Chinese Spirituality and Society Program

To advance the social scientific study of Chinese religions, the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University has developed the Chinese Spirituality and Society Program (CSSP). This program is generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation to support well-designed research projects on Chinese spirituality and society, organize training workshops for the grantees to carry out robust social scientific research on religion in Chinese society, and sponsor summer institutes for teaching the sociology of religion at Chinese universities. We hope the CSSP will generate new findings on religion in China, nourish the spirit of creativity and international collaboration among Chinese scholars, and enhance scholarly understanding of Chinese spirituality and society both in China and the West.

The central component of this program is to provide research grants to Chinese scholars through an open Request for Proposal (RFP) competition. The funding will be divided into two types: Research Center Grants and Individual Grants. With a total of $500,000, we plan to award 2 or 3 large grants to research centers up to $100,000 each and about 10 grants to individual projects.

The CSSP will organize three intensive training workshops. The first workshop is to be held in China in the summer of 2010 for two weeks, and will be attended by about 30 applicants selected based on the Letters of Intents; the workshop will focus on research design and proposal writing. The second and third workshops will be held at Purdue University in summer 2011 and 2012 for the 12-15 grantees, and will focus on the research method, data collection, data analysis, and writing for scholarly journals and monographs. A final conference will be held in 2013 to disseminate the findings of the funded projects.

The CSSP will organize three Summer Institutes for teaching the sociology of religion from 2010 to 2012. The participants of the Summer Institute are faculty members at Chinese universities that have been offering or plan to offer sociology of religion courses. About 15 professors will be selected on a competitive basis to attend the Summer Institutes for three consecutive years. During these three years, the participants will develop sociology of religion courses on introductory, intermediate and advanced levels.

The CSSP also includes publication of Chinese and English volumes of the social scientific study of Chinese religions.