Berthrong, John H.  “Boston Confucianism: The Third Wave of Global Confucianism.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 40, nos. 1-2 (Winter-Spring 2003): 26-47.

Abstract

The essay begins with a review of the contested definition of Confucianism as a tradition in East Asia and in modern Western critical scholarship.  Many scholars argue that Confucianism is an English term for which there is no Chinese equivalent within the Warring States period, the first great wave of the Confucian movement.  However, certainly by the Song dynasty (960-1279) Chinese scholars definitely thought of themselves as Confucians over against Buddhists and Daoists.  The Song revival of the Confucian Way is universally recognized as the second great wave in the history of Confucianism and is the wave that washed beyond the shores of China into Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.  Just when it looked as if the Confucian Way might be extinguished in China by the external pressure of the Western imperial powers and the internal critique of radical Chinese intellectuals, a group of Chinese scholars in the early twentieth century began the revival and the reform of the Confucian movement.  This revival is likened to a third wave of Confucian expansion.  Can Confucianism be revived throughout East Asia?  And, if so, what will modernized Confucianism look like?  Now after three generations of revival, a reformed and renewed Contemporary Confucianism is well underway throughout East Asia as a diverse and vital philosophical and cultural movement.  The next intriguing question is whether Confucianism can move from East Asia into North America and Europe.  Will Confucianism become a portable intellectual tradition in Boston as well as Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taipei, Seoul, Kyoto, and Tokyo?  The preliminary answer is that Confucians may indeed play an active role in the philosophical and religious debates of the twenty-first century.