Christianity in Contemporary China : Socio-Cultural Perspectives [1 ed.] 9781136204999, 9780415528467

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SPINE 19mm

Christianity in Contemporary China

Edited by Francis Khek Gee Lim

Routledge studies in Asian religion and philosophy

Christianity in Contemporary China Socio-­cultural perspectives Edited by Francis Khek Gee Lim I S B N 978-0-415-52846-7 www.routledge.com

9

780415 528467

SPINE 19mm

Christianity in Contemporary China

Christianity is one of the fastest growing religions in China. Despite its long history in China and its significant indigenization or intertwinement with Chinese society and culture, Christianity continues to generate suspicion among political elites and intense debates among broader communities within China. This unique book applies socio-­cultural methods in the study of contemporary Christianity. Through a wide range of empirical analyses of the complex and highly diverse experience of Christianity in contemporary China, it examines the fraught processes by which various forms and practices of Christianity interact with the Chinese social, political and cultural spheres. Contributions by top scholars in the field are structured in the following sections: Enchantment, Nation and history, Civil society and Negotiating boundaries. This book offers a major contribution to the field and provides a timely, wide­ranging assessment of Christianity in contemporary China. Francis Khek Gee Lim teaches in the Division of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His publications include Imagining the Good Life: Negotiating Culture and Development in Nepal Himalaya, Mediating Piety: Technology and Religion in contemporary Asia (editor) and Christianity and the State in Asia (co-­editor).

Routledge studies in Asian religion and philosophy

1 Deconstruction and the Ethical in Asian Thought Edited by Youru Wang 2 An Introduction to Daoist Thought Action, language, and ethics in Zhuangzi Eske Møllgaard 3 Religious Commodifications in Asia Marketing gods Edited by Pattana Kitiarsa 4 Christianity and the State in Asia Complicity and conflict Edited by Julius Bautista and Francis Khek Gee Lim 5 Christianity in Contemporary China Socio-­cultural perspectives Edited by Francis Khek Gee Lim

Christianity in Contemporary China Socio-­cultural perspectives

Edited by Francis Khek Gee Lim

First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Francis Khek Gee Lim for selection and editorial matter; individual contributors, their contribution. The right of Francis Khek Gee Lim to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the author for his individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Christianity in contemporary China : socio-cultural perspectives / edited by Francis Khek Gee Lim. p. cm. – (Routledge studies in Asian religion and philosophy ; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Christianity–China–History–20th century. 2. Christianity–China– History–21st century. I. Lim, Francis Khek Gee. BR1288.C4955 2012 275.1'083–dc23 2012013179 ISBN: 978-0-415-52846-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-09414-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents



List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Shields of faith: Christianity in contemporary China

viii ix xiii 1

F rancis K hek G ee L im

Part I

Enchantment

15

  1 Signs and wonders: Christianity and hybrid modernity in China

17

R ichard M adsen

  2 From ‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’: changing paradigms and changing perspectives

31

P eter T ze M ing N g

Part II

Nation and history

43

  3 Christian revival from within: Seventh-­day Adventism in China

45

J oseph T se - ­H ei L ee and C H R I S T I E C H U I - S H A N C H O W

  4 Protestant reactions to the nationalism agenda in contemporary China C arsten T . V ala

59

vi   Contents   5 Trying to make sense of history: Chinese Christian traditions of countercultural belief and their theological and political interpretation of past and present history

78

T obias B randner

  6 Contemporary Christianity and the religiosity of popular Chinese cinema

91

Y am C hi - ­K eung

  7 ‘To the Peoples’: Christianity and ethnicity in China’s minority areas

105

F rancis K hek G ee L im

Part III

Civil society

121

  8 Civil society and the role of the Catholic Church in contemporary China

123

SHUN-HING CHAN

  9 The emergence of Christian subcultures in China: beginnings of an inculturation from the grassroots?

138

K atrin F iedler

10 Calvin, culture and Christ? Developments of faith among Chinese intellectuals

153

F redrik F ä llman

11 Christian ethics and business life: an ethnographic account of overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs in China’s economic transition

169

J oy K O O I - C H I N T ong

12 Saints, secrets, and salvation: emergence of spiritual–religious groups in China between 1978 and 1989

183

K ristin K upfer

Part IV

Negotiating boundaries

205

13 The house-­church identity and preservation of Pentecostal-­style Protestantism in China

207

CHEN-YANG KAO

Contents   vii 14 Making sense of China’s state-­society relations: unregistered Protestant churches in the reform era

220

T eresa Z immerman - ­L iu and T eresa W right

15 A Three-­Self Protestant church, the local state and religious policy implementation in a coastal Chinese city

234

M ark M c L eister

16 Constructing sacred space under the forces of the market: a study of an ‘upper-­floor’ Protestant church in Hong Kong

247

G ustav K . K . Y eung



Index

262

Illustrations

Figures   7.1 Graves of murdered European missionaries and Tibetan Catholics   7.2 Multilingual worship   7.3 Tibetan Bible passages translated by French missionaries, c. 1895 12.1 Organizational structure of the ‘Teachings of the Supreme God’ 16.1 Multiple uses of space

113 116 117 188 253

Table 11.1 Profile of respondents

157

Contributors

Tobias Brandner (PhD, University of Zurich, Switzerland) is Assistant Professor at the Divinity School of Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong Kong, teaching Western church history, missiology, and ecumenism. He has also for the past 14 years been working as prison chaplain in Hong Kong. His recent publications include ‘Mission, Millennium, and Politics: A Continuation of the History of Salvation – from the East’, in Missiology: An International Review, 47/3 (2009), 317–332, and the book, Tiechuang nei de shijie: xianggang jidujiao jianyu shigong mianmianguan, 2010. Shun-­Hing Chan is Associate Professor of religion and philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research focuses on sociology of religion, church-­state relations, religion and social movements, and religion in Hong Kong and mainland China. He is editor and author of A Carnival of Gods: Studies of Religion in Hong Kong and Changing Church and State Relations in Hong Kong 1950–2000 (with Beatrice Leung). Christie Chui-­Shan Chow is a PhD candidate in Religion and Society Program at Princeton Theological Seminary, USA. Her research interests include Christian ethics, religion and media, and Seventh-­day Adventism in modern China. Fredrik Fällman PhD in Sinology at Stockholm University; Distinguished Adjunct Researcher at Renmin University of China, Beijing; Researcher at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (2007–11). In 2005–06 Dr. Fällman served as the Co-­ordinator for the Nordic Confucius Institute in Stockholm. Since 2008 he has been a Board Member of the Institute of Sino-­Christian Studies in Hong Kong. Recent articles and books include ‘Useful opium? On ‘adapted religion’ and ‘harmony’ in contemporary China’ (Journal of Contemporary China, 2010) and Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contemporary China (UPA, 2010). Katrin Fiedler is currently Project Leader for the China Information Desk (China InfoStelle), a small entity dedicated to collecting and disseminating information about contemporary Chinese society, in particular with regards to religion and culture. She holds a PhD in Chinese studies, and worked as

x   Contributors Editor of the Amity News Service in Hong Kong and as a Coordinator for the Interdisciplinary Centre of East Asian Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt before assuming her current position in Hamburg, Germany. Chen-­yang Kao is a postdoctoral research fellow at Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He has been carrying out fieldwork in different parts of China, examining the impact of social change on Protestantism. He has written a number of articles on religion in China and Taiwan, including ‘The Cultural Revolution and the Emergence of Pentecostal-­style Protestantism in China’ (Journal of Contemporary Religion), which was also the winning entry of the 2008 Taylor & Francis Sociology of Religion Postgraduate Essay Competition, British Sociological Association, Sociology of Religion Study Group. He has a PhD in religious studies from Lancaster University, UK. Kristin Kupfer, PhD, Sinologist and Political Scientist, currently Researcher/ Lecturer at the Institute of Sinology, University of Freiburg, Germany. From 2007 until 2011 she worked as a freelance journalist in Beijing, PR China. Her dissertation, Emergence and Development of Spiritual-­Religious Movements in the PR China after 1978, was published by Electronic University Publications, University of Bochum, Germany in 2010. Her research interests include questions on religion, on social media and on protest in the People’s Republic of China. Joseph Tse-­Hei Lee is Professor of History and Co-­director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Pace University in New York, USA. He is the author of The Bible and the Gun: Christianity in South China, 1860–1900 (New York and London: Routledge, 2003; Chinese edition, Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2010), and the co-­editor of Marginalization in China: Recasting Minority Politics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Francis Khek Gee Lim teaches at the Division of Sociology, Nanyang Technological University. His research interests include religion, tourism, and development, spanning a number of ethnographic areas such as Nepal, Tibet, China, and Singapore. He is the author of Imagining the Good Life: Negotiating Culture and Development in Nepal Himalaya (Brill, 2008), editor of Mediating Piety: Technology and Religion in Contemporary Asia (Brill, 2008), and co-­editor of Christianity and the State in Asia: Complicity and Conflict (Routledge, 2009). Richard Madsen is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He has written extensively on the sociology of morality, religion, and politics, in both the United States and Asia. His latest book is Democracy’s Dharma: Religious Renaissance and Political Development in Taiwan. Mark McLeister is a doctoral candidate based at the University of Sheffield/ White Rose East Asia Centre where he has also lectured on contemporary Chinese society and taught Mandarin Chinese. His PhD thesis explores interactions between Three-­Self Churches and the local state. He worked for an

Contributors   xi extended period in China where he was involved in development, teacher-­ training, and higher education. Mark’s broad research interests include contemporary Chinese religion, Christianity in China, and language learning and teaching. He is specifically interested in researching the relationship between popular religion and ‘Pentecostal-­style’ Chinese Protestantism, as well as Chinese Protestant models of proselytizing. Peter Tze Ming Ng, PhD in education from London Institute of Education in 1985, served as Professor of Religious Education for 23 years at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Since 1989, he has established extensive networks in mainland China; been appointed Research Associate of Huazhong Normal University (1993–94) and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2001), Visiting Scholar of the People’s University of China (2001), Adjunct Professor at Shanghai University (2005–08, 2010–13), Sichuan University (2007–10) and Lanzhou University (2007–10), and was elected the Chairman of North East Asian Council for the Study of History of Christianity (2007–09). His recent book, Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives, was published by Brill, 2012. Joy Kooi-­Chin Tong is Assistant Professor of Intercultural Studies at Indiana Wesleyan University. She was a post doctoral research associate at the Center on Religion and Chinese Society of Purdue University. She received her PhD in sociology from the National University of Singapore. Her thesis was about Christian ethics and economic life of overseas Chinese in mainland China. Her publications include Overseas Chinese Christian Businessmen in Modern China (Anthem Press, 2012), ‘McDonaldization and the Mega-­Church’, in Religious Commodifications in Asia (Routledge, 2008; edited by Pattana Kitiarsa), ‘Women, Piety and Practices’, Contemporary Islam, 2(1) March, 2008 (co-­authored with Bryan Turner). Carsten T. Vala is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland. He specializes in the politics of Protestantism in China and is completing a book manuscript entitled God above Party: The Politics of Protestants, Party-­state, and Civil Society in Contemporary China. He has previously published work on the ‘patriotic’ training of pastors in official churches and on the growth of unregistered churches. Teresa Wright is Chair and Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach. Her research focuses on protests, political economy, political attitudes, and democratization in China and Taiwan. Along with two books, The Perils of Protest: State Repression and Student Activism in China and Taiwan (University of Hawaii Press, 2001) and Accepting Authoritarianism: State-­Society Relations in Post-­Mao China (Stanford University Press, 2010), Dr. Wright has published articles in Comparative Politics, Communist and Post-­Communist Studies, China Quarterly, and Asian Survey, as well as numerous chapters in edited volumes. Dr. Wright received her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.

xii   Contributors Yam Chi-­Keung (PhD, Edinburgh University) currently teaches in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at the Hong Kong Baptist University, and is an Honorary Research Associate in the Divinity School of Chung Chi College at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as a veteran media producer with experience across radio, television, and film. The main thrusts of his teaching are interdisciplinary courses in media cultures, cinema, and theology. His research interest includes the religious and theological dimensions of popular media cultures in Chinese and East Asian societies. Gustav K.K. Yeung is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He researches and teaches in religion and modern society, Christianity in Hong Kong and China, and spiritual life of young people in Hong Kong. His recent publications include ‘The cultural defense of Hong Kong Protestant conservatives’ (2011); ‘Protestant voluntary associations and the Anti-­Mui Tsai Movement in Hong Kong in the early Twentieth Century’ (2010); ‘Educational practices and institutions as Christian service in Asia’ (2010); ‘ “To take up your own responsibility”: the religiosity of Buddhist adolescents in Hong Kong’ (2010). Teresa Zimmerman-­Liu (MA in Asian Studies, California State University, Long Beach) holds a BS and a translation certificate from Georgetown University. Her research focuses on literary constructions of Chinese cultural identity and dissent among exiled Chinese literati. A working Chinese–­ English interpreter/translator in Taiwan and the USA since 1983, her professional practice includes assisting former house-­church members from China transition to US life. Her publications include the translation of an essay by Liu Xiaobo in No Enemies, No Hatred (HUP, 2012) and a chapter, co-­ authored with Dr. Teresa Wright, on ‘Christianity in China’ in The Changing World Religion Map (Springer, forthcoming).

Acknowledgements

Chapters in this volume have been selected from papers presented at the conference, Christianity in Contemporary China: Socio-­cultural Perspectives, held in January 2011 at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. I would like to express my deep appreciation to the wonderful support provided by Mr Ang Wee Li and the Centre of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences on logistical and financial matters, without which the conference would not have been possible. Kwok Kian-­woon, head of the Division of Sociology, and Alan Chan, Dean, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, both offered much needed encouragement for this project. The participation of Li Xiangping, Paul Woods, Ma Li, Huang Ke-­hsien, Xie Zhibin, Zhu Yujing, and Yu Ying in the conference and their papers provided many insights during the discussion sessions. I am grateful to all the participants in the conference and contributors in this volume for the very stimulating conversations and their friendship.

Shields of faith Christianity in contemporary China Francis Khek Gee Lim

Christmas carols floats through the chilly December air in the remote village of Cizhong, on the Yunnan border with Tibet. The Christmas Eve Mass signals the start of a two-­day festivity that includes communal dancing, feasting, drinking, and other forms of merry-­making. Tibetans comprise the majority of the Cizhong Catholic community, while the Naxi, Nu, and Han make up the rest. The Mass tonight is attended not only by the locals; in the church are around twenty domestic and foreign tourists, and a number of officials from the Diqing Prefecture’s Cultural Bureau. Some of these visitors are walking through the church to find good vantage points for taking pictures, while others mingle with the villagers seated at the pews listening to the priest’s sermon. The priest celebrating this year’s Christmas Eve Mass is from the church in city of Dali which belongs to the ‘official’ Patriotic Church. However, the Tibetan priest who often visits Cizhong and neighbouring villages is not present. He does not belong to any state-­recognised diocese, and neither does he acknowledge the authority of the Bishop of Kunming since the latter’s consecration has not been approved by the Vatican. Most villagers do not really care about the distinction between the ‘official’ and ‘underground’ church. What is most important is that they are allowed to practice their faith in their everyday life, a faith which was first brought to this part of China by French and Swiss missionaries toward the end of the nineteenth century. Many villagers are happy that a priest is there to celebrate Mass in their century-­old church on Christmas Eve. And as the priest holds up the Eucharist, Cizhong Catholics focus their attention on the wafer that is the Body of Christ, at that particular moment in unison of devotion with millions of Catholics throughout China and other parts of the world. Christianity in China has witnessed a revival over the last three decades. In recent years there has been a surge in scholarly interest on Christianity in contemporary China. This is partly due the religious revival witnessed in the country since the early 1980s, after years of state effort to suppress and even to eradicate religion after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) captured power (Leung 2005; Kindopp 2004). The long history of Christianity in China, especially its experience in the modern era, has been the subject of a number of seminal historical studies (e.g. Cohen 1963; Lutz 1971; Charbonnier 2002; Lian 2010; Bays 2012; Ng 2012). However, compared to the relatively large body of historical work in both Chinese

2   F.K.G. Lim and foreign languages, only a small number of book-­length studies have employed socio-­cultural methods in the study of contemporary Christianity (e.g. Hunter and Chan 1993; Madsen 1998; Liang 1999; Lozada 2001; Yang 2005; Ng et al. 2005; Gao 2005; Cao 2011). Therefore, one of the key aims of this volume is to address the paucity of empirical work on Christianity from socio-­cultural perspectives. In order to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the fraught processes by which various forms and practices of Christianity interact with the Chinese social, political and cultural spheres, this volume deliberately eschews focusing solely on one particular theoretical approach or topic. Instead, its major contribution to scholarship lies in its wide range of empirical analyses of the complex and highly diverse experience of Christianity in contemporary China.

Broken spirit, merry heart Based on their survey of religious experience among the Han Chinese, Yao and Badham (2007) note the ‘three mores’ of Christianity in contemporary China: more females, more elderly, and more people of a lower educational level than the national average. In addition, there are 28 per cent more Christians living in the rural than in the urban areas. There are other interesting findings worth noting. For example, around 14 per cent of the Christians surveyed claimed membership in the Chinese Communist Party, indicating that for these people there is no contradiction between adhering to a religious faith while being a member of an officially atheistic political party. A quarter of self-­claimed Christians indicated that they have prayed to or worshipped non-­Christian deities, such as the Buddha, Lord Guan (guandi), God of Fortune (caishen), Allah, Laozi and Confucius. This syncretic religious experience suggests that at the level of popular Christianity the boundary between Christianity and other Chinese folk religions can sometimes be blurred (cf. Madsen 2001). However, Yao and Badham point out that despite evidence of syncretism, many Christians still reject influences from traditional Chinese religious faith as ‘they would not allow their faith to be diluted too much, and energetically resist the ‘invasion’ of popular religious belief ’ (Yao and Badham 2007: 86) Despite its long history in China and its significant intertwinement with Chinese society and culture (e.g. Liang 1999; Madsen 2001; Ng et al. 2005), Christianity continues to generate suspicion among political elites and intense debates among broader communities in the country. There is in China what might be termed a ‘politics of Christianity’, due to, on the one hand, the party-­ state’s determination to exert control over all religious matters within the country, and on the other hand, Chinese Christians’ intense ambivalence toward state regulation over their religious affairs. The latter position can be traced ultimately to Jesus’ exhortation in the Bible to render what is rightly due to God and Caesar. While many Christians might acknowledge the separate spheres of state and religious authority, and in fact work within the framework of the state, there are others who, when forced to make a choice, recognise only God as the ultimate authority (cf. Bautista and Lim 2009: 2).

Shields of faith   3 The contestation between authority of God and authority of the state goes back a long way in Chinese history, since the Nestorians brought their own version of the religion in the seventh century. Comparing historically the development of Christianity and Islam in China, Israeli (1980) argues that because Muslims came to China not with the main intention to seek converts, but primarily to trade, the religion they brought was not viewed by the ruling elites as a heterodox faith. Islam was propagated mainly through intermarriage between the Muslim traders and the Chinese. In contrast, the main purpose for the Nestorians, Franciscans, Jesuits, and missionaries of other foreign religious orders was the proselytization of the Chinese people, such that Christianity came to be considered by many as a heterodox religion and hence an ethico-­political threat. This eventually culminated in the Kangxi Emperor’s banning of Christianity in the Qing empire following the protracted ‘Rites Controversy’. In the subsequent two centuries, the tension between Christianity and Chinese society erupted on numerous occasions with varying intensity. Events like the Boxer Rebellion and the numerous anti-­Christian and anti-­foreign protest movements in the early parts of the twentieth century were testament to Christianity’s uneasy presence in China (Cohen 1963). Despite having experienced some severe setbacks, the first quarter of the twentieth century saw Christianity’s indigenization gaining momentum with the emergence of truly local movements and churches seeking a break from foreign mission churches. Examples of such indigenous churches include the True Jesus Church, the Jesus Family, and the Christian Assembly/Little Flock (xiaoqun). At the same time, Christian colleges in various parts of the country, such as St. John’s University in Shanghai, Yenching University in Peking, and Lingnan University in Guangzhou had curricula that cater specifically to the Chinese cultural and political contexts (Lutz 1971; Leung 2007). In response to the rising tide of nationalism, for example, the Lingnan University adopted the motto, ‘For China, for God, and for Lingnan’. These colleges and universities also produced a significant group of Chinese elite that played prominent roles in the country’s political, military, and cultural arenas. As Ng (2012) notes, the missionary movement generated ‘a plurality of particularizations of the Christian faith in China’, such that ‘each had to find its own ways of preaching the Christian gospel’. It is perhaps ironic that a religion that is still considered by some people in China as a ‘foreign’ religion, susceptible to being used as a tool for Western imperialistic designs on the country, has had such a lasting and profound impact on how Chinese people think about religion. Goossaert and Palmer (2011: 10) reckon that before the late nineteenth century, religion did not exist as a distinct category in China, and neither was there an autonomous religious field differentiated from other aspects of social life. It was the Christian missionaries, together with the secularizing socio-­political reformers and revolutionaries inspired by European ideas of nationalism and secularism, who were instrumental in creating a separate field marked as ‘religious’. This development has given rise to three types of responses: groups may seek to claim a legitimate position within the religious field according to Christian norms; to position themselves in secular

4   F.K.G. Lim fields such as science, medicine, or philosophy; or to reject the boundaries between religious and other fields by operating in several simultaneously (ibid.). Christian groups in China fall mainly under the first and the last responses, and relate differently to the party-­state and Chinese society depending on which of these responses they take. In the contemporary context of China as a nation-­state ruled by an officially atheistic Communist Party, the politics of Christianity in the country erupts in the debate, contestation, and negotiation over issues such as the divide between the ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ Church; the affinity between Christianity and Chinese culture; whether China is becoming Christianized (and over the exact number of Christians); the influence of foreign Christian groups and protection of national sovereignty; and the role of Christianity in international politics. Further, the close ties between some Christian groups in China and those based overseas (such as American and South Korean Christian organizations actively cultivating ties in China), and the Chinese Catholics’ complicated relationship with the Vatican, have contributed to the party-­state’s intense suspicion over foreign interference in the country’s religious and political affairs. Of course, Daoist and Sino-­Buddhist groups also cultivate relations with foreign groups but they do not face the same degree of suspicion and hostility from segments of the party-­state and society as the Christians do. In fact, Daoism, non-­Tibetan Buddhism, and popular religions are considered as more authentically ‘Chinese’ and have even received state support in the last few years through sponsorship of the World Buddhist Forum and local authorities’ promotion of the Mazu cult in southern China. Although the CCP bolsters what it views as truly ‘Chinese’ religions to construct a ‘spiritual civilization’ (jingshen wenming) and a ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui) through the Party’s united front policy, the relationship between the state and society with the small (but rapidly increasing) minority of Christians continues to manifest multiple areas of tension. In his comparative study of the expansion of Christianity, Buddhism and Islam, Montgomery (1991) highlights a number of factors that impact on ­people’s receptivity of a new religion introduced from the outside, including whether the source of the external religion is seen as a threat, and whether there exist large and well-organized indigenous religions that are able to resist the introduction of foreign religions. In this vein, we wish to consider the possible unintended effect of the Cultural Revolution on Christianity in China. As is well documented, the party-­state’s ultra-­leftist fervour during the Cultural Revolution included efforts to suppress all religions, including those widely associated with ‘traditional’ Chinese culture such as Buddhism, Daoism, and popular Chinese religion. The anti-­religion campaigns severely undermined the authority structures of these religions, with their religious leaders either jailed or killed, and properties confiscated. Thus, through those years of religious suppression, the party-­state had dealt a severe blow to China’s traditional religious and cultural centres, resulting in the reconfiguration of the religious market in the reform era when religious organizations were allowed to operate in the open again. In other words, one of the possible factors highlighted by Montgomery offering strong

Shields of faith   5 resistance to the wider adoption of the Christian faith among the Chinese – the religious traditions normally associated with ‘Chinese civilization’ – had been severely undermined by the cultural destructions wrought by the Cultural Revolution. As such, the subsequent ‘reform era’ presented a favourable religious market for Christian groups to operate and increase their influence. These days, many Chinese people no longer consider Christianity a ‘foreign’ religion and a tool for Western imperialistic expansion, but as a prestigious religion that symbolizes modernity and cosmopolitanism (cf. Yang 2005). Increasingly Christian converts come from the elite strata of Chinese society consisting of successful businesspeople, university students, and professionals (Gao 2005; Cao 2011). However, the expansion of Christianity witnessed in recent years does not necessarily imply that it has now established an equal cultural footing among the Chinese compared to Buddhism, Daoism, or Confucianism (cf. Lian 2010: 242). The politics of Christianity is also evident when we examine the secularization process that it has undergone in China. This issue is comparable to Ji’s discussion of the secularization of Buddhism, wherein he uses the term ‘secularization’ in the juridical sense: ‘the appropriation of religious properties [symbolic and physical] by the secular state power’ (Ji 2008: 235). An important consequence of state-­induced secularization is the further institutionalization of the various major religious traditions, specifically in the form of umbrella national religious ‘associations’. Hence, unlike the European experience where secularization has historically resulted in the separation of church and state, in China the process involved the politicization of religion via its institutionalization under state control. Hence, comparable to the case of Buddhism discussed by Ji, the secular party-­state appropriated and mobilized Christianity’s human, material, and spiritual resources for its own ideological and political goals, embodied in institutions such as the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), China Christian Council, China Catholic Patriotic Church, and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference. Many TSPM churches have become more political as their leaders are mobilized by the party-­state to show patriotism and to contribute to the country’s modernization projects (Yao 2011: 64). However, the institutionalization of religion in China has ultimately created a legitimate space for officially recognised religions to operate. And as these religions, under the protection of the state, acquired their own institutional resources such as funding, trained religious personnel, social and political networks, religious properties, and supportive members, they are increasingly able to negotiate with state authorities in their own terms. Concomitant with the statist institutionalization of Christianity is the emergence of an ‘unofficial’ Catholic church and the rapid rise in the number of independent Protestant ‘house churches’ and ‘meeting points’. Important early studies of the house churches indicated that these groups were not highly politicized, with the faithful focusing more on spiritual matters than political activism, and emphasizing strict separation of church and state (e.g. Hunter and Chan 1993: 85). In recent years, however, with the influx of intellectuals, highly educated professionals and city dwellers, the dominant Protestant evangelical

6   F.K.G. Lim tradition of religious piety and aversion to politics and social engagement has given way to a more variegated position toward social awareness and political activism (Yao 2011: 67). For example, there is an influential and vocal group of house churches that have embraced human rights activism and regard the quest for social justice, religious freedom, and political reform as integral to the practice of Christian faith. This group have established strong connections with overseas churches and human rights organizations which share the same social and political agenda, and have often acted as spokespersons of China’s house churches in the international media (Yao 2011: 67–68). However, the majority of the house church congregations tend to take the middle approach of being more engaged in social issues while refraining from political activism and direct confrontation with the party-­state (ibid.) Therefore, over the last few years we can observe an increasingly assertiveness of Christians in Chinese society. Through their social engagements such as charitable work and rising confidence in negotiating with the party-­state, Christians exert a strong presence in Chinese society that belie their relatively small numerical size. This can be attributed to a number of factors. First, more and more members of the middle class in the urban areas have embraced the faith – many are highly educated professionals or intellectuals who have acquired substantial social, cultural, and economic capitals that allow them greater organizational and mobilization capacities in the pursuit of religious aims. For example, many independent Christian groups are renting commercial premises for conducting their religious activities, even when this is often illegal. Christian groups’ increasing willingness to take an assertive negotiating position with the authorities is clearly seen in 2011, when the Shouwang church members held outdoor services, after being forced to vacate their original premises, to publicize their displeasure with the official handling of their case and to stake out a prominent presence in the public sphere. At the same time, many groups are harnessing the tremendous power of the new media such as the internet to present their theologies, views on socio-­political affairs, missions, and activities to an increasingly internet-­savvy population. On the theological front, Yang (2010: 197–198) has argued that for Christianity to establish itself even more firmly in Chinese culture, a Chinese Christian theology has to be developed based on empirical work that details the Christian communities’ contemporary interpretation of their faith. To this end, some leaders and theologians in the official TSPM are reflecting critically about the role of the church in a rapidly changing society fraught with tensions and faced with huge challenges, and are actively discussing ‘Theological Reconstruction’ to enable the Christian church to maintain its relevance in society through greater social awareness and engagement (Wang 2001; Wickeri 2007). As communications infrastructure continues to be improved across China and with the country’s greater openness to the rest of the world, the tentacles of Christian networks are spreading both within and outside the country, linking urban centres, rural villages, official and independent Christian groups, as well as deepening interactions with overseas Christians and developments in global Christianity.

Shields of faith   7

Book outline To reflect the wide range of issues that form the focus of this volume, the chapters are grouped under four themes: enchantment, nation and history, civil society, and negotiating boundaries. Enchantment Contemporary ethnographic accounts of everyday life reveal that many in China still see their world as inhabited by spirits of all kinds and continue to believe that fate can be determined by non-­personal/supernatural forces. In the opening chapter of this volume, Richard Madsen describes how for many Chinese the world remains ‘enchanted’. Despite the form of Protestant Christianity promoted by Western missionaries since the middle of the nineteenth century, the Chinese ‘modernity’ that has emerged over the last century is of a hybrid kind. Madsen argues that the enchanted world of Chinese tradition has not been displaced by what Charles Taylor calls an ‘immanent frame’ – a worldview that sees the ‘natural’ world as governed by universal impersonal laws – and so the ‘signs and wonders’ of popular Christianity continue to be the most rapidly growing form of Christianity in China. In the next chapter, Peter Ng examines the shift in research focus from the initial ‘Christianity in China’, to the current one of ‘Chinese Christianity’. Drawing on his long research experience, Ng offers a broad survey of scholarship on Christianity in China, noting how researchers previously had little choice but to adopt a historical approach to the subject, given its politically sensitivity nature in the early days of Deng reform era. Thus, the initial focus was mainly about the historical impact of Christian missionaries in China. Recently, however, due to the increasing ease to conduct in-­depth, empirical work among Christian groups, researchers are able to approach the subject from a socio-­ cultural angle. This methodological shift has produced valuable research that reveals Christianity’s Chinese particularism, and contributed to the discursive formation of ‘Chinese Christianity’ as an object of research. Nation and history Debates about the relationship between Christianity and Chinese nationhood, and how the religion may adapt to socialism (e.g. Dunch 2001) are important parts of the ‘politics of Christianity’. Mayfair Yang (2008: 20) has noted that early twentieth-­century anti-­religious movements in China were motivated in part by the elite’s embrace of scientism, evolutionism, and nationalism – a set of ideologies still held by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) today. These ideologies undergird the CCP’s understanding of Chinese historical development as teleological, with the founding of the People’s Republic as the ultimate triumph in the long struggles of peasants and workers against the feudalistic and bourgeois elements. In short, the Party sees itself as saviour of the Chinese nation.

8   F.K.G. Lim The founding myth of the PRC consists of the belief that the state/nation and the CCP are conceptually inseparable. However, as illustrated by the chapters in this section, many Christians in China hold divergent views concerning the interpretations of historical development, the meaning of nationhood, and ideas of ‘salvation’. A related and highly contentious issue is how the Church should respond to the party-­state’s effort to achieve dominance over many aspects of society, including religious affairs. One way for the party-­state to exert hegemonic rule over the renmin – variously translated as ‘people’, ‘citizens’, or ‘nation’ – is through ideological work and related institution-­building. For Christianity, this involved the establishment of a national church severed from alleged Western imperialist control, culminating in the creation of Three Self Patriotic Movement for the Protestants and the China Catholic Patriotic Association for the Catholics. Joseph Lee and Christie Chow show in their chapter that for many members of the Seventh-­Day Adventist Church, being Chinese and patriotic need not, and should not, include full identification with the CCP’s revolutionary agenda and absorption into a state-­ controlled ‘patriotic’ church. Those who vehemently rejected state ideological and institutional control in turn formed their own diffused network of house churches. On the official front, the party-­state embarked on intensive efforts to instil a state-­centred nationalism among members of all social and religious organizations. Carsten Vala’s contribution discusses how the CCP in its ideological work aims to define patriotism in terms of loyalty to the Party and the state. Through in-­depth interviews with Protestant leaders in both the official and unofficial church, Vala examines whether the CCP’s nationalistic agenda has been successfully implemented among Christian leaders with different institutional affiliations. While the study finds many leaders in the official church echoing the CCP line, it also shows some leaders in both the official and unofficial churches rejecting the view that being patriotic means being uncritically loyal to the party­state. To these Protestant leaders, one can be a good and loyal Chinese citizen, an integral part of renmin, without compromising what they see as essential Christian principles, such as placing sacred authority over secular authority. Vala portrays the situation as much more complex and fluid than a simplistic binary of ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ church might suggest, as a range of shared and contested meanings of ‘nation’, ‘citizen’, ‘people’, and ‘country’ are framed in terms of Christian theology. In Tobias Brandner’s chapter, we see how some of the revivalist Christian groups share with the CCP a teleological, evolutionist interpretation of Chinese history. The crucial difference is that the Christian version is founded upon soteriological theology rather than dialectical materialism. Brandner examines Chinese history, and specifically the Chinese people’s role in salvation history, through the lens of the contemporary development of Christianity in China, as well as through an understanding of China’s role in Christian salvation history. The chapter contrasts competing versions of teleological history that derive from different cultural meanings of the Chinese nation. To some of these Christian

Shields of faith   9 thinkers, it is Christianity, not Communism, which will bring salvation and glory to the Chinese nation. Such an interpretation of Chinese history at the same time resonates with the long history of millenarian and apocalyptic thinking in Chinese religious movements, from the Taiping Dao to Maitreyan beliefs. Yam Chi-­Keung’s chapter approaches the Chinese Christians’ expressions of the ‘Chinese nation’ through popular culture, in this case, films. Yam’s contribution explores the faith by comparing the movie Raised from Dust that depicts Christian reflections on life, death, and human bonding, with two blockbuster films that deal with the same issues, namely, Assembly and After Shock. Such a comparison reveals the distinctive ways Chinese Christians, guided by their religion, deal with important existential questions. Viewed through the prism of religion, the ‘Chinese nation’ and its ‘culture’ are shown as not monolithic but highly pluralistic. Meanwhile, what seems to be portrayed in Raised from Dust is a ‘placid evocation’ of Christianity’s necessary confrontation with structural evils and illustration of how ‘Christian communities in China seek to survive in adverse situations and be faithful to the prophetic call’. The pluralistic feature of the ‘Chinese nation’ can also be gleaned from its Chinese rendition, zhonghua minzu. This concept implies the existence of a multi-­national (duo minzu) community, comprising fifty-­six official nationalities with the Han as the majority. The fact that China is a multi-­ethnic country means that to gain a more comprehensive grasp of Christianity in China requires investigations into the religion’s ethnic and regional dimensions. Important issues to examine include the mode of Christianity’s introduction to the ethnic minorities, the level of its acceptance by these groups, as well as the religious networks and identifications that are created. Francis Lim’s chapter discusses how Christianity has become intertwined with ethnicity in southwestern China. By proposing the concept of ‘religio-­ethnicity’, he discusses how Christianity can be a crucial factor in the multiple ways of being ethnic in the minority areas in China, and also demonstrates the limitation of viewing ethnicity solely through the eyes of the state. Civil society Madsen (1998) has argued that Catholicism in China lacks strong civic characteristics when measured against the republican model of civil society. This feature is particularly evident in the rural Church. As China embraced market reforms and allowed non-­state enterprises and associations to take on more prominent economic and social roles, Madsen’s conclusions have continued to stimulate debates about the role of the Christianity in China’s fledgling civil society. Taking Madsen’s argument as a point of departure, Shun-­Hing Chan draws on fieldwork data from four Catholic dioceses to argue that the Catholic churches do show a nascent spirit of a civil society, primarily through contestation with the state for greater religious freedom. However, Chan also qualifies his findings by stating that the Catholic Church is still some way from developing strong civic features that could contribute to the formation of a vibrant civil society in China.

