Introduction

[Excerpt] Both Confucianism and Christianity are regarded as two of the world’s largest civilizations in that each has a massive following of adherents residing in different parts of the globe. Christianity is huge in that, over the past century, it constituted about a third of the world’s population, today numbering more than two billion people. Likewise, Confucianism, which has its origins in China and is at the roots of much of East-Asian culture, has permeated the psyche of China’s 1.4 billion peoples and the 50 million more Chinese living in diaspora, as well as the majority of the population in the Korean peninsula and Japan. Together, Christianity and Confucianism have inspired the lives of about half of all the people living on Earth in the last two millennia.

These two religions have not only shaped the religious lives of their followers, but also the societies their followers inhabit. The Confucian and Christian principles and values have seeped into many spheres of life through the spirit, behavior, mind, and relationships of Confucians and Christians, and will continue to leave an enduring mark on the socio-cultural-political structures of many of the world’s nations in both the East as well as the West. Despite their massive global influence, the active engagement between the two traditions