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The purpose of this paper is to conduct a brief survey on the Catholic Church in Taiwan since its establishment by the Spanish missionaries in 1662 until today on its internal development and external relationship with the government. It is interesting to discover that, mostly, the Church has a harmonious relationship with the government, except a very few cases in which its foreign missionaries following the social teaching of the Church antagonize the government. However, it does not affect the close relationship between the Church and government in Taiwan.

It is a qualitative research on archive and books to research on the events of the Catholic Church in Taiwan in the discipline of social sciences. Historical research is in the majority of events.

The finding is acceptable because it is one of the few writings on the Catholic Church in Taiwan when writing on the Protestant Churches in Taiwan is flooding.

This is a ground-breaking work with academic value.

The study discovers a crisis of authority and administration in Catholic mission of Taiwan during 1910 and 1920s. It aims to discover the reasons and the significance of the problem.

The author works on the reports and correspondence of Jean de Guébriant, apostolic visitor of China missions in 1919–1920. He received some reports from the Dominican Prefect Apostolic of Formosa, Clemente Fernandez.

The author discovers a severe problem of authority brought about some conflicts between the Prefect Apostolic Clemente Fernandez, o.p. and some Dominican missionaries in the mission, conflicts reflecting ambiguous status of this prefecture apostolic with regard to not only the Dominican Provincia del Santo Rosario, headquarters of Dominican missions in East Asia, but also the Dominican apostolic vicariate of Southern Fujian in China, and even the Japanese Catholic church, because Taiwan had been conceded to the Japanese empire since 1895 until 1945.

The author has not yet consulted the archives in Propaganda Fide in Vatican circle and in Dominican archives. Still, some questions remain unanswered for lack of related archives. This study calls for further works in the future.

Very few relevant studies are found on the Dominican mission in Taiwan during 1860–1949. This study reveals a serious problem on the structure of Catholic mission due to an unclear status of Taiwan. It reflects, in fact, the delicate situation in ecclesial and political aspects between China, Japan and Spanish missions in Manila, Philippines.

The Catholic Church expects theological institutes, priests and seminarians to be well-informed, critical and creative users of information and communications technology. Currently, most theological institutes use the traditional face-to-face teaching method. An attempt to implement blended learning as an innovative teaching and learning modality for communication theology was made at the Saint Peter’s Pontifical Institute, Bangalore, India, using the lab-rotation model for one semester. This paper aimed to study the two important course outcomes: participation and satisfaction.

The course was designed using the analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation (ADDIE) model, developed, implemented and evaluated for 21 first-year theology students. The combination of descriptive and quasi-experimental research used an online questionnaire containing statements on a five-point Likert scale. The study evaluated the potentials of blended learning as an innovative modality through student participation and satisfaction.

This research found that a high level of participation augmented satisfaction among the students during the implementation of the blended learning modality. The positive results revealed that future shepherds in the Catholic Church could effectively integrate information and communications technologies (ICTs) in their life and mission and serve digital citizens.

The research was conducted in St. Peter’s Pontifical Institute of Theology (SPPI) for an elective course, Communication Theology, taught once a week. Only two outcomes; participation and satisfaction were studied. The respondents were 21 first-year theology students of the SPPI, which could have limited the generalizability of the results. They were not allowed to use any gadgets. So this research had to adopt a lab-rotation model wherein the students followed part of their course in the computer room.

This pilot experience in blended learning modality will help SPPI recognize the advantage of such an approach and possibly decide to adopt it as one modality in the institute. It may also serve as a model for other Catholic schools and this could trigger the wider adoption of blended learning among Catholic schools. Results of the study can demonstrate to the faculty how blended learning is designed and a sample module can easily guide them on how it may be implemented. Hence, this can equip them already with knowledge and skills about the new modality.

The positive learning experiences will help the professors to further discover and adopt new and existing learning technologies that can enhance the learning atmosphere for post-millennials. They can now innovate teaching and learning strategies to best address the learning needs in their classroom, given the pervasiveness of ICTs in the everyday lives. This study will also provide a new learning option for the students as they undergo a new student-centred learning exercise.

The pioneering effort of integrating ICTs in the form of blended learning in theology curriculum was executed in SPPI. The application of the blended learning approach to teaching communication theology is innovative in that educational technology is not only applied to theology courses but involves the promotion of technology use among future religious leaders. From a long-term perspective, this attempt can transform traditional face-to-face dominated teaching approaches.