10   F.K.G. Lim More broadly speaking, the gradual loosening of state control over different aspects of Chinese society has resulted in a profusion of cultural diversity and pluralism, and this is also evident even in the Chinese Christian domain. As Katrin Fiedler’s chapter indicates, there are at least three different Christian subcultures: the ‘culture Christians’, ‘boss Christians’, and ‘healing Christians’. All these subcultures have emerged as Christianity interacts and melds with dynamic social, cultural, and economic forces, resulting in the formation of Christian subcultures that are distinctly Chinese. The subsequent three chapters provide in-­ depth case studies of the subcultures that Fielder outlines. On the topic of ‘culture Christians’, Fredrik Fällman examines the influence of Calvinism among prominent Chinese intellectuals, and offers explanations to the Calvin element in this particular development. By investigating the ways Christian values shape Chinese intellectuals’ thinking about viable solutions to China’s current social problems, Fällman’s chapter illustrates the intimate ties between religious faith, ecclesiology, and social involvement in China’s civil society today. In the next chapter, Joy Tong tackles a related theme in her study of the ‘boss Christians’. In recent years, more and more overseas Chinese businesspeople, many of them Christians, have begun working in China. Combining data gathered from sixty in-­depth interviews with investors, chief executives, managers, and professionals with insights from participant observation in business firms, Tong discusses the ways Christian ethics influences the decision-­making and business practices of her respondents. Her study reveals how religion is an increasingly significant resource for forging new business moralities. Finally, Kristin Kupfer’s chapter examines the emergence of Christian-­ inspired charismatic groups, whose success depends significantly upon the healing powers claimed by their leaders. In contemporary China, although the state considers such Christian-­inspired communities to be ‘evil cults’ and the mainstream churches view them with suspicion, they are nonetheless good examples of the diversity of the Christian religious field in China. These groups, denied of official recognition and existing as largely marginalized groups, may also pose immense challenges to the orthodoxies of mainstream Christianity. The party-­state is especially wary of such groups since charismatic communities have historically shown the potential to evolve into alternative sources of authority to challenge state power. Negotiating boundaries Different sorts of boundaries – theological as well as political – have been erected between the so-­called ‘house churches’ and the state-­sanctioned church. Many members and leaders of the house churches are theologically opposed to the umbrella national associations established by the party-­state because they regard submission to Party-­state authority as compromising core Christian principles. Conversely, many supporters and religious personnel of these national organizations consider independent house churches and underground groups as potential sites of political dissent and religious heterodoxy, and ‘unpatriotic’ in their

Shields of faith   11 rejection of the CCP leadership. As Kao Chen-­yang argues in his chapter, the house church movement needs an overriding discourse to legitimate its existence. To do so, it creates and sustains, at least at the discursive level, a separation between the house-­church’s style of worship and theology from that practiced in the official church. As Kao demonstrates, the house church movement, inspired by Wang Mingdao, leans more toward the Pentecostal model in emphasizing an unmediated, individualistic relationship with God. This model also acknowledges the centrality of the Holy Spirit in the practice of faith and rejects the role of a professionalized ecclesiastical hierarchy in determining religious doctrines and correct conduct. Kao argues that the root of the contemporary house church movement can be traced to the Cultural Revolution period, when churches were deprived of professionally trained clerical leadership. These house churches are now composed of loosely organized, and often completely autonomous, cells of worshippers who conduct religious activities out of the watchful eyes of the authorities. While scholars have often described the relationship between the house churches and the state in oppositional terms, the church-­state relationship also has a negotiated nature that ranges from outright opposition to qualified mutual accommodation. As the chapter by Teresa Wright and Teresa Zimmerman-­Liu illustrates, major factors of variation exist in the relations between government authorities and unregistered house church members. Such factors include whether members of the unregistered churches have positive personal ties with officials who enforce religious policies, and whether the authorities are on heightened state of alert due to upcoming important international events. In addition, as examined in Mark McLeister’s contribution, certain groups and individuals are situated in what Yang (2006) characterizes as the ‘grey market’ of the religious economy, i.e. religious activities of a legally ambiguous nature. McLeister’s ethnographic study demonstrates the high level of flexibility in religious policy implementation at the local level, due to reasons such as whether church workers have cultivated personal relationships with local government officials and law enforcement personnel. Theological and political boundaries are not the only boundaries which are negotiated, contested and blurred. In his research on a Hong Kong Christian congregation’s migration pattern, Gustav Yeung analyses the negotiation of spatial meanings and the blurring of religious and commercial domains that take place in relation to the congregation’s changing religious ideology, use of physical space, and socio-­economic characteristics. Yeung’s chapter also illustrates how churches that are not affiliated with the state can fare differently in Hong Kong compared to those in the mainland, due to the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ system under which the territory is governed. The Hong Kong case further illustrates the tremendous variety of Christian experiences in contemporary China.

Soaring on wings like eagles There are many fans of American NBA basketball in China, where the mainstream television channels often broadcast the matches ‘live’. Such broadcasts seemingly did not cover many of the matches involving Jeremy Lin, the latest

12   F.K.G. Lim NBA sensation playing with the New York Nicks. Commentators have wondered if this was because Lin often talked enthusiastically about his Christian faith during media interviews, and attributed his professional success to the grace of God. If state media indeed sought to downplay Lin’s religiosity due to the party-­state’s intent on controlling and managing Christianity (and other religions) in China, the success of such an effort is doubtful, as enthusiastic fans could still view Lin’s interviews on the internet and international satellite television channels. Meanwhile, overseas Chinese Christians and other foreign Christian individuals and groups continue to establish religious and social ties with Christians as well as non-­Christians in China, through means such as official or unofficial visits, mission projects, charity work, distribution of religious publications, internet streaming of Christian programmes, and offer of financial assistance for the construction of churches. The dilemma for the party-­state lies in their wish to maintain tight control over the social and political order to prevent possible challenges to their hegemonic hold on power, and the need to allow for certain degree of freedom for the Chinese people in the pursuit of economic reforms and social development. The emerging structural spaces created by China’s rapid transformations will ultimately facilitate Christianity’s even deeper integration with society, thus ensuring ‘signs and wonders’ to continuously appear in an enchanted Chinese modernity.

References Bautista, J. and F.K.G. Lim (2009) ‘Introduction’, in J. Bautista and F.K.G. Lim (eds) Christianity and the State in Asia, London and New York: Routledge. Bays, D. (1996) (ed.) Christianity in China, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bays, D. (2012) A New History of Christianity in China, Chichester: Wily-­Blackwell. Cao, N. (2011) Constructing China’s Jerusalem, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Charbonnier, J.-P. (2002) Christians in China, San Francisco: Ignatius Press. Cohen, P. (1963) China and Christianity, Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Dunch, R. (2001) ‘Protestant Christianity in China today: fragile, fragmented and flourishing’, in S. Uhalley, Jr. and X. Wu (eds) China and Christianity, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Gao, S. (2005) Dangdai Beijing de jidujiao yu jidujiaotu: zongjiao shehuixue ge’an yanjiu, Hong Kong: Daofeng Shushe. Goossaert, V. and D. Palmer (2011) The Religious Question in Modern China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hunter, A. and K.-K. Chan (1993) Protestantism in Contemporary China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Israeli, R. (1980) Muslims in China, London: Curzon Press. Ji, Z. (2008) ‘Secularization as religious restructuring: statist institutionalization of Chinese Buddhism and its paradoxes’, in M. Yang (ed.) Chinese Religiosities, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kindopp, J. (ed.) (2004) God and Caesar in China, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution. Leung, B. (2005) ‘China’s religious freedom policy: the art of managing religious activity’, The China Quarterly, 184: 894–913.

Shields of faith   13 Leung, P.Y.S. (2007) ‘Christian higher education in China’, in P. Leung and P. Ng (eds) Christian Responses to Asian Challenges, Hong Kong: Chung Chi College. Lian, X. (2010) Redeemed by Fire, New Haven: Yale University Press. Liang, J. (1999) Gaige kaifang yilai de zhongguo noncun jiaohui, Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary. Lozada, Jr, E.P. (2001) God Aboveground, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lutz, J. (1971) China and the Christian Colleges: 1850–1950, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Madsen, R. (1998) China’s Catholics, Berkeley: University of California Press. Madsen, R. (2001) ‘Beyond orthodoxy: Catholicism as Chinese folk religion’, in S. Uhalley, Jr. and X. Wu (eds) China and Christianity, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Montgomery, R. (1991) ‘The spread of religions and macrosocial relations’, Sociological Analysis, 52: 37–53. Ng, P.T.M. (2012) Chinese Christianity, Boston: Brill. Ng, P.T.M., F. Tao, X. Zhao and X. Liu (2005) Shengshan jiaoxia de shizijia, Hong Kong: Institute of Sino-­Christian Studies. Uhalley, Jr, S. and X. Wu (2001) (eds) China and Christianity, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. Wang, A. (2001) ‘The nature and purpose of theological reconstruction in the Chinese Church’, Chinese Theological Review, 15. Wickeri, P. (1988) Seeking the Common Ground, Maryknoll: Orbis. Wickeri, P. (2007) Reconstructing Christianity in China, Maryknoll: Orbis. Yang, F. (2005) ‘Lost in the market, saved at MacDonald’s: conversion to Christianity in urban China’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44: 423–441. Yang, F. (2006) ‘The red, black, and gray markets of religion in China’, Sociological Quarterly, 47: 93–122. Yang, H. (2010) ‘The contextualization of Chinese Christian theology and its main concerns’, in M. Ruokanen and P. Huang (eds) Christianity and Chinese Culture, Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans. Yang, M. (ed.) (2008) Chinese Religiosities, Berkeley: University of California Press. Yao, X. and P. Badham (2007) Religious Experience in Contemporary China, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Yao, K.X. (2011) ‘Chinese evangelicals and social concerns: a historical and comparative perspective’, in R. Cook and D. Pao (eds) After Imperialism, Eugene: Pickwick Publications.

Part I

Enchantment

1 Signs and wonders Christianity and hybrid modernity in China Richard Madsen

When asked by messengers of John the Baptist how they could know that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus replied: ‘Go back and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised to life, the good news is proclaimed to the poor and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me’ (Luke 22–23). The most rapidly growing segments of Christianity in China today are full of signs and wonders – miracles of healing, exorcisms, ecstatic experiences in which believers are seemingly transported to another world, visions of Jesus or (for Catholics) of the Virgin Mary. The prevalence of belief in these signs and wonders is puzzling to – indeed scandalous for – most secular social scientists, not to mention Chinese government officials. Modern social scientists are committed to explaining the world through reason – logic and facts – and they base their work on an assumption that nature is governed by unbreakable physical laws that do not allow for miracles. Within this framework, if people perceive signs and wonders the cause must be psychological, a transformation of perception by emotional forces that override the capacity to see the truth through reason. The challenge for social scientists is how to explain these psychological (mis)perceptions in terms of logic and empirically observed facts. And how to explain the accelerating acceptance of belief in such impossible signs and wonders. But this rationalized reduction of religious experience to interior psychic forces is in tension with another aspiration of social science, at least in its humanistic forms. That is, to enable us to walk (or at least hobble) in the shoes of people shaped by different cultures and historical experiences, to see the world from their point of view and even to learn from them. This aspiration has been shared by humanistic scholars in many different cultures. One beautiful expression is the quote from Mencius that is the epigraph of Robert Bellah’s recent (2011) book, Religion in Human Evolution: When one reads the poems and writings of the ancients, how could it be right not to know something about them as men? Hence one should try to understand the age in which they have lived. This can be described as ‘looking for friends in history’. (Mencius 5B:8)

18   R. Madsen The way to get inside the mentality of people different from ourselves is to place those experiences in broad historical contexts, with special attention to what Charles Taylor calls the ‘frames’, the taken-­for-granted assumptions that shape expectations and give meaning to experiences in particular historical times (Taylor, 2007). Thus Taylor tells us that people in medieval European Christendom lived in a ‘transcendent frame’ in which they took for granted that this ­everyday world was full of forces from beyond, from God or spirits or demons, and that humans could gain access to these forces through rituals and prayer. This was a world in which it was impossible to imagine that God did not exist, even though there could be plenty of debates about the nature of God and its implications for human life. Taylor shows how reforms within Christianity, including but not limited to the Protestant Reformation, gradually disembedded the transcendent, the ‘supernatural’ from the immanent, the ‘natural’. Thus the world became dis-­enchanted. God created the natural world to run according to universal laws, which could be discovered through human reason; and when God did enter the world today it was through the conscience of individuals, inspiring them to faith and good works, leading to the establishment of scientific and social institutions to heal the sick and alleviate poverty. These were the new signs and wonders, not the suspension of the laws of nature through miracles which our medieval Christian forbearers sought through prayer. According to Taylor, these developments within Christianity eventually led to the modern secular mentality of Europe and North America, which is characterized by an ‘immanent frame’. Within this set of taken-­for-granted assumptions, this world is based on natural laws, knowable through scientific reason, which can be used by humans for their mutual benefit. Within this immanent frame, belief in God is a matter for each individual’s personal faith and it is optional so far as public life is concerned. Many people live satisfying lives without believing, and this forces people who do believe to be more thoughtful about what they are gaining from their belief. The goods of belief are usually conceived in terms of their usefulness for supporting good morality – although religious people do not necessarily have better morality than atheists. The purpose of life within the immanent frame is to steadily make this world better through human effort; and modern people assume that their ways of living and thinking represent progress over the medieval transcendent frame (Taylor, 2007, pp. 539–593). According to Taylor, through its historical transformations, modern Western Christianity created this immanent frame, which forms the broad context for how most modern Western Christians understand their faith, even though this modern immanent frame has led to a decline in the numbers of Christians and their capacity to influence the world. There are several reasons why this analysis is useful for understanding the development of Christianity in China. First of all, it shows us that Christianity is not a fixed, static set of universal beliefs. It is a rich historical tradition. Although all Christians make reference to certain common ‘classic’ texts, particularly the New and Old Testaments of the Bible, there has been constant change in the ways that Christians have understood these texts and related to each other and to

Signs and wonders   19 the world. A major example of this change has been the internal reforms in Christian understandings that led to the transformation of the transcendent frame to the immanent frame and thus to the creation of Western modernity. Thus when we talk about the encounter of Christianity with Chinese culture, we are talking about the interaction between a dynamically transforming Western tradition and a dynamically transforming Chinese tradition – interactions that have caused further transformations in each. A second reason why this dynamic understanding of Christian development is important is that it allows us to see how Christianity undergoes constant change as it interacts with the modernization of Chinese culture. Chinese Christianity is different from Western Christianity, and Chinese modernity is different from Western modernity. One sign of this difference (but certainly not the only one) is the pervasive importance of ‘signs and wonders’ in indigenous Chinese Christianity, especially the kind that has been flourishing since the Reform era.

Modernizing Christianity and the modernization of China The Protestant Christianity that came to China in the nineteenth century was by and large a modernizing Christianity. As Max Weber (and now in a different voice Charles Taylor) has argued, this form of Christianity had ‘dis-­enchanted’ the natural world and made it possible to see nature as governed by impersonal universal laws that could be uncovered through empirical science and manipulated through human endeavor. This made possible a scientific revolution and industrial revolution – which in turn provided means and motive for the West’s imperialist expansion (Weber, 1958, pp. 129–156). Most of the Protestant Christianity that came to China in the nineteenth century promoted, at least indirectly, this Western modernizing spirit. The Protestants strongly criticized popular worship of gods, ghosts, and ancestors; and they demanded that Christian converts give these up. Many missionaries to be sure believed in the literal truth of the Biblical account of creation and would be considered ‘unscientific’ and ‘fundamentalist’ by today’s standards. But even these carried a worldview that opened the way for modern science. They promoted the notion that the world was empty of invisible spiritual forces. Partly to distinguish themselves from Catholics, Protestant missionaries criticized belief in miracles and visions. Healing of the blind, and lame, and lepers was to be done through the application of Western medical science carried out by doctors (like Peter Parker) infused with a Christian spirit of dedication and generosity. They also promoted a disciplined, rationalized way of life and identified this with the essence of Christianity (Dunch, 2001). Protestant Christianity was thus identified in the Chinese mind with modern Western culture, for better or worse. For worse, because it was part of the West’s imperial aggression. For better, because it embodied the scientific spirit and rationalized organization that might enable China to improve its economy and defend itself against the West. At the end of the nineteenth century, reformers like Liang Qichao were encouraged by missionaries like Timothy Richards to

20   R. Madsen eliminate the shrines and temples that had anchored community and meaning at the grassroots level and to transform Chinese life through a modern scientific education. In the early twentieth century, it was Christian missionaries who created universities like Yanjing and St. John’s that became models for a modern higher education. It was because of competitive dialogue with Western Christian nations that Chinese reformers at the turn of the twentieth century developed categories for thinking about the relationship between the world of material forces and the world of spiritual forces. It was at this point that they developed the category of ‘religion’ itself. The word used was zongjiao, derived from Japan, which in turn had borrowed it from European scholarship. As Chinese intellectual elites saw it, all Western nations had a national religion and if China was to be a modern nation, it had to have one too. That religion should have its own distinctive national content but to be a real religion it had to have a particular form, which was in fact the form taken by Protestant Christianity in the West. The religion would be a matter of beliefs which would be adhered to by individuals and would provide proper guidance for their moral character. It would eschew ‘superstitious’ practices that supposed that people might improve their fortunes by calling upon unseen beings that stood behind the visible world. The most truly modern form of religion (as expressed in the writings of European liberal theologians) would in fact go completely beyond traditional religion by subtracting all belief in divine forces and retaining only core moral teachings. The Chinese national religion-­equivalent, Chinese intellectuals said, was Confucianism, which was now assumed (contrary to the historical record) to be a set of coherent teachings that promoted good social morality and was not connected with irrational spiritual forces – an ancient proto-­secular moral teaching that anticipated the post-­religious wisdom that modernizing Western Christians were now adopting. Later (after 1912), two other indigenous Chinese faiths were added to the officially recognized world of Han Chinese national religions: Buddhism and Daoism. These retained certain beliefs in realities that transcended this visible world and so, unlike Confucianism, were classified as religion (zongjiao). But in their officially recognized forms these too were Westernized constructs that selected certain aspects from a welter of Chinese cultural traditions and fit them into the standard religious mold: systems of beliefs that promoted good morality and were practiced by individuals who voluntarily joined together into congregations. To Buddhism and Daoism were then added the ‘foreign religions’ (yangjiao) of Protestantism and Catholicism. In the name of unity between Han Chinese and minority nationalities, Islam was also officially recognized as a religion. In the constitutions of the Republic of China, the free practice of these five religions was supposed to be protected by the state (Yang, 2008, pp. 11–19). If this was what Chinese religions truly were, then Chinese society would indeed have conformed to a Western model of modernity. Religion was mainly a set of models for personal morality, stripped of any forces that might intrude upon the order of nature, which was governed by laws that could be discovered

Signs and wonders   21 through modern science. In the early twentieth century, the predominant forms of Protestant missionary Christianity were important agents for transferring this Western view of modernity to China. The missionaries pioneered the establishment of modern schools and hospitals and to meet the social disruptions of industrialization and urbanization, they established new forms of social work and community development. While their efforts to improve life in this world were embraced by many Chinese, their efforts to connect their this-­worldly activity with a supernatural source received only lukewarm acceptance. For example, St. John’s University in Shanghai graduated many distinguished alumni who contributed greatly to modern Chinese intellectual life – but only a tiny fraction of them ever converted to Christianity. Although some of the major Chinese leaders of the twentieth century, like Chiang Kai-­shek, were Christians, the total number of Chinese Protestant converts never even reached one million. The path followed by a modernizing Protestantism in China paralleled that taken in the West, where the very success of Protestant efforts to progressively improve modern society eventually led to a weakening of attachment to the supernatural message of the religion. But there were important differences. The modernizing agenda in China did not go nearly as deep as it did in the West. The Chinese Protestant universities and hospitals and YMCA associations only touched the surface of Chinese urban life. Despite some genuine, admirable contributions to local rural development, they had little impact overall on the terrible poverty and social disruption afflicting the vast rural population. Moreover, in the minds of many nationalistic urban elites, they were fatally compromised by their continued connections with foreign imperialism. Eventually, the Chinese people would arrive at their own hybrid version of modernity, in which elements derived from the West were amalgamated with indigenous traditions in a mutually transforming process. This eventually led to important differences between patterns of Christian belief in China and in the West (van der Veer, 2011). In the West, particularly in the United States, the perceived spiritual vapidity of modernizing Christianity led to a ‘fundamentalist’ reaction. Key issues were an insistence on a literal interpretation of the Bible and a rejection of scientific theories of evolution, and an affirmation of strict moral standards, supposedly based on Biblical teachings, especially about sexuality. There was also a movement toward a ‘pre-­millenialist’ theology, based on an interpretation of the Book of Revelation that rejected the notion that the world could be saved through steady human progress and predicted an imminent second coming of Christ to punish the evil and reward the good with eternal life. But in the West, even these ‘fundamentalist’ forms of Christianity accepted the modernizing immanent frame that Christian reform had produced. Conservative evangelical Protestants may have stressed a return to the ‘fundamentals’, but they did not want to return to the Middle Ages, in which powerful spiritual forces constantly interrupted the impersonal laws of nature. For one thing, that sounded too Catholic. So even Western ‘fundamentalist’ Protestants lived in a non-­enchanted world. Although many of them rejected the theory of evolution (this was a marker of identity for them), they accepted most of modern physics and biology and the technologies

22   R. Madsen based on them. Although they stressed the closeness of God to humanity, they conceived of this closeness in personal subjective terms – they could feel the presence of God or his Holy Spirit when it touched their hearts and they relied on God to strengthen their moral discipline. For the most part, they did not expect God to perform miracles. They did not expect signs and wonders in ­everyday life – except for the signs and wonders of conversion from sin to a righteous moral life.

Popular Christianity in a hybrid modernity In China, on the other hand, to the embarrassment of its modernizing elites, much of the world remained enchanted. It was full of personalized powers and forces that affected human fortunes, for good or bad. These forces took many different forms, benevolent protector spirits, dangerous hungry ghosts, deceased ancestors whose spirits remained a continual part of one’s household, cow demons and fox spirits that posed deadly threats, deities who could bring rain and ensure the birth of sons, patron gods of thieves, and gods who punished criminals. The gods were an active presence in daily life. One’s health and prosperity required that one take care to placate them. With the right techniques, they could also be manipulated to serve one’s purposes. This world was described and understood with the vocabularies of Confucian scholars, Buddhist monks, and Daoist priests (Feuchtwang, 1992; Dean, 1998). But at the popular level at any rate, there was nothing corresponding to the twentieth century’s ‘religions’ of Buddhism and Daoism or to the supposedly secular moral traditions of Confucianism. Among ordinary people, Buddhist Bodhisattvas and Daoist immortals were worshiped together in jumbled temples along with a wide assortment of local spirits. The modernizing versions of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism were abstracted from this luxuriantly meaningful landscape and given support from the Republic of China (and, except during the Cultural Revolution, at least minimal tolerance from the People’s Republic of China). But the cultural residue left over after the supposedly pure forms of religion and morality had been distilled out were now officially labeled ‘superstition’, and modernizing governments, both in mainland China and Taiwan, sought to wipe them out. They did not succeed. To this day, even while Chinese intellectuals sincerely proclaim that ‘the Chinese people have never been religious’, literally millions of local temples have been built or rebuilt, little shrines to the God of Wealth or the Maitrya Buddha are to be found in almost every privately-run shop, and communities band together to carry out spectacular festivals for the gods. In America these ways of thinking about the world have been swamped by a hegemonic modern culture. In China, they shape the consciousness of a wide swathe of the population, and they have not been dissolved by modernity. Rural Chinese may ‘suspend belief ’ when they sojourn in the city or attend school or join the Communist Party, and thus maintain a hybrid consciousness. But their home community remains an enchanted world, where gods and people share a domicile

Signs and wonders   23 and omens and portents are found in the land. The Chinese cultural landscape is a hybrid of enchanted and dis-­enchanted forms – which lately has been proving to be just as successful as Western cultures in rapid economic development and technological innovation. It is in the enchanted part of this cultural landscape that Christianity has found especially fertile ground. The kind that has flourished here has its foreign origins in the oppositions to the modernist versions of nineteenth- and twentieth-­century Protestantism – the kind that looks to ecstatic experiences of the Holy Spirit, literal readings of the Bible, and expectations of the end of time. But whereas modernizing Christianity had some success in transforming Chinese religious culture into its own Western likeness and in the process helped push China toward a secular modernity that diminished the place for religion, it was the robust religious culture of the Chinese enchanted world that has to a great degree transformed Western ‘fundamentalist’ Christianity into its own likeness. The historian Lian Xi’s new book, Redeemed by Fire, offers the most comprehensive account of the history of this popular Christianity (Lian, 2010). The history begins in the early twentieth century, when charismatic preachers like Wei Enbo, the founder of the True Jesus Church, broke with their missionary churches and founded their own indigenous communities, inspired by Pentecostal movements like the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles and independent revival movements in Korea. From the beginning, these movements in China reported miraculous healings of the sick and exorcisms of demons. For example, in rural Hubei, which the [True Jesus Church] reached in late 1919, many rural substations and ‘prayer houses’ were established when the word spread that the deity preached by the sect could ‘dissolve calamity and remove misfortune’ (xiaozai jie’e), ‘cure a hundred diseases’ (xiaochu baibing), and relieve people of ‘evil habits’. Among those who joined the sect were opium addicts and people possessed by ‘disease demons’. (Lian, 2010, p. 53) The theme of miraculous healing has continued down to the present day in the spiritual successors of these first indigenous churches. Besides miraculous healing, there are miraculous harvests: ‘without the use of fertilizer or pesticide, the faithful would have miraculous crops’ (Lian, 2010, pp.  223–224). As Lian suggests, such reports of miracles are in strong continuity with indigenous folk religion. Like the latter, popular Christianity, in both its Protestant and Catholic forms often emphasized healing, miracles, and similar abilities to harness the power of the spiritual world to the struggles of common people. And just as one turned to Ma Zu, Niang Niang, the Dragon King, or other deities in popular religion in anticipation of a good spouse, a son (instead of a daughter), success in examinations, or escape from misfortunes, converts to

24   R. Madsen Christianity have also accentuated the efficacy of their faith in promoting personal wellbeing. (Lian, 2010, p. 230) Besides divine interventions to solve personal problems, indigenous Christian believers also experienced gratuitous wonders. At one rally, the faithful sang, prayed, and thrust their hands up into the air – where they allegedly caught sweet-­tasting ‘manna from heaven’, which looked like little white rice dumplings. Others had, in their swoons and trances, savored the joy of being ‘caught up’. Returning from their celestial journeys, the enraptured told ‘marvelous stories’ of ‘all manner of delights’ and reported on the sightings of ‘lofty and ornate buildings . . . good things to eat (peach being especially noted), fragrant and variegated flowers, beautiful clothes, music both instrumental and in song, social fellowship with heavenly beings, even the Trinity described as the Father, Son, and Mother, and rest like that of a child in the bosom of Jesus’. (Lian, 2010, p. 106) In all of these experiences, we can find echoes of popular Daoist and Buddhist traditions, like the tales of a Peach Garden of Immortality located in the Western Heaven. One can also find echoes of the visions of heaven granted to Hong Xiuquan, the initiator of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom rebellion in the nineteenth century. The Taiping movement was inspired by Christianity, although Western missionaries eventually soundly rejected its Christian authenticity. Similarly, in the twentieth century, leaders of the modernizing, missionary dominated Churches have expressed deep skepticism about the authenticity of these indigenous Christian movements. In 1935, the eminent theologian Zhao Zichen (T.C. Chao) thought that these indigenous revivalist groups were ‘half insane’, although he nonetheless admitted that the movements could ‘bring people renewed hope and renewed life and help them endure the hardships of our times’ (Lian, 2010, pp. 106–107). Until 1949, the Protestant denominations in China were dominated by foreign missionaries whose mainstream theology was a modernizing one, heavily influenced by the social gospel. Only about a fourth of the less than one million Chinese Protestants came from the revivalist, indigenous popular Christian movements. Soon after the Communist victory in 1949, the missionaries were expelled and their schools, hospitals, and orphanages taken over by the Chinese state. The churches were put under the control of the Three Self Protestant Movement, a ‘mass organization’ which was supervised and controlled by the government’s Religious Affairs Bureau and the Communist Party’s United Front Department. Meanwhile, the leaders of the indigenous popular Christian movements were imprisoned and the movements outlawed. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), all forms of religion were assaulted, and from the outside it looked as if religion had been wiped away in China.

Signs and wonders   25

The explosion of popular Christianity in the Reform Era When he ascended to power after the death of Mao Zedong and the overthrow of Mao’s close supporters, Deng Xiaoping launched the ‘Four Modernizations’, the first phase in the era of reform and opening. Ironically, though, this new modernization brought about an explosion in the very kind of religion that modernity was supposed to vanquish. In the new (if still restricted) space for religion that opened up in the Reform Era, religious practices of all sort have steadily revived, with increasing rapidity. Among Christians the most spectacular growth has been that of the indigenous popular revivalist movements. They have grown from several hundred thousand in 1949 to tens of millions today and they are the majority of all Protestants in China. The growth actually seems to have begun during the time of greatest persecution in the Cultural Revolution. According to ethnographic fieldwork done by Chen-­yang Kao in Fujian Province, the rapid growth of popular Christianity was made possible by the destruction of local temple worship, which had been public and male-­dominated. With the traditional religious landscape stripped bare, religion became exclusively a private matter, pursued especially by women. But the Christian God was seen as especially connected with the private sphere, because he did not need to be worshiped in elaborate temples. And the Christian God was not only more powerful than the common gods of the private sphere, such as the kitchen god, but in the end even more powerful than the public gods, which he proved by out-­performing the local gods in destroying demons, healing the sick, and protecting the community (Kao, 2010). If this analysis is correct, popular Christianity did not so much displace the enchanted world of traditional spirits and deities as find fallow spots in the ground of the traditional religious landscape to grow up among the other spiritual entities of (especially rural) China. The Christian God was like the other gods, intruding into the affairs of everyday life and profoundly influencing the health and welfare of ordinary people, only, from the point of view of the Christians, more strongly. This analysis is reinforced by recent research conducted by Duan Qi from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in a county in Quizhou Province (Duan, 2009). The parts of the county where temples had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution are now heavily Christian. The parts where temples had been spared are now having a strong revival of the folk religion. At the boundaries of Christian and non-­Christian areas there have been harsh disputes over the encroachment of spiritual powers of one religion onto the space of another. For instance, the Christians put up a church whose cross overlooked a non-­Christian area and sent bad energy into it. The head of a non-­ Christian family in the shadow of the cross died suddenly of a heart attack and this set off a local uprising against the church. The dispute was eventually solved by moving the church and its cross to a new location where its spiritual forces would be more confined to the Christian community. The decentralized nature of the indigenous Christian movements has led to the proliferation of a great variety of sects, some with differences so great that

26   R. Madsen they zealously attack one another as heretics. Some of these form tightly closed militant associations at odds with the rest of the world. The most well-known example is the ‘Eastern Lightning’ (from Matthew 24:27, ‘As the lightning comes out of the east and shines even to the west, so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be.’). Beginning in Henan, it is now especially strong in Shaanxi, but has also spread south of the Yangze river at least as far as Wenzhou. It features a belief that Christ has been reincarnated as a woman. Members of other indigenous Christian communities claim that the Eastern Lightning is ‘spawn from the nest of Satan’ and allege that it uses lies, bribery, sexual seduction, and physical coercion to make its converts. Besides Eastern Lightning, there are at least ten other such militant popular Christian sects, with names like the ‘Established King’, ‘Lord God Sect’, and the ‘Three Ranks of Servants’. The Chinese government has labeled many of these ‘evil cults’, similar in public menace to the Falungong, and has tried to root them out. But they still seem to survive and are even spreading and growing. Part of their appeal is that they prophesy an imminent end of the world, to be accompanied by earthquake, famine, and pestilence, and they back this up with miraculous signs and wonders in the present day (Madsen, 2010). Meanwhile, other indigenous popular Christian movements have made contact with world-­wide Pentecostal networks. Visitations from the Hong Kong based (but originally from Los Angeles) evangelist Dennis Balcombe in the late 1980s have led to a new emphasis on speaking in tongues in ecstatic worship sessions and perhaps somewhat less emphasis on miraculous healings, exorcisms, and visions among many of the Chinese movements. Thus some of the indigenous popular Christians in China are becoming more like Pentecostals in the USA, who see ‘signs and wonders’ more in psychological (or spiritual) terms than as miraculous irruptions of the supernatural into the natural order of the world. These are the movements that have been meeting to form a common orthodoxy, a ‘Confession of Faith’ that would distinguish themselves from the militant sectarian groups, and and perhaps make them more acceptable to a suspicious government (Aikman, 2003, pp. 271–275). So some parts of indigenous Chinese Christianity may be entering into the dis-­enchanted ‘immanent frame’ in which Western Christianity has resided. But other parts still locate Western Christianity in an enchanted world, full of signs and wonders, and in the process they shape the texture of global Christianity itself.

The enchanted worlds of Catholics It is not easy to integrate the development of Catholicism with Protestantism in China because the histories of the two forms of Christianity proceeded along separate tracks, distinctive enough that in the official Chinese classification system they are considered two different religions, not branches of a single common Christianity. (For that matter in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most Catholics and Protestants themselves did not recognize the validity of each other’s faiths.) In the nineteenth century, both Protestants and Catholics

Signs and wonders   27 were seen as agents of Western imperialism – and both were targeted by the Boxers in 1899–1900 on that basis – but it was mainly the Protestants that came to be seen as representing Western modernity. This perception persisted well into the twentieth century. ‘When we went from [the Protestant-run] Yanjing University [in Beijing] to [the Catholic] Furen University’, an alumnus of Yanjing University in the 1930s told me, ‘we said it felt like going from capitalism to feudalism’. Nonetheless, in the history of Catholicism too in China, there has been a tension between a modernizing impulse which would dis-­enchant the natural world, and an embrace of enchantment. In the seventeenth century, the Jesuits impressed elite Chinese with their prowess in Western science and technology. Their dialogue partners were scholar-­officials with similar interests, like Xu Guangqi, who were interested in applying rational methods to determine the cycles of nature – for example, to predict eclipses of the sun or to determine the advent of the most suitable weather for planting or harvesting. The Jesuit version of Catholicism thus encouraged elite Chinese to move away from the assumption that natural phenomena could be caused by the miraculous intervention of spiritual forces. Moreover, as is well known, the Jesuits for their part, interpreted official Chinese rituals in a dis-­enchanted way. They saw them as expressions of sound morality rather than as obeisance to transcendent spirits. Rivals to the Jesuits like the Dominicans and Franciscans, on the other hand, considered Chinese rituals to be worship of (false) deities, which required rejection by Christian converts. In the early eighteenth century, the ‘rites controversy’ was decided by the Pope in favor of the Jesuit’s rivals, with the result that the emperor declared Catholicism to be a ‘heterodox teaching’ (xie jiao) and banned further entry of missionaries into China. A consequence of this was that local Catholic communities, cut off from the teaching of foreign missionaries, actually blended their faith with many of the practices of the folk religion. Like medieval European Catholics – but unlike the modernizing Jesuits – they embraced an enchanted world where the spiritual and material were in constant interaction. When missionaries returned in force in the nineteenth century, they had to struggle to wrest control of local Catholic communities from the local leaders who had led the communities in the missionaries’ absence, and they tried to purify the communities of ‘pagan’ practices. This may in fact have intensified the taste for these practices among many local Catholics. But the Catholic missionaries also had plenty of substitutes for local religious practices, particularly Marian devotions, like Our Lady of Lourdes, who promised miraculous healing to those who prayed to her (Madsen, 2001). Holy Mary came to be seen as a protector deity and villages in northern China carried on stories about how she appeared to them when they were under siege during the Boxer uprising and delivered them from the Boxers. The Boxers may have believed that they had sacred powers making them invulnerable to bullets, but Mary’s power was greater. In the twentieth century a great shrine to Our Lady Queen of China was built in the Hebei village of Donglu, which housed a painting of Mary in a similar pose to that of a famous portrait of the Empress

28   R. Madsen Cixi. This became a major pilgrimage site and many miracles and apparitions have taken place there. There are other major Marian pilgrimage sites, notably Sheshan in Shanghai, and smaller shrines scattered in villages throughout China. In each place, there are many reports of signs and wonders. As is well known, after the Communists came to power, they harshly suppressed the Catholic Church, not only expelling all foreign missionaries but imprisoning many of the leading Chinese clergy. The Catholic Church was considered especially problematic to the Communists because of Catholic allegiance to the Vatican, which was militantly opposed to Communism. The Chinese government got a few bishops and priests to join a Catholic Patriotic Association which required them to renounce ties to the Vatican. But this officially approved segment of the Catholic Church never claimed the allegiance of more than a tiny fraction of baptized Catholics. As in the eighteenth century, after the Church had been declared a heterodox teaching by the emperor, Catholic communities quietly carried on the faith by themselves without priests. As before, this may have led to deeper immersion into the enchanted world of transcendent powers and spirits. The officially approved leaders of the Church were opposed to all such ‘superstition’. If the Church had any positive role at all to play in the new China, it was that of promoting a compliant social morality that could contribute to ‘socialist construction’. Perhaps because they were treated so badly by the Communist Party, many Catholics – rural Catholics especially – became very invested in a world of miracles that contradicted the ideology of scientific materialism. Henrietta Harrison has done extensive research on how a Catholic community in Shaanxi experienced miraculous appearances by the Virgin Mary along with many miracles – precisely at the time in the early 1960s when outside workteams were being sent in during the Four Cleanups campaign to re-­establish Communist discipline and to exterminate the Catholic religion (Harrison, forthcoming). Using the raw power of the state, the workteam suppressed the visions by imprisoning those who had claimed them. But we can assume that the visions and miracles went underground, but not away. When more space for religious activities opened up in the Reform period, the Catholic signs and wonders have come back. Even though looser government regulations have led to the official opening of many churches and have enabled many bishops and priests to quietly gain acceptance by the Vatican even while working under the Catholic Patriotic Association, there has flourished an unregistered, ‘underground’ church, which comprises about two-­thirds of China’s 13 million Catholics. The officially approved Patriotic Church manages Marian shrines but their government overseers are wary about these, and the official church says they are places for inspiring morality, not causing miracles. When a fine invisible line is crossed, even officially approved Marian shrines are closed down, as happened at the Shanghai Sheshan shrine in 2008 (Madsen and Fan, 2009). There are indications that the Vatican itself is wary of Marian apparitions and miracles in China. Although the Catholic Church never promoted the dis-­enchantment of the world as thoroughly as the Protestant Reformers, and although until the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, it presented itself as

Signs and wonders   29 opposed to ‘modernism’, the modern Catholic Church wants to discourage forms of piety that would inhibit rationalized, central control by the Vatican. Also, many Western-educated clergy have been weaned away from a mentality that would see the supernatural constantly irrupting into natural processes. Thus, some of those in Rome who are concerned with the Catholic church in China see a slide away from orthodoxy in the underground church, caused they think by lack of proper supervision by the agents of orthodoxy. In some areas, they say, underground priests spend too much time performing exorcisms and other kinds of healing, and people are too prone to seek miracles and visions. Yet, signs and wonders are more thoroughly woven into the fabric of Catholicism than Protestantism. Reports of visions and healings do not usually lead Catholics to break away from their mother church. The spiritual center of gravity of the Chinese Catholic Church is still in the countryside – urban Catholics are relatively few, and indeed many rural Catholics give up their faith if they move to the metropolis. And it is in rural China where the enchantment of the world still seems most plausible. The spiritual tenor of the mainland Chinese Catholic Church is much more enchanted than that of the Church in urban Hong Kong – and in Western industrialized countries like Europe and the United States. The culture of societies that Western imperialists colonized and partially converted to Catholicism – societies like rural China – now counterbalance the modernizing tendencies of the Church in its former European and American homes (Madsen, 1998, pp. 76–122).

