Developing an Imperial Theology: Transforming “Others” into “Brothers in Christ” for a Multiethnic Empire

Abstract

This chapter examines how theories of imperialism and religion intersected in the Japanese empire by focusing on how Japanese Protestants used and articulated imperial justifications for evangelism at the turn of the twentieth century. While viewed with suspicion as internal “others” for their allegiance to an ostensibly foreign religion, Japanese Protestants were nonetheless crucial participants in the debates that attempted to give intellectual and ideological weight to Japan’s territorial expansion. Their contributions, based on an expansive and inclusive understanding of who constituted the Japanese, hinged on a logic that also made a case for the inclusion of ideological or religious others. By promoting this theory, Christians also presented Christianity as a transcendent unifier, and conversion the central means by which otherwise diverse peoples could be bound to the Japanese empire.