the liberating spirit of Christianity, especially the proclamation of God’s unmerited grace, on the other.