Conclusion Thus the modern Western reaction against modernist Christianity – the various forms of ‘fundamentalist’ and especially Pentecostal Christianity – have found especially fertile ground in the enchanted garden of Chinese culture. Especially in the recent Reform era, this has become the dominant form of Chinese Protestantism and one of the most dynamic religious developments in China as a whole. But unlike in the West, where it represents an emotional, populist moralism, the Chinese version of popular Christianity is infused with the magical aura of a god and ghost saturated world. Catholic popular piety is similar. Full of signs and wonders, visions and miracles, these forms of Christianity find echoes in spirit-­filled movements throughout the former colonies of the global South. These cause unease, confusion, even scandal to many Christians as well as many secular social scientists in the former seats of Christendom. But for people disillusioned by modern statist or neo-­liberal development schemes, on the other hand, these re-­enchanted forms of Christianity offer consolation and hope and the promise of alternative pathways through the modern world.

References Aikman, D. (2003) Jesus in Beijing, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing. Bellah, R.N. (2011) Religion in Human Evolution, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

30   R. Madsen Dean, K. (1998) Lord of the Three in One, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Duan, Q. (2009) Paper presented at conference on Chinese religion and society, Fudan University, July 2009. Dunch, R. (2001) Fuzhou Protestants and the Making of a Modern China, 1857–1927, New Haven: Yale University Press. Feuchtwang, S. (1992) The Imperial Metaphor, London and New York: Routledge. Gernet, J. (1985) China and the Christian Impact, trans. by J. Lloyd, London and New York: Cambridge University Press. Harrison, H. (forthcoming) History of a Catholic Village in Shaanxi, Berkeley: University of California Press. Kao, C.-Y. (2010) ‘The Cultural Revolution and the post-­missionary transformation of Protestant Christianity in China’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Lancaster. Madsen, R. (1998) China’s Catholics, Berkeley: University of California Press. Madsen, R. (2001) ‘Beyond orthodoxy: Catholicism as Chinese folk religion’, in S. Uhalley, Jr. and X.-X. Wu (eds) China and Christianity, White Plains, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Madsen, R. (2010) ‘Chinese Christianity: indigenization and conflict’, in E. Perry and M. Selden (eds) Chinese Society, 3rd edn, New York: Routledge. Madsen, R. and Fan, L.-Z. (2009) ‘The Catholic pilgrimage to Sheshan’, in Y. Ashiwa and D. Wank (eds) Making Religion, Making the State, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Taylor, C. (2007) A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. van der Veer, P. (2011) ‘Secularism’s magic’, in C. Calhoun, M. Juergensmeyer and J. van Antwerpen (eds) Rethinking Secularism, New York: Oxford University Press. Weber, M. (1958) ‘Science as a vocation’, in H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills (eds) From Max Weber, New York: Oxford University Press. Lian, X. (2010) Redeemed by Fire, New Haven: Yale University Press. Yang, M. (ed.) (2008) Chinese Religiosities, Berkeley: University of California Press.

2 From ‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’ Changing paradigms and changing perspectives Peter Tze Ming Ng Introduction: studies of Christianity in China since the new China era I first visited China in 1981, almost 30 years ago and attended the first conference in Wuhan in 1989. I went into several bookstores in the early 1980s (Friendship Store and Zhonghua Shudian) and wanted to find some scholarly work on Christianity but could not find any, except a couple of books on Marxist views on religion. But now, 30 years later, we can find more than 3000 books on Christian studies or religious studies in most academic bookstores in China. Another thing we should note is that scholars in the 1980s could not approach Christianity from explicitly religious or sociological perspectives, because ‘sociology’ and ‘religion’ were still very sensitive terms, if not taboo subjects, in those days. That was why scholars had to start from historical studies. I myself was trained in the fields of religious studies, sociology and education. But still, I had to join the group as historian in the 1980s and started my research on the history of pre-­1949 Christian higher education in China. We were later joined by educators, theologians and philosophers. And in the last 10–13 years we have scholars from the fields of cultural studies, anthropology and sociology. In this chapter, I shall discuss the shift of paradigms and changing approaches in the past three decades. These would shed light on our study of Christianity in contemporary China too.

From Christianity in China to Chinese Christianity The study of Protestant missionary movements in China was largely neglected by scholars in the West since the 1950s until the 1970s; as an American historian John K. Fairbank said, the missionaries were indeed ‘the invisible men in the American history’ (Fairbank 1969: 877). Since then, Western scholars basically applied the ‘impact–response’ paradigm developed by Fairbank, who argued that the arrival of Western missionaries caused an impact on China and that subsequent changes in China were China’s response (Fairbank and Tang 1954).1 From the 1980s on, Paul Cohen, one of Fairbank’s students, proposed a more ‘China-­centered’ approach to the study of modern Chinese history. His views are

32   P.T.M. Ng found in the book Discovering History in China published in 1984. Cohen suggested that we should rediscover Chinese history by making the issues within Chinese society the point of departure. Cohen’s move was significant but did not go far enough; his China-­centered approach was still seen from a Western perspective. As Jessie Lutz said in her doctoral dissertation, missionary educators had encountered ‘the other-­ness of Chinese culture and people’ and were shocked to admit that ‘in China Western norms did not apply’ (Lutz 1971: 4–10). Indeed, we are still encountering ‘signs and wonders’, miracles and unexpected things of all kinds in China today, and in many cases we have to admit that Chinese Christianity is not the same as Western Christianity. In the mid-1990s, scholars like Daniel H. Bays and Jessie G. Lutz began searching for the Chinese side of the story. Bays, in his edited volume Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, wrote that the ‘study of Chinese Christians’ should be a new direction for research on the history of Christianity in China (Bays 1996). He gathered in his volume six essays on the rise and development of indigenous Chinese Christian churches. Later, at the conference held by the University of San Francisco in 1999, Lutz proposed a new framework to reorientate the historical study of Christianity in China to the participation of Chinese Christians, again taking Chinese Christians as subjects of Chinese Christianity (Lutz 2001: 179–193). Lutz divided the history of Protestant Christianity in China into six periods, namely: 1 2 3 4 5 6

pioneering and preparation, 1807–60; foundation building and expansion, 1860–1900; good times: popularity and growth, 1900–25; hard times: an era of national and social challenges, 1925–49; facing political challenges (1949–80); and revival of Chinese Christianity (1980–).2

This was merely a proposal but it represented an attempt by Western scholars to follow through with a ‘paradigm shift in research’, which pointed to a new avenue for the study of the history of Protestant Christianity in China. Only in this way can they set for themselves a ‘Chinese agenda’ and search for ‘the Chinese perspectives (especially including those of the Chinese Christians)’ (Ng 2001).

New materials found What happened in China in the past 30 years? The reopening of archives in China since the late 1980s has enabled Chinese scholars to conduct more in-­depth research on the history of Christian missions in China, especially regarding the history of Christian colleges in China. An International Symposium on Historical Archives of Pre-­1949 Christian Higher Education in China was held on December 9–11, 1993 at Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Ng 1995).3 It sparked much interest among scholars and researchers both in China and overseas. Scholars began to urge the use of the newly released archives in exploring

‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’   33 not only the history of Christian colleges, but also the history of Christian missions in China. To help the scholars become more acquainted with these archives, a publication project began in 1994, under the editorship of Philip Leung and myself at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As a result, a series of five guidebooks on the archives of Christian colleges in the mainland were published in 1996–98 by the Centre for the Study of Religion and Chinese Society of Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Ng 1996–98). Changing paradigms Scholars in mainland China started their move in the late-­1980s. The landmark was the First International Symposium on the History of Pre-­1949 Christian Universities in China, held at Huazhong Normal University in Wuhan on June 1–3, 1989, which was the first conference of its kind in the last 60 years in the Chinese mainland and ushered in a new era for the study of the history of Christianity in China. At this conference, Zhang Kaiyuan suggested a new direction for the study of Christian colleges in China. Since then, Chinese scholars have approached the topic from the perspective of modernization and cultural exchanges between China and the West (e.g., Shi 1991; Wang Lixin 1997; Wang Licheng 2001; Xu 1999; Zhu 2002). Although these Chinese scholars still focused on educational activities by the missionaries, they clearly began shifting to the genuinely ‘China-­centered’ paradigm. They began to make extensive use of Chinese archival resources, and most important of all, they were attempting to incorporate the different sources. However, if looking from the perspective of China-­Western cultural exchanges, these scholars have not gone far enough. They were still confined by the concern with the uni-­directional flow of ‘the West influencing the East’, overlooking the possible exchanges in another direction – that is ‘the East influencing the West’. Again, it was an impact-­response paradigm, but just the other way round. Only by studying from this bi-­directional perspective can one get a truly comprehensive understanding of China-­Western cultural exchanges. Since the mid-­1990s, Chinese scholars began to attempt enquiries from this perspective. For example, Han Qi, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote in his book The Impact of Chinese Science and Technology in the West: ‘Jesuit missionaries brought Western religion and science to China; at the same time they sent to Europe voluminous reports about China, which enabled the West to understand Chinese science and civilization’ (Han 1999). This illustrated the bi-­directional impact of cultural exchanges between China and the West. Indeed, many missionaries had stayed in China long enough to understand Chinese culture and society, and after coming into closer contact with the Chinese people, they changed their minds about China. Another Chinese scholar, Lian Xi wrote his doctoral dissertation, entitled: The Conversion of Missionaries: Liberalism of American Protestant Missions in China (Lian 1997). He explicitly described how several missionaries’ understanding of why they came to evangelize China was gradually transformed through their closer contacts with

34   P.T.M. Ng Chinese religion and culture. The missionaries wanted to change China, but it turned out to be the other way round, and eventually they were changed by China. The three missionaries under study were Edward H. Hume, Frank J. Rawlinson and Pearl S.Buck. In 1996, I worked with Philip Leung, Xu Yihua and Shi Jinghuan on a joint project investigating four areas in the history of Chinese Christian colleges: (1) theological education; (2) religious education; (3) Chinese studies and education; (4) patriotic education. This research project verified that while using the ‘impact and response’ and ‘China-­centered’ approach, we could adopt also the perspective of bi-­directional exchanges of impact and responses and could discover the importance and new significance of social and cultural perspectives (Ng 2002). For instance, we found that, ‘in China, the place and functions of religion are different (from those in the West)’ (cf. Gernet 1985: 3). Chinese people considered religion as ‘respect for ritual (li)’, which was an expression of respect to the natural, social and political order. Religion should be inclusive and non-­aggressive. But the ‘Christianity’ brought by the missionaries was ‘a religion that changed customs, called into question accepted ideas and, above all, threatened to undermine existing situations’ (cf. Gernet 1985: 1). Hence, different cultures; as a result, Western Christianity turned out to be the most exclusive religion that demanded from followers total commitment and the abandonment of their former religious beliefs and customs as proof of their conversion. This was what the Chinese people were not ready to accept. Erik Zurcher had rightly reminded us that Confucianism had long been representing the orthodoxy (zheng jiao) in China; it followed that Christianity, coming from the West, became not just a foreign religion (yang jiao), but a heretical religion (xie jiao), hence to be rejected by Chinese intellectuals (Zurcher 1997: 614–653).4 It was also found that Christianity as a social institution existed only on the periphery of Chinese society, and was never reckoned as playing any significant role in the social life of China except as being ‘anti-­government’ or associated with ‘revolutionary’ movements, such as the Taiping Rebellion. Religious education, in similar ways, could never be placed as significantly as it was at the core of school curriculum or required subjects in mission schools. That was why, in the nineteenth century, Chinese officials and intellectuals would in no way favor any form of religious education in schools, nor were the Chinese people interested in religious courses offered in missionary schools (Ng 2002, ch. 2). Hence, the sociological and cultural perspectives are also significant in the study of history of Christian higher education in China. And we need to ask seriously how does religion/Christianity function in China and how do Chinese people see religion/Christianity in their life in China? These would shed more light on our study of Christianity in contemporary China too. Changing perspectives There was a conference on ‘Glocalization and Christianity’ held in Beijing in December 2003 by the Center for the Study of Christianity of the Research Institute of World Religions, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing,

‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’   35 where this new term (also a new concept in social sciences today) ‘glocalization’ was used to generate a more creative perspective of the Christian movements, by exploring the interplay between globalization and localization which could be applied to the study of the history of Christian missions in China. What is ‘glocalization’? How does it differ from the concept of ‘globalization’? ‘Globalization’ tends to view the process from a one-­way direction and may turn out to be imperialistic, whereas ‘glocalization’ is a concept that emphasizes mutually interactive relations. ‘Glocalization’ covers not only the processes of ‘globalization’ and ‘localization’, but also gives more attention to the interplay between ‘the global’ and ‘the local’ by searching for their mutual and interactive relations (e.g., Robertson 1992; Entrena 2003; Koshy 2003). In the case of Chinese Christianity, the global aspect of it could be seen as being ‘Christian’ and the local aspect was that it should be ‘Chinese’. Hence, Chinese Christianity should and must be the result of interactive relations between its global, Christian, and its local, Chinese, ingredients. By adopting the ‘glocalization’ paradigm, scholars can now look into greater details of both Chinese and Western resource materials, and in comparing the Western and Chinese perspectives, they will be enlightened to see a vivid interplay between the Western and Chinese perspectives. I cite just one example from my own research in recent years. I have been attempting research on the development of indigenous Christianity in China and have recently completed three papers (Ng 2011, 2012a, 2012b). All these three researches have a vested concern with the development of indigenous Christianity and the Three-­self movements in China. I was trying to use both Chinese and Western resource materials and incorporated Western and Chinese perspectives. More than that, I discovered that rather than imposing any Western perspectives or agenda upon China, it is not only an exciting, but also an essential, task to rediscover the Chinese side of the story, especially the perspectives from and the part played by the Chinese Christians. Concerning the concept of ‘Three-­self ’, many scholars would go back to the time of Henry Venn, the general secretary of the British Church Missionary Society, who propagated the principle of ‘Three-­self ’, saying that the ultimate aim of missionary work was the building of a genuinely native church in the mission field. According to Venn, ‘The native church . . . should potentially be a church of the country, a church that could become self-­governing, self-­ supporting, and self-­extending’ (Warren 1971: 26, 64ff.). However, it was at the Missionary Conference of the Anglican Communion in London in June 1894 that there was a consensus affirming that the time was not ripe for a native episcopate. And the decision was made at the Lambeth Conference of 1897, stating that ‘the power of independent action, ought not be a rule to be confided to Native Churches until they are also financially independent’ (Six Lambeth Conferences 1920: 202). Hence there was the shift of concern to the issue of finance, which overrides other issues of self-­government or self-­propagation. And it is interesting to know that at the World Missionary Conference of 1910 held in Edinburgh, though Commission II was devoted to the ‘Church in the Mission

36   P.T.M. Ng Field’, and the issues of self-­government, self-­support and self-­propagation were discussed, the whole matter was put into discussion within the context of different church polities. The report of the commission had moved from issues of self-­ support, self-­government and self-­propagation to church polity, and the whole discussion was held back by a new issue of political independence. There was a new pattern perhaps intensified by the Faith and Order issues that sprang from the Edinburgh conference which have been dominated by church union discussions (Thompson 1997). In short, the Edinburgh conference did not help much with the development of indigenous Christianity in China. However, the story in China was quite different and it would be very interesting if we could reveal the Chinese side of the story which I did in my three papers. There are a few points worth mentioning here. 1 2 3

4

The development of Three-­self church or the Three-­self movement remained an important issue and a significant part of Chinese Christianity throughout the twentieth century and even today. Chinese Christians had been taking more active roles in the development of indigenous Chinese Christianity at the turn of the twentieth century, especially after the Boxer Movement. C.Y. Cheng, one of the Chinese delegates, had already spelt that out explicitly at the Edinburgh conference of 1910, where he said: ‘The (urgent) problem in China is the independence of the Chinese Church’ (World Missionary Conference 1910a, 2: 352). And he appealed for support towards the development of indigenous Churches in China (Gibson 1912: 347–349).5 Though C.Y. Cheng’s address was judged as ‘without question the best speech’ made at the conference, his words and his appeal were not taken with much seriousness (Stanley 2009: 108). Hence, the development of indigenous Christian churches in China would still be a long, long way to go. If we look more closely into the ‘Chinese side’ of the story, we discover that Chinese Christians kept voicing the problem of Western denominationalism. C.Y. Cheng made it clearly in his speech at the Edinburgh conference, confirming that ‘denominationalism has never interested the Chinese mind. He [the Chinese] finds no delight in it, but sometimes he suffers for it’ (World Missionary Conference 1910b, 8: 196).6 But no one bothered about it at that time. In his address at the National Council of Churches conference in Shanghai in 1922, T.C. Chao (Zhao Zichen) made it again clearly by saying: ‘The [Chinese] Church is weak because she is still foreign, both in thought and form, and is divided, by Western denominationalism’ (Chao 1923). Another Chinese theologian and educator, Francis C.M. Wei (Wei Zhuomin), a president of Huazhong University and the first Henry W. Luce Visiting Professor of World Christianity (Wei 1947) who, in the opening lecture at Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1945, echoed the same in saying that ‘Western Christianity’ was only one form of expression of World Christianity and its non-­global aspect was ‘the spirit of denominationalism’. Indeed, both theologians were just repeating what C.Y. Cheng had asserted

‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’   37

5

at the 1910 Edinburgh conference. The issue remained essential and crucial for Chinese Christians, at least for those in mainland China: how could our Chinese churches be truly united if they were split by the spirit of Western denominationalism? Chinese Christians were more concerned with the development of a united Christian Church freed from Western denominationalism, and C.Y. Cheng said that Chinese Christians hoped to put aside the Western spirit of denominationalism. Unfortunately, this was not understood by the participants at the Edinburgh Conference in 1910. The development of indigenous Chinese Christianity could not be accomplished until after 1949 when Wu Yaozong attempted a drastic and complete change by political means (Ng 2011). It is indeed not easy to tell this side of the Chinese story but it is surely part of Chinese Christianity which was developed from the specific social and cultural contexts, and we need to tell it the Chinese way, paying due respect to Chinese cultural and socio-­political situations, and acknowledging the Chinese agenda and the Chinese Christians’ perspectives. Scholars today are working hard to break through the Western Christianity-­ centered paradigm, and in order to become truly the study of ‘World Christianity’, it is of great importance to rediscover the non-­Western side of Christianity, which is, in this context, Chinese Christianity, which is definitely not the same as Western Christianity; hence, the call for the shift from ‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’.

In the annual conference of American Academy of Religion in 2006, there was a special theme on ‘World Christianity in Local Contexts’. In my presentation there, I suggested that the term ‘local contexts’ should be reckoned as a qualifier of global Christianity (Ng 2006). ‘World Christianity’ is ‘Christianity embracing the whole world’. Whether it is ‘Chinese Christianity’, ‘Asian Christianity’, ‘European Christianity’ or ‘Western Christianity’, they are but all ‘Localized Christianities’ or simply ‘World Christianity in their local contexts’. Furthermore, besides working on the Chinese side of the story, we may attempt also comparative studies, in order to have a better and fuller picture of ‘World Christianity’. In the past decade, I have been working with some scholars from North-­east Asia, namely China, Japan and Korea, to develop research projects on historical and comparative studies of Christianities in the three countries. For this, I shall simply mention three other books which came out as a result of our collaborative studies. The first work appeared in 2007, entitled: Christian Response to Asian Challenges: A Glocalization View on Christian Higher Education in East Asia (Leung and Ng 2007). It was enlightening to see that though the issues of imperialism, nationalism, secularization and modernization were similarly found in the three countries, yet the development of Christian higher education was very different due to the different social, cultural and political contexts. And it was fascinating to find that the Christian presence in different countries could be analyzed not only from intranational but also from international perspectives.

38   P.T.M. Ng Hence, historical and comparative studies were found very enriching and new perspectives would emerge in comparative study. The second volume, Christian Mission and Education in Modern China, Japan, and Korea, was the result of a conference of the North East Asia Council of Studies in History of Christianity (NEACSHC) held in Korea in 2007 (Jongeneel et al. 2009). It was extremely encouraging to see this volume all sold out within a year and we are now working on the third volume entitled Christian Movements in North-­East Asia: Historical and Comparative Studies, which came out in January 2011 (Jongeneel et al. 2011).

Concluding remarks Mark Mullins once wrote a book entitled Christianity Made in Japan (Mullins 1998). The title sounds somewhat strange. Yet, the author was giving us a perfect example of how World Christianity could become localized in Japan, as it had become localized ‘Western Christianity’ in Europe and in America. Now as we are turning to ‘Christianity in contemporary China’, what we should be looking for is not ‘what had the missionaries done in China’, nor is it simply taking ‘Christianity in China’ as an unfinished Western project. It is rather ‘Christianity made in China’, and indeed a new kind of Christianity found in China, with Chinese Christians as the proper subject of our study. We might have been seeing Christianity as a transforming social force in China, which would help modernizing China or bringing it to a Westernized civil society; but now we are surprised to find that Chinese Christianity is not working towards the same kind of civil society in the Western sense. We have already been astonished to find that this ‘Christianity made in China’ is but a new kind of Christianity. In this volume, we shall see accounts of varieties of Christianity or such ‘strange’ types of Christianity for which we are compelled to clarify our conventional conceptions and redefine our terminology, and to create new words for them. Again, as Richard Madsen has suggested in this volume, we have to open our eyes and find for ourselves more ‘signs and wonders’, more miracles and unexpected things in China. Hence, from ‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’, or more precisely, ‘the Christianity made by Chinese Christians’ is the trend of development we have been moving forward to.

Notes 1 This research paradigm of ‘impact-­response’ can be a two-­way interaction. We may regard Christian education in China as an attempt by missionaries to bring Western Christian education to China, but Christian education in China was also subjected to severe impacts from Chinese culture and related social movements. In order to respond to these challenges, missionaries and the Chinese educators assisting them continuously made significant revisions to reform and adjust their educational objectives and the content of the curriculum. Therefore, the transformation of Christian education in China can be viewed as responses of Christian education to the impacts of Chinese society. See for instance Peter Tze Ming Ng et al. (2002).

‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’   39 2 The last two periods were dropped in the publication. 3 The symposium was organized by Chung Chi College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, with the support from the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia and the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. 4 Zurcher was referring to the seventeenth-­century China, but his thesis applies to nineteenth- and early twentieth-­century China too. 5 John C. Gibson, who was an active leader in both the Shanghai (1907) and the Edinburgh (1910) conferences, also made the following remarks: The time is well within the memory of working missionaries when we had to labour with the Home Church and persuade it to believe that there was such a thing as the Chinese Church in existence. . . . It was now beyond doubt that the Chinese Church was an important adjunct to the Christian Missions in China. He also recalled: When the Centenary Conference of 1907 met, the minds of missionaries were fully prepared for this recognition. The organizers of the conference touched the core of the matter when in drawing up the programme. They set down as the first topic: ‘The Chinese Church’, and appointed a representative Committee to deal with it and allotted to it the whole of the first day of the Conference work. . . . It was impossible that the Chinese Church should any longer fail to be recognized as holding the foremost place among the forces which are now creating a Christian China. (Gibson 1912: 347–349) 6 The phrase ‘Your denominationalism does not interest Chinese Christians’ was often repeated and quoted. See, for example, the Editorial in Chinese Recorder, 70(12), (December 1939): 689.

References Bays, D. (ed.) (1996) Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Boynton, C.L. et al. (1939) ‘Dr. Cheng Ching Yi – Resolution-­Reminiscences’, Chinese Recorder, 70(12): 689. Chao, T.C. (1923) ‘On the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese Church’ (in Chinese), Life Monthly, 3(5): 1–8. Cohen, P. (1984) Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past, New York: Columbia University Press. Entrena, Francisco (ed.) (2003) Local Reactions to Globalization Processes, New York: Nova Science. Fairbank, J.K. (1969) ‘Assignment for the 70s’, American Historical Review, February: 877. Fairbank, J.K. and S.Y. Teng (1954) China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Francisco E. (2003) (ed.) Local Reactions to Globalization Processes, New York: Nova Science Publishers. Gernet, J. (1985) China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures, trans. Janet Lloyd, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gibson, J.C. (1912) ‘The part of the Chinese Church in mission administration’, Chinese Recorder, 43(6): 347–349. Han, Q. (1999) ‘Preface’, Zhongguo kexue jishude xichuan jiqi yingxiang [The Impact of Chinese Science and Technology in the West], Shijia zhuang: Hebei renmin chubanshi.

40   P.T.M. Ng Jongeneel, J.A.B., P.T.M. Ng et al. (2009) (eds) Christian Mission and Education in Modern China, Japan, and Korea, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Jongeneel, J.A.B., P.T.M. Ng et al. (2011) (eds) Christian Movements in North-­East Asia: Historical and Comparative Studies, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Koshy, N. (2003) ‘The present phase of globalization’, Quest, 2(2): 75–84. Leung, P.Y.S. and P.T.M. Ng (2007) (eds) Christian Response to Asian Challenges: A Glocalization View on Christian Higher Education in East Asia, Hong Kong: Centre for the Study of Religion and Chinese Society, Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lian, X. (1997) The Conversion of the Missionaries: Liberalism in American Protestant Missions in China, 1907–1932, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Lutz, J. (1971) China and the Christian College, 1850–1950, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Lutz, J. (2001) ‘China and Protestantism: historical perspectives’, in X.X. Wu and S. Uhalley (eds) Christianity and China: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Missionary Herald (1910) Boston, 354. Mullins, M. (1998) Christianity Made in Japan, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Ng, P.T.M. (1995) Zhongguo jiaohui daxue lishi wenxian yantaohui lunwenji [Essays on Historical Archives of Christian Higher Education in China], Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Ng, P.T.M. (1996–98) (ed.) Zhongguo jiaohui daxue dongan mulu [Archival Catologue Series of Christian Colleges in China], Hong Kong: Centre for Study of Religion and Chinese Society, Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Vol. 1: An Overall Introduction of the History and Whereabouts of the Christian Colleges Archives; Vol. 2: Resources at the Second Historical Archives of China; Vol. 3: Resources at Huazhong Normal University Archives; Vol. 4: Resources at West China University of Medical Sciences Archives; Vol. 5: Resources at Shanghai Municipal Archives. Ng, P.T.M. (2001) ‘Paradigm shift and the state of the field in the study of Christian higher education in China’, Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, 12: 127–140. Ng, P.T.M. (2002) Changing Paradigms of Christian Higher Education in China, 1888–1950, Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. Ng, P.T.M. (2006) ‘The necessity of the particular in the globalization of Christianity: the case of Christian higher education in China’, paper presented at the American Academy of Religion Annual Conference, Washington, D.C. on 18–21 November. Ng, P.T.M. (2011) ‘Wu Yaozong and the Three-­self Movement in China’, in Ying Fuk Tsang et al. (eds) Abiding Faith for a Nation in Crisis: Wu Yaozong and Twentieth Century Chinese Christianity, Hong Kong: Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, Theology Building, Chung Chi College, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Ng, P.T.M. (2012a) ‘C.Y. Cheng (Cheng Jing Yi) – the Prophet of his times’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, New Haven: Overseas Ministries Study Center. Ng, P.T.M. (2012b) ‘The other side of 1910: the development of indigenous Christianity in China before and after the Edinburgh Conference in 1910’, in P.T.M. Ng (ed.) Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives, Leiden: Brill. Robertson, R. (1992) Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture, London: Sage Publications.

‘Christianity in China’ to ‘Chinese Christianity’   41 Shi, J.H. (1991) Di Kaowen yu Situ Ledeng zai Hua jiaoyu huodong [The Educational Activities of Calvin Mateer and John Leighton Stuart in China], Taiwan: Wen Jin Publishing House. Six Lambeth Conferences, 1867–1920 (1920) London. Stanley, B. (2009) The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing. Thompson, D.M. (1997) British Missionary Policy on the Indigenous Church: The Influence of Developments in Domestic Ecclesiology and Politics, Cambridge: North Atlantic Missiology Project, #38. Wang, L.C. (2001) Meiguo wenhua shentou yu jindai Zhongguo jiaoyu: Hujiang daxuede lishi [American Cultural Influence and Modern Chinese Education: A History of Hujiang University], Shanghai: Fudan University Press. Wang, L.X. (1997) Meiguo chuanjiaoshi yu wan Qing Zhongguo xiandaihua [American Missionaries and Modernization in late Qing China], Tianjin: Tianjin People’s Publishing House. Warren, M. (1971) To Apply the Gospel: Selections from the Writings of Henry Venn, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. Wei, F.C.M. (1947) The Spirit of Chinese Culture, New York: Scribner Press. World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910 (1910a) ‘Report of the Commission II’, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 2: 352. World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, (1910b) ‘Report of the Commission VIII’, Edinburgh: Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 8: 196. Xu, Y.H.E. (1999) Jiaohui daxue yu shenxue jiaoyu [Christian Colleges and Theological Education], Fuzhou: Fujian Educational Press. Zhu, F. (2002) Jidujiao yu jindai Zhongguo nuzi gaodeng jiaoyu: Jinling nu daxue yu Huanan nuda bijiao yanjiu [Christianity and Modern Higher Education for Women: Comparative Study of Jinling Women’s University and Huanan Women’s University], Fuzhou: Fujian Educational Press. Zurcher, E. (1997) ‘Confucian and Christian religiosity in late Ming China’, Catholic Historical Review, 83: 614–653.

Part II

Nation and history

3 Christian revival from within Seventh-­day Adventism in China Joseph Tse-­Hei Lee and Christie Chui-­Shan Chow

Introduction China is still ruled by a powerful one-­party state even though it has the fastest growing economy in the world. The revival of Christianity reflects a broader phenomenon of growing interest in religion and spirituality which has taken place since the 1980s. The Chinese are caught in the space between collapsed traditions and discredited Communist ideology on the one hand, and the pursuit of wealth and the Western lifestyle on the other. They are struggling in a competitive market economy, but are disillusioned with repressive politics and bewildered by conflicting values. This raises the level of social anxieties and drives many to seek solace within these confusions. Some people are turning to traditional religions; others are seeking salvation in Christianity. Explanations for the resurgence of religious fervor vary, such as a crisis of faith that resulted from the collapse of Maoism as a compelling ideology and the strong human inclination for meaning that manifests itself as a desire for salvation in times of uncertainty. But it remains unclear why people subscribe to Christianity specifically, and why Chinese converts actively proselytize and plant churches in urban and rural areas (Liao 2011). This chapter looks at the growth of Seventh-­day Adventism, a Protestant denomination characterized by Sabbath observance and its belief in the imminent second coming of Jesus Christ, in contemporary China, focusing on two parallel phenomena. The first is the transformation of Adventism from a persecuted religion in Maoist China into a fast-growing religious movement in the Reform era. The experience of church-­state conflicts of the 1950s is crucial to understanding the continuities and ruptures of Adventism today. The re-­ emergence of the Adventist churches points to the utter failure of the state to control the religious sphere. Many Adventists did not merely survive religious persecution under Mao’s rule (1949–76); they rejected the subservient role that the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement had assigned them. They liberated themselves from the state-­run religious patriotic institutions and organized autonomous and diffuse worshipping communities. The second phenomenon is the construction of a new Adventist identity among individuals and groups in a fast changing and globalized environment. As Fenggang Yang (2005) points out,

46   J.T.H. Lee and C.C.-S. Chow many people convert because Christianity advocates the idea of a transcendental God and provides a clear path towards modernity and cosmopolitanism, akin to why some young urban believers like to meet at McDonald’s for prayer groups and Bible study. Besides these spiritual, psychological and material incentives, Adventism offers an attractive system of religious worldviews that consolidates people’s faith, and a set of congregational norms that addresses the challenges of social and economic inequalities, the unpredictable risks in a market economy, and the uncertain interactions with the socialist state. This study examines how the present-­day Adventists negotiate their positions in the religious field vis-­à-vis the state-­controlled Three-­Self Patriotic churches. It argues that the church-­state conflicts of the 1950s greatly affected the political and religious orientations of Chinese Adventists in the Reform period. Many Adventists favored a decentralized model of church governance over the top-­down hierarchy created by the American missionaries before 1949. They cultivated transnational religious networks with the Adventist headquarters in the United States through Hong Kong. They challenged the post-­denominational emphasis of the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement by adhering to Sabbath observance and the belief in the imminent advent of Jesus Christ. The Adventist revival has to do with the church’s resilience against persecution and the believers’ ability to rejuvenate their faith and to set clear boundaries against the secular society. Beginning with an overview of Seventh-­day Adventism in China, this study highlights the complex political environment that the Adventists experienced under Mao. It then discusses the Adventists’ strategies for survival, the emergence of schismatic groups, and the process of faith intensification in the Reform era.

Seventh-­day Adventism in China Seventh-­day Adventism began as a religious revival in mid-­nineteenth-century America. It held the Christian beliefs and the spiritual writings of its prophetess, Ellen G. White (1827–1915), as the doctrinal authority. Reverencing the seventh­day Sabbath, known as the biblical Sabbath (i.e., the original seventh day in the Judeo-­Christian calendar), was an important marker of Adventism. Since many Adventists were scattered across the country, they came together through the bond of the published church papers. With the improvement in printing technology and postal services, the Adventist movement was built on the flow of written communications. Adventist editors published church papers and pamphlets to spread the doctrines. Itinerant preachers baptized new converts by immersion and instructed them to preach Sabbath-­keeping, the second coming of Jesus Christ and biblical prophecies. The educational level, religious commitment and organizational ability of early Adventists were essential for the growth of the movement. Otherwise, not everyone could remain in such a loosely organized group for a long period of time. The spread of Adventism attracted many Scandinavian and German migrants in the Midwest and on the West coast, who in turn used family ties and business networks to spread the faith to Europe, the Middle East and China (Pfeiffer 1981: 13–25).