The nature of immigration to the United States has varied tremendously over the course of the last 100 years. While the rate of immigrants in comparison to the total population was as high as 14% in the early 1900s, it steadily declined due to regulations passed at the beginning of the First World War reaching its lowest point in 1970 at less than 5% (Bernard, 1998). Yet, ever since the early 1970s, in response to the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments that replaced national-origin quotas with a single annual worldwide ceiling for all other immigrants while eliminating any numerical limitations for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, the number of immigrants has been continuously on the rise. In 1996, about 1 of every 10 residents in the United States was foreign born. This is exemplified by the fact that more than one fourth of the present foreign-born population of the United States arrived after 1990 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2004).

Christian-affiliated social groups and leaders have been active and vocal in movements advocating democracy, equality and social justices. Christians are also specular in the “July 1st Protest” in 2003 and “Umbrella Movement” in 2014. Are Christians, in general, more politically active in Hong Kong? This paper aims to examine these questions from a quantitative viewpoint.

This paper examines the effects of religion and other socio-demographic factors on both electoral and non-electoral participation based on data from the World Value Survey 2013 Hong Kong data set.

Interest in politics and education level are strong predictors of both electoral and non-electoral participation in Hong Kong. Confidence in government is negatively associated with political participation. Religious affiliation is not a predictor of any kinds of political participation. The effects of interest in politics are greater among Protestants and Catholics than people with no religion.

While previous surveys show that Christians have a strong presence in political participation, the results suggest that being a Christian is not statistically related to a higher level of political participation. On the other hand, affiliating to Christian churches may provide necessary resources (e.g. networks, skills and knowledge) only to those members who are already interested in politics and thereby facilitate their political participation.

Based on national sample data, this study debunks the public perception that “Christianity is politically active” and suggests the possible role of churches in mobilizing politically interested members into political activities.

The preservation and disappearance of indigenous people’s traditional knowledge system, under mainstream social culture immersion and fusion, have presented a dynamic and changing acculturation interactive relationship impacting Truku women’s health concepts. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore how the traditional Gaya knowledge system and mainstream culture confinement care model affect the beliefs and behaviours of postpartum self-care amongst contemporary Truku women.

An ethnographic semi-structured method, based on cultural care factors and the Leininger Sunrise Model, was conducted to interview 17 Truku women with childbearning experience in eastern Taiwan. As data were collected, UDIST Vivo 11.0 software was applied for analysis.

Amongst the three knowledge system categories, namely, traditional, mainstream and reconstruction, the traditional knowledge system, including Gaya norms, provides the overall cultural value of a Truku family. While taboo is inherited through the experience of the elders, the mainstream knowledge system favours the Han. However, the reconstruction knowledge system highlights the “functional” response strategies based on Truku women’s comfort and conveniences.

Limited relevant studies have focused on the health and postpartum self-care knowledge of ethnic Truku women in Taiwan. The results are expected to provide clinical medical personnel with a reference and strengthen cultural sensitivity and the ability to implement the cultural congruency care of postpartum indigenous women in Taiwan.

National identification among young people and the issues about how national education should be conducted have been the significant topics when the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was entering its third decade of the establishment. This paper was written based on data the authors obtained upon participation in a project organized by the Centre for Catholic Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The project was carried out after the official curriculum, known as the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide, was shelved due to popular resentment. The project aimed at capturing the timely opportunity for substantial resources available for school-based operation of moral and national education and developing an alternative curriculum about teaching national issues and identification for Catholic Diocese and Convent primary schools to adopt. This paper aims to investigate the nature of this Catholic Project and examines the extent to which it is a counterhegemonic project or one for teaching to belong to a nation (Mathews, Ma and Lui, 2007). It assesses the project’s possible contribution to citizenship and national education in Hong Kong, since the withdrawal of the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide.

The authors of this paper worked in an education university of Hong Kong and were invited to be team members of this Catholic Project. The role comprised proposing topics for teacher training, conducting seminars, giving comments to teaching resources, observing and giving feedback to schools that tried out the teaching and designing/implementing an evaluative survey and conducting follow-up interviews with involved parties such as teachers and key officials of the Catholic Centre. Given this, the research involved can be perceived as action research. This paper was written up with both the qualitative and quantitative data the authors collected when working the project.

