ABSTRACT
For adult individuals, both male and female, the decision to become a Christian had important consequences in the social sphere. In general, joining a religious community would not meet with serious obstruction. Like lay Buddhism, Christianity had its shared body of outspoken and clearly formulated articles of faith; it had its own corpus of sacred scriptures, and a variety of ritual practices and obligations such as daily prayers, confession, fasting, keeping a house altar, and taking part in communal activities. The problem was that the prohibition conflicted with one of the most basic rules of Confucian morality: the principle that a filial son is obliged to ensure the continuity of the family by engendering male offspring. There is clear evidence that the conventional image of the Jesuit China mission as a movement active among the highest elite and recruiting its converts from the top echelons of society is not at all correct.