Christian revival from within   47 As a latecomer to China at the turn of the twentieth century, the Adventists reaped the fruits of other Protestant missions. They converted other denominational church members, ‘the lost sheep of the house of Israel’, who kept the Christian Sabbath instead of the biblical one. Many missionaries accused the Adventists as sheep-­stealers (Smith 2007: 9–10). But the Chinese joined the Adventists for very complex reasons. American Baptist missionary Ellison Hildreth (5 December 1914) reported that the Adventists had ‘succeeded in unsettling a good many of Baptists’ in Dengtang market outside Chaozhou city along the South China coast. As one woman confessed, ‘I am a member of this [Baptist] church and I am faithful to it; but if it is necessary to keep the sixth day to be saved, I am willing to keep that as well as the worship day; is there any objection to doing that?’ Reverencing the seventh-­day Sabbath gave the Baptist woman an assurance of salvation that she lacked. The Adventists also recruited Hong Zijie, a former Baptist preacher in Shantou treaty port. Although Hong was ‘deficient in some of his morals’ and left the ministry, he maintained good contacts with the Baptists. Hong met Timothy Zheng (Timothy Tay), a Singaporean Adventist passing through Shantou on his way to Xiamen. They debated the doctrines and Zheng converted Hong. Hong then became an Adventist evangelist and worked ‘to win away Baptists and Presbyterians from their allegiance’ (Hildreth 5 December 1914). Evidently, desire for assurance of salvation and discontent with outdated dogmas were the reasons for the Chinese conversion to Adventism. In structure, the Adventist movement in China was highly centralized and hierarchical. By the mid-­twentieth century, all the congregations and institutions were divided into seven regional unions under the China Division, the Adventist mission headquarters in Shanghai. Funded by the General Conference of the Seventh-­day Adventists in the United States, the China Division and most regional unions were headed by the missionaries before 1949. This rigid hierarchy created a subordinate relationship between the missionaries and Chinese staff when other Christian missions indigenized their leadership and became self-­supporting. A major strength of this centralized model was that Chinese Adventists could easily access American missionary resources and seldom needed to cooperate with other denominations. The drawback was that the Adventists became isolated in Chinese Protestant circles. Nevertheless, the strong American ties shielded the Adventists from Nationalist control before 1949. With respect to its membership, the Adventists attracted people from diverse backgrounds. In 1945, the 261 Adventist churches had a membership of 22,940 (Luke 1990). In 1950, they ran 112 elementary schools, 14 middle schools, one junior college and 15 hospitals and sanatoriums, and employed 134 ordained ministers, 213 preachers and 156 school teachers (Seventh-­day Adventists 1976: 267–270). In half a century, the Adventists established a visible presence in China. An important part of the Adventist mission strategy was to make their publications available to the public. The Signs of the Times Press, a national Adventist publisher in Shanghai, was remarkable. Besides publishing religious and

48   J.T.H. Lee and C.C.-S. Chow health care literature, Shizhao yuebao [The Signs of the Times] was the most widely circulated Christian periodical in mid-­twentieth-century China (Chinese Union Mission 2002, vol. 1: 301–305). In 1937, over 70,000 copies of each monthly issue were sold (Xie 1940). This success was owed to the effective use of the postal network to reach areas not yet visited by the missionaries and to the dedication of the colporteurs who promoted subscriptions among Christian and non-­Christian readers (Tan 1972: 14–20). The Adventist emphasis on Sabbath observance and spiritual discipline, and their belief in the second coming of Jesus Christ spoke to the sense of fear and insecurity pervasive in China during the Sino-­Japanese War (1937–45) and the Civil War (1946–49). But these institutional features aroused the suspicion of the Maoist state. After the Communists seized power in 1949, they launched the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement to integrate the diverse Protestant denominations into the socialist order. The term ‘Three-­Self ’ was originally coined by Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission and Henry Venn of the Church Missionary Society in the nineteenth century to describe an evangelistic policy that made Christians in Africa and Asia self-­supporting, self-­ governing and self-­propagating. The Chinese state replaced the ‘Three-­Self ’ slogan with the ‘Three-­Self Patriotic Movement’ in order to sever the churches’ ties with the foreign missionary enterprises and co-­opt native church leaders. The state also launched countless campaigns to persecute Christians whose views of church-­state relations differed from those of the government (Lee 2007). Changes in global politics badly affected Chinese Christians. The Korean War led to the state’s expulsion of foreign missionaries from China. The expulsion was a calculated political tactic that ended the missionary era. But favorable political conditions did not guarantee the smooth implementation of the Three-­ Self policies. The Communists needed to control the churches from within by neutralizing any Three-­Self opponents. The official infiltration into the Adventist institutions began at the China Training Institute and the Signs of the Times Press, where students and workers were more receptive to communism than church leaders. The students and workers’ involvement was essential for building an incipient party structure within the Adventist circle. The China Training Institute was a junior college located at Qiaotou town in northern Jiangsu province in 1925, about 160 miles from Shanghai and 30 miles from Nanjing (Chinese Union Mission 2002, vol. 1: 319–321). This college trained many pastors, teachers, and medical and nursing staff. The Communists planted underground party members among the staff during the Civil War. In early 1950, the authorities deliberately destabilized the China Training Institute by forming the pro-­government labor and student unions. The labor union was composed of construction workers from Subei. These construction workers demanded salary raises and threatened to attack the administrators. In 1951, the government stepped in by sending a working team to take over the college. The leaders of the working team were Yan Kequn, a former underground party member in Nanjing, and Ren Wantao of the New Fourth Army, both Jiangsu natives. They used their

Christian revival from within   49 native place ties to recruit supporters. They mobilized the Subei workers and students to support the Korean War and land reform, and put the pro-­government activists in charge of the student union (Chinese Union Mission 2002, vol. 1: 129–131). The Communists employed the same divisive tactic to infiltrate the Signs of the Times Press in Shanghai. Most of the printing workers came from Anhui province and the editors were Cantonese and Shanghaiese. In 1950, the Shanghai municipal government urged the Adventist printing workers to unionize themselves but none of the editorial staff supported unionization. The union organizers recruited Gu Changsheng (2009: 49–50), a Subei native and a junior editorial staff in his early thirties. Gu came from a humble family and received help from the missionaries to attend the China Training Institute. He interpreted for the American soldiers in wartime Chongqing. After World War II, he joined the Signs of the Times Press in Shanghai. When the tide turned against the missionaries, he switched to the anti-­Christian camp. Once the Communists infiltrated the Adventist institutions, they forged alliances and channeled pre-­existing grievances into anti-­imperialist sentiments. It was an irresistible attraction for students, printing workers and junior church staff to align with the state. As they were motivated by war psychology to display their loyalty to the new regime, they became radicalized and learned new political vocabularies to express their grievances against the missionaries. Another important Communist power-­building tactic was to organize the frustrated church workers to form a new core leadership against the current leaders. The Communists paid much attention to leadership training. In July 1951, the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement sent a working team led by Liu Liangmo, a prominent Three-­Self leader, to the Adventist headquarters in Shanghai (Gu 2009: 61–62). The team created a new organization, the Chinese Seventh-­day Adventist Three-­Self Reform and Accusation Committee, to undermine the existing church leadership and assigned Nan Xiangqian, a union organizer at the Signs of the Time Press, to be the chair and Gu Changsheng, the secretary. Other committee members included Cheng Buyun, a clerk of the China Division, Jiang Chongguang, an ordained minister, and Peng Xiangsheng, president of the China Training Institute’s student union (Tsao 1975: 25). In the summer of 1951, Liu Liangmo orchestrated three accusation meetings against the Adventist leaders. According to Frederick W. Mote (2010: 15–35, 161–168), the typical accusation tactic was to charge prominent church leaders with fabricated crimes and to mobilize their relatives against them. By humiliating the church leaders, the government could isolate them, diminish their authority, and intimidate the congregants. The officials’ desire for bureaucratic control and popular participation dictated the accusation process. Before each meeting, Liu Liangmo arranged a rehearsal among the Adventists. He reviewed the accusation speeches and ordered the accusers to memorize the materials and to shed tears when talking about their sufferings. It was remarkable how readily some Adventists accepted the subservient role assigned by the state.

50   J.T.H. Lee and C.C.-S. Chow Shortly after the accusation meetings, the state formed the Seventh-­day Adventist Preparatory Committee of the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement to take over all the Adventist institutions. This process of co-­optation revealed a combination of top-­down and bottom-­up power-­building tactics. The top-­down tactics referred to the government’s efforts to recruit supporters for the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement. Those pro-­government Adventists joined the Three-­Self partly out of self-­interest and partly in the hope of a meliorating the harshness of the anti-­religious measures and indigenizing the church. The bottom-­up tactics included infiltrating the Adventist circle and radicalizing students, printing workers and junior church workers. Once the Communists gained a foothold within the church, they replaced the existing leaders with their collaborators. Against this backdrop, the congregants found themselves in a dilemma, torn between the public need to support the state and the private life of upholding their faith and continuing religious activities at home. Those accused Adventist church leaders remained defiant and organized themselves to counter the Communist influence. For example, David Lin translated most of the spiritual writings of Ellen G. White into Chinese, and the translation was of great significance as it standardized the Adventist doctrines and instilled a sense of spiritual identity among the congregants (Peng 1951). The graphical account of the spiritual battle in Ellen G. White’s works provided the readers with an eschatological lens through which to interpret their experience within a tripartite framework: justification by confessing their faith, sanctification by enduring persecution and gaining the promise of the remnants’ salvation. One unintended consequence of the accusation campaign was the growth of activism among the Adventist youth. Jiao Hongzhi, the son of a prominent minister, gave up his medical education to assist David Lin’s translation project and took up pastoral duties. In 1958, he was arrested by the police with Lin and both were imprisoned for decades (Chinese Union Mission 2002, vol. 2: 546). Another one was Robert Huang, who organized prayer groups and revival meetings in Shanghai during the 1950s. He was imprisoned with Jiao and Lin at the same time (Maxwell and Huang 2004). His youngest brother, Norman Huang, was jailed for criticizing Mao, Lin Biao and Jiang Qing during the Cultural Revolution (Huang 2005). It was indeed risky for these Adventists to evangelize in metropolitan cities. In rural areas with relatively weak government control, many Adventists carried out evangelistic work. Chen Youshi used to chair the Southern Zhejiang Conference of the Seventh-­Day Adventists. In 1952, Chen retired and became an independent evangelist in Pingyang district. In 1955, the Pingyang District Bureau of Religious Affairs ordered Chen to attend political study sessions. When everyone denounced Christianity, Chen criticized the Three-­Self leaders for betraying the church (Chinese Union Mission 2002, vol. 2: 471–473). In Wenzhou, known as ‘China’s Jerusalem’ because of the high concentration of Protestants, many Adventists were inspired by Chen’s courage. They actively evangelized and expanded the church membership from 1,049 in 1949 to over 2,000 in 1956 (Cao 2010). According to David Lin,

Christian revival from within   51 In these brief years of progress, this mission has baptized hundreds of new converts, kept their meeting places in repair, acquired two new church-­ buildings, and are in the process of building another one this year [1956]. And this was all done in the tense atmosphere of land reform and rural organization. (Tsao 1975: 42–43) On many occasions, women led the congregations after the ministers were arrested. What motivated their evangelistic zeal was the belief in God’s providential care and their final deliverance, continuing the Christian tradition of resisting a hegemonic power. Even though the Communists were capable of infiltrating all Christian institutions, they failed to penetrate into the decentralized Adventist network. The Adventists’ survival as a denomination during the repressive period enabled them to expand during the 1980s and 1990s.

The Adventist schism in southern Zhejiang In the early Reform era, the landscape of Chinese Adventism was composed of two major groupings, from the older Adventists in metropolitan cities to the lay evangelists and new converts in rural townships. Although the latter adapted Christianity to local cultures, they had no formal theological training and differed from the older Adventists in doctrinal ideas and liturgical practices. The different theological orientations, along with other factors, had led to schisms among the Adventists since 1979. The proselytizing activities in the Maoist era created numerous Adventist groups in southern Zhejiang province, and the region later became the national center of religious revival. During the Cultural Revolution, the Adventist laymen in southern Zhejiang held regular Sabbath services and admitted members from other Protestant denominations such as Watchman Nee’s Little Flock, Baptists and Presbyterians (Lee 2005). Influenced by other denominations, the lay leaders emphasized God’s grace rather than works as the basis for salvation, and adopted charismatic praying aloud in groups as opposed to the calm and orderly celebration of prayer during the worship. The newly released Adventist pastors were shocked by the new doctrines and practices. The older congregants who looked up to the pastors for guidance formed the Old Faction (Laopai), whereas the lay evangelists and many new converts called themselves the New Faction (Xinpai). After the church split in 1979, these factions expanded their respective networks from southern Zhejiang to other parts of China. These factions and their subsidiaries coexisted peacefully under the relatively relaxed political environment. What they did not foresee was that many schisms were to follow. In 1985, another schism broke out within the Old Faction in southern Zhejiang over ordination and church registration. To be legally recognized as a Three-­Self Patriotic church, an Adventist congregation had to follow many regulations such as restricting religious activities in specific areas, accepting the state ordination of church ministers, reporting church memberships to the government,

52   J.T.H. Lee and C.C.-S. Chow submitting church budget to the Three-­Self officials, rejecting Seventh-­day Adventism, and complying with the post-­denominational emphasis of the Three-­ Self Patriotic Movement. These control measures contradicted the Adventist heritage of the Wilderness Church. One of the Old Faction’s leaders, Li Hua (a pseudonym), accepted official ordination and joined the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement in order to cultivate patronage ties with local officials for protection. But Li Hua’s co-­worker, Deng Liang (a pseudonym), bitterly opposed the state’s intervention in church affairs and insisted on registering the congregation as Adventist, not a Three-­Self Patriotic church. Deng immediately launched a nationwide campaign against those Adventists accepting the Three-­Self ordination in Liaoning, Jilin, Henan, Anhui, Fujian and Guangdong provinces. Those Adventists who followed Deng to break away from the Old Faction called themselves the Wilderness Church (Kuangye Jiaohui). The problem never ended. In 2000, the Wilderness Church encountered an internal dispute over church registration. The Wilderness Church’s leaders in another district along the border of Zhejiang and Fujian provinces registered their congregations with the local government to avoid tensions with the state during the official crackdown on unsanctioned religious activities in 2000. This move infuriated Deng and led to the further split of the Wilderness Church in 2003. The New Faction was fraught with internal disagreements over church leadership, doctrinal interpretation and ritual practices. First, leadership succession was always contentious. The leaders often handpicked their children to run the churches but the younger Adventists wanted to democratize the church structure by electing competent people from outside of the leaders’ family. Second, the rise of Ling Shi (a pseudonym) in Cangnan district fueled the intra-­church dispute within the New Faction. As an intellectual and a gifted leader, Ling downplayed the traditional Adventist teachings in order to connect with other Protestants. Liturgically, he taught people to pray with rising arms and sing non-­ Adventist hymns, and gained many followers among the reform-­minded church members. After the death of a prominent leader of the New Faction in 2003, Ling and his followers disagreed with the older church leaders over leadership succession. The climax of this dispute was marked by Ling’s founding of the Seventh-­day Adventist Union Ministry to support many Adventists leaving the New Faction in 2008. His opponents called Ling’s group the Neo-­New Faction (Xinxinpai). Ling also published The Wheatfield Quarterly (Maitian), a highly popular print and electronic periodical to engage in theological discussion with religious inquirers and construct a more intellectual image of Chinese Adventism. With these innovative strategies, Ling reinvented himself as a cosmopolitan preacher and church leader. He successfully used his theological knowledge and communicative skills to convert many college students and young urban professionals in Cangnan district. Factional disputes were hard to resolve but conciliatory efforts were made to bring the schismatic groups together. The factional leaders reached doctrinal agreement and permitted inter-­church cooperation to expand the Adventist movement locally. Besides the local efforts, the Adventists from Hong Kong

Christian revival from within   53 helped to contain the escalation of schisms. Since the 1980s, many Hong Kong Adventists have rebuilt old churches, trained pastors and lay leaders, and mediated intra-­church conflicts across China. They also partnered with the American Adventists to found a media center to launch religious broadcasting for the mainlanders. The media center prepared all the programs in Mandarin at its studio in Hong Kong and broadcast through a powerful short-­wave transmitter in Guam. Besides learning about the Adventist doctrines, many listeners were encouraged to establish local worshipping communities and to solidify their ideological resistance against the state. This form of electronic evangelization has not only broken through geographical barriers and state surveillance, but also created an invisible global highway that enables Christians inside and outside China to form a support alliance. The strong transnational ties that the Adventists developed through Hong Kong reinforced their denominational identity against the post-­denominational emphasis of the state-­run patriotic churches. The municipal officials and Three-­Self leaders kept a watchful eye on this whole development in southern Zhejiang. Even though the authorities had contained the growth of Adventism by co-­opting some of the schematic groups, they permitted the Adventists to operate provided that their church leaders did not publicly condemn the Three-­Self principles and policies. In this perspective, the Adventist schism reflected various strategies that the church leaders used to make the faith easily accessible to different groups of followers and to seek new space for the institutionalization of their religious activities.

Conversion and faith consolidation The strong support from Hong Kong has sustained the marginalized Adventists in a hostile secular society. The most effective strategy is to carve out a secure space for the Adventists to experiment with their faith. A major challenge facing the Adventists is Sabbath observance. Sabbath observance affirms a regular personal practice of communicating with God at a specific time, symbolizing ‘daily devotions and self-­surrender to Christ’ (Strand 2003: 528). The Adventists interpret the seventh day as God’s final ‘conclusion to Creation week’, a day set aside by God to bless humans with His grace (Shea 2003: 450). This sacred time lasts from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. The Adventists define Sabbath observance as an irreversible mark of religious transformation. In countries with a substantial Adventist presence, the church often petitions on behalf of its members for exemption from taking part in any civic activities held on Saturday. But the Adventists in China have no one to speak for them when public activities are scheduled on Sabbath, as shown in the following stories. Like many Christians who were persecuted under Mao, the Jiao family, who assisted David Lin’s translation project, was displaced from Shanghai to an impoverished labor camp in Qinghai where Jiao Wangxin (2009a) was born. Since childhood, Jiao Wangxin (2009b: 1–6) ‘took it as a habit to read the Scripture every day’. Upon returning to Shanghai with the family, Jiao received baptism at sixteen clandestinely to avoid official suspicion. Wishing to become a

54   J.T.H. Lee and C.C.-S. Chow doctor, Jiao needed to obtain excellent results in the nationwide university entrance examination. But the examination was scheduled on the Sabbath and the state never made special arrangements for students in the event of holy days. Jiao decided to observe the Sabbath rather than taking the examination. When he composed his conversion testimony two decades later, he called that experience a religious crisis and an evangelistic opportunity. It was a religious crisis that challenged him to observe the Ten Commandments in general and the fourth one of Sabbath-­keeping in particular. He turned the crisis into an opportunity to uphold his faith against all the odds. Jiao’s courage is admirable but family support is essential. In a society that respects filial piety, it would be impossible for him to walk out from the examination without parental approval. The experience reflected his spiritual transformation through family support towards a personal relationship with the divine. A similar conversion process can be seen in the story of Zhang Miaomiao (2009). Her public examination was postponed to 20 September 2008 due to the Sichuan earthquake on 12 May. But the rescheduled examination was on Saturday and Zhang requested a leave of absence. When the teachers failed to persuade Zhang to change her mind, they asked her mother if she really wanted her daughter to attend college. Zhang’s mother replied, ‘I want her to be in a good college so that she can get into the seminary. But what is the point of studying theology if she does not obey the Lord?’ Zhang skillfully crafted her testimony in a sequential order that her decision was supported by her mother. Surprisingly, that rescheduled examination was made invalid due to mass cheating. Zhang interpreted this outcome as a sign of divine intervention and the experience reinforced her faith. She identified herself with Daniel in the Old Testament, who manifested Christian loyalty because he survived the Babylonian captivity and delivered the prophetic message in the end time. By drawing on this insight to justify her action, Zhang transformed her faith from a family identity into a self-­defined theological understanding. Ritual practices often help converts socialize into the new religion they embrace. The Chinese Adventists distinguish themselves from other Protestants by Sabbath observance. In demonstrating this unique identity marker, both Jiao and Zhang kept the Sabbath at all cost and relied on the relational resources of the family network for help. As they negotiated between a set of ideal convictions and demanding social expectations, they experienced a gradual change from family conversion to faith intensification. They evaluated the pros and cons of keeping the Sabbath and justified their decisions theologically. The mastery of biblical vocabularies and the emotional sentiments that they displayed not only sustained the faith practices and group norms to be expected from a faithful Adventist but also indigenized the Adventist subculture within a larger secular society. The conversion of Laijia Caidan (2010), a Tibetan Buddhist herder, is unusual because of his ethnic background. Laijia grew up in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and was educated in the local school, learning Tibetan and Mandarin Chinese. Mastering the Chinese language is important for the ethnic minorities

Christian revival from within   55 to compete in the national economy and move up the social ladder. A junior high school education would enable Laijia to acquire fluency in Mandarin, even though this educational level may not guarantee him a decent job in the Han Chinese-­controlled economy in Tibet. But an unspecified family trouble forced Laijia out of education after he finished the junior high school. Without family support, Laijia had to make ends meet on his own. In 2000, Laijia left home for Xining, the capital of Qinghai province. As a migrant worker, he found an odd job at a Muslim restaurant where he encountered Brother Lei, a Han Chinese Adventist doctor. Lei frequented this restaurant because Muslim meals were in line with the Adventist dietary practice of abstaining from pork and shellfish as stipulated in Leviticus 11:1–47. As time passed, Lei became Laijia’s intimate friend (zhixin pengyou). The intimacy in this cross-­ethnic relationship is shown by Lei’s courage in breaking the law by preaching to a Tibetan in a predominantly Muslim environment. The state prohibits Han Chinese Christians from proselytizing among the Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists out of concern for stable inter-­ethnic relations. But Laijia found Christianity to be fascinating and his interest in the doctrines motivated Lei to bring this Tibetan to the Adventist church. The first breakthrough came when Lei asked Laijia about the origin of the universe. As a Tibetan Buddhist, Laijia was raised not to think about the origin of the universe but was instructed to cope with human sufferings by controlling one’s desires and seeking enlightenment (nirvana). When they discussed the subject of creation, Laijia thought that Lei was a member of Falungong, a sectarian movement founded by Li Hongzhi in China in 1992 that promoted qigong, some ancient breathing exercises believed to improve one’s health. In 1999, Falungong was banned and labeled by the state as an ‘evil cult’ (xiejiao). To avoid misunderstanding, Lei gave Laijia a Chinese Bible. Upon reading it, Laijia ‘became inspired and saw the light all of a sudden’ (huangran dawu). Laijia perceived his conversion as a spontaneous moment of inner enlightenment. Lei inculcated Laijia in the core Adventist beliefs such as Sabbath-­ keeping, the dietary law, the Apocalypse, and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Laijia initially found the Apocalypse and the second advent of Jesus Christ similar to the Falungong’s belief in the apocalyptic threat posed by the final kalpa (era). Evidently, the Tibetan Buddhist cosmology and karma provided Laijia with a cultural framework to interpret Adventist Christianity. What warded off Laijia’s worries about Lei’s connection with the Falungong had to do with the next evangelistic strategy. Instead of giving personal spiritual counseling, Lei brought Laijia to the Adventist tent meeting in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in 2001. The Adventist tent meeting usually lasts for at least three days with intensive sermons, prayers and group discussions. In Urumqi, Laijia found many ‘young college students who were all very enthused about the truth’ and met an American Adventist missionary, who later sponsored him to study public health. After the tent meeting, Laijia resigned from his waiter’s job at the Muslim restaurant and returned to Tibet. In 2002, Laijia visited Lei in Xining and asked to be baptized. His conversion occurred through the efforts of Han Chinese Adventists. Once he joined the

56   J.T.H. Lee and C.C.-S. Chow church, he drew on many religious and cultural resources to integrate his Tibetan heritage into the Christian identity. His spiritual journey took a new turn as he decided to become a Tibetan Christian herbalist in order to convert fellow Tibetans. He learned the basics of Tibetan medicine but the herbalist’s license test was scheduled on Saturday. Laijia chose to observe the Sabbath instead of taking the test. His wish to become a health evangelist was achieved thanks to church support. Through the help of the American missionary whom he met in Urumqi, Laijia went to study at the Meihua (American–Chinese) Health Center in Xiamen, Fujian province. A sanitarium and medical center funded by overseas Chinese Adventists, the Meihua Health Center offered the ‘NEWSTART’ (i.e., Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sunshine, Temperance, Air, Rest, and Trust in God) program that combined the gospel with natural healing techniques to train Adventist health evangelists. Laijia completed the NEWSTART training and became a full-­time health evangelist. He used this method to cure his mother’s arthritis and converted her. When he presented himself as a well-educated Chinese Tibetan Adventist in his 2010 testimony, he was a respectable and successful evangelist. He established several NEWSTART health centers in Fujian province, where he lived and married a Chinese Adventist. This story reveals the importance of friendship, spiritual mentorship and church supporting networks. When Laiji got to know Brother Lei, bonds of trust and intimacy developed between them, and this transcended the ethnic boundaries and laid the ground for Laiji’s conversion. For a young Tibetan with the level of junior high education, Laijia did much better than many Tibetan and Chinese migrant workers. It was through the church that he gained a sense of security and belonging during his sojourn in major cities, and received the public health training that he otherwise would not have acquired. The conversionary process provided him with a clear path towards modernity, and this entailed his move from semi-­nomadic herding in China’s western frontier to a ministry of health evangelism in the coastal region. He climbed the social ladder through hard work and study, used his Christian faith to cross the ethnic boundary from Tibet to coastal China, reinvented himself as a well-educated Chinese Tibetan Adventist worker, and secured a stable career through the church in a cosmopolitan city.

Conclusion Entering the twenty-­first century as an indigenous Christian body, the Adventist movement exhibits a non-­compromising religious group with some strength and flexible strategies for survival. The failure of the state’s control and the diffusion of church authority into the hands of lay leaders have given rise to a ‘Four-­Self ’ Adventist church (i.e. self-­supporting, self-­governing, self-­propagating and self-­ theologizing) on Chinese soil. Although the Maoist state had jailed most of the Adventist leaders by the 1960s, it failed to control individual believers. Under tremendous political pressures, many Adventists theologized their struggles, seeing their sufferings as a test of their faith and trusting a transcendental God to

Christian revival from within   57 rescue them from religious persecution. The Adventists organized cell groups and house meetings at a grassroots level, which sowed the seeds of religious revival in the 1980s and 1990s. During the Reform era, Chinese social networks (guanxi) such as family ties, friendship and discipleship played a crucial role in sustaining the Adventist movement. Through these networks, the Adventists intensified their faith and drew on theological insights to make sense of the fast-­ growing world. By observing the Sabbath, the Adventists reclaimed the sacred time and space, and publicly critiqued China’s obsession with materialism and hyper-­competition. In addition, the relational resources of the family and church networks strengthened the Adventists’ resolve against the authoritarian state and secular culture. The Adventists gained encouragement from fellow believers to face personal crises and problems, and the ever-­expanding transnational church networks through Hong Kong and abroad created new career opportunities for those willing to join full-­time ministry. From the perspective of religious revival in China today, the renaissance of Seventh-­day Adventism exists beyond the state-­controlled patriotic religious organizations. The Adventists constantly seek new space for the continuous growth of their activities even though they risk creating schismatic groups. In southern Zhejiang, the proliferation of different Adventist groups, the expansion of their evangelistic activities and transnational church ties, and the cultivation of patronage ties with officials and urban professionals reflect the innovative strategies that the Adventists employed to empower themselves and to defuse potential tensions with the state. This form of Adventist activism has sustained their distinctive religious identity against the post-­denominational emphasis of the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement and created a variety of solidarities among the congregations. The ambiguous interactions between the Adventists and the state must be viewed beyond the old dichotomy of suppression and resistance, and even less as the result of the state’s deregulated religious policy. Such interactions are constitutive of one another as the yin and yang, and will continue to evolve in line with the simultaneous transformation of state governance and of religious activism.

References Cao, N.L. (2010) Constructing China’s Jerusalem: Christians, Powers, and Place in Contemporary Wenzhou, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chinese Union Mission (2002) Zhonghua shenggong shi [The Chinese Seventh-­day Adventist History], 2 volumes, Hong Kong: Chinese Union Mission of the Seventh-­day Adventists. Gu, C.S. (2009) Awaken: Memoirs of a Chinese Historian, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse. Handel, L. (1900) ‘Hong Kong–Macao’, in G.G. Fernandez (ed.) Light Dawns over Asia: Adventism’s Story in the Far Eastern Division 1888–1988, Silang, The Philippines: Adventist International Institute of Advanced Studies. Hildreth, E. (5 December 1914) Letter from Shantou to US, RG 8, box 8, the Ellison Hildreth Papers, Yale Divinity School Library, China Records Project Miscellaneous Personal Papers Collections.

58   J.T.H. Lee and C.C.-S. Chow Huang, R.N. (2005) Zai enguang xia yilu zoulai [Under Grace All the Way Through], self-­published manuscript. Jiao, W.X. (2009a) ‘Mengzhao de jingyan [The experiencing of my calling]’, Moshi musheng [The Last Shepherd’s Call], 87(3): 17–19. Jiao, W.X. (2009b) A Strategy to Improve the Health of Ciba Church according to the Principles of Natural Church Development in the Context of the Seventh-­Day Adventist denomination and Local Culture, unpublished D.Min. dissertation, Andrews University. Laijia, C.D. (2010) ‘Fangyang de rizi [When I was still a herder]’, Moshi musheng, 88(9): 42–44. Lee, J.T.H. (2005) ‘Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China’, Church History 74(1): 68–96. Lee, J.T.H. (2007) ‘Christianity in contemporary China: an update’, Journal of Church and State, 49(2): 277–304. Liao, Y.W. (2011) God is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China, New York: Harper One. Maxwell, S.M. and Huang, R. (2004) Prisoner for Christ: How God Sustained Pastor Huang in a Shanghai prison, Nampa, ID: Pacific Press. Mote, F.W. (2010) China and the Vocation of History in the Twentieth Century: A Personal Memoir, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Peng, X.S. (1951) ‘Kongu Anxiri hui qian zhonghua zonghui zongganshi meidi zougou Lin Yaoxi [Accusations against David Lin, former president of the China Division of the Seventh-­day Adventists and the running dog of American imperialists]’, Shanghai Municipal Archives, Call number: U103–0–118–1. Pfeiffer, B. (1981) The European Seventh-­day Adventist Mission in the Middle East, 1879–1939, Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang. Seventh-­day Adventists (1976) Seventh-­day Adventist Encyclopedia, Vol. 10, Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald. Shea, W.H. (2003) ‘Creation’, in D. Raoul (ed.) Handbook of Seventh-­day Adventist Theology, Vol. 12, Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald. Strand, K.A. (2003) ‘The Sabbath’, in D. Raoul (ed.) Handbook of Seventh-­day Adventist Theology, Vol. 12, Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald. Smith, J. (2007) Christianity with Chinese Characteristics: Adventist Adaptation to Changing Patterns of State Behavior, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Michigan. Tan, K.O. (1972) Bibles and Blessings in Old China: A Personal Testimony, Singapore: Malaysian Signs Press. Tsao, L.C. (1975) The Development and History of the Seventh-­day Adventist Church in China since the Communist Takeover, unpublished M.A. thesis, Loma Linda University. Xie J.S. (1940) Zhongguo jiaohui duiwu xin Zhongguo jianshe de gongxian [The Contributions of the Chinese Church towards the Development of New China], Beijing: Yench’ing Christian Fellowship. Yang, F.G. (2005) ‘Lost in the market, saved at McDonald’s: conversion to Christianity in urban China’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44(4): 423–441. Zhang, M.M. (2009) ‘Yongyu miandui xinyang de kaoyan: shou anxiri de jianzheng [Meeting challenge with courage: a testimony of Sabbath observance]’, Moshi Musheng, 87(9): 25.

4 Protestant reactions to the nationalism agenda in contemporary China1 Carsten T. Vala

The Chinese Communist Party-­state seeks continued domination over society. Like other elite groups trying to impose hegemony, it promotes an ideology of its own legitimacy to lessen the costs of governance, as David Laitin puts it (Kindopp 2004; Laitin 1986). According to the regime, this ideology succeeds among Protestants to the extent that they view all political issues through the lens of sovereignty and see defending Chinese sovereignty as the most important political issue of all (Kindopp 2004: 19; Laitin 1986: 29; Metzger 1977: 14). Among Protestants, sovereignty ranks such a high value because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views Protestants in China with political suspicion. Protestants have historic (and ongoing) ties to foreign organizations and countries that in the official historiography have been labeled as ‘foreign imperialist’ (Wu 1963). In fact, in the eyes of the Communist regime, Protestants only became ‘fully Chinese’ after 1949 when they proclaimed support for the regime-­ backed Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) association and cast off links with foreign missionaries and churches (Vala 2009a). As China has opened to the world in the reform era, Protestants outside the official churches that are under TSPM authority continue to be under suspicion, because they remain outside regime control and foster relations with the many foreign groups that have entered the country to strengthen Chinese Christianity. The Chinese Communist Party-­state therefore propagates a hegemonic agenda to tame Protestants by socializing them in TSPM churches to be ‘patriotic’, understood to constitute loyalty to the CCP leadership. In this chapter, I investigate how Protestants respond to the party-­state’s nationalist agenda by asking how effective are efforts to inculcate party-­state loyalty by the regime and its official Protestant associations, the Three Self Patriotic Movement and the Christian Council (CC). I begin with a brief note on the sources of data and then discuss the contingent membership of all religious believers in the party-­state’s definition of the nation. Next, I elaborate on the regime’s blend of different elements of nationalism (state-­led, civic, and cultural) as they apply to Protestants. These elements provide a schema for matching Protestant responses to aspects of the regime’s nationalist agenda. After analyzing the range of responses from leaders in official and unofficial churches and seminaries, I conclude with discussion of the limited success of the party-­state nationalist agenda.

60   C.T. Vala

Interviewing Protestant leaders This chapter draws primarily on interviews I conducted in 2009 and 2010 among Protestants in ‘official churches’ and unofficial ‘house’ churches. Official churches are registered with the state and affiliated with the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) association because they have official authorization and are staffed by leaders trained (or at least approved) by the TSPM (Vala 2009b). I refer to them as TSPM leaders and as TSPM or official churches. I also refer to the Three Self Patriotic Movement and Christian Council associations as the lianghui (‘two committees’ or TSPM/CC) because in most areas they work in such close concert that their attitudes and interaction with the regime are indistinguishable. Because not all Protestant ‘house’ churches meet in private homes, I use the broader term ‘unregistered churches’ to encompass congregations that meet in rented office space and also to emphasize all these churches’ lack of formal state approval. The data were collected in 2009 and 2010, when I conducted nearly 40 interviews in Mandarin Chinese with pastors, provincial and municipal leaders of the ‘two committees’, seminary teachers and students in the official churches, as well as with leaders in unregistered churches.2 Because interviewees were developed through snowball sampling, the data are not meant to be statistically representative of the Chinese Protestant churches although they do come from a range of urban areas (cities, provincial capitals, and Beijing) and provinces (southeastern coastal areas, the central region, and the Northeast). The data instead are intended to illustrate a variety of Protestant reactions to patriotic education and state-­led nationalism. I focus on Protestant leaders because elites, according to Antonio Gramsci (1971), are key actors in the process of establishing hegemony (Gramsci 1971: 135, 145, 150). They enjoy social authority, have greater influence than do non-­elites (such as common believers), and, among Protestants, leaders typically interpret key religious texts through a variety of activities such as preaching sermons, culminating in their ability to develop the Gramscian ‘common sense’ that Protestant congregants accept as truth.3 For my purposes, interviewing current and future Protestant leaders about their attitudes towards the party-­state’s nationalist agenda offers insight into the receptivity of important grassroots actors among a population that generates anxiety for the CCP.4

The Chinese Communist Party-­state views Protestant loyalty as questionable The CCP worries about the loyalty of Chinese Protestants for historical and contemporary reasons. First, Protestant history in China is darkened by association with ‘enemy forces’ and countries; second, Protestants are arguably the fastest growing religious population in China today; third, domestic dissidents and democracy activists abroad have become Protestant; and, fourth, the CCP blames Christianity for the collapse of Eastern European Leninist regimes. Historically, Protestants have been viewed as tainted by historical association with the

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   61 ‘foreign imperialism’ of the United States and other Western powers. Foreign Protestants first entered China in great numbers after the Qing government was forced to sign ‘Unequal Treaties’ in the mid-­nineteenth century that pried open Chinese ports to Western powers. Then, shortly after the Chinese Communist Party unified the country in 1949, foreign missionaries were expelled and Protestants and Catholics had to declare loyalty to the regime by joining ‘patriotic’ religious associations. In the People’s Republic of China under Mao, only Christians deemed loyal to the CCP were permitted to organize. Protestants today continue to be contingent members of ‘the nation’, whose belonging depends on whether they join the party’s United Front by participating in churches under the Three Self Patriotic Movement association. The rapid expansion of Protestant numbers in the reform era further raises concern among the party-­state leadership. By official count, which records only believers who are 18 years old or older in official churches, the Protestant population has ballooned 10 percent annually from three million in 1982 to 15 million by 1999 (Vala 2009b). A recent nationwide survey put the number of all Protestants at more than 40 million (Horizon Research 2007),5 but roughly half of all believers worship outside official religious venues that are monitored by state officials (Yang 2006). In addition to increasing numbers, dissidents (such as the ‘rights defense’ lawyers Xu Zhiyong and Gao Zhisheng who were arrested in 2009 (Jacobs 2009)), former June 4, 1989 democracy activists (Chen 2009), and growing numbers of intellectuals are also Protestants (Carnes 2006). Adding to anxieties over rising Protestant numbers and critical voices, CCP leaders worry about Christian loyalty because churches played a significant role in the collapse of Leninist regimes in Eastern Europe (Gong 2003: ch. 5, esp. 147–149; Zhao and Zhuang 1997: 552). Social scientists sent by the CCP to study the downfall of Communist states concluded that Western powers had supported religious groups to instigate democratic movements (Chan and Carlson 2005: 19; Gong 2003: 148). Given these perceived threats to Chinese sovereignty, Chinese Communist Party-­state leaders seek to inculcate in Protestants a form of patriotism that binds them to the nation and solidifies their loyalty to the regime.