This paper reported a Catholic citizenship training project with the focus on a Catholic school project on preparing students to understand the nation by learning national issues analytically. The ultimate goal was to ensure teachers in Catholic primary schools could lead the students to examine national issues and other social issues from the perspective of Catholic social ethics. Though the project arose after the failure of the government to force through its controversial national education programme, this paper found that instead of being an alternative curriculum with resistance flavour, the project was basically a self-perfection programme for the Catholic. It was to fill a shortfall observed of Catholic schools, namely, not doing enough to let students examine social and national issues with Catholic social ethics, which, indeed, had a good interface with many cherished universal values. In the final analysis, the project is not a typical national education programme, which teaches students to belong to a nation but an innovative alternative curriculum transcending the hegemony-resistance ideological tensions as advanced by western literature (for example, Gramsci, 1971; Freire, 1970; and Apple, 1993).

The paper contributes to the literature of Hong Kong studies and citizenship education studies. The results of such an innovative endeavour, which captures and capitalizes the opportunity and resources for developing a national education curriculum in school-based manner. Attention was paid to the endeavour’s nature and its possible contribution to the knowledge, policies and practices of citizenship and national education in Hong Kong amidst deep social transformations. In particular, the paper can add to the specific literature about Hong Kong’s citizenship and national education development since the withdrawal of the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide. Using an empirical example of Asian schooling and society, analysis of this paper illustrates the way in which development of an alternative curriculum is more innovative and interesting, transcending the hegemony-resistance ideological tensions.

This paper aims to analyse the class dimensions of racism in Taiwan against temporary migrant workers and migrants' efforts to build inter‐ethnic and labour‐community coalitions in struggle against racism.

An important source of data for this study were the unstructured interview. Between September 2000 and December 2005, more than 50 temporary migrants and their support groups in Taiwan were interviewed, specifically about migrants' experiences of racism and their resistance strategies. These interviews were conducted face‐to‐face, sometimes with the assistance of translators. Between 2001 and 2007, some 70 people were interviewed by telephone, between Australia and Taiwan.

In Taiwan, temporary migrants suffer the racism of exploitation in that capital and the state “racially” categorize them as suitable only for the lowest paid and least appealing jobs. Migrants also suffer neglect by and exclusion from the labour unions. However, migrants have succeeded, on occasions, in class mobilization by building powerful inter‐ethnic ties as well as coalitions with some labor unions, local organizations and human rights lobbies.

The research raises implications for understanding the economic, social and political conditions which influence the emergence of inter‐ethnic bonds and labour‐community coalitions in class struggle.

The research will contribute to a greater appreciation among Taiwan's labour activists of the real subordination of temporary migrant labour to capital and of the benefits of supporting migrants' mobilization efforts. These benefits can flow not only to migrants but also to the labour unions.

A significant body of academic literature has recently emerged on temporary and illegal migrants' efforts to engage the union movements of industrialized host countries. There is a dearth, however, of academic research on the capacity of temporary migrants to invigorate union activism in Asia, including Taiwan.

Purpose – This chapter examines the roles of the Unification Church (UC) in reconstructing the discourse of the gendered desire of Filipina marriage migrants and their Korean husbands, serving as an intermediary agency in the process of international marriage migration, and reinforcing heterosexual practices as part of a regime of normalization.

Methodology – The chapter is based on 1 year of ethnographic fieldwork that included a review of secondary sources, participant observation, and in-depth interviews with Filipinas and Korean men.

Findings – The chapter shows the ways in which the UC reinforces the dominant discourse of gendered desire that portrays marriage migrants as women who wish to migrate mainly to marry a man who can provide economic stability. Filipina migrants, however, infuse the cultural discourse of romantic love into their decisions about husbands and marriage migration. Lastly, as the UC delineates normative heterosexual practices based on its religious doctrines, the church becomes a “regime of normalization” for traditional patriarchal heteronormativity.

Social implications – The chapter contributes to the idea that gender and sexuality are socially constructed and constitutive of migration.

Originality/value of chapter – The chapter examines not only the matchmaking role of an intermediary agency that facilitates cross-border marriages but also the agency's role in re/constructing gendered desire. Further, the chapter contributes to an understudied area: the social process of reconstructing heteronormativity in a transnational context.