Peng Yin

Peng Yin is a scholar of comparative ethics, Chinese Christianity, and religion and sexuality. He is completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Persisting in the Good: Thomas Aquinas and Early Chinese Ethics. The volume explores the intelligibility of moral language across religious traditions and rethinks Christian teaching on human nature, sacrament, and eschatology. Yin’s research has been supported by the Louisville Institute, Political Theology Network, Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, and Yale’s Fund for Gay and Lesbian Studies.

A recipient of Harvard’s Derek Bok Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Yin teaches “Comparative Religious Ethics,” “Social Justice,” “Mysticism and Ethical Formation,” “Christian Ethics,” “Queer Theology,” and “Sexual Ethics” at STH, as well as “Gender & Sexuality: An Interdisciplinary Introduction” at the College of Arts and Sciences. At the University, Yin serves as a Core Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and as an Affiliated Faculty in Department of Classical Studies and Center for the Study of Asia.

Selected Publications

Articles and Book Chapters

“James Baldwin as a Preface for Christian Ethics,” Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 44.1, Spring/Summer 2024.

“The Question of Political Legitimacy in Chinese Political Theology,” in Political Theology in the Asia Pacific, edited by Kwok Pui-lan (Baylor University Press, forthcoming).

“The Ignatian Tradition and the Intellectual Virtues of the Comparative Theologian” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Comparative Theology: A Festschrift in Honor of Francis X. Clooney, SJ, edited by Axel Takacs and Joseph Kimmel. (Wiley Blackwell, forthcoming).

“Waiting for God’s Own Time” The Future of God, Reflections, Spring 2023.

“Matteo Ricci’s Legacy for Comparative Theology,” Modern Theology 38, no.3. (July 2022), 548-567.

“Virtue and Hierarchy in Early Confucian Ethics,” Journal of Religious Ethics 49, no.4 (December 2021), 793-807.

“Chinese Protestantism and the Prospect of a Public Religion,” in Brill Handbook for Contemporary Global Christianity, edited by Stephen Hunt, 229-246. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

Selected Scholarly Presentations

“The Distinctiveness of Chinese Christianity,” McDonald Agape Lecture, The University of Hong Kong, 2023.

“The Theological Origins of the New Cold War Discourse,” Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 2023.

“The Prospect of Chinese Political Theology,” Bartlett Lecture, Yale Divinity School, 2023

“James Baldwin as a Preface to Christian Ethics,” Society for Christian Ethics Annual Meeting, 2023.

“On Ricci, Epictetus, and Comparative Theology,” Seminar on Matteo Ricci’s Cultural Translation of Stoicism in Ming China, Campion Hall, University of Oxford, 2022.

“Book Discussion on The Samurai and the Cross” With Diarmaid MacCulloch, Pia Jolliffe, and James Lewis, University of Oxford, 2022.

“Queer Unlearning: Queer Theology as Apophatic Theology,” Christian Systematic Theology Unit, Gay Men and Religion Unit, and Queer Studies in Religion Unit, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, 2022.

“The Intellectual Virtues of a Comparative Theologian,” International Symposium of Jesuit Studies, Boston College, 2022.

“Equality of Opportunity and Inequality of Respect: A Thomistic Response,” Society for Christian Ethics Annual Meeting, 2020.

“Xunzi and the Moral Significance of Ritual,” Indian and Chinese Religions Compared Unit and Ritual Studies Unit, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, 2019.

“Karl Barth and Thomas Aquinas on ‘True Religion,’” Comparative Theology Unit and Karl Barth Society of North America, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, 2019.

“Authoritarianism and the Political Power of Chinese Protestantism,” Conference on Religion and Power: Political, Legal, and Economic Perspectives, Center for Public and Comparative Law and Faith and Globalization Engagement, University of Hong Kong, 2014.

“Homosexuality, Christian Ethics, and Anti-discrimination Law,” Sexual Orientation Anti-Discrimination Law Forum, Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong, 2013.