The party-­state, state-­led nationalism, and religious believers Protestants, like all religious believers in China, have an ambiguous status with respect to the ‘nation’, the content of which the Chinese Communist Party-­state asserts the right to determine (Dunch 2008: 160; Guo 2004: 30). According to the Constitution, the CCP defines the ‘nation’6 in secular terms as ‘the people’ (renmin) who comprise the classes of workers, peasants, and intellectuals (Dunch 2008: 163; Guo 2004: 42). But because the party-­state recognizes that many others within its territorial borders fall outside these categories of ‘the people’, it promotes an expanded version of the Chinese nation as ‘Chinese peoples’ (zhonghua minzu) through the United Front strategy (Townsend 1996: 117). Participation in the United Front requires that Protestants (like all other

62   C.T. Vala religious believers) accept the party-­state definition of the state’s ‘key task’ and its enemies (Guo 2004: 17; Zhao 1998: 297; Zheng 1999: 89). The regime’s top goal is building a strong, wealthy, sovereign state that is united under party leadership; foreign threats and internal ethnic disunity constitute important enemies. Hence, to unite all ethnic groups and gather support behind itself, the regime rejects the closest Chinese equivalent for the word ‘nationalism’ (minzuzhuyi) for suggesting narrow and divisive ties to ethnic identities (Zhao 1998: 290). Instead, the party-­state casts nationalism in terms of ‘love of country’ or ‘patriotism’ (aiguozhuyi, literally ‘love the country-­ism’) (Guo 2004: 30). The regime then promotes its own interests as the interests of the nation so that loyalty directed towards the nation shifts onto itself (Zhao 1998: 291). This is what Charles Tilly calls a ‘state-­led nationalism’ (Zhao 1998: 290). Religious believers, according to the Chinese Communist Party-­state ideology, join the nation by supporting the leadership of the party as part of their ‘love of country’ or patriotism (Guo 2004: 42–43). The party-­state, state-­led nationalism, and Protestants For Protestants in particular, the Chinese Communist Party-­state melds strands of what He Baogang and Guo Yingjie (2000: 46) have identified as state-­led nationalism, civic consciousness, and cultural nationalism together to create what I view as the requirements for Protestant membership in the nation.7 This nationalist agenda becomes clearer by analyzing how speeches by state officials and ‘patriotic’ textbooks connect nation, citizen, and traditional Chinese culture. Then-­director of State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA) Ye Xiaowen drew together the strands of CCP state-­led nationalism in a speech at the 2008 national lianghui conference. Director Ye put the core issue as to how ‘Western’ Christian culture will assimilate into Chinese culture, an ancient, ‘uninterrupted’ civilization (Ye 2008). This question is crucial because in the past Christianity had been a ‘tool of invasion controlled and used by imperialism and colonialism’ (Ye 2008). It was the party that had delivered Chinese believers from this ugly past, but calling on religious believers to love the (atheist) party would be a hard sell. Therefore Ye called on Chinese believers to look to the guo, the nation or state, as a kind of savior, or, putting it in Ye’s words, that ‘patriotism’ is the foundation for ‘Chinese peoples (zhonghua minzu)’ to ‘stand tall’ in the world. More than a source of political salvation or ethnic pride, patriotism, according to Ye, acts as the ‘spiritual force’ of Chinese civilization (Ye 2008). For Chinese Protestants to be welcomed by the Chinese peoples they must align themselves with the socialist system and ‘assimilat[e] into Chinese cultural traditions’ (Ye 2008).8 The strands of cultural adaptation, loyalty to the state (and hence the party), and civic participation in the socialist state come together for Protestants in this version of ‘patriotism’.9 To flesh out this sketch of Protestant patriotism, it helps to turn to the first-­ ever nationwide patriotic education textbook for Protestants, which was published in 2006. The Protestant Patriotic Curriculum (Trial Edition) is now

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   63 required for use in all official Protestant seminaries (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006). The text argues that ‘everyone must love their country (guo)’, implicitly making patriotism more ‘fundamental’ than religious faith, which is a choice (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 2). An individual’s attachment to country is therefore so basic that it doesn’t depend on the type of regime, continues the text, so one must support whichever regime governs the country in which one lives. Further, the nation-­state, despite its being a ‘product of humankind’, has a ‘sacred nature’ bestowed on it by the Bible (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 14). Because it is linked with a ‘specific social system’ and therefore a ‘particular’ nation-­state, patriotism for Chinese Protestants means ‘loving the People’s Republic of China and the socialist system’ (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 2). In short, Protestants must love the state and implicitly support its rulers, the party. Second, the Protestant Patriotic Curriculum promotes regime loyalty in terms of a CCP form of civic consciousness. It reminds readers that after the 1996–97 national conference the lianghui put forth the slogan ‘a good Protestant must be a good citizen’ (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 439). A good Protestant takes ‘patriotic’ obedience to laws and regulations as the ‘standard of all behavior’, rather than Biblical norms (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 439). Further, a Protestant must do nothing that violates ‘the country [and] its laws, regulations, [or] policies, as well as rules, institutions, and social conventions’, always keeping the ‘interests and benefits of the nation-­ state and collective’ above those of the individual (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 439). By becoming part of ‘the people’ (renmin), the ‘sacred mission’ of Protestants becomes ‘protecting the unity of the motherland’, the ‘site of our . . . unceasing prosperity’ and ‘sacred earth given to us by God’, against ‘foreign enemy forces’ seeking to ‘destroy the socialist motherland’ (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 439–441). In short, because the Chinese Communist Party claims that benefiting the people is its ‘basis’ and ‘source of power’, then Protestants should ‘sacrifice’ for ‘the people’s benefits and interests’ and support party leadership to protect the country (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 439–441). Finally, in terms of cultural nationalism, the textbook teaches that Protestant theology needs to ‘integrate’ with traditional Chinese culture. Such integration involves recognizing that Chinese scholars from the era of the Hundred Schools of Thought to the time of the Confucian classics have embraced a ‘nationalist spirit’ in seeking principles to realize ‘new societies’ (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 399.) To help build a ‘brilliant Chinese civilization’ now, Protestant Christianity should build on the inheritance of cultural values of ‘forbearance, justice, propriety, wisdom, faith, unity of heaven and man’ to develop a ‘reconciled’ theology that is ‘harmonious’ with Chinese society and culture (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 399, 400). Chinese culture has been the ‘power’ of China’s ‘non-­stop prosperity’ and a ‘spiritual source’ for ethnic unity (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 398, 399). Chinese culture in turn ‘shows care for the spirit of nationalism of the country, people,

64   C.T. Vala and society’ and puts ‘the people (renmin) of the country at its center’ (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 399). The circle is therefore complete: as ‘patriotic’ Protestant theology should draw upon traditional cultural values to ‘fit’ China’s socialist conditions, it will take on the focus of ‘the people’, whose representative is the CCP. In the official seminaries, lianghui leaders have introduced Theological Construction to continually ‘adjust [theology] to the times’ (Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong 2006: 430–431). To reduce this complicated argument, in the following sections I look for expressions of state-­led nationalism, civic consciousness, or cultural nationalism to assess the degree to which the party-­state agenda has taken hold (He and Guo 2000: 46). We will see whether Protestant leaders express: 1 2 3

support for party leadership and condemnation of religious infiltration, as evidence of state-­led nationalism; support for obeying laws and regulations in terms of good citizenship, as evidence of civic consciousness; and support for adaptation of Christianity that puts traditional cultural values of assimilation above historic Protestant doctrine (such as justification by faith alone), as evidence of cultural nationalism.

Before turning to the interview data, I offer several hypotheses about the differences between attitudes of leaders in official churches and seminaries and attitudes of leaders in unregistered churches. If the regime’s agenda has taken hold, I expect that leaders in the official churches will express stronger support for various pro-­party elements of the agenda than unregistered church leaders do. Second, related to the first hypothesis, presidents of official seminaries, as the putative leaders of institutions training the future pastors for official churches, should be even more supportive than TSPM pastors of the nationalism agenda. Third, I expect unregistered church leaders to be least supportive of the agenda, especially if they lead churches that have endured heavy state pressure to be shuttered.

State-­led nationalism: patriotism as ‘love of party’ Does patriotism (aiguozhuyi, literally ‘love of country-­ism’) connote love of party, in Protestant eyes? According to most scholars of nationalism in China, the Chinese Communist Party’s promotion of patriotism includes ‘love of party’ or of the New China (Guo 2004: 30; Townsend 1996: 117; Zhao 1998: 290; Zheng 1999: 93).10 As He Baogang and Guo Yingjie (2000: 34–36) have argued, the Chinese term for ‘country’ (guojia, literally ‘country-­home’) is so broad that it connotes land, nation, and state, as well as government and the Chinese Communist Party also. The editor of the Protestant Patriotic Curriculum confirmed this etymological understanding (Interview, Nanjing, September 2010). According to this view, being patriotic means attachment to all these entities, including support for the party.

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   65 Those who have experienced heavy state pressure echoed this identity between love of country and love of party. A TSPM teacher who had been jailed for several days said that ‘the nation and country should represent guojia’ but ‘in [officials’] eyes, if you don’t love the party . . . you don’t love your guojia’ (Interview, June 2009). Protestant leaders in the unregistered churches also criticized the party’s claim that the meaning of the ‘country’ equaled the ruling party. As one leader in Wuhan put it, ‘the (guojia) and ruling party is the same thing. There’s no difference. If we are “patriotic” (aiguo) then that includes “loving the party” (aidang) . . . they control the country so if we are “patriotic” (aiguo) [they think that] we must love them too’. Or, as another Beijing unregistered church leader explained, ‘[they say that] to be a Chinese person under the leadership of the Communist Party, you must love the party that is currently ruling’ (Interview, Beijing, July 2009). Although most interviewees in the official churches privately rejected an identity of patriotism with love of party, a few Protestant leaders enthusiastically promote the party-­state agenda. Such leaders rise rapidly into the upper ranks of the official Protestant associations or party-­state. For example, in Harbin, the municipal leaders of the TSPM and CC repeated the party-­state line that Protestant Christianity’s main challenge ‘comes from the outside’ in that overseas organizations are backing ‘underground religious forces’ that ‘make being patriotic and loving God oppositional’ rather than a ‘natural thing’ (Interview, Harbin, July 2009). Echoing the CCP’s formulation of patriotism, this husband-­ and-wife couple have not only secured the top two positions in both the Harbin municipal TSPM association and Harbin Christian Council, they have also cemented their power by appointments as a vice president of the national China Christian Council and a National People’s Congress representative, respectively (Fang 2010). Other Protestant leaders in the official churches appear to support the party-­ state agenda but only because lianghui and CCP policies demand that they do so. In their views, the multiple understandings of guo mean that support for patriotism includes support for the party. In interviews, principals at a major regional seminary and a smaller provincial seminary at points suggested that the concept ‘country’ (guojia) conflates the ruling party, political system, land, society, and everything else contained within the borders of the People’s Republic. The head of one regional seminary put it colorfully, To love the country means to love everything in the country, including the [political] system. It’s like the evening news; it has weather, economics, politics, society, religion. The country includes religion. . . . So to love the country means we should love and protect (aihu) and support the government. (Interview, Wuhan, June 2009)11 Less directly, a provincial seminary principal, despite dismissing the idea that patriotism meant loving the party, made inadvertent comments that suggested

66   C.T. Vala that the broadness of the ‘country’ concept included the party, too. He explained that the slogan ‘uniting China through a national (country) consciousness (guojia de yishi)’ really meant that ‘the Communist Party unites China’ (Interview, June 2009). Even so, he still refrained from expressing unqualified support by saying that, in dealing with disagreements with the party-­state, ‘Jesus didn’t teach “oppose the government”, [rather] he said, “be as cunning as serpents, innocent as doves” ’. Therefore, declarations by lianghui leaders about ‘warmly loving the country, warmly loving the socialist system’, he explained, ‘are just routine sayings . . . a stand . . . [that] doesn’t really have any meaning’. Instead, the seminary leaders craft strategies to suit the problems they face without confronting the party-­state head-­on.

Civic consciousness: patriotism as good citizenship for both TSPM and non-­TSPM Pastors inside and outside the official Protestant structures expressed broad agreement in their views that patriotism connotes being good citizens, a second aspect of the nationalist agenda. Although the party-­state and national ‘patriotic’ textbook set the standard for devout Protestant behavior as obeying all rules and regulations, Protestant leaders themselves expressed more complex attitudes that weighed church interests and their interpretation of Biblical principles. For pastors and seminary teachers in the lianghui churches and schools, attitudes toward civic consciousness ranged from pragmatic to what I call ‘conditional and diminutive’ perspectives. Pragmatists equated patriotism with good citizenship or obeying laws and regulations because such agreement was like the ticket price to enter into further work in the official structures. Teachers and principals in the official seminaries expressed similar perspectives, referring to church interests as the justification for uttering patriotic statements, rather than that being ‘patriotic’ was worthwhile for its own sake. As one provincial seminary vice principal put it, ‘a person’s citizenship is most important, because if you don’t have citizenship you can’t do anything else’ and ‘So we still need to be patriotic, or else there is no way for the church to develop’ (Interview, Changsha, June 2009). But more frequently pastors and seminary students discussed good citizenship or obedience of the law as conditional and diminutive. Conditionality required that following rules and regulations not violate what they considered to be core tenets of the faith. Diminution meant that being a good citizen is a weaker version of the far stricter standards of the Bible. Conditional, diminutive expressions of Protestant patriotism-­as-citizenship were nearly indistinguishable between leaders in the official churches and seminaries and their counterparts in the unofficial structures. According to a Beijing TSPM seminary student, ‘Of course I must obey national laws and regulations, but as soon as it violates my faith, then I can no longer obey’ (Interview, Beijing, July 2009). Similarly, a Shenzhen unregistered church leader claimed, ‘[we Protestants shouldn’t] be managed by the

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   67 government, but being restrained by laws and regulations is needed’ (Interview, Shenzhen, June 2009). An unregistered church leader in Wuhan agreed, ‘we must respect the government, and observe some of their rules, respect them when we talk to them, but we shouldn’t totally obey them’ (Interview, Wuhan, July 2009). Another unregistered Beijing preacher explained, A good citizen will not go beyond the bounds of the laws and regulations . . . [But] if you followed all these regulations, then the Christian gospel would not have spread so widely, because the regulations on public order restrict evangelism. Christians have the life of God, and so we do not have to obey. Because we live for God so we can violate them. (Interview, Beijing, July 2009) Such ideas reflect the widespread conviction among many adherents in TSPM and non-­TSPM circles that religious injunctions supersede policies, rules, and regulations. For these Protestants, patriotism-­as-citizenship reflects more stringent and authoritative demands that God places on them such that good citizenship is a diminution of devout faith. Two aspects of this diminutive view are shared by Protestant leaders in both non-­TSPM and TSPM settings: first, Protestants should be good citizens as a way of demonstrating a moral lifestyle to others; second, Protestants should be good citizens because the civic standards are far less demanding than the standards required by God. Viewing good citizenship as a demonstration of a virtuous way of life, one Protestant recalled his work as a TSPM pastor in a small Hubei city where he rarely discussed ‘patriotic’ slogans like ‘loving one’s country (or “being patriotic”) and loving one’s faith (aiguo aijiao)’ (Interview, Beijing, July 2009). Rather, he said, he preached about being a Christian, being an example of a good citizen. Because the Bible says in Acts, chapter 6, it gives seven words, the first is to have a good reputation . . . not just in the church but in every area of life, in society, so [that everyone] acknowledges you’re a good person. Similarly, a Beijing unregistered church preacher, when asked about differences between being a good Christian and being a good citizen, answered, ‘in terms of virtue there’s no conflict at all’ (Interview, Beijing, July 2009). Good citizenship is simply a way to express one’s faith through behavior that promotes Christianity among non-­believers. Leaders in both the official churches and the unregistered churches also shared the view that good citizenship was a weaker requirement compared to the demands of being a Christian. A TSPM assistant pastor in northeastern Changchun explained that ‘Being patriotic is just loving this country, obeying laws and regulations. . . . So what [a Protestant] obeys isn’t this country’s laws, what he obeys is God’s will and his principles. God’s words surpass all laws and regulations’ (Interview, Changchun, July 2009). A preacher in Beijing for an

68   C.T. Vala unregistered church put it succinctly that ‘following God’s laws is far stricter than following man’s laws’ so that ‘what you do should be better than what a common citizen does’ (Interview, Beijing, July 2009). When analyzed from the perspective of civic consciousness, the Chinese Communist Party-­state’s nationalist agenda appears to have faltered. To be sure, Protestant leaders in both official and unofficial structures accept the regime view of citizenship as obeying laws and regulations and that Protestants should be good citizens. But, on the other hand, Protestants believe that civic duties do not loosen the strictures imposed by Christian faith. Even when official seminary leaders express attitudes that appear to validate citizenship as a restraint on Protestant behavior (implying that being a good citizen enables Protestants in official venues to escape worse restrictions), they qualify such expressions as required utterances to satisfy party-­state requirements and continue Protestant work. More commonly, Protestants inside and outside the official churches and seminaries share what I call a ‘contingent and diminutive’ civic view that obeying laws and regulations is important, subject to three conditions: first, such obedience is contingent upon these laws not conflicting with their understandings of the requirements of Christian faith; second, good citizenship is important because it demonstrates the morality and virtue of a Christian’s life as an instrument of evangelism; and third, good citizenship reflects a less stringent standard of behavior than the more demanding religious strictures of the Bible.

Cultural nationalism: patriotism as theological construction vs. loving individuals The third, cultural aspect of the nationalist agenda can be derived from the varying Protestant reactions to party-secretary Jiang Zemin’s 1993 call on believers to ‘adapt religion to socialist society’ (Jiang 2003). Jiang called on religious circles to reform doctrines that ‘don’t fit with socialist society’ and ‘utilize . . . positive doctrines to serve socialism’ (Jiang 2003: 255). In response, Bishop Ding Guangxun launched Theological Construction (shenxue sixiang jianshe) in the late 1990s to promote theological change through the official Protestant associations and churches (Interview, Harbin, November 2002; Dunch 2008). Almost immediately, all but a small minority of Protestants in the pulpit and the pews rejected Ding’s ideas about weakening the Protestant doctrine of ‘justification by faith’ (Kindopp 2004: ch. 7). Eventually, many TSPM leaders used Theological Construction to correct fundamentalist theology, promote love as the core of Christian teaching, and direct Protestant energies to doing social work (Interview, Beijing, September 2010; Interview, Changsha, August 2010). A third group, Protestants in the unregistered churches, has taken Ding’s push to weaken ‘justification by faith’ and teach ‘God is love’ to represent the goal of Theological Construction: distorting what most Chinese Protestants would recognize as orthodox theology. At the extreme, only one TSPM association leader from my sample supported Theological Construction by de-­emphasizing justification by faith as the sole

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   69 criterion for being Christian. He stressed the importance of ‘good behavior’ and switched the starting point for theological thinking from the Bible to the societal context. As the Harbin municipal lianghui leader asked, ‘In China, what kind of church should we have? In Chinese society, what form should the Chinese church take?’ because the goal is that ‘non-­believers have a good impression of Christianity’ (Interview, Harbin, July 2009). His emphasis on contextualization leads to a theology grounded neither in the Bible nor in moralistic views widely held in official churches. Instead, his theology seeks universal approval by all in society, because, the Harbin lianghui leader maintained, ‘it’s not necessary to say who’s right and who’s wrong. You can think your thoughts, he can think this way, I can think that way . . . and [we can] discuss what kind of thinking . . . that everyone can accept’ (Interview, Harbin, July 2009). For such lianghui leaders, a cultural transformation of Protestant principles into socially acceptable content is as important as defending Chinese Christianity from what he called ‘overseas . . . religious organizations [that] . . . support . . . underground religious forces’ (Interview, Harbin, July 2009). For other lianghui leaders, Theological Construction is a ‘cover’ to carry out theological changes that weaken fundamentalist understandings, substitute more liberal theology, and promote a range of ideas on how Protestants can contribute to society (Dunch 2008: 172; Interview, Changsha, June 2009; Interview, Chenzhou, June 2009). The vice chairman of the national TSPM committee explained that fundamentalists believe that ‘getting rich [is] sinful’ whereas in his view ‘this is related to Chinese culture. You must preserve a balance [between having wealth and being too attached to it]’ (Interview, Nanjing, September 2010). Others insist that only one method of baptism (either sprinkling or immersion) is efficacious. In Hunan Province, such True Jesus Church theology is so influential that Protestants think that a believer who worships on Sundays, doesn’t speak in tongues, or is baptized by someone who later commits a major sin, is no longer ‘saved’ (Interview, Changsha, June 2009). Hence, the Hunan Provincial Seminary principal (who is also the Provincial Christian Council president) views Theological Construction as an opportunity to sweep away such sectarian beliefs for the moderate idea that ‘What is important is whether in your heart you believe in God’ and to teach about social issues like the environment and Protestant responsibility to society (Interview, Changsha, June 2009; Interview, Wuhan, July 2009). TSPM leaders in Hubei Province hosted Theological Construction seminars to discuss techniques for better pastoral management (Interview, Beijing, July 2009). At the same time, Protestant leaders are mindful that Theological Construction originated as a political movement to ‘get along well with the government’ (Interview, June 2009). As one provincial seminary vice principal illustrated, ‘The government first meant to strike us, requiring us to do theological construction. But we’re turning it around to strike the government. . . . It’s like Chinese Taiqi . . . using others’ strength to hit [back]’ (Interview). For Protestants outside the lianghui structures of churches and seminaries, any state-­backed attempt to alter theology weakens Christianity. Neglecting the intent of some lianghui leaders to use it to correct theology, they refer to Ding’s

70   C.T. Vala original ideas and point to extreme cases, such as when Harbin’s lianghui leaders advocate popular agreement over Biblical standards to set church theology, as evidence for how Theological Construction destroys historic Christian faith by weakening doctrines like ‘justification by faith’. As Ryan Dunch summarizes in his own analysis, Theological Construction may meet a pressing need but ‘has produced . . . Christian theology . . . out of step with the faith held by most Chinese Protestants . . . [leaving it] open to the criticisms of being too liberal, too political, too accommodationist’ (Dunch 2008: 178). Most unregistered Protestant interviewees went beyond rejecting Theological Construction to suggest an alternative formulation of patriotism in place of the regime’s ‘patriotic’ allegiance to an abstract nation that is defined and manipulated by the CCP. Unregistered leaders from the southeast coast to northern China resisted the CCP’s nationalist formulation of allegiance to an abstract ‘people’ (renmin) and instead proposed reframing patriotism as concrete service to specific individuals in one’s life. As a leader of an unregistered church in Shenzhen put it, I just [try to] persuade people [who claim] they are very patriotic but . . . don’t even see very practical problems around them. They just say very abstractly that they love an abstract nation-­state. I teach them, ‘You want to be patriotic? Love those around you; only by doing so can you really love the country.’ Because individuals make up the nation (or country, guojia). (Interview, Shenzhen, June 2009) Or, as a former TSPM pastor now in charge of a large unregistered Beijing church put it, ‘what’s more important than being patriotic is to love people . . . [because a] “people” (renmin) without a person doesn’t exist. When we love each individual then we can realize that we love “the people” ’ (Interview, Beijing, July 2009). For these unregistered leaders, patriotism as loyalty to an abstract ‘country’ is less important than patriotism as helping real people with pragmatic, daily struggles. In this way, care for individuals translates into a love of country. Even some teachers in TSPM seminaries agree, as one who had been jailed for helping foreign Christians said the party says if you don’t love the party, you don’t love ‘the country’. . . . But I teach students that . . . ‘we love the people, [which] means [to] love “the country” ’. As he claims, ‘It’s possible to be patriotic and not love the [party-]state’ (Interview, July 2009). For still other unregistered church leaders, the issue is that love for individuals in need supersedes concern for the political system, as another Beijing unregistered church preacher emphasized, ‘A real Christian should love his country. He should love this family. But the scope is even larger. He should love people. [The concept of] “people” (ren) is bigger than the country (guojia)

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   71 or nations (minzu)’ (Interview, Beijing, July 2009). Recognizing the political goals behind the nationalist agenda, unregistered church leaders with experience in official churches reject the regime slogans to ‘love one’s country, love one’s faith (aiguo aijiao)’ as too politicized, because they distort the focus of Protestant work and blur important differences between the people as citizens who make up the nation and the people as CCP leaders who rule. A Wuhan unregistered leader criticized the aiguo aijiao slogan because it made ‘ “loving one’s country” . . . more important than “loving one’s faith” ’. He said that further evidence that the TSPM was ‘too . . . political’ is that Three Self leaders ‘sing the national song at meetings’, which violates his principle that religious gatherings should be free of political content (Interview, Wuhan, July 2009). At the same time, the other half of the slogan, ‘lov[ing] [one’s] faith’, continued the leader, was so meaningless that TSPM leaders focused on the wrong things, such as TSPM organizational needs, rather than ‘caring for society’ (Interview, Wuhan, July 2009). Ignoring the substantial social service work by many official churches, he sees organizational needs directing TSPM’s energies toward outward projects like new church construction rather than on less visible activities like evangelism. The result, according to this unregistered leader, is that official Protestant associations were ‘almost locking people up inside the [official] churches’ (Interview, Wuhan, July 2009). Patriotism, he continued, really meant that ‘we [Protestants in unregistered churches] must warmly love this land, [and] warmly love the people on this land, [and] when we warmly love the people on this land we need to do some things for them.’ He insisted that such concern for others ‘must be separated from politics’ and that means that ‘we should differentiate between [serving] the people (renmin) of this country and [pleasing] the leaders of the ruling party’. A former TSPM pastor in Beijing who now leads a large unregistered church carried the analysis to its logical conclusion, explaining that For thousands of years, [in] China, collectivism has been used emptily as an abstract ‘people’ to push many people around without . . . remorse. If [the CCP] doesn’t respect you as an individual [they] can callously push . . . people [around, and] without blinking an eye call it the people’s interests. [But] without persons where are ‘the people’? (Interview, Beijing, July 2009) For such a Protestant who formerly worked inside the state structures but now leads an unregistered congregation, he views the party as brandishing abstract concepts of ‘nation’ or ‘people’ as tools to manipulate citizens. The party’s political values are replacing the people’s lost sense of morality, he continued, in a voice rising in anger, When a nation (minzu) loses its heart and soul it’s frightening . . . day after day [the party-­state is] talking about patriotism, receiving patriotic education, and [that] only when the country’s interests are served is something

72   C.T. Vala correct, and anything that doesn’t serve the national interest is from the enemy. This kind of logic is very frightening. Christians cannot support this kind of thinking. (Interview, Beijing, July 2009) In sum, Protestants outside official churches substitute an immediate, tangible version of patriotism-­as-concrete-­service for the Chinese Communist Party’s loyalty to an abstract ‘nation’ or ‘country’.

Three implications of Protestant reactions to the party-­state nationalist agenda Pastors in the official churches were expected to express stronger support for love of the Chinese Communist Party than leaders in unregistered churches, and principals of official seminaries were expected to express even stronger expressions of pro-­party support. As we have seen, this support, as several scholars have argued, partly comes from the multiple connotations of the term ‘country’ (guo) (He and Guo 2000: 34–36). Not surprisingly, church leaders outside the official churches identified the patriotic agenda with love of the party. And, certainly, for a few lianghui leaders, unqualified support for the regime does blend easily with Protestant faith.12 But more commonly official church or seminary leaders expressed support for the party or state through routine and superficial formulations that did not indicate Protestant interests were subordinate to the regime agenda. Still, routinely repeated, public professions of party support by official leaders helps perpetuate among official churchgoers the idea that Protestant churches worship freely under a hegemonic party-­state.13 Therefore, the first implication of this analysis is that because leaders in the Protestant associational structures express support (however perfunctorily) for the regime, they are also tied to the fate of the party-­state. This also means that the TSPM and CC associations become implicated in broader regime goals as well, such as to preserve political stability, because they are the only authorized, widespread, and public Protestant organizations recognized by the regime.14 Evidence of this responsibility is that seminary principals are focusing on how to avoid authoritarian church leaders by ‘democratiz[ing]’ church management through collective leadership structures with accountability systems.15 Official Protestant leaders have long been responsible for educating religious staff about religion policies that seek to allow ‘normal’ religious activities that do not harm public order. Although Protestant leaders may hedge their expressions of party support with qualifications cited from Biblical scriptures, because TSPM pastors regularly conduct activities under party-­state purview, it means that Protestants in official churches may well view lianghui structures and official churches as discredited when the regime collapses. In terms of civic consciousness, agreement among Protestant leaders inside and outside official structures appears to signal failure of the party-­state agenda. Although most interviewees judged observance of laws and regulations as

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   73 important, the motivation for their law-­abiding behavior comes from a common religious understanding, not from the party-­state’s promotion of shared political interests. Three consequences result from prioritizing religious teaching over political decree. First, Protestant leaders view being a good citizen as contingent on whether the rules and ordinances ‘violate faith’. Protestants see less or more evidence of violations depending on whether they work inside or outside official churches. Second, good citizenship is valued as a way to demonstrate the morality of a Christian lifestyle, especially because living virtuously is a channel for proselytizing non-­believers in a restrictive authoritarian setting. Third, good citizenship is also perceived as a weaker version of the much stricter standards imposed by Biblical scriptures. Both official and unofficial Protestant leaders insist that they would not obey rules and ordinances that contradict their faith but they draw different lines as to when requirements for church registration, prohibitions on preaching in public, and TSPM approval of church leaders constitute violations. Regardless of where the specific lines are drawn, at the most basic level, as greater numbers of Chinese become Protestants, the believers will also likely become better citizens. As long as regulations do not violate Biblical principles, Protestants on both sides of official church boundaries will continue to teach obedience to the state.16 Lastly, the cultural dimension of the nationalist agenda comprises, first, the varying Protestant responses to the effort of Theological Construction to ‘adapt religion to socialist society’ and, second, unregistered church leaders’ counter-­ framing of patriotism in terms of concrete service to individuals. Unregistered church leaders have taken the initial Theological Construction topics of weakening ‘justification by faith’ as characteristic of the whole reform agenda, whereas official church and seminary leaders now employ Theological Construction for goals ranging from broadening narrow fundamentalist stances to encouraging Protestant engagement in social service. Most strikingly, however, unregistered church leaders across the country interpret patriotism in terms of care for people rather than loyalty to the regime. In this version of patriotism, Protestants best demonstrate their love of country by attending to real needs of individual persons, rather than by proclaiming allegiance to an abstract ‘people’ (renmin) defined by the CCP. This view of patriotism-­as-particularistic-­service ties into activities that most unregistered church leaders see as fundamental to being a Christian. As one young preacher in Beijing explained above, A real Christian should love his country. . . . But the scope is even larger, he should love people. [The concept] ren is bigger than the country or nations. . . . So we can love the Tibetans, and do missions there. Why? Because we love them. (Interview, Beijing, July 2009) This perspective defines love for country as love for individuals, not a collective, abstract ‘people’ (renmin) whose content is filled by the Chinese Communist

74   C.T. Vala Party and whose interests the CCP claims to represent. Love for people is love for individuals who comprise the ‘nation’, such that even when specific activities (such as spreading Protestant faith among Tibetans) violate state regulations (on where evangelism may occur and who may engage in it), such activities remain the highest aspirations of a Protestant believer. For most Protestants within and outside official structures, religious teachings, albeit interpreted more or less strictly, trump political considerations in issues of patriotism. A third implication is that the CCP ‘patriotic’ agenda has been least successful in its most ambitious aspect of cultural transformation of Christianity to ‘adapt to socialist society’. Most official church pastors and seminary leaders reject Theological Construction as a tool to weaken core doctrines while unregistered church leaders question the party-­state’s entire framework for nationalism. This grassroots resistance suggests that the regime’s ‘patriotic’ agenda is triggering an equally strong backlash that means Protestants are less likely to accept the party-­state’s nationalist agenda now than before the effort to assimilate Christianity. Therefore, the party-­state’s patriotic agenda of state-­led nationalism appears to enjoy partial resonance rather than success. The regime has offered good citizenship as a way for Protestants to formulate their understanding of patriotism. Protestants have embraced it, even as they have put forward their own theological underpinnings for being good citizens. The party-­state has been less successful in altering or filling the particular content of patriotism to lead many Protestants, inside or outside official structures, to proclaim anything suggesting a ‘love of party’, even if, etymologically, the ‘country’ connotes the party, too. Protestants outside the official churches offer a counter-­ hegemonic option in seeing patriotism as concrete, particularistic aid to individuals, building on a strong, evangelical Biblical foundation. Rather than being divided by the regime agenda, Protestants inside and outside the official churches share a mostly conservative, evangelical approach to the Biblical scriptures that strengthens a common Protestant identity over against the party-­state’s state-­led nationalism. The Bible and the historical traditions of the Chinese church provide rich resources to resist the regime’s hegemony by reminding Protestants who they are. Patriotism, or nationalism, for many Chinese Protestants therefore involves an allegiance to regime that is subordinate to a higher loyalty to God.

Notes   1 Thanks to Janine Holc, Nadav Shelef, Teresa Wright, and Francis Lim for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.   2 Most interviews were recorded and translated; a few interviewees preferred to answer questions without any digital recording. In these cases, I remembered as much of the interviews as possible and wrote down details after the interviews.   3 I am not adopting Gramsci’s view of the clergy as ‘traditional intellectuals’ who automatically support the regime, as the Catholic priesthood did in Italy in his day. As Timothy Cheek points out in a study of the ‘gaps’ in contemporary scholarly

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   75 applications of civil society to China, Gramsci’s hegemony theory can elucidate much state-­society behavior if his assumptions about class are relaxed. See Cheek 1998: 219–254. Instruction by leaders does not automatically translate into congregations’ acceptance, as studies of subalternates in other settings have made clear.   4 Officials keenly recognize preaching’s powerful impact on congregations, as one provincial Religious Affairs Bureau director lamented that [we] still have no good educational form that can reach such a universal level as the 15 million person-­times [assuming over 3,000 sites with an average 100 people per site and 50 weeks of preaching] of preaching given by preachers every year in the province. (Zhou 2002: 150)   5 According to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of World Religions, China has 23 million Protestants in 2010 (Research Group of Institute of World Religions 2010: 191). However, these data are unreliable because the survey used only one item to assess whether believers lived in any household (whereas the Horizon Survey used multiple items) and, according to a Chinese religions scholar, the survey’s administration and interpretation were politically influenced. A re-­examination of the Horizon Survey estimated the total population at 70 million Protestants. See Stark et al. 2011.   6 The PRC Constitution translates the term guojia as nation, state, and country in the English version. Compare ‘Constitution of the People’s Republic of China’, People’s Daily online, accessed on 9 July 2011, http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/ constitution.html, and ‘Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xianfa’, accessed on 9 July 2011, www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2004/content_62714.htm.   7 I adapt three of He and Guo’s four components: ‘statist and socialist identity’, ‘cultural identity’, and ‘civic and territorial identity’, ignoring ‘Han identity’ because all respondents were Han. I combine socialist ideology into state-­led nationalism, maintain civic consciousness, and add elements of cultural transformation.   8 Notice that Ye Xiaowen uses the cultural nationalist term minzu for Chinese peoples or nation when seeking to stress pride in China as an enduring civilization for all ethnic groups, but switches to the socialist term renmin for peoples when stressing state-­led nationalist ideas that Protestants should be loyal to the party.   9 This conceptualization of state-­led nationalism has at least two major problems: first, if Christian culture is a kind of Western culture and Chinese civilization has been unbroken for thousands of years, surely Communism must also be recognized as a distinctly European cultural break in Chinese civilization? Second, he neglects to recognize that Christian churches were ‘swept clean’ of imperialism by the establishment of the Three Self Patriotic Movement in the 1950s. 10 Oddly, Peter Gries in his 2004 book on China’s New Nationalism, Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy pays scant attention to the distinction between nationalism and patriotism, mentioning it in a single chapter on popular nationalism (see p. 133 especially). 11 Support, however, doesn’t mean unqualified subordination, because this principal has also deftly advanced church interests against what he perceived as the local state’s abuse of power. 12 The Harbin lianghui leadership insisted that believers enjoy domestic freedom and that foreign infiltration, rather than poor clergy training as many leaders say, is the top challenge to official churches (Interview, Harbin, July 2009). 13 In 2002, the Harbin municipal lianghui leader urged Protestants at the opening ceremony for a new church to study the spirit of the recent Chinese Communist Party Congress. Author’s observation, Shuangcheng, November 2002. 14 In the last five years, a new stream of unregistered, public churches has also emerged in Beijing, Shanghai, and other major cities. See Moll 2008.

76   C.T. Vala 15 The Hunan Provincial Christian Council president said that church management is the ‘biggest challenge’ (Interview, Changsha, September 2010). One example of the church literature addressing this need is Wang 2008, Church Ministry Management. 16 Interestingly, unregistered church leaders and some TSPM preachers justify unrestricted evangelism by appealing to the Chinese Constitution’s statutes on protection of religious freedom over restrictive national or local regulations (Interview, Harbin, June 2006).

References Carnes, T. (2006) ‘China’s New Legal Eagles’, Christianity Today. Online. Available: www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/september/39.106.html (accessed October 22, 2011). Chan, K.-K. and E. Carlson (2005) Religious Freedom in China: Policy, Administration, and Regulation, Santa Barbara, CA: Institute for the Study of American Religion. Cheek, T. (1998) ‘From Market to Democracy in China: Gaps in the Civil Society Model’, in J. Lindau and T. Cheek (eds) Market Economics and Political Change: Comparing China and Mexico, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Chen, D.W. (2009) ‘How the Family of a Dissident Fled China’, New York Times (9 May 2009). Online. Available: www.nytimes.com/2009/05/10/world/asia/10dissident.html (accessed August 28, 2009). Dunch, R. (2008) ‘Christianity and ‘Adaptation to Socialism’’, in M.Y. Yang (ed.) Chinese Religiosities, Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation, Berkeley, CA: University of California. Fang, Y. (2010) ‘The Second Plenum of this National Lianghui Committee Opens in Shanghai’, April 9, 2010. Online. Available: www.ccctspm.org/news/ccctspm/2010/49/1049661. html (accessed November 30, 2010). Gong, X. (2003) Shehuizhuyi yu Zongjiao [Socialism and Religion], Beijing: Zongjiao Wenhua Chubanshe. Gries, P.H. (2004) China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy, Berkeley, CA: University of California. Guo, Y. (2004) Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China: The Search for National Identity under Reform, New York: RoutledgeCurzon. He, B. and Y. Guo (2000) Nationalism, National Identity, and Democratization in China, Brookfield, VT: Ashgate. Gramsci, A. (1971; 1999) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, edited by Q. Hoare and G. Nowell-­Smith, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Horizon Research (2007) Horizon Life Satisfaction Survey. Jacobs, A. (2009) ‘Arrest in China Rattles Backers of Legal Rights’, New York Times (August 9, 2009). Online. Available: www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/world/asia/10rights. html (accessed August 28, 2009). Jiang, Z. (2003) ‘Gaodu Zhongshi Minzu Zongjiao Gongzuo [Greatly Stress Ethnic Minority and Religious Work (November 7, 1993)]’, in Central Party Committee and State Council Religious Affairs Bureau (eds) Selections of Documents from Religious Work in the New Era, Beijing: Zongjiao Wenhua Chubanshe. Kindopp, J. (2004) The Politics of Protestantism in Contemporary China: State Control, Civil Society, and Social Movement in a Single Party-­State, unpublished PhD thesis, George Washington University. Laitin, D. (1986) Hegemony and Culture: Politics and Religious Change Among the Yoruba, University of Chicago Press. Metzger, T. (1977) Escape from Predicament, New York: Columbia Press.

Protestant reactions to nationalism agenda   77 Moll, R. (2008) ‘Great Leap Forward, China is Changing and So Is Its Church. How New Believers are Shaping Society in Untold Ways’, Christianity Today (May 19, 2008). Online. Available: www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/May/19.22.html (accessed May 23, 2008). Research Group of Institute of World Religions (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) (2010) ‘Zhongguo Jidujiao Ruhu Wenjuan Diaocha Baogao [An In-­House Questionnaire Survey on Christianity in China]’, in Zhongguo Zongjiao Baogao (2010) [Annual Report on China’s Religions (2010)], Beijing: Shehuikexue Wenxian Chubanshe. Second Plenum of Eleventh National People’s Congress (2009) ‘List of National People’s Congress representatives for Heilongjiang Province’ (March 9, 2009). Online. Avail­ able: www.npc.gov.cn/huiyi/dbdh/11_2/gdbtzy/2009–03/02/content_1480313.htm (accessed November 30, 2010). Stark, R., B. Johnson, and C. Mencken (2011) ‘Counting China’s Christians’, First Things (June 2011). Online. Available: www.firstthings.com/print/article/2011/05/ counting-­chinarsquos-christians (accessed June 18, 2011). Townsend, J. (1996) ‘Chinese Nationalism’, in J. Unger (ed.) Chinese Nationalism, Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe. Vala, C.T. (2009a) ‘Monopolizing Protestantism through Church Leadership, 1949–1958’, presentation at American Society of Church History Annual Conference, New York City. Vala, C.T. (2009b) ‘Pathways to the Pulpit, Leadership Training in ‘Patriotic’ and Unregistered Chinese Protestant Churches’, in Y. Ashiwa and D.L. Wank (eds) Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, Stanford University Press. Wang, A. (ed.) (2008) Church Ministry Management [Jiaohui Shigong Guanli], Beijing: Zongjiao Wenhua Chubanshe. Wu, Y.T. (1963) ‘The Present-­Day Tragedy of Christianity’, in F.P. Jones (ed.) Documents of the Three-­Self Movement: Source Materials for the Study of the Protestant Church in Communist China, New York: National Council of Churches in the USA. Yang, F. (2006) ‘The Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China’, Sociological Quarterly, 47: 93–122. Ye, X. (2008) ‘Zai Zhongguo Jidujiao Dibaci Daibiaohuiyishang De Jianghua [Talk at the Eighth National Christian Representatives Meeting]’ (January 9, 2008), Beijing, ­People’s Republic of China. Zhao, S. (1998) ‘A State-­Led Nationalism: The Patriotic Education Campaign in Post-­ Tiananmen China’, Communist and Post-­Communist Studies, 31(3): 287–302. Zhao, T. and W. Zhuang (1997) Dangdai Zhongguo Jidujiao Fazhanshi, 1949–1997 [A History of Christianity in Socialist China, 1949–1997], Taipei, Taiwan: CMI Publishing. Zheng, Y. (1999) Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China: Modernization, Identity, and International Relations, New York: Cambridge University. Zhongguo Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Yundong Weiyuanhui Zhongguo Jidujiao Xiehui [National Protestant Three-­Self Patriotic Movement Committee and China Christian Council] (2006) Jidujiao Aiguozhuyi Jiaocheng (Shiyongben) [Protestant Patriotic Curriculum (Trial Edition)], Beijing: Zongjiao Wenhua Chubanshe. Zhou, J. (2002) Zongjiao Gongzuo Tansuo [Investigation into Religious Work], Beijing: Zongjiao Wenhua Chubanshe.

5 Trying to make sense of history Chinese Christian traditions of countercultural belief and their theological and political interpretation of past and present history Tobias Brandner1 It is arguable that there has never been a time where a society has changed as dramatically and rapidly as China in the past 25 years. And never has change in a society affected so many people as deeply and completely as in present-­day China. The speed, ubiquity, and thoroughness of the change happening in recent decades have led people to call for new interpretations of history and of China’s role and position in it. This question is equally asked by political, economic, and cultural analysts as by Christians. Reflecting on the present naturally leads to reflection on the past: How is the present connected with it? Or does the present bring something radically new? When Chinese Christians reflect about the present and the past, they find themselves in a contradictory situation. On one hand, they enjoy, together with other people in China, the fruits of the tremendous social changes that also allow greater freedom to share one’s religious belief. On the other hand, they experience the relative freedom they gained as fragile and often accompanied by hostility and suspicion. They recognize the ambivalence of social change, as not only a blessing, but at the same time contributing to a growing disintegration of society. This chapter introduces three interpretations of Chinese history offered by Christian groups or individuals. They attempt to make sense of recent history and the less recent past, of the radical changes of the last three decades and of the emerging contradictions. These historical constructs try to come to terms with past suffering while at the same time shedding light on the question where Christians stand in this process of change. Such interpretations of history integrate past suffering, explain the salvation historical position and role of Christians, give eschatological significance to the present time, develop a political theology, and offer a grand narrative that integrates conflicting elements of a rapidly changing society in an integral whole. This chapter focuses on independent Christians’ interpretations of history because these Christians stand in a more delicate relationship to the established institutions of government and party-­controlled society than do the registered churches. The term ‘independent Christianity’ (similar to the term ‘autonomous Christian communities’ as suggested by Hunter and Chan 1993: 81ff.) is used in

Trying to make sense of history   79 a non-­exclusivist and broad sense, referring to so-­called house churches without being restricted to them. Many Christians from registered churches interpret the contradictions of the present time similarly. I use the term to describe Christian religious expressions that stand in critical distance from the established and state- or party-­controlled Christian religiosity. The first example to be presented is an interpretation of history offered by the Back to Jerusalem Movement (BJM), a revivalist missionary movement that is linked to millenarian urgency and a covenantal understanding of the role of Chinese Christians. The second example is an interpretation of Chinese history presented in a book and DVD, China’s Confession, produced by Yuan Zhiming, who was part of the dissenting movement of 1989. The view of history expressed in these two publications has been popular among Chinese Christians both inside and outside China. The third example is the vision of Ren Bumei who, like Yuan, was involved in the dissenting movement of 1989. On the surface, his vision appears to stand simply in the tradition of the Protestant Reformers’ understanding of human corruption. However, it fascinates because of his thorough and deeply critical understanding of the history of China. Although the described historical visions have been developed in interaction with a broader revivalist Christian constituency beyond China, they do express a significant view of present-­day Chinese Christians’ self-­understanding that responds to a specific time and social context. The findings of this essay echo those of Lian Xi (Lian 2010) who described how millenarian expectations were a driving force behind Chinese indigenous groups (the True Jesus Church, the Jesus Family, the Shandong Revival) and indigenous Christian leaders (Wang Mingdao, John Sung, Watchman Nee). A concluding section summarizes the achievements of countercultural historical interpretations, sets them in a context of countercultural history in China, and critically assesses them.

A premillennial-­covenantal vision: the Back to Jerusalem Movement The Back to Jerusalem Movement (BJM) is a Christian movement that originally emerged from independent Chinese churches like the Jesus Family (Deng 2005: 452ff.; Bays 1996: 263–268; Lian 2010: 64–84) in Shandong Province in the 1920s, the Northwest Spiritual Movement, or groups in central Henan Province. A thorough analysis of this movement has been presented by this author in another context (Brandner 2009).2 It thus suffices at this point to give a short summary. BJM interprets the history of Christianity as a westward movement. It understands that the spread of the gospel started from Jerusalem from where it moved westward to the ends of the earth. Through a history of suffering and persecution, the gospel spread into central, northern, and western Europe and North Africa, and later to central and southern Africa, the Americas, the islands of the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and parts of Asia, until finally reaching

80   T. Brandner China (Brandner 2009: 319). That this historical narration simply ignores the equally important eastward movement of early Christian faith (see for this Moffett 1998)2 does not need to concern us here because our purpose is simply to understand what vision BJM communicates through its historical outline. BJM believes that the most important parts of the world still to become Christian are located west and south of China and deduces that its specific historical mission must be focused there: the task for Chinese Christians is to bring the gospel to this least evangelized area, the so-­called 10/40 window, a term popular among Evangelical Christians to describe the latitudinal band of the globe between ten and 40 degrees north of the equator where Christianity is marginal. By carrying the gospel back to its starting point in Jerusalem and thus fulfilling Christ’s call to preach the gospel all over the world, the present era may come to its conclusion. The historical vision of BJM carries important psychological implications. Many Christians in China ask why they received the gospel so late and what their purpose within God’s history of salvation is. BJM gives a reassuring answer: it all had a deeper purpose. China has its role not at the beginning of God’s history of salvation, but at its end, by bringing the gospel to its starting point and thus fulfilling the history of salvation. Such a narration integrates a long history of political humiliation and suffering, both foreign and self-­made. God has chosen China for this task precisely because Chinese Christians are well molded by their long history of persecution. The millenarian vision of carrying the gospel to its starting point and thus to usher in the end of time is linked to a belief in a special election of Chinese Christians. The covenantal relationships of God with the nations have shifted parallel to the spread of Christianity from Israel to the Church of Rome, later to the Reformers in Wittenberg, Zurich, or Geneva, and more recently the United States. The present time sees God’s covenantal relationship move to China. This idea strengthens an emerging Chinese self-­confidence that, parallel to China’s rise in political power, seeks a meaningful role for China in the religious and spiritual realm (Brandner 2009: 323f.). The historical vision of BJM provides purpose and comfort in a context where Christians continue to experience a government that is hostile to the exercise of religious belief outside government-­controlled channels. BJM offers a vision that is thoroughly different from the turmoil of the past century and from the values of the past 30 years of economic liberalization. It connects pessimism regarding the whole of secular history and a feeling of decay on the one hand with faith in the significance of the Christian revival that is happening in present-­day China on the other. This is in short form how BJM makes sense of history and how it integrates the suffering of past and present and the tremendous changes of the spiritual landscape into a grand narrative. The next example of modern Christian interpretation of Christian history, the one by Yuan Zhiming, shows similarities with BJM while at the same time a different overall orientation when integrating the contradictions of history into a grand narrative.

Trying to make sense of history   81

God’s intimate connection with Chinese history: China’s confession Yuan Zhiming first became known to a broader public through his script for a television series The Yellow River Eulogy that was broadcast and widely viewed during the liberal climate of the spring of 1989, as peaceful demonstrators started to gather at Tiananmen Square. Under the guise of a story about corruption and intrigues at the imperial court, the Yellow River Eulogy told the story of present-­day China, in a way that was easily recognizable. After the massacre on 4 June 1989, Yuan Zhiming was labeled as an inciter of the protests and was forced into exile in the USA. Highly trained in the thoughts of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, he had become disillusioned by the Communist Party and its failure to overcome corruption and to bring political reform. While continuing to engage in the largely exiled political reform movement, he became a Christian – like a good number of other dissidents, exiled former party members and supporters of the Tiananmen movement, among them Zhang Boli, Ren Bumei, or Yu Jie, and possibly the now jailed Liu Xiaobo – and started to study theology at the Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.3 China’s Confession, first written as a book and published 1998 (Yuan Zhiming 1999), has subsequently been published as a video and is easily accessible through the internet.4 Further material is taken from an article on ‘God and China’, equally published and accessible on the internet. The core question that Yuan Zhiming addresses is whether there is a relationship between the Christian God and the history of the Chinese people and where God was during the past 5,000 years (Yuan, ‘God and China’, paragraph 1).5 His answer in China’s Confession is that God was always and from the very beginning present in the Chinese history. God’s history with Israel has its parallel in God’s history with China. Culture and history evolved in parallel along the banks of the Jordan and Yellow rivers, both histories rooted in one origin, the origin of humankind, God’s creation and his covenant with Noah (A17). Yuan’s historical concept builds on the Roman Catholic theology of accommodation and in particular the method of figurism that the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries used in their encounter with China (von Collani 1996: 103ff.). This concept is based on the idea of an original revelation of God in China. Yuan discovers God’s presence in China’s earliest history by showing links between the biblical narration and the history of China, by showing the virtue of China’s ancient rulers and by identifying parallels between biblical teachings and the teachings of the great Chinese philosophers. To give some examples: •

The Bible tells how God finished his creation in six days and rested on the seventh day (A9). The Chinese classic, ‘Zhou Yi’, states that ‘the way of the heavens comes around in seven days’ (A9).

82   T. Brandner •

•

The story of the two trees in the garden, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil has a parallel in the Chinese text ‘The Book of Mountains and Seas’ that similarly speaks of a tree of immortality and a tree of wisdom (A11). The biblical story of the flood is remembered in the classical Chinese story of a person named Gong Gong whose revolt brought divine judgment and led the columns supporting heaven to collapse and bring water covering the entire earth (A13).

The memory of God’s earliest encounters with humankind is, according to Yuan and the figurism of the Jesuits, not only preserved in the myths of Chinese culture, but similarly in the beautiful Chinese characters. They reveal a deep knowledge of God, be it in the character for ‘greed’, 婪 lan, that shows a woman standing under two trees (A19), in the character for ‘big boat’, 船 chuan, showing a boat with eight people (A20), or, more puzzling, in the character for ‘justice’ that depicts the symbol for ‘I’, 我 wo, being put underneath the symbol for ‘lamb’, 羊 yang, making it 義 yi (more examples can be found in von Collani 1996: 123f.). Even though such an interpretation of the Chinese characters is linguistically and etymologically hard to support, it is a creative interpretation from a perspective that assumes an original revelation to the people in China or an original unity of humankind before being scattered over the entire world following the construction of the tower of Babel. Yet, the godliness of the early culture did not prevail and filial piety and ancestral worship usurped the role of God (A35). After 2,500 years of ancient Chinese belief that they were the sons of God who personally tended to every detail of his creation (A46), a long history of decline began. The narrator of the movie sighs: Oh, Chinese! You who hold high the principle of filial piety, do you know that your ancestors used to revere God piously? Do you really know? You travel thousands of miles to worship Emperor Huang, but you do not worship God whom Emperor Huang himself worshipped. Is this not faulty and sad? (Video, 13: 20ff.) Only some of the rituals (A37ff.) and the voices of the great philosophers preserved an idea of the early knowledge of God. The period of the Warring States, lasting from the fifth to the third century bc, changed China deeply. ‘Purity and simplicity vanished. Anarchy and bloodshed were encouraged’ (A47). With Confucius we sigh: ‘The great Dao has now faded and man has fallen’ (Video, 15:09ff.). It is from this point on that the tragedy of Chinese history, the history of fallen humankind in China, unfolds: the emperors usurped the throne of God. The Chinese were continuously fearful of the god who sits on the palace throne – the emperor (B42). It is a history of bloodshed and of millions of lives being

Trying to make sense of history   83 sacrificed and families scattered all over China so that one man, the emperor, can dominate the land (B49). History develops within a constant pattern of power and control: godless men regard themselves as God (B57). Similar to the prophets in ancient Israel, only a small number of righteous people tried to bring reform and to end the tragedy of the cycle of violence and man’s self-­ worshipping, yet all came to tragic ends (B62). Episodes 3 and 4 tell about several attempts to transform Chinese society, some even introducing the laws of God to China, for China kept yearning for salvation and a restoration of primitive godliness. It is against this background that China received Buddhism (C1ff.) and later Roman Catholic missionaries. Yet, all these attempts ended unsuccessfully. Either they turned into a cult, like the Taiping rebellion (D3–6), or they only introduced superficial changes without changing the spiritual fabric of the Chinese society, like the Westernization movement (D11). Only with Sun Yat-­sen did China return to the God (D32), who had first revealed himself in the earliest time of Chinese history. However, these moments of opportunity for thorough change failed when military strongmen with their own hidden agendas took over (D36). The history of Communist China, episode 5, appears like a fast replay of 2,500 years of turmoil (E2) and fits into a long history of autocrats, atheism, rebellion, and violence (D42–44). Mao brutally annihilated all possible political rivals (E3ff.) so that he could become China’s undisputed God (E12). The economic reforms initiated by Deng and the subsequent economic boom could not solve the root problem (E32), not even introducing democracy could resolve it, for the root problem is a spiritual problem. Yuan learnt this lesson when witnessing how the exiled Chinese dissidents who previously had jointly called for democracy became deeply split when in the West (E35). Yuan affirms that democracy needs to grow out of a firm faith in God, a faith in the equality of mankind before God, in the equality of sinful human beings who all have fallen short of his glory. Only then will it lead to equality between leaders and citizens and respect for both supporters and opponents (E36–41). This understanding of democracy as being necessary due to the sinful nature of human beings reflects a thoroughly Reformed theology, possibly imbibed during his studies at the Jackson seminary, that stands in contrast to the enthusiastic spirit of the French Revolution and its natural-­philosophical foundation of democracy. What many present-­day Chinese people regard as an economic boom offering unimagined new opportunities is in fact a deep spiritual crisis where people put their faith in power, pleasure, and the pursuit of personal gain (E43). Economic development possibly causes deeper harm to China than the Cultural Revolution as it corrupts the hearts of men (E49). It is against this backdrop that Chinese turn increasingly to God and China, the land of God – Shenzhou – returns to its original destiny (E56–63). Yuan tells a story of Chinese rebellion against the God who had at the earliest time revealed himself to China, but was subsequently usurped by sinful men who consistently suppressed the memory of this God. Throughout this history there were several moments where China was coming very close to repent and turn back to God; there were several people who tried to lead China back to God;

84   T. Brandner and there was, underneath the surface, a deep yearning to fill the void and to find salvation. Yet, each attempt to change and repent failed and led to a new person raising and claiming the place of God. Each reform failed because it did not address the spiritual root cause of China’s tragedy. Several characteristics can be identified in this historical outline: 1 2

3 4

History is overall described as a history of decline. The tragedy of this history accelerates and deepens as history approaches the more recent past. The goal of history is the restoration of the past. The historical outline believes in God’s original revelation in the Chinese context and claims a harmonious past of godly life that needs to be regained. This gives the historical account an overall conservative tone despite politically progressive elements and a deep understanding of the roots of democracy. Underneath the tragic history and in contrast to it, there appears a growing counter movement in the form of the recent growth of Christianity in China. The present time is of decisive eschatological significance as the two contrasting movements of historical decline and growth of the Christian churches encounter each other.

History as cycle of catastrophes: Ren Bumei The third example of a critical and independent interpretation of China’s history comes from Ren Bumei, born 1967 in Heilongjiang province. While studying at the Beijing Renmin University, he became involved in the Tiananmen movement. After its suppression he stayed in China and eventually, around 2004, became a Christian. He has since been an independent intellectual and Christian thinker and has been studying at Concordia Lutheran Seminary in Edmonton, Canada. He edited several books, but due to difficulties publishing in China, he has mainly published on the internet.6 Only his most recent and most comprehensive volume has been published in Hong Kong under the title Catastrophism: Chinese People’s Restless Wandering and Redemption. In this book, Ren recounts the history of China as a continuous and tragic history of all kinds of catastrophes, natural and man-­made, famine and power struggles, turmoil and hostility, killing and violence. Because of this history of catastrophes, all Chinese effectively turned into refugees (zaimin). Life as refugee has fundamentally shaped the Chinese spirit, mindset, and culture overall. Ren calls it a ‘refugees’ mentality’ (Ren 2010: 127–169, chapter 4). The refugee mentality is characterized by an attitude of constant struggle for survival due to a shortage of resources (Ren 2010: 28). Even though China has entered a new historical period and seen tremendous economic development over the past years, this mindset has survived and still shapes people’s life and Chinese culture. It can be experienced even in affluent societies such as Hong Kong or in many cities in China. Some people have described the mentality of Hong Kong people as one of bok meng (搏命, colloquial Cantonese, Mandarin ping ming 拼 命), meaning ‘to find oneself in a constant struggle for survival’. The term

Trying to make sense of history   85 describes the willingness to work excessively hard, even at the risk of one’s life, and the readiness to accept high risk in business practice, hoping to gain a lot while possibly losing everything. This attitude is close to what Ren describes as refugee mentality. From this hermeneutical perspective, Ren gives an account of Chinese culture, history, psychology, and spirituality. Chinese religion, like all of Chinese culture, is subject to this refugee mentality. One of the foremost purposes of religion is simply to receive backing from supernatural powers. Ren thus highlights how religion in China has a strongly utilitarian perspective. The refugee mentality not only affects religious life in general, but equally Christian faith and appears as an impediment to the spread of Christian faith, because a mindset of standing in a constant struggle for survival and an obsession with immediate benefit keeps people from Christian faith. Even where Christianity is successful, it is often embraced with a utilitarian purpose, either in the hope of securing protection or to receive a special blessing from a supernatural power. Ren’s overall pessimistic outlook and his understanding of how the refugee mentality equally affected Christian faith make him more critical about the present religious situation than BJM or Yuan. He does partly build on the historical perspective of Back to Jerusalem when he depicts Christian history as unfolding in five stages, the last stage being the extension of Christianity to Jerusalem that brings the journey of the gospel to an end (Ren 2010: 15ff.). However, there is less triumphalism regarding the present growth and potential of Christianity in China. Ren sees China not so much in a history of decline that would end in a final and dramatic catastrophe, as common countercultural pessimists assume, but rather caught and constantly oscillating in a cycle of catastrophes (see the chart in Ren 2010: 348). Although in the long run there is some progress due to improvements in production and in the protection against disasters, there is overall only minor growth because the cyclical disasters destroy most of the gains made and one has to start from nearly the bottom again (Ren 2010: 348–349). Ren understands the present globalization as a process of growing sinicization (zhongguo hua) that means the world being increasingly shaped by Chinese influence. Sinicization means both that catastrophes will become more common and also that the refugee mentality will be globalized and turned into a ‘refugee-­ ization’ of the world (Ren 2010: 352). The slender development that happens is negligible because overall history remains trapped in catastrophe and corruption. This also includes the recent years of economic liberalization. The economic reforms since the 1980s are simply elements of a limited modernization (Ren 2010: 355–358) that fails to overcome the tragic nature of Chinese history. The dominant militarism has suppressed all steps toward thorough liberalization. A break from this tragic nature of history could only come through fundamental spiritual transformation that would change the refugee mentality of the Chinese people. Redemption for refugees means being sought after and found, being called back from exile in the Far East (Ren 2010: 384). This process is the redemption that happens in Christ. The process of redemption is discussed in the second last section of the book in chapter 7 under the title Grand History: Creation, Fall,

86   T. Brandner Salvation, Regeneration (Ren 2010: 384ff.). The Word became flesh and entered the world to bring the lost Chinese back to Christ (Ren 2010: 384). God’s redemptive history with the Chinese refugees is a history of seeking the lost refugees and turning them into an elected people (Ren 2010: 386). At this point, Ren introduces an interesting interpretation of an earlier westward movement in Chinese history: He believes that Christ’s birth triggered a mysterious shock effect throughout the world that also reached China and caused China to turn suddenly to the West. While Chinese people previously sought salvation and immortality rather in the East (Ren 2010: 389), exactly around the time of Jesus’ death they started to turn to the West. At the same time, they turned from a pragmatic and inner-­worldly form of Confucianism to a more metaphysical concern. Indeed, it was the Han Emperor Liu Zhuang (ad 28–75), the second emperor of the Chinese Eastern Han Dynasty, also known as Emperor Ming of Han, who first sent people westward to seek God. However, by mistake they went to India instead of going to the Middle East. As a result, not Christianity, but Buddhism entered China and began to shape Chinese culture (Ren 2010: 389f.). Ren understands salvation as going far beyond a narrow individual concern. Although his account lacks particularity and simply makes reference to a rather randomly constructed graphic concept of a geographical cross centering on Jerusalem (Ren 2010: 385), it is worthy of note that Ren does not give China a particular eschatological role that elevates her significance in the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation. China is simply part of God’s history for the whole world. Redemption of the people in China may be different from redemption elsewhere only in that it needs to respond to its peculiar refugee mentality. On the surface, Ren appears to be standing essentially in the tradition of the Reformers’ teaching on the radical corruption of humankind and mankind’s total submission under the power of sin. There is little salvation-­historical development, little expectation regarding an imminent change of history, and little excitement about the role of Christians in the transformation of history. Rather, he reflects a dialectical understanding of history where any point of history stands in equal distance from salvation. Yet, remarkably, Ren presents, similar to BJM and Yuan, a new political assertiveness and outspokenness that is atypical for the independent Christian tradition in China. Earlier representatives of this tradition used to be strictly apolitical in their public and theological statements. Only implicitly, by rejecting cooperation with official church or government structures, did they express a political position. Ren presents an explicit political theology that links Christian faith and an analysis of the power of sin with an interesting and sharp analysis of Chinese history.

Conclusion: countercultural interpretation of history and its dangers The historical visions of BJM, of Yuan Zhiming, and of Ren Bumei are recent examples that try to make sense of the profound transformation processes that China has undergone in the past century, of tremendous suffering and more

Trying to make sense of history   87 recent economic and spiritual growth. They see history as in a process of decline and hope that a radical conversion would end this tragic history. The contrasting developments give the present time its significance. These modern examples are part of a long tradition of critical, countercultural, and often millenarian historical interpretation by dissenting religious groups that runs throughout Chinese history. The term ‘counterculture’ describes a culture with values and habits that run counter to those of established society. It is a sociological term attributed to Theodore Roszak (1995) who used it to describe the 1960s rebellion of student radicals and hippies in the US and Western Europe. Since Roszak, the term has mainly been used to describe groups that stand in contrast to social conventions and governmental constraints, challenge authoritarianism, and embrace individual and social change (Ken Goffman 2004: 29). The term may equally be used more broadly to refer to all cultural, religious, or ideological expressions brought forth by groups that stand in critical contrast to the political or cultural elite or mainstream. Many countercultural religious groups have a millenarian theology. Millenarianism stands in critical opposition to the cultural or political mainstream and suggests a significant role for a small group of dissenting Christians in the unfolding of the end of history. Chinese history has produced several movements that carry countercultural and millenarian interpretations of history. They were all responses to an experience of powerlessness and a hope of empowerment that responded to the disempowering experience of life in a totalitarian state. The most famous one is the Taiping Movement (1836–64) that combined Christian syncretism with a millenarian ideology (see Spence 1996 and 1998). Similarly, the White Lotus Movement combined peasant-­based nationalism with a messianic hope for an imminent return of the Maitreya Buddha (Overmyer 1976: 73–89). A third example of messianic millenarianism in the Chinese tradition are Daoist sects of the late Han dynasty (Seidel 1970), among them the Heavenly Master (or Celestial Master, tianshi dao), around Sichuan, the Yellow Turbans, also known as Taiping Dao (taiping dao) in eastern China, and a group known through its core text, the ‘Sutra of the Transformations of Lao-­Tzu’ (Laozi bianhua jing). The countercultural interpretation of history can be understood as a discourse of empowerment that showed the moral corruption, the decay and eventual fragility of what appears to be so powerful. Repeatedly, as the history of sectarian upheavals shows, it turned into effective empowerment that turned forcefully against the ruling power. The comparison with millenarian movements throughout the history of China does not, however, mean that the Christian revivalist groups in the same way inspire rebellion. I agree with Lian Xi (Lian 2010: 242) that popular Christianity in China overall rather shuns political activism. Instead, the empowerment brought about by the described concepts of history signifies a disassociation from a world bound to perish and has a comforting and healing effect. Christians can regard themselves as cultural and political vanguard. Change is not coming through them, but through God himself.

88   T. Brandner The recurring pattern of a hope in an inner-­worldly radical change reflects a belief that history is indeed in a continuous decline and that the ancient time was the best. This view is not unique to countercultural or sectarian movements, but is shared by mainstream society, typically reflected in the Confucian sayings ren xin bu gu ‘the heart of man is not like in old times’ or shi feng ri xia ‘the world is going downwards day by day’. Today’s pessimism regarding the present age is nurtured by a past century of continuous turmoil and by a series of paradigm shifts that completely unsettled the people in China: 100 years ago from a centuries-­old imperial system to a republican system; sixty years ago from a long and devastating war to the strict government of the Communist Party; then, forty years ago, a decade of political and social turmoil during the Cultural Revolution, an attempt to eradicate all traditional values by condemning them as feudal; and finally, the introduction of economic liberalization in the past thirty years. This last shift is arguably the most thorough of all and has probably had the deepest impact on people’s livelihoods and experiences and stands in starkest contrast to all previously cherished values. Today, despite tremendous progress and the growing wealth of large parts of society, Chinese people still live in a highly unstable economic and political environment. They feel that the wider economic and political context is out of their control – subject to decision-­making powers in a far-­away centre or to economically powerful people out of common people’s reach. Many Chinese regard their government as remote and without connection to their actual needs. Loss of control, a feeling of heteronomy, being like a pawn in the hands of the powerful, dependence of livelihood on some far-­away economic and political powers and a simultaneous experience of social injustice foster a pessimism that makes people receptive to millenarian movements. Millenarianism turns the order of disempowerment upside down and turns the alienated individual apparently into a subject of history that stands at the forefront of social change. Although the spiritual and psychological role of such pessimistic millenarian and countercultural belief is clear, this reflection will conclude with three points of criticism: First, salvation history has its obvious downside. It has the tendency to suppress whatever does not fit into its salvation-­historical scheme, as, for example, seen in the construction of a historical vision by BJM that completely ignores the early Christian development towards the East. Such history does justice neither to the historical depth of Christianity in China nor to its many-­sidedness. Christianity in China – as elsewhere – is not a straight line. Second, millenarianism can easily be misused, particularly if linked to a leader with messianic aspirations, as often happens. The history of China (and elsewhere) shows ample evidence of such abuse. Emperors or would-­be emperors repeatedly appealed to the millenarian hopes of the people and presented themselves as messianic savior, as most recently shown in the messianism surrounding Mao Zedong. When a secular leader assumes a messianic role, his political power is reinforced by his religious charisma and his supernatural quality. The strength of Yuan Zhiming’s historical view is exactly his sensitivity to the tragic human claims of salvific power. Finally, the

Trying to make sense of history   89 counterculturalism of Christian revivalism is often deeply inconsistent and not aware of the forces and conditions that actually prepared the ground for its emergence. This inconsistency is particularly evident when Christian revivalist groups turn into a conservative force supporting the government, as in the ‘Love Singapore Campaign’ or the ‘Citywide Renewal in Hong Kong’, movements that back an aloof government and the business establishment. Among the factors that cause such shift from counterculturalism to submission, both push and pull factors may play a role. A government may be tempted to co-­opt such movements in order to shore up its legitimacy. At the same time, revivalist movements commonly experience a social upwards-­movement that brings them closer to social mainstream. It can well be imagined that a similar process could take place in China. The parallelism of BJM’s westward extension and the Chinese government’s ‘Go-­ West Campaign’ has already been pointed out (Brandner 2009: 325). Similar convergences might also take place elsewhere. The belief in a special salvation-­ historical role of Christianity can easily converge with the growing patriotic emphasis in official discourse to support social harmony. Yet, when severed from the alienating conditions that laid the foundations of this countercultural and counter-­political hope, countercultural movements turn into mainstream culture simply reflecting their values. Critical disassociation turns into submission to the logic of the dominant culture.

Notes 1 The article is a shortened and edited version of a first publication in the journal Studies in World Christianity 17.3 (2011): 216–236. It is reproduced here by kind permission of the publisher of the journal. 2 Further information to the history of the movement can be found on the website www. backtojerusalem.com, further in Paul Hattaway, Back to Jerusalem: Called to Complete the Great Commission, Carlisle, 2004. The movement became known to a broader public through the book by David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power, Washington D.C., 2003. One of the few academic sources about the movement preceding my own ana­ lysis is Kim-­Kwong Chan, ‘Missiological Implications of Chinese Christianity in a Globalized Context’, Quest, 4/2 (2005), 55–74. 3 Information regarding Chinese dissidents turning to Christian faith are widely circulated among Chinese Christian circles and on the internet. They cannot always be independently verified. Several former dissidents now serve in Christian ministry or have made explicit statements about their faith. See for a list of dissidents and their present whereabouts www.geni.com/projects/Chinese-­Dissidents (accessed on 3 July 2011). 4 As video www.prayerforallpeople.com/chinasconfession.html; in text form providing a summary of the text of the video www.chinasoul.org/index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=3358%3Achinas-confession-­script-episode-­1&catid=252%3Ayswd& Itemid=104&lang=en-­gb) (accessed on 13 August 2011). The notes in brackets refer to the video indicating the time or mostly, when marked with a letter of the alphabet, to this latter source. 5 (accessed on 5 August 2010). 6 See www.boxun.com/hero/renbm/ (accessed on 5 August 2010) where a collection of his publications can be found.

90   T. Brandner

References Bays, D.H. (1996) ‘The Rise of an Indigenous Chinese Christianity’, in D.H. Bays (ed.) Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 263–268. Brandner, T. (2009) ‘Mission, Millennium, and Politics: A Continuation of the History of Salvation – from the East’, Missiology: An International Review (Quarterly Journal of the American Society for Missiology), 47/3: 317–332. Deng, Z.M. (2005) ‘Indigenous Chinese Pentecostal Denominations’, in A. Anderson and E. Tang (eds) Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, Costa Mesa, CA: Regnum, 437–466. Goffman, K. (aka R.U. Sirius) and Dan Joy (2004) Counterculture through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House, New York: Villard Books. Hunter, A. and K.K. Chan (1993) Protestantism in Contemporary China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lian, X. (2010) Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China, New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Lutz, J.G. (2008) Opening China: Karl F.A. Gützlaff and Sino-­Western Relations, 1827–1852, Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. Moffett, S.H. (1998) A History of Christianity in Asia. Volume I: Beginnings to 1500, 2nd edn, New York: Orbis Books. Overmyer, D.L. (1976) Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Ren, B.M. (2010) Zai bian lun. Zhong guo ren liu qin piao dang ji qi jiu shu, Xiang Gang: Guo ji zheng zhu xie hui. Roszak, T. (1995) [1969] The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition, Berkeley: University of California Press. Seidel, A.K. (1970) ‘The Image of the Perfect Ruler in Early Taoist Messianism: Lao Tzu and Li Hung’, History of Religion, 9(2/3): 216–247. Spence, J.D. (1996) God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan, New York: W.W. Norton. Spence, J.D. (1998) The Taiping Vision of a Christian China 1836–1864, Waco, Texas: Markham Press Fund. von Collani, C. (1996) ‘Figurismus – Anfang und Ende einer kontextuellen Theologie in China’, in R. Malek (ed.) ‘Fallbeispiel’ China. Ökumenische Beiträge zu Religion, Theologie und Kirche im chinesischen Kontext, Sankt Augustin: Steyler Verlag, 89–127. Yuan, Z.M. (1999) Shenzhou Chanhui Lu. Shangdi yu wuqian nian Zhongguo, Petaluma, CA: Shenzhou chuban gongsi.

6 Contemporary Christianity and the religiosity of popular Chinese cinema Yam Chi-­Keung

Introduction: the triple lacuna of religion and Chinese cinema The religious dimension of Chinese cinema is a ‘triple lacuna’ in contemporary scholarship which is conspicuously underrepresented in, or even totally missing from, three academic fields that could be related to such endeavour – the study of religion in China, the study of Chinese cinema, and the interdisciplinary study of film and religion. Scholars who study religion in China have engaged various cultural forms, particularly Chinese literature, in their works, but significant endeavour involving Chinese film is yet to emerge from this sector. Understandably, few (if any) scholars in this field are expert in cinema study, and their knowledge of film seldom goes beyond personal interest as cinema-­goers. In the field of cinema study, although the study of Chinese cinema has been flourishing for two decades or so, its religious aspect has virtually been untouched. Recent scholarly books on Chinese cinema cover a broad range of subjects, such as its relationship to socio-­ cultural-political changes (Zhu 2003; Zhang 2007), its relation to ecological issues (Lu and Mi 2009), as well as its economic and industrial dimensions (Zhu and Rosen 2010). Works that explore the religious are yet to be seen, however. This indicates a conspicuous lack of interest in religious matters among film scholars, rather than the lack of religion-­related content in Chinese films. While the interdisciplinary study of film and religion is gradually shifting away from the kind of Euro-­American-centrism from a decade ago, Chinese cinema is still outside of the picture. In their monumental work in the field, Mitchell and Plate suggest that this absence is probably due to the lack of religious content in contemporary Chinese film (Mitchell and Plate 2007: 71). I would argue, however, that the true reason is actually the lack of expertise who can work with religion and Chinese films. In short, while the interdisciplinary study of religion and Chinese cinema can be related to at least three prominent academic disciplines, it is yet relatively untouched. This chapter, then, is one step in my ongoing effort in addressing this ‘triple lacuna’.

Scope, approach, and purpose Previously I have explored the relationship between religion and Chinese language films in the broader sense, including films from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and

92   C.K. Yam mainland China (Yam 2009a, 2009b, 2010). In this chapter I specifically focus on films from the mainland that have been phenomenally popular in the country in recent years. The major samples to be discussed include Assembly (Ji Jie Hao, dir. Feng Xiaogang, 2007) and Aftershock (Tangshan Da Di Zhen, dir. Feng Xiaogang, 2010). Both films enjoyed sweeping commercial success in the domestic market, respectively during the New Year season in 2008 and the summer of 2010. Additionally I also use as a sample for comparison a low budget independent production, Raised from Dust (Ju Zi Chen Tu, dir. Gan Xiaoer, 2007), which is generally considered the first film produced in the People’s Republic that explicitly portrays a group of Christians as its main characters. While Assembly and Aftershock do not involve explicit religious representations, they do touch on issues that are of fundamental religious significance, notably the view of life and death. Critical analyses of these popular films can thus offer insights into the cultural-­religious sensibilities of contemporary Chinese people, and deserve serious attention from observers of religion in China, including Chinese Christianity. Recent interdisciplinary works in religion and film suggest that the cinema has become a major site of meaning making in the contemporary world (Marsh 2007; Lyon and Marsh 2008). That is to say, motion picture as a medium has replaced traditional religious institutions (such as the church) as the primary location where meaning and worldviews are created and negotiated among common people. Though these works by Marsh and others are primarily concerned with the situation of contemporary Western societies, the socio-­cultural importance of the cinema in China today is comparable to, if not greater than, its Western counterpart. Close analysis of popular films is therefore an important means for observers to gain meaningful insights into the way contemporary Chinese people construct their beliefs. More importantly, this study is not confined to the textual aspect – that is, ‘close viewings’1 of the films to ‘excavate’ whatever can be uncovered from the cinematic elements and identify the meanings of the films. Equally important are the contextual aspects, including the production context and the reception context. Production context refers to the wider socio-­cultural, political, and other circumstances in which the films emerge. Reception context refers to how the films have been received, understood, interpreted, appropriated, and used by the audience within their specific socio-­cultural, political, and other circumstances. In other words, I adopt in this chapter a methodology which combines textual and contextual studies of popular Chinese cinema.2 The emphases on audience reception and on film as a site of meaning making entail special attention to how the common people in China negotiate meanings, articulate values, and express aspirations and frustrations through their consumption and appropriation of the films. Thereby, I provide another means to access the popular cultural and religious sensibilities in contemporary China – glimpses that may otherwise be overlooked. My contention is that contemporary Christianity needs to take heed of the cultural and religious characters of Chinese people and society today, if it is to continue to be part of the lives of this people as well as the world.

The religiosity of popular Chinese cinema   93

Popular Chinese cinema: Assembly and Aftershock as representative samples In this section I shall explicate why Assembly and Aftershock are considered representative samples by discussing some of the films’ relevant features in terms of their popularity in mainland China and their reception among the domestic audience. It should be noted that since the establishment of the Peoples’ Republic, the idea of a popular cinema is a relatively new phenomenon. Throughout the decades from the 1950s until the end of the twentieth century, Chinese film industry was a state-­owned and state-­controlled business. According to the pioneering work on this subject by Zhu and Nakajima (2010), it was only in the 1990s that the impact of market economy began to reach the film industry. Before the turn of the century, Hollywood imports and other factors pushed the cinema in China toward full-­swing commercialization, and box office gross became the most important measurement of a film’s success. Over the last few years, new box office records were set almost every year. For instance, in 2009, a new box office record of domestic productions was created by If You Are the One (Fei Cheng Wu Rao, dir. Feng Xiaogang, 2008) with a gross of close to 400 million RMB yuan. The record was surpassed by Aftershock from the same director the following year, with a gross of about 650 million yuan, breaking the box office record of any film that has ever been released in the country. Although such impressive figures are sometimes questioned, these phenomena, including the controversies over box office records, do indicate that Chinese cinema is in the midst of a tide of commercialization. The notion of popular film in the commercial sense, measured by ticket sales instead of party approval, is being established in China. In this tide of commercialization, there is little doubt that Feng Xiaogang is a key figure. His moderately budgeted urban comedies find echoes among many and have been massively popular among the urban audience ever since the mid-­ 1990s. Over the last decade, he has been widely regarded as the major maker of New Year films – meaning that his works are mostly shown during the New Year’s holiday season and often gross high return in ticket sales (Zhu 2010). It has been said that A World Without Thieves (dir. Feng Xiaogang, 2004) released in the New Year season of 2005 represents the filmmaker’s turn toward high concept3 blockbusters (Zhu 2010: 201–205). Assembly and Aftershock are Feng’s most recent attempts in that direction, in which he puts aside the cityscape and the microcosmic world of the urban dwellers, and appeals to a larger audience across the country. Packaged as a war film, Assembly is in essence the story of how a captain in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) endeavours to recover what his team members have lost after their deaths in combat (which were miscategorized as ‘missing in action’). The narrative begins with combat actions during the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s, carries on into the Korean War and ends in the latter part of the 1950s, when the Peoples’ Republic was hardly a decade old. The first half of the film depicts how Captain Gu Zidi lost his whole team in a

94   C.K. Yam defensive mission, while the second half focuses on Gu’s effort to reclaim the honourable status of his teammates as having ‘died in action’ rather than having ‘disappeared’ as the authorities claimed. Released in cinemas countrywide on 20 December 2007, the film grossed 260 million RB yuan after 40 days of screening, which was at the time the second highest domestic box office record for Chinese film in history.4 Besides box office success, it also enjoyed critical acclaim and positive response from the general audience and won the Best Film in the 29th Hundred Flowers Film Award in China. Professor Zheng Dongtian of the Beijing Film Institute was reported to call the film ‘the best blockbuster ever’, while the same report said that Professor Li Daoxin of Peking University praised the film as ‘a war film of the era’.5 An audience survey conducted across five major Chinese cities during the film’s cinematic release recorded a ‘satisfaction rating’ of 86 per cent, a score which was much higher than all other Chinese blockbusters released in recent years.6 The overwhelming audience enthusiasm may be explained by the film’s high level of realism seldom seen in mainland Chinese cinema. On one hand is the realistic depiction of combat situations, which has been compared to the combat scenes in Saving Private Ryan (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1994) in a number of reviews and audience writings. On the other hand there is the realistic portrayal of the PLA soldiers. Instead of being presented as heroic and fearless super-­humans (as in almost all other mainland Chinese films), the soldiers in Assembly are normal human beings who are afraid of death, miss their families, and betray strong emotions in atrocious situations. The film emphasizes the soldiers’ humanity with flesh and blood rather than their often idealized military identity. Such realistic depiction of war and the soldiers are uncommon in mainstream Chinese films – so uncommon that a review in the official media regards the film ‘as real and as touching as a documentary’.7 While Assembly was promoted as a war epic, Aftershock was marketed as an epic about the catastrophic Tangshan earthquake (1976). Yet, the film is in fact a story of intergenerational animosity between a mother and her daughter who have been separated for three decades after the earthquake. Apart from the first ten minutes or so, the bulk of the narrative has little to do with that natural catastrophe which has taken the lives of a quarter of a million mortals, and which is arguably one of the most consequential events in modern China. In this sense, the English film title (which is actually the same as the title of the book, Yu Zhen, on which the film is based) reflects more accurately the essence of the story – it is indeed about the psychological aftershock of the earthquake on two women rather than the quake itself. Notwithstanding the use of spectacular special effects in the earthquake sequence (which could have taken up the major portion of whole film’s production budget), the natural disaster only serves as a prologue or antecedent which provides the background for the main narrative. As a number of reviews have pointed out, regardless of how touching it could be to some audience members, the film is merely a melodrama between mother and daughter which could have been caused by any fatal incident and not necessarily related to the earthquake in Tangshan.8

The religiosity of popular Chinese cinema   95 Indeed, Aftershock has met with mixed response in China. Reviews from official media tend to be positive and regard the film as a very touching piece, whereas ‘unofficial’ reviews, particularly those written by the general audience in online discussion forums, tend to be more critical. Regardless of such contradicting reviews, or perhaps because of such contradicting reviews, the film has enjoyed unprecedented commercial success. After 41 days on screen since its nationwide theatrical release on 22 July 2010, the film has set a new box office record in the history of Chinese film industry, grossing a total of 650 million RB yuan.9 While this exceptional figure is beyond the expectations of the investors and the filmmakers,10 it is not beyond imagination. After all, the Tangshan earthquake does occupy a special position in modern Chinese history and is of particular significance in the minds of many Chinese people. Yet, a number of other factors have also been used to account for the film’s extraordinary commercial achievement, including keen official financial support (with the major investor being the City Government of Tangshan), and the popularity of disaster films in recent years both globally and in China. The most intriguing explanation, however, is a claim that the Film Bureau has made way for this film by forbidding all other major films from screening in the country around the time when Aftershock was shown, thus making it the only choice for summer cinemagoers.11

Religiosity of popular Chinese cinema: protrayal of life and death in Assembly and Aftershock Regardless of whether they have received overwhelmingly positive reviews and notwithstanding their artistic qualities, it is undeniable that these two films have created extremely high box office figures. Cinema-­going is still not easy to account for in a country such as China, where there is a complex interplay of state control and consumers’ choice. Yet two things are beyond doubt: first, these two films have been watched by many in China; second, many Chinese people have been talking about them with considerable enthusiasm. Hence they can legitimately be considered representative samples of recent popular Chinese cinema. It is noteworthy that these two excessively popular films are set against backdrops of war and natural disaster – situations in which humans naturally experience close encounter with death, and are thus confronted by issues related to the ultimate fragility of humanity. As such, even though the stories themselves do not address any religious issue explicitly, the narratives are inevitably overshadowed by fundamentally religious undertones. How the issue of life and death is addressed and handled by the characters constitutes the core religiosity of the films. In the case of Assembly, with its overall framework of realism, death is presented as a predicament that is feared and is to be avoided, instead of being confronted heroically by the soldiers. More remarkable, however, is the film’s representation of the communal dimension of death. Death is depicted as not merely the termination of the individual’s physical existence but entails

96   C.K. Yam long-­term material and non-­material consequences for the living. This representation is embodied in Captain Gu’s personal circumstances after the war as well as his attitude toward the loss of his teammates. As the film’s protagonist, Gu holds to a strict view of how the death of his teammates should be treated. Early on in the story, right after the opening combat sequence in which the team lost many of its members, he urges his assistant to report the death toll accurately without delay, lest the departed do not get the appropriate treatment on time. In a subsequent sequence in which the team is being wiped out in mission, he orders the bodies of all killed teammates to be hid in the mine which they use as shelter, lest they would be treated disrespectfully by the enemies. With such a dignified view of the dead, it is no surprise that Gu finds it intolerable when after the war he learns that his teammates are all categorized as missing rather than having died in combat. Gu’s insistence becomes more easily appreciated when the wide difference in treatment toward the two categories of war casualties is taken into account. In practical-­material terms, the family of one who died in action is awarded with 700 catties of rice, while that of the missing only gets 200 catties. The intangible non-­material aspect is even more significant. As the film narrative suggests, there can be many different reasons that a soldier disappears during warfare – they could have deserted, been executed by their superiors, or captured by the enemy. Therefore, while those who have died in action are always considered war heroes, the families of the missing often end up living miserably, burdened with a sense of shame. This discrepancy and the misery of the family of the missing are brought out clearly in the scene in which Gu meets the widow of a teammate. In that scene, the captain learns that the mother of the late teammate has become depressed for the rest of her life because she thinks her son has died a dishonourable death, while the widow also appears to be living in uncertainty. In this way, the death of a person is portrayed in the film as not simply the termination of an individual’s physical life. Instead, it bears non-­material or even spiritual significance for family members as well as the departed. As such, death is represented as a communal matter beyond the individual. What a person’s death entails is not only the sorrow of losing a loved one but also the possible loss of honour and identity of both the dead and the living. As Captain Gu believes that his teammates’ due honour and identities are unfairly snatched, he is motivated to pursue his self-­appointed mission to revert the misclassification of his whole team as missing in action. Throughout the second half of the film, Gu is insistent and persistent in the efforts to regain for his team the deserved honour of war heroes. The actions of Gu are presented as almost an obsession. To him, it is the way to resume the name and identity both of himself and that of the teammates’ families. It is also his way of salvation to work himself out of his painful circumstances. In Aftershock, life and death as an issue is handled differently. There is little, if any, portrayal of the communal dimension of death, and there is no depiction of honour and identity as in Assembly. The focus, instead, is on the impact of death on one family. Set against a major natural catastrophe of epic proportion in

The religiosity of popular Chinese cinema   97 which the death toll is virtually uncountable, death is represented as a sudden, indifferent, and indiscriminate force that not only takes away the lives of tens of thousands, but also destroys the lives of numerous who remain. Yet the filmmaker chooses to focus singly on the life of one particular family to the disregard of all other forms of aftermaths of the earthquake. In the microcosmic world of the film, it is the death of the father that causes the misery of his whole family over the following decades. In terms of the drama, however, this father’s death, and therefore the subsequent misfortune of this family, could be caused by anything and is not necessarily the result of the earthquake. That is to say, there is no compelling reason for such a family melodrama to be told as the story of Tangshan earthquake. The same is true the other way round: that there is neither necessary nor sufficient rationale to tell the story of Tangshan Earthquake with a yarn of forgiveness between mother and daughter. It is noteworthy that quite a number of the negative reviews on Aftershock do criticize the film on this ground in one way or another. Such dissatisfactions toward the film suggest that the Tangshan earthquake occupies a very important position in the lives and hearts of many Chinese people over the decades. To borrow a Durkheimian notion, it appears that the massive earthquake in 1976 commands a ‘sacred’ position for many in China, and that it is almost a taboo which should not be touched without due respect and a pious attitude. This ‘sacredness’ is suggested implicitly in the comments made by some audience members, who complain that the film is merely a re-­abuse of the earthquake victims which make them suffer one more time.12 Such dissatisfactions expressed in the negative reviews further suggest an important perceived shortcoming of the film – that it has disregarded some larger issues which the audience consider crucial. These are in fact a range of problems that point to the fundamental flaw of the governance by the Communist Party which has surfaced after the earthquake, including the incompetence of the rescue mission, the tardiness of the subsequent reconstruction, and the bureau­ cracy of party cadres. Audience members who are critical toward the film are discontented that the filmmaker takes advantage of a ‘sacred’ incident that is deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of modern Chinese people, and tells a story which is essentially irrelevant and irreverent to the incident. As one audience member laments, the greatest shame is that that there will not be another film called Tangshan Earthquake anymore.13 Comments such as this one are indicative of the frustration of the audience that the film has shied away from the more important issues in question, and has thereby rendered the film title meaningless. Furthermore, by putting forth a family tearjerker as the representative story of Tangshan Earthquake, the filmmaker chooses to overlook the communal, societal, and socio-­cultural dimensions of death and centres on death being an individual matter. Even as a human drama of one family, the whole plot is constructed on the basis of a death incident that has never really happened. The daughter’s unwillingness to forgive arises because her mother chooses to save her younger brother to her abandonment; concomitantly the mother is guilt-­ridden for three decades

98   C.K. Yam because she thinks her daughter has been killed due to her decision to save the younger brother. The plausibility or implausibility of this dramatic arrangement notwithstanding, death is represented here as an irony. The miseries of both the daughter and the mother are unnecessary and unfounded, as the ground is a non-­ event. There is a (probably unintended) deep sense of absurdity. Death as a destructive force is portrayed as extremely powerful – so powerful that it does not even require the reality of death to destroy the lives of two generations. It is merely the imagination of death, the shadow of death, or the (mis)belief in the reality of death which ruins their lives for more than 30 years. Although Assembly and Aftershock exhibit divergent representations of life and death, there is nonetheless a common thread between them. Both depict death as a strong destructive force. In Aftershock, the mere shadow of it is enough to take away the essence of life from two generations in a family. In Assembly, it snatches away the core identity and honour of a whole team in the army and leaves their families in misery. Death appears to be the cause behind all the sufferings of the major characters in the two films. This representation forms a stark contrast with the cinematic portrayal of a rural Christian community discussed below.

Cinematic portrayal of Chinese Christians encountering life and death: Raised from Dust (2007) Apart from the religious sensibilities exhibited in the popular cinema which is often implicit and probably unintentional, explicit portrayal of the religious in general, and Christianity in particular, does exist in Chinese cinema. A recent example in this regard is Raised from Dust. The director Gan Xiao’er is a self-­ confessed Christian who traces his spiritual root to a rural church in Henan Province. It is known to be the first film produced in the Peoples’ Republic that portrays explicitly the life of a Christian community as its main subject matter. It should be emphasised that Raised from Dust is not an underground film which is banned in the country. Although it is an independent production and has never been shown in mainstream cinemas in the mainland, the film has been shown on numerous different occasions, including some festivals of independent films within the country, in addition to some special showings in other parts of the world. It has also won a Special Award in the Fourth Annual Festival of Independent Images in China. No doubt, it should legitimately be regarded as part of the contemporary Chinese cinema. This film’s representation of life and death is starkly contrasting to those in the two popular films discussed above. This departure in representation might be the result of a number of different but interrelated factors. First, it can be the film’s nature as an independent production, the filmmaker of which neither needs to seek official endorsement from the authorities in the creative process, nor to appeal to a wide audience as in the case of the commercial blockbusters. Second, it might be due to the nature of its subject matter, in which most of the major characters are Christians, some of whom may hold to a view of life and death

The religiosity of popular Chinese cinema   99 that is not quite the same as that of the majority of the Chinese population. This possibility may be considered dubious, however, since different studies have consistently suggested that both Protestant and Catholic Christianity in China today, especially rural Chinese Christianity, exhibit much of the characteristics of popular folk religion (Hunter and Chan 1993; Madsen 2001; Oblau 2011). Thus, a third factor at work might be the key – namely, the personal religious conviction of the filmmaker, who might have projected his own view of life and death onto the film’s characters. It should be noted that although he traces his spiritual roots to a rural church in Henan, director Gan Xiao’er is in fact a practicing urban intellectual Christian, who graduated with a master’s degree from the Beijing Film Academy and has now been teaching in a university in Guangzhou for more than a decade. Given his background, it is not surprising that his religious views would be quite different from the average rural believers. Raised from Dust betrays a high level of realism in its style, and does contain scenarios consistent with the impression of rural Chinese Christianity as a religion which emphasizes health and healing (there is one scene showing Christians praying for the recovery of a sick baby). Nevertheless, the overall outlook on life is not the same as what is commonly understood as typical. After all, the film represents a particular rural Christian community seen through the eyes and mind of an urban intellectual filmmaker who has historical ties with the community but has left the village for almost two decades. Life in rural China as portrayed in Raised from Dust is hard, but death appears to be a reality which is silently accepted rather than something to be feared or avoided at all cost. The female protagonist Xiaoli toils in manual labour for a barely sustainable life. She can pay neither the hospital bill of her terminally ill husband nor the tuition fees of her third-­grade daughter. Yet she is calm and reserved, and accepts life as it is. The audience does not see any emotional outbreak, cursing of fate or questioning the divine, in any way similar to those displayed by the main characters in Aftershock or Assembly. In fact she is seldom seen to express herself to others and never seen to mention the needs of her family. Even though it is clear to the audience that her husband is very sick and not doing well at all, Xiaoli, without any exception, always describes her husband’s condition as ‘fine’ when asked by fellow church members or others. Even when her own daughter asks about the father over dinner table at home, she gives the same answer. When her cart has a flat tire, she takes it to the repair station but only to do the repair herself. At the same time, she is happy to earn some money by transporting bricks for a friend’s dubious building project which aims to take advantage of the government. The portrayal in these scenes suggests that she has chosen to absorb all the stress, take up the entire burden upon herself, and never ask for help from others. Nonetheless, the same life-­attitude may not be adopted by many others, and life may not be equally hard for everybody. For instance, an old friend of Xiaoli’s husband is plotting to make a fortune by cheating on the government, while at the same time preparing to send his two sons to university. The school teacher of Xiaoli’s daughter apparently receives a decent income which enables him to

100   C.K. Yam join a gambling game on his pay day, while concurrently paying a home visit to notify the protagonist that her daughter has been expelled from school simply because she fails to pay her fees. Death, for the protagonist, is not something to be rejected. It is instead depicted as a solution to or at least a temporary relief from some of the problems she faces. This is most vividly depicted in the final sequences of the film. When Xiaoli gets an unexpected sum of donation from her fellow church members, she chooses to stop her husband’s treatment and uses that money to pay her daughter’s long overdue tuition fees. In the brief process she is not seen to express any inner struggle over a hard decision. Instead she simply goes to sign the documents at the hospital and take her husband out with her cart, while the latter is literally running out of breath at the very moment of being disconnected from the respiratory machines. On the cart when her husband is choking badly, a long flashback shot in slow motion is inserted, showing a happy Xiaoli riding in the cart which her husband is driving, both of them smiling charmingly in a manner not seen throughout the rest of the film. The scene that follows immediately is the funeral service of the husband. Subsequently, after paying the overdue tuition fees, Xiaoli and her daughter are seen to sit at their table at home, say grace, and have supper together contentedly. In short, the protagonist is shown to have made a decision which essentially leads to the imminent death of her own husband but also enables her daughter to go back to school and allows the two of them to live a peaceful life. It is in this way that the death of one person becomes a solution to others’ problems, albeit a temporary one. This decision of Xiaoli, and in fact this depiction of her regarding death as a solution, is puzzling to some among the audience. At least one commentator has queried that she is essentially killing her husband and therefore contravening the sixth commandment in the Decalogue (Exodus 20:2–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21).14 This query suggests that the portrayal of death, and in fact the protagonist’s overall outlook on life, is such a far cry from those betrayed in the mainstream popular films that the general audience may find the dissonance too hard to reconcile. In the midst of this very unique representation of life and death, Raised from Dust also puts forth an implicit criticism of that which exacerbates the hardship of the protagonist. Reflecting on what Xiaoli comes across, one is tempted to ask: Why has nobody ever thought of waiving the daughter’s tuition fees? Why can the hospital not ignore the medical bills of the sick husband out of a sense of goodwill? When the state spends huge sums of money to buy out the land for railway construction and pay a fortune to appease the faked landowners, why is there no extra resource to help the most disadvantaged in the same village? At the end of the day, the church community is the only party which offers concrete assistance and spiritual support to the protagonist. Although the film itself is about a microcosmic story of a woman, a small family, and a church community within a poor village, its portrayal of life does call for attention to something larger – some of the very real systemic and structural problems which are confronting China. Incidentally, those are essentially the same problems with which the discontented audience of Aftershock are concerned.

The religiosity of popular Chinese cinema   101

Concluding remarks: implications for contemporary Christianity In this chapter I examine the portrayal of life and death in Assembly, Aftershock, and Raised from Dust as representative samples of contemporary Chinese cinema. I regard the cinema as a cultural text through which particular aspects of a society under a specific temporal-­spatial context can be understood. Through looking into the film narratives and receptions, I uncover certain features of the popular religious sensibilities of contemporary Chinese people from an angle which is seldom taken. In this manner, this chapter contributes to filling the triple lacuna of religion and Chinese cinema in contemporary scholarship. One striking feature which I identify from the films is the communal dimension of death expressed in Assembly. Death is not only about the termination of a person’s physical life but has long lasting implications for those around the departed, and is often connected to their honour and core identity. That this film is so popular both commercially and critically suggests that this narrative of communal identity and honour finds resonance among many Chinese. This is closely connected to the overall emphasis on the communal aspect of life in the Chinese society, which finds its double roots, on the one hand in the traditional culture which tends to situate a person’s identity within the family-­clan, and on the other in the communist collectivism in modern China which stresses party loyalty over personal will. This fascination with and embeddedness in communal identity is a far cry from the individualistic worldview which has characterized modern Christianity, especially certain strands of western Christianity. It can in one sense be taken as an interrogation of the church’s representation of faith, that the latter might at times be overly emphatic on the personal-­individual dimension of Christianity to the neglect of the communal. That is to say, the communal character of Chinese people can serve to confront contemporary Christianity (including but not limited to Chinese Christianity) to be more self-­critical toward its own individualistic tendency in the representation of faith, and to take more seriously the often neglected communal dimension ingrained in Christianity. As numerous contemporary Christian theologians and Biblical scholars from different theological orientations have pointed out, the understanding of Christianity being mainly concerned with individual souls, that it is primarily about personal salvation, is, at best, misguided. In addition to the individual level, the communal, societal, and cosmic dimensions of divine redemption are integral to the essence of the Christian faith.15 It is gravely unfortunate that mainstream Chinese Christianity has inherited the individualistic version of spirituality which emphasizes personal salvation, but re-­encountering and re-­engaging with the communal spirit of the Chinese people should serve as a corrective. Another striking phenomenon is the overwhelming tide of harsh critical reception toward Aftershock despite its commercial success. In essence, this tide of discontent is indicative of the widespread dissatisfaction and frustration toward the dysfunction of party-­state bureaucracy and the consequential ill-­fate of the people. Disgruntled audience members are annoyed that the filmmaker takes advantage of an important incident in modern China to tell a melodramatic

102   C.K. Yam story while avoiding those issues which they regard as more significant. Such discontents point to the increasing awareness of non-­natural factors that contribute to worsening the consequences in natural disasters such as earthquakes in Tangshan and Sichuan (2008), and there are growing concerns with what really happened and what could have been done. Similar concerns and discontents have also surfaced regarding other catastrophes, such as the Wenzhou railway accident (2011) and frequent coal mine accidents. In short, audience anger toward Aftershock is exemplary of the general frustration toward the watering down of truth in the systemic failure and corruptedness of the state machinery. This quest for truth – for what has really happened – poses a huge challenge to contemporary Christianity, as to whether the latter can play the role of a society’s conscience to preserve and convey truth. In theological terms, this is a call to the legacy of the Hebrew prophets, to confront the powers that be with what is truly happening regardless of how inconvenient the truth is, instead of covering up by pretending that everything is peaceful and in order (cf. Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11). This has never been an easy role for Christian churches at any time and place. It is an even greater challenge for the Christian communities in China today, where the current official ideology upholds ‘harmony’ (hexie), and all voices perceived as threatening the official understanding of ‘harmony’ tend to be suppressed, sometimes violently. It is indeed a difficult test for Christians in China to strike a balance between maintaining their own survival (as individuals and as communities) and being faithful to the prophetic tradition (and thereby also respond to the people’s longing for truth). The silent embrace of life’s hardships and the calm acceptance of death’s inevitability in Raised from Dust might appear typical of how the average Chinese (including Christian) can conduct herself in China. I would suggest, however, that the whole narrative-­creative approach of this film could even be more worthy of consideration. While portraying the protagonist’s acceptance of adversities without complaint, the film somehow leads the audience to question the absurdities of the situation around her and query the prevalent oppressive system which turns otherwise decent people into evildoers. It thereby becomes a gentle but solid cinematic public theological discourse within the context of structural evil. While not confronting face-to-face the powers that be, it is placidly evocative of a confrontation. Such an approach can be one way to consider as Christian communities in China seek to survive in adverse situations and be faithful to the prophetic call.

Notes   1 I do not favour applying literary terms and concepts to the study of motion pictures directly. Although ‘close viewing’ refers to an activity which is very similar to ‘close reading’ in literary criticism, viewing a film is fundamentally different from reading a piece of literature. I therefore insist on this difference in terminology.   2 This is the methodological approach that I take in my related ongoing research endeavours mentioned above, and echoes (but is not identical to) that advocated by Melanie J. Wright in her methodologically ground-­breaking work on religion and film

The religiosity of popular Chinese cinema   103 (Wright 2007), and is also similar to those used by other leading scholars in film and theology (such as Marsh 2004; Deacy 2005).   3 ‘High concept’ is a term commonly used in the modern motion picture industry and is believed to have emerged from Hollywood. It refers to film projects that typically involve a big monetary investment, massive and targeted marketing campaigns, technically sophisticated production, top-­notch stars, and expect high box office grosses. For a study on high concept, see Wyatt 1994.   4 The highest box office record in China at that time was held by Curse of the Golden Flower (Man Cheng Jin Dai Huang Jin Jia, dir. Zhang Yimou, 2006).   5 Source: special feature in ent.163.com, 29 December 2007, http://ent.163. com/07/1229/12/40SM8S1O000300B1.html (accessed 27 December 2010).   6 The survey was sponsored by the Film Industry Research Centre of the China Film Association. Report claims that the survey involved using 10,000 questionnaires in 20 cinemas in five major cities, but no details of the methodology and questions involved were provided. Source: special feature in ent.163.com, 29 December 2007 http:// ent.163.com/07/1229/12/40SM8S1O000300B1.html (accessed 27 December 2010).   7 ‘Insights to Chinese cinema from Assembly’, Xinhua.net (Beijing), source: ent.163.com, 1 January 2008 http://ent.163.com/08/0101/10/4147ODJO00031H06.html (accessed 28 December 2010).   8 For example, among several others, this point is asserted in a review by Teng Jing Shu, who calls the film a ‘heavy duty tearjerker’. Source: ‘Related Comments’ in Baidu Baike http://baike.baidu.com/view/3267.htm (accessed 28 December 2010).   9 Figure released by Huayi Brothers, one of the investors behind Aftershock. Source: China Finance Information, 2 September 2010 www.cfi.net.cn/p20100902000115. html (accessed 27 December 2010). 10 For example, the director Feng Xiaogang himself predicted in public that the film would gross 500 million RMB yuan, and his bold forecast made him the target of much ridicule. 11 These factors are mentioned by Wu Da Fu in ‘Tears and Wounds Worth 500 Million’. Source: Huaxia Shibao, reposted in www.cnstock.com 14 August 2010 www.cnstock. com/index/gdbb/201008/769944.htm (accessed 27 December 2010). 12 Source: ‘Short Comments on Aftershock’ in Douban Movies http://movie.douban. com/subject/3596502/comments?sort=vote (accessed 27 December 2010). 13 Source: ‘Short Comments on Aftershock’ in Douban Movies http://movie.douban. com/subject/3596502/comments?sort=vote (accessed 27 December 2010). 14 Chuanjiangrat, ‘Heaven bless people who are well fed’ (Shang cang bao you chi bao le fan de ren min), from chuanjiangrat’s blog, 1 June 2007 http://i.mtime.com/chuanjiangrat/blog/371488 (accessed 15 December 2010). 15 This is not, as some may suspect, an invention of radical liberation theologians but instead a general consensus across a wide range of schools of theological thought, perhaps with the exception of the most ‘conservative’. To get a general understanding of this, the reader only needs to skim through some works by notable theologians and Biblical scholars from the last few decades, such as Jürgen Moltmann and N.T. Wright, among others. As the latter has commented, the emphasis on personal salvation over social and cosmic redemption is a notion from Calvinism and the Enlightenment rather than a Biblical one (Wright 2006: 21–22).

References Deacy, C. (2005) Faith in Film: Religious Themes in Contemporary Cinema, Aldershot: Ashgate. Hunter, A. and Chan, K.K. (1993) Protestantism in Contemporary China, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.

104   C.K. Yam Lu, S.H. and Mi, J. (eds) (2009) Chinese Ecocinema, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lyon, C.H. and Marsh, C. (2008) ‘Film’s Role in Contemporary Meaning-­Making’, in S. Knauss and A.D. Ornella (eds) Reconfigurations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Religion in a Post-­Secular Society, Vienna: Lit Verlag. Madsen, R.P. (2001) ‘Beyond Orthodoxy: Catholicism as Chinese Folk Religion’, in S. Uhalley and X. Wu (eds) China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Marsh, C. (2004) Cinema and Sentiment: Film’s Challenge to Theology, Milton Keynes: Paternoster. Marsh, C. (2007) ‘Theology and the Practice of Meaning-­Making’, The Expository Times, 119(2): 67–73. Mitchell, J. and Plate, S.B. (2007) The Religion and Film Reader, London and New York: Routledge. Oblau, G. (2011) ‘Divine Healing and the Growth of Practical Christianity in China’, in C.G. Brown (ed.) Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Yam, C.K. (2009a) ‘A Secular Gospel for the Marginal: Two Films of Stephen Chow as Hong Kong Cinematic Parables’, in C. Deacy and E. Arweck (eds) Exploring Religion and the Sacred in Media Age, Surrey: Ashgate. Yam, C.K. (2009b) ‘Projecting Christian Faith on the Hong Kong Screen’, Studies in World Christianity, 15(2): 113–130. Yam, C.K. ‘To Live and Die on the Chinese Screen: Regarding the Religious Dimensions of Chinese Language Film’. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Media, Religion, and Culture, held at Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, August 2010. Wright, M.J. (2007) Religion and Film: An Introduction, London: I.B. Tauris. Wright, N.T. (2006) The Last Word, New York: HarperCollins. Wyatt, J. (1994) High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press. Zhang, Z. (2007) The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty First Century, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Zhou, X. (2007) Young Rebels in Contemporary Chinese Cinema, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Zhu, Y. (2003) Chinese Cinema during an Era of Reform, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger. Zhu, Y. (2010) ‘New Year Film as Chinese Blockbuster: From Feng Xiaogang’s Contemporary Urban Comedy to Zhang Yimou’s Period Drama’, in Y. Zhu and S. Rosen (eds) Arts, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 195–207. Zhu, Y. and Rosen, S. (eds) (2010) Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Zhu, Y. and Nakajima, S. (2010) ‘The Evolution of Chinese Film as an Industry’, in Y. Zhu and S. Rosen (eds) Arts. Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

7 ‘To the Peoples’ Christianity and ethnicity in China’s minority areas Francis Khek Gee Lim

Introduction For a very long time now, Christianity has been spreading among China’s so-­ called ‘minority nationalities’. In southwestern China, for example, large numbers of Lisu, Nu, and Miao have been converted since the late nineteenth century and Christianity has become part of the ‘traditional’ religion of these ethnic minorities. Christian missionaries have historically also played an important role in the process of ethno-­genesis in China, such as the creation of written scripts for certain communities. Mackerras (2003) has argued that it is necessary to examine the various ways ethnic minorities in China are historically related to processes of globalization in order to understand important issues such as their self-­identification, interactions with other groups, and relations with the state. For example, the arrival of a religion such as Christianity among the ethnic minorities can be seen as part of a global expansion of ties that has profoundly shaped local cultures and societal relations within China. The primary purpose of this chapter is to examine how an attention to Christianity’s indigenization in the minority regions can further help us understand the complex ways by which ethnic identity is practiced and negotiated. I argue that the arrival of Christianity among certain ethnic minorities not only stimulated their ethnic consciousness, but in some cases has contributed to the formation of religio-­ethnicities – groups whose members practice a common religion, and encompass a number different officially recognized ethnic minorities. Such groups manifest many key elements that would qualify them as ethnicities. While there is a broad range of definitions for the concept of ethnicity, most would include criteria such as a sense of common history, of common culture such as beliefs, values and language, a common feeling of survival, and the preference for group endogamy (e.g., Keyes 1976; de Vos 2006: 1). There is also a consensus among scholars that ethnic boundaries, and hence ethnic identity, develop not in isolation but through interactions with other social groups and the nation-­state. Hence, Fredrik Barth (1969) emphasizes the negotiated nature of boundary making in ethnic identification in relation to changing contexts, while Thomas Eriksen (2002: 12) argues that ethnic should be conceptualized as ‘an aspect of a relationship, not a property of a group’. My own approach here

106   F.K.G. Lim broadly follows the views that ethnicity has to be regarded as contextualized and negotiated. However, I also wish to highlight the eminent role that the nation-­ state plays in shaping a dominant discursive practice with regard to both emic and etic forms of ethnic identification. Between 2007 and 2009, I conducted three periods of anthropological fieldwork totalling four months among the Tibetan Catholics in three neighbouring areas. At Yanjing in the Mangkang country of southeastern Tibet, I lived in the only Catholic church in Tibet for about two months. At Gongshan county, northern Yunnan, I visited all the fourteen Tibetan Catholic villages dispersed throughout the hills around the county town. I also lived for a total of about a month at Cizhong village in Deqin country in northern Yunnan. Data for this chapter is mainly based on two sources: one, field observations and interviews with Tibetan Catholics; second, the writings by foreign missionaries, county gazettes, and published works by Chinese and foreign scholars.

Ethnic groups made ‘legible’ There is a sizable body of literature on the state’s project in the identification of ‘nationalities’, known as the minzu shibie. The project is not only about the imposition of political control over the unruly minority regions. Guided initially by ideas of evolutionary Marxism which classify peoples according to their prevailing modes of production, minzu shibie was simultaneously a cultural project that slotted peoples into a hierarchical system that ranked them according to their economic and cultural achievements. When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) first came to power, it needed detailed descriptions of the peoples under its rule in order to determine ‘the ladder of history a particular group might have been at the time of the Communist take­ over’ (Harrell 2001: 42). The minzu classification project was carried out in the service of development, national integration, and crucially, ordering. The CCP relied mainly on evolutionary Marxism and the Stalinist criteria for identifying nationality: a ‘nation’ refers to a group of people who share common language, territory, economy, and psychology manifesting as culture. In addition, the nations in a multinational country could be classified in a hierarchical order in terms of their progress, at the point of identification, along the evolutionary stages of modes of production. One important result of this hierarchical ordering was the positioning of the Han majority, which wielded political power at the central government, as having attained the most advanced stage of civilizational evolution. The Han minzu were thus held up as the model for the other minority peoples. Harrell (1995; 2001) has provided one of the most compelling accounts and critique of the minzu shibie project undertaken by the CCP. His analysis underscores the fact that ethnic practices in the everyday life of the minority peoples do not neatly conform to the state’s system of minzu classification that stresses exclusivity and permanence. This rigid system as currently applied by the state in its effort to classify, order, and control – i.e., to make ‘legible’ (Scott 1998) – the diverse populations of China, has been superimposed upon a highly fluid and

‘To the Peoples’   107 complex reality. Further, the ethnic identification project was not as systematic and ‘scientific’ as many have assumed. The CCP was highly reliant on a group of experts for their taxonomic methods and advice to gain an understanding of the complexities of the minority regions and to eventually demarcate the boundaries that set one ethnic group from another (Mullaney 2010). The Communist leadership needed to establish visible units into which these groups could be assigned. The problem was that for effective management the number of such units cannot be prohibitively large. Yang Bin (2009) has examined in the case of Yunnan province the contingent and pragmatic ways with which researchers, under the state’s employment, determined which groups should be classified as minzu. Through an inconsistent exercise, researchers and officials involved in the project narrowed down the large number of minzu applications to just around twenty-­two, depending on factors such as the amount of time the researchers had in the field, and whether the elites of the minority groups were convincing in pressing their case to the researchers. In addition, minzu as a distinctive category did not always conform to the Soviet model and ‘includes all kinds of ethnic or pro-­ethnic groups, no matter which state of society they are in . . . [and] could be a mix of several ethnic groups, one single ethnicity, a sub-­ethnic unit or just a tribal community’ (Yang 2009: 767). As an ideological practice, the minzu project has evolved into a system of ethnic classification that stresses exclusivity and permanence, with the minzu categories as units that allow for strong state intervention in society. Minzu policies are thus double-­edged: theoretically all peoples are considered equal, and many ethnic minorities have been given spaces for speaking out and are able to take advantage of resources made available by the central government for social and infrastructural development. However, the national stage is also dominated by the Han Chinese, indicating that the minzu system is also a state-­formulated hierarchical system imposed on the ethnic minorities. The system has also allowed for state penetration into the affairs of ethnic minorities to an unprecedented degree. In the meantime, the minzu system has been further institutionalized via dual processes of normalization and standardization: state-­sponsored and academic efforts in writing standard histories for the ethnic minorities has meant that unitary histories are produced for each of the minority groups which are assumed to be real units with distinct boundaries. In much of such standardized accounts, religion is often considered an important marker of minzu identity. Representing the official position, Ye Xiaowen, the former director of the Religious Affairs Bureau, expresses the view that the ‘religious question’ is often intimately linked with the ‘national question’: In a nation (minzu) with a broad-­based and profound religious belief, the religious and national sentiments, the religious and national psychology, and religious and national customs, religious and national culture, the religious and national consciousness of every believer are intertwined and infiltrate each other, sometimes even becoming inseparable. (Ye Xiaowen, quoted in Sutton and Kang 2009)

108   F.K.G. Lim Some scholars (e.g., Gladney 1991; Sutton and Kang 2009) have used the term ‘ethno-­religion’ to describe the kind of religion that is closely related with ethnicity. In fact, certain minority groups such as the Uighurs, Tibetans, Hui, and Dai have been defined primarily in terms of their religions. The focus in this chapter is to present two ways of understanding how religion, in this case Christianity, might relate to ethnic identity in China’s minority areas. One is in terms of how missionary efforts to convert the minority nationalities have stimulated, sustained, and enhanced ethnic consciousness among certain groups, and how Christianity as it has been adopted by these groups has become an ethno-­religion. Second, I argue that Christianity can itself be considered a kind of ethnicity, and I propose the concept of religio-­ethnicity to capture the ways in which Christianity can act as a crucial principle upon which new boundaries can be drawn to form social groups that display many features of ethnicity. The existence of, and the dynamic interactions between, the officially recognized minzu and religio-­ ethnicity further complicates the picture of the different ‘ways of being ethnic’ (Harrell 2001) in China.

Christianity and ethnic consciousness During seventeen years of work, a few churches were formed among the Chinese and a few Nosu were sworn to Jesus. Evangelistic, scholastic, and medical work was carried on. A few natives were trained for work among their own people, but things went slowly till Tuesday, July 12th, 1904, when, without a moment’s warning, or any expectation on our part, four strangers walked into our courtyard at Chaotong. (Pollard 1919: 29) Thus wrote Samuel Pollard from the United Methodist Mission of his fateful encounter with the Miao (Hmong) that was to have profound consequences for both Pollard’s life and the Miao. Over the next two weeks, the Chaotong Mission House, where Pollard was based, received a further twenty-­two Miao who had travelled long distances apparently ‘to learn about Jesus’. The Miao subsequently flocked in great numbers to the Stone Gateway (shimen kan), in Guizhou province, and embraced Christianity, heralding a conversion story that was to become one of the most successful among the ethnic minorities in China. According to T’ien (1993: 5–6), a prominent feature among ethnic minorities which had converted to Christianity in Yunnan was that many of them had been dispersed throughout the province after protracted and often bitter struggles against the Han. These groups tended to form high altitude settlements and lacked unified political organizations. The Miao, Lisu, and Lahu were some of the ethnic groups that manifested these features, and which seemed to have embraced Christianity as a rejection of sinicization while regarding Christianity and contacts with foreigners as offering alternative paths toward modernization (ibid.: 11). As is well documented in scholarly literature, in the last two centuries many Western Christian missionaries like Pollard desired to bring to the minority

‘To the Peoples’   109 groups not only the Gospel, but also the ‘civilization’ of modern Christian nations that included advances in health, science, and technology. What these missionaries sought to achieve was nothing short of a radical transformation of the Chinese and the ethnic minorities in the periphery (e.g., Hirono 2008; Harrell 1995; Wang 2008). When the ethnic minorities in China were faced with civilizing projects promoted by the Christian missionaries, they had to grapple with important issues concerning their own group identity: who they were and what distinguished them from those who sought to civilize them (Harrell 1995: 28–29). One critical component of ‘civilization’, as advocated by its proponents, was the written script. From the perspective of Christian missiology, effective proselytism would also entail translating the Gospel into the languages of the evangelized peoples. As Peel (2000: 281) writes in discussing Christianity’s impact on the formation of the Yoruba people in Nigeria, The impulse of Christianity to translate its Gospel implies its acceptance of peoples of ‘nations’ as naturally given units to which the Church must speak: in the New Testament the Church’s mission ‘to the Gentiles’ was literally ‘to the nations/peoples (pros ta ethnē)’. For those without a written script, the imperative for the missionaries was often to invent one. For example, the writing system created by Pollard has become an integral part of Hua Miao’s total ethnic identity (Diamond 1996). Hua Miao’s Christian identity is inextricably linked to the new (as it then was) written script since most of the religious texts used, including the Bible and hymns, were printed in that script. The church’s literacy campaigns through Bible study classes and school education have resulted in the creation of a group of Hua Miao intellectual elite whose members occupy important religious and political leadership positions. These people in turn further contribute to the Miao’s overall cultural development. Some of these Miao elite were actively involved in church-­related work such as pastoral care and missionary activities, resulting in the formation of an indigenous Miao church. The Pollard script and indigenized Christianity have since been accepted by the Hua Miao as part of their cultural tradition and ethnic identity. The Hua Miao’s conversion to Christianity is a good example what Hefner (1993) terms a ‘world building’ enterprise. The introduction of literacy initiated through the arrival of Christianity among the Hua Miao has exerted profound impact on the cultural construction of their ethnic consciousness. Literacy brought by Christianity had ‘strengthened self-­identity and resistance against assimilation to some of the cultural and social practices advocated by the Han Chinese state’, while tying Hua Miao transnationally and transculturally to the broader Christian world that includes ‘ancient peoples of the Near East, to the Christian martyrs, the Protestant Reformation, and the outside world’ (Diamond 1996: 156–157). The Hua Miao case is one of a number of rather successful indigenization of Christianity among minority nationalities in China (see also

110   F.K.G. Lim Han 2000), and shows how Christianity can indeed become an ethno-­religion just like Islam for the Hui or Buddhism for the Tibetans. However, there is another important impact of Christianity on ethnicity in the minority areas which I shall examine below, viz. the formation of religio-­ethnicity.

Christianity and religio-­ethnicity Taking Madsen’s (1998) point that Catholic communities in many parts of rural China constitute themselves with strong ethnic features, I propose the concept of religio-­ethnicity as a useful way to analyze the experience of Christianity among the minorities who have converted to the faith. Religio-­ethnicity, in a broad sense, refers to a social group whose members’ sense of belonging and solidarity is based upon their common adherent to a religious tradition, a shared sense of history, and a religious identity that strongly reflects an ascribed status. A religio-­ethic group is more a cultural phenomenon than a political designation, and can include a number of different state-­designated ethnic groups. Below, I shall discuss the cases of Lisu Protestant Christianity and Tibetan Catholicism as two examples of religio-­ethnicity. Lisu Protestantism Over the last century, Christianity has spread rapidly among the ethnic minorities in Yunnan province, where in many areas whole villages and clans consider Christianity – either Protestantism or Catholicism – as their traditional religion. For example, in 1997 an estimated 70 percent of the people in the Fugong county of Nujiang Prefecture were Christian (Yamamori and Chan 1998). Most of these Christian communities are legacies of the foreign missionary efforts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. One of the most successful efforts was undertaken by James Fraser from the China Inland Mission, who managed to convert many Lisu to Christianity by the 1920s. Covell (2008) estimates that there are now nearly 300,000 Lisu who are Christians. The Lisu’s adoption of Christianity has also exerted profound impact on other neighbouring ethnic groups, such as the Nu. The majority of the Lisu and the Nu have historically shared the same living environment and many social and cultural traits (Han 2004). While the Lisu can be found in the provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, the majority of them live in the northern and northwestern parts of Yunnan, in valleys which are carved out by Lancang, Nu, and Jinsha rivers. For the Nu, an important feature of their geographical distribution is that they tend to live in ‘pockets’ of communities surrounded by the Lisu (Han 2004: 126). The spread of Christianity among the Lisu and the Nu can be classified into three broad stages (Han 2004: 131). In the first stage, Protestant missionaries, bolstered by their success among the Miao in the Yunnan northeast, intensified their effort to bring the Gospel to the neighbouring regions, where Lisu and the Nu lived. In the second stage, evangelism focus shifted to the areas around the Nu river, such as Weixi, Lijiang, Yong Teng, Teng Chong. The third stage of

‘To the Peoples’   111 the development saw the establishment of Protestant communities in the Nu areas as the main springboard for further evangelism. Around the 1910s, following the development of the Miao script, Protestant missionaries began an effort to do the same for the Lisu, first with the so-­called ‘Eastern Lisu script’. Subsequently the ‘Western Lisu script’ was developed using Latin alphabets in capital. The church actively promoted the use of the Lisu scripts in their religious publications, in liturgies, and in mission schools, resulting in their widespread adoption not only by the the Lisu, but also in other minority nationalities such as the Nu who attended the Lisu churches (Han 2004: 134–135). Importantly, the Nu generally did not regard Lisu Protestant missionaries and the Lisu language as elements of alien culture to be resisted or rejected. One important reason, as Gao and Gong (2010) argue, is that the Nu have historically shown strong affinity with Lisu culture. In the areas where the Lisu predominate, there has been significant Lisu-­ization among the other minority nationalities who long have had intensive social, economic, and cultural interactions with the Lisu. The Lisu script, the Lisu Bible, and the Book of Praise have been accepted by both the Lisu and the Nu as important parts of their own ethnic culture and sources of religious knowledge. The Christianization of the Lisu and the Nu in turn further strengthens the cultural identity shared by both nationalities. In recent years, Lisu Christians have intensified efforts to evangelize their neighbouring minority nationalities, such as the Dulong. By 1998 at least 800 out of 4000 Dulong living in the Dulong Valley had become Christian through Lisu missionary efforts (Yamamori and Chan 1998: 411). Tibetan Catholicism It was the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and Catholics of Alulhaka village, perched on top of a hill in the remote Gongshan county in the Nujiang region, gathered in the newly built chapel for Mass officiated by Fr. Ambrose, the Tibetan priest who hailed from the village. Halfway through Mass, Fr. Ambrose, holding high the monstrance containing the Eucharist, led the congregation out of the chapel and the whole group slowly traced a route that marked out the boundary of the village. At certain locations, the priest would pause and raise up the monstrance to bless the village and the congregation. After about forty-­five minutes, the entire procession returned to the chapel to conclude Mass. The purpose of this act of circumambulation, the priest told me later, was not only for him to bless the village, but also to mark out the boundary of the religious community of Alulhaka. The Alulhaka chapel was part of a network of fourteen chapels located in the remote hills around Gongshan county town, where the main Catholic church of the county was located. This network of chapels and churches, together with those in the neighbouring counties in northern Yunnan, are in turn part of the Dali diocese. At least this is how the official China Catholic Patriotic Church currently draws the boundary of the diocese. From the Vatican’s perspective, the churches in Gongshan, Deqin and neighbouring counties in Yunnan, Yanjing in Tibet, and Bathang, Lithang, and Kangding in Sichuan, still

112   F.K.G. Lim belong to the Diocese of Kangding that was established in 1946. This diocese followed the Vatican’s successive establishment of Vicariates Apostolic (that of Lhassa, Thibet, and Tatsienlu) since 1846 for the evangelization of Tibet. The responsibility for converting the Tibetans had first fallen on the shoulders of French missionaries from the Societé des Missionaires Étrangères de Paris (MEP), and later, on the Swiss missionaries from the Order of the Grand St. Bernard. Despite persistent efforts, the missionaries failed to establish a permanent mission in central Tibet. However, they were successful in maintaining a lasting presence in a number of Sino-­Tibetan border regions that included western Sichuan, southeastern Tibet, and northern Yunnan. The missionaries learned Chinese and Tibetan, and translated Bible passages, hymns, prayers, the liturgy of Mass, and other devotional material from Latin and French into the Tibetan language. They also set up schools, seminaries, medical clinics, and orphanages. While the Tibetans were the main focus for the missionaries, members of other neighbouring ethnic groups also utilized the services provided by the church and some converted to Catholicism as well. In other words, with regard to religio-­ ethnicity, like Lisu Christianity the community of Tibetan Catholicism also comprises of non-­Tibetans such as the Naxi and the Nu, who live in areas dominated by Tibetans who are Catholics. For example, the mission at Baihanluo, in the remote hills of Gongshan county, northern Yunnan, in 1898 comprised more than 1000 Catholics, drawn mainly from the Tibetan, Nu, and Lisu (Lisuzu Jianshi, 1983: 65–66). The pattern persists to this day: when I visited Baihanluo in 2007, Tibetan, Nu, and Lisu Catholics share the same hymnals, prayer booklet and devotional texts with biblical passages in the Tibetan language, based on editions first published by the French missionaries in the early twentieth century. The two Tibetan Catholic priests who periodically visit Baihanluo and surrounding Catholic villages also use these same texts when leading prayers and giving sermons. Many Tibetan Catholics remember 1905 as a particularly painful year. The persecution against Catholics that had first started in Bathang in Sichuan province spread to the neighbouring regions in Yunnan and Tibet where communities of Tibetan Catholics and the foreign missionaries lived. In Bathang, church properties were destroyed and nine lay Catholics were killed together with two missionaries. At Yerkalo/Yanjing in Tibet, anti-­Christian Tibetans comprising of Tibetan monks and ordinary Tibetans destroyed the church building, school, priest residence, and the oratory. Thirteen members of the Tibetan community were shot dead, and the resident priest was beheaded. The bodies of many of the dead were then thrown into the Lancang River. Not far away, in Tsekou, Yunnan province, the Tibetan Catholics faced similar ferocious attacks by the Tibetan Buddhists. There, around eight Catholics were killed and the church destroyed. Two priests, Fr. Dubernard and Fr. Bourdonnec, were brutally killed. The latter was first shot with poisoned arrows, and his head was cut into half at the mouth by a broad blade (Loup 1956: 147). As I stood before the grave of Fr. Dubernard while visiting Tsekou in 2008, my guide, John, a leader of the local Tibetan Catholic community, told me with a grim face,

‘To the Peoples’   113 You know how they killed him? First they beheaded him, and then they dug out his heart and threw it into the river. The other priest [Fr. Bourdonnec] was also killed not far from here. Later, someone found and took the body of Fr. Dubernard and buried him here. These days, local Catholics often come to the grave to pray, especially during the Feast of All Souls and when there is drought. According to John, praying for rain at these martyrs graves is particularly efficacious. When asked about the history of their faith, the Catholics – Tibetan, Nu, Naxi, or other nationalities – would inevitably recount the martyrdom of the foreign missionaries to highlight the persecution that their faith had suffered in the past, while linking the historical narrative with the present challenges they faced. As I have written elsewhere (Lim 2009), historically the Tibetan Catholics as a religious community had to deal with what many in the broader Tibetan and Chinese societies viewed as the political and cultural ‘foreignness’ of their religion. The Tibetan term for Catholicism is ‘nangda pichi’ (written form: gnam bdag po’i chos), ‘Religion of the Heavenly Lord’. Tibetan Catholics refer to themselves, and are referred to by others, as ‘je to pa’ (je to is translated from Chinese jidu, for ‘Christ’; pa is the Tibetan suffix). A strong symbolic boundary is established between the Tibetan Catholics and the wider Buddhist Tibetan society as Buddhism is referred to as ‘bichi’ (bod chos), literally ‘Tibetan

Figure 7.1 Graves of murdered European missionaries and Tibetan Catholics (source: image © Francis Lim).

114   F.K.G. Lim religion’. Thus, ‘bichi’ entails a correspondence between religion and ethnicity, a view widely held by the Tibetan Buddhists, and dovetails nicely with how the minzu shibie project constructs the boundary of nationality. However, this perceived ‘foreignness’ of Tibetan Catholicism does not mean that the Tibetan Catholics are always living in a state of high tension with the Tibetan Buddhists and the authorities. Indeed, many Catholics I spoke with emphasized that apart from their religion, they engage in many common cultural practices with other Tibetans, such as celebrating the national holidays like Lunar New Year (the Tibetan Buddhists will also celebrate the Losar, the Tibetan New Year), songs and dances, food, and economic activities. In village life, outside of specifically religious contexts, there is no marked social boundary between the Tibetan Catholics and their non-­Catholic neighbours in terms of commensality and other social interactions. In fact, some non-­Catholics try to learn about the history of Tibetan Catholicism, and many are in the red wine-­ making and lodge businesses, to tap into the increasingly lucrative tourism market as visitors seek out the Tibetan Catholic communities that are promoted in various tourist guidebooks, websites, and agencies as exotic destinations (Lim 2009: 92–94). For example, Mr. Liu, a Naxi retired teacher and a Tibetan Buddhist, operated a lodge next to the famous church at Cizhong village, Deqing county in Yunnan. Many tourists visiting Cizhong stayed at the lodge, which was recommended in some tourist guide books. Mr. Liu has become a sort of local celebrity as tourists sought him for information about the history of Tibetan Catholicism, and to taste his homemade red wine that was marketed as the authentic legacy of the French Catholic missionaries. Hence, the strong sense among the Tibetan Catholics of belonging to a unique community owes much to the symbolic boundary that has been drawn by two processes. On the one hand, there is the constant social memorialization of certain significant past events often related to instances of martyrdom and triumphant efforts that overcame adversity. On the other hand, the rapid encroachment of a tourism industry based primarily on cultural heritage tourism provides more opportunities for the Catholics, as well as neighbouring non-­Catholics who wish to gain material benefits from tourism, to narrate their history to an interested audience and be made aware of the uniqueness of their community. Another factor that characterizes rural Catholicism in China as a kind of ethnicity is that for most believers their religious identity is an ascribed status. In other words, being a Catholic in many rural areas means being born into a Catholic family and participation in family and community religious and rites of passage rituals. According to the statistics compiled in 1950, there were about 5000 Catholics in the Kangding diocese. These days, according to the two Tibetan Catholic priests I worked with, the number is around 6000. While no exact figures can be obtained, current estimates indicate the number of believers has seen only negligible increase throughout the last fifty years or so. Informants say that believers are overwhelmingly born into Catholic families, and group endogamy is the prevailing norm. New converts are few, and these are mainly those who have converted when marrying Catholics.

‘To the Peoples’   115 Here, it is necessary to refer to an important missiological principle for Catholic and Protestant missionaries – conversion by families. This is how James Fraser, the most famous missionary to the Lisu, describes the strategy in 1916 in a letter: When these tribespeople turn to the Lord en famille it does not necessarily mean that every member of the family is whole-­hearted about the matter – indeed this is seldom the case – but it does mean that the responsible members of the family turn from Satan to God with a definiteness otherwise lacking. When, accordingly, I speak about so many Christian ‘families’ I mean families where those responsible have removed all vestige of demonolatry from the home. (quoted in Covell 1995: 142) This missiological principle, I would argue, is a significant factor in the formation of Christianity as religio-­ethnicity because, as noted by many ethnographers, many families in China’s minority areas are multi-­ethnic, often across generations. Below are two examples from my fieldwork area. Joseph Xiao was a twenty-­year-old Catholic from Gongshan county in the Nujiang Autonomous Prefecture, northwest Yunnan. When I first met him in 2007 he was enrolled as a seminarian in a junior seminary in Xi’an, Shaanxi province, hoping to become a Catholic priest and eventually return home to serve his community. Joseph’s identity document indicated his nationality as Tibetan, which was the same as his father’s. However, Joseph’s mother was Nu and his sister was also registered as Nu. Minzu identity within the Joseph’s family and others are often chosen with pragmatic aims in mind; Joseph’s sister was registered as a Nu to take advantage of the preferential treatment that the Nu minzu – but not the Tibetan – enjoy in the Gongshan Dulong-­Nu Autonomous county. Joseph and his family and their religious faith confound the state’s effort to classify peoples according to neat categories of minzu. Tibetan and Nu are the main languages spoken in Joseph’s family, while Tibetan is widely spoken among the different minzu in the area where Joseph and his family lived. The family history of the Tibetan Catholic priest, Father Ambrose, is another poignant illustration. While Fr. Ambrose was officially registered as Tibetan, his great-­grandfather, by the name of Li Changsheng, was a Han Chinese originally from Sichuan province who married a Tibetan Catholic woman after arriving in Gongshan county. Li Changsheng’s children were all baptized as Catholics and registered as Tibetan, while retaining the Han surname, Li. One of the children, Renata, married a Nu woman called Sara who converted to Catholicism following the marriage, and the couple gave birth to three sons, the youngest was Fr. Ambrose. After the priest’s mother died, his father re-­married a Tibetan Catholic. The multi-­ethnic feature of Fr. Ambrose’s family history is not uncommon in the minority areas of China (cf. Harrell 2001). Important to my argument here is that Fr. Ambrose’s kinfolk, while belonging to a number of different officially recognized nationalities, belong to a Catholic community which has historically been formed as a result of missionaries’ effort to convert the Tibetans.

116   F.K.G. Lim Thus, due to the historical patterns of evangelism and the subsequent development of the Catholic mission that was established in the Tibetan regions, most members of the Tibetan Catholic community live and identify with a specific geographical area in southwestern China. This area is largely that of the old Kangding Diocese that spills over into a few neighbouring provinces. Catholics from different officially designated ethnic groups use liturgical and devotional tracts in Tibetan first produced by the missionaries, and recount a social history related to efforts initially to convert the Tibetans. The multi-­ethnic feature of Tibetan Catholicism is today reflected in the different languages used in the liturgies of some churches and community, even while Tibetan remains the dominant language. Thus, as regards religio-­ethnicity, members belonging to what I call ‘Tibetan Catholicism’ do not all belong to an officially defined Tibetan ‘nationality’, just as those who belong to ‘Lisu Christianity’ are not all Lisu people.

Figure 7.2  Multilingual worship (source: image © Francis Lim).

‘To the Peoples’   117

Conclusion In many Catholic and Protestant communities in rural China, the Christian faith has been transmitted inter-­generationally from respected elders to the younger ones via kinship ties, ensuring a steady growth even in times of severe state persecution. Through this mode of transmission, Christianity becomes intertwined with kinship to constitute an integral part of rural life: people consider the faith as bound up with their own identification with particular lineages or villages. The shared social memory of the sufferings of Christians for their faith further strengthens a sense of solidarity among these Christian communities. This melding of kinship ties, religious identity, social networks and historical memory indexes the deep processes at work in the indigenization of Christianity in China (Lee 2007; Ng et al. 2005). I have discussed two possible approaches to conceptualize the impact of this form of Christian indigenization on ethnic identity among the minority groups.

Figure 7.3 Tibetan Bible passages translated by French missionaries, c.1895 (source: image © Francis Lim).

118   F.K.G. Lim The first approach, common among researchers and other commentators on religion and ethnic minority, examines how the expansion of Christianity, via the initial efforts of foreign missionaries and subsequently through the local ones, has precipitated new ethnic consciousness in China’s minority areas. The formation of new ethnic consciousness can proceed in a few ways, such as in responding to the ‘civilizing missions’ of Christian missionaries and groups (and later, of the state), through the invention of a written script, and resulting from the production of cultural institutions such as literary works, educational enterprises, religious practices, etc. In short, Christianity is considered by these ethnic minorities who have adopted it as a kind of ethno-­religion, as shown in the Hua Miao case. The second way to analyze the relationship between Christianity and ethnic identity in the minority areas is through what I term religio-­ethnicity. This does not mean that members of a religio-­ethnic group would refer to their community as a separate minzu. My main point is that there are certain Christian communities that manifest many elements of what scholars have conceptualized as an ethnic group. From the discussion of ‘Lisu Protestantism’ and ‘Tibetan Catholicism’, we can identify at least five features of religio-­ethnicity. First, the presence an ethnic group which was historically the target population for Christian evangelism. This ethnic group would usually be culturally dominant in a multi-­ ethnic area, but at the same time not viewed as a cultural or political threat to smaller neighbouring groups. Second, concerted effort was expended on the part of missionaries to translate the Gospel and other religious tracts into the dominant group’s language, which was also widely used by other ethnic groups living in the same geographical area. These two features combined to facilitate the transmission of Christianity to the surrounding groups following the conversion of the culturally dominant group so that Christianity became an additional integrative factor for these groups. Third, the ‘ethnic’ component of this religious community is further shaped by a shared sense of history and internal solidarity generated through common historical experience of interacting with other local non-­Christian groups, the state, and transnational social actors. Fourth, the religio-­ethnic group is often associated with a particular geographic area. This is partly due to the traditional settlement pattern of constituent members of the religio-­ethnic group, and partly due to the state’s residential policy in terms of the hukou system that made it very difficult for rural Christians to migrate permanently to other areas. Finally, religious and geographical identities overlap with kinship such that being a Christian to large extent is an ascribed status. Of course, Christianity as ethno-­religion and as religio-­ethnicity are not mutually exclusive phenomena. In fact, the former could be an important foundation for the latter. Take for instance ‘Lisu Protestantism’: while Christianity’s indigenization can be considered an example of it becoming Lisu’s ethno-­religion, in that it has become integral to Lisu ethnic consciousness, ‘Lisu Protestantism’ can also be a religio-­ethnicity as an indigenized Lisu Christianity, using Lisu script and language, spread to neighbouring ethnic groups such as the Nu or the Dulong which are not averse to Lisu cultural influences. The phenomenon of religio-­ethnicity thus

‘To the Peoples’   119 underscores the limitation of how ethnicity is understood via the state’s minzu classification system, which has become the dominant frame with which many people view ethnicity in China – the statement ‘there are fifty-­six “nationalities”/ethnic groups in China’ appears in countless scholarly and official documents. This chapter’s examination of how Christianity can shape ethnicity highlights not only the multiple ways of being ethnic in the minority areas on China, but also the limitation of viewing ethnicity through the eyes of the state.

References Barth, F. (1969) Ethnic Groups and Boundaries, Boston: Little, Brown. Covell, R. (1995) The Liberating Gospel in China, Grand Rapids: Baker Books. Covell, R. (2008) ‘To every tribe’, Christian History and Biography, 98: 26–29. De Vos, G.A. (2006) ‘Introduction: ethnic pluralism: conflict and accommodation’, in L. Romanucci-­Ross et al. (eds) Ethnic Identity, 4th edn, Lanham: Altamira Press. Diamond, N. (1996) ‘Christianity and the Hua Miao: writing and power’, in D. Bays (ed.) Christianity in China, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Eriksen, T.H. (2002) Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2nd edn, London: Pluto Press. Gao, Z. and Gong, M. (2010) ‘Zongjiao rentong yu wenhua rentong de hudong’, Xinan bianjiang minzu yanjiu, 6: 184–190. Gladney, D. (1991) Muslim Chinese, Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies. Harrell, S. (1995) (ed.) Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Harrell, S. (2001) Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Han, J. (2000) Jidujiao yu yunnan shaoshu minzu, Kunming: Renmin chubanshe. Han, J. (2004) ‘Jidujiao yu Yunnan bufen shaoshu minzu shehui wenhua’, in X.-Z. Yang and F.-Z. Xing (eds) Yunnan jidujiao chuanbo ji xianzhuang diaocha yanjiu, Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary. Hefner, R. (1993) (ed.) Conversion to Christianity, Berkeley: University of California Press. Hirono, M. (2008) Civilizing Missions, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Keyes, C.F. (1976) ‘Toward a new formulation of the concept of ethnic group’, Ethnicity, 3: 203–213. Lee, J. T.-H. (2007) ‘Christianity in contemporary China: an update’, Journal of Church and State, 49: 277–304. Lim, F.K.G. (2009) ‘Negotiating ‘foreignness’, localizing faith: Tibetan Catholicism in the Yunnan–Tibet borderlands’, in J. Bautista and F.K.G. Lim (eds) Christianity and the State in Asia, London: Routledge. Lisu zu Jianshi (1983) Kunming: Renmin chubanshe, 65–66. Loup, R. (1956) Martyr in Tibet, New York: David Mackay. Mackerras, C. (2003) China’s Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation, London: Routledge. Madsen, R. (1998) China’s Catholics, Berkeley: University of California Press. Mullaney, T.S. (2010) ‘Seeing for the state: the role of social scientists in China’s ethnic classification project’, Asian Ethnicity, 11: 325–342. Ng, Peter Tze-­ming, Tao Feiya, Zhao Xingsheng and Liu Jianbo (2005) Sheng shan jiao xia de shi zi jia : zong jiao yu she hui hu dong ge an yan jiu, Hong Kong: Institute of Sino-­Christian Studies.

120   F.K.G. Lim Peel, J.D.Y. (2000) Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pollard, S. (1919) The Story of the Miao, London: H. Hooks. Scott, J.C. (1998) Seeing Like a State, New Haven: Yale University Press. Sutton, D. and X. Kang (2009) ‘Recasting religion and ethnicity: tourism and socialism in northern Sichuan’, in T. Dubois (ed.) Casting Faiths, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. T’ien, J.-K. (1993) Peaks of Faith, Leiden: E.J. Brill. Wang, L. (2008) Meiguo chuanjiaoshi yu wanqing zhongguo xiandaihua, Tianjin: Renmin chubanshe. Yamamori, T. and K.-K. Chan (1998) ‘Missiological ramifications of the social impact of Christianity on the Lisu of China’, Missiology, 26: 403–417. Yang, B. (2009) ‘Central state, local governments, ethnic groups and the minzu identification in Yunnan (1950–1980s)’, Modern Asian Studies, 43: 741–775.

Part III

Civil society

8 Civil society and the role of the Catholic Church in contemporary China1 Shun-­Hing Chan

Introduction The emergence and development of civil society in mainland China has been an important topic for social researchers over the past 20 years. The questions researchers have raised can be summarized as follows: what is civil society (Kean 1988)? Was there a civil society in Chinese history?2 Which model provides a better explanation for the organizational form of Chinese society, the model of state corporatism or that of civil society (White et al. 1996; Unger 2008)? How should researchers conduct empirical study on Chinese society using the civil society model (Brook and Frolick 1997; Ho 1997; Weller 2005; Deng 2008)? If non-­governmental organizations play a key role in building civil society, then what role is played by religious organizations (Ma 2006; Lu 2009; Madsen 2008)? In sociological literature, researchers consider Catholicism to be instrumental in constructing civil society, which in turn contributes to democratization. For example, José Casanova holds that the Catholic church plays a prominent role in three aspects of civil society formation. First, the church serves as an autonomous public space and as a countervailing force to state power. Second, the church becomes an institution of civil society when it gives up its monopolistic claims and recognizes religious freedom and freedom of conscience as universal and inviolable human rights. Third, the church enters the public sphere of civil society to raise normative issues, participating in ongoing processes of normative contestation (Casanova 2001b). Casanova’s illuminating observation is useful in enabling researchers to understand how the Catholic church may have contributed to the construction of a civil society as it stands in China today. The research question examined by this chapter is as follows: what role has the Catholic church played in constructing civil society in contemporary China? I use the working definition of civil society suggested by the Centre for Civil Society at the London School of Economics as the theoretical framework of this chapter. I then provide in-­depth analyses of a variety of practices among Catholic priests facing government control and examine the implications of their resistance for the building of civil society. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the Catholic church’s contribution in advancing religious freedom in the context of social restructuring in contemporary China. .

124   S.-H. Chan

Theoretical framework General speaking, three different models of civil society can be identified: the liberal, the republican and the Marxist (Calhoun 1992; Putnam 1993; Ku 2002; Madsen 2008). There are many discussions regarding how theoretically grounded research on the nature of civil society should be conducted in the Chinese setting.3 For example, Craig Calhoun critically examines the use and misuse of the concept of civil society in Chinese society by a number of scholars (Calhoun 1992). Richard Madsen’s writings on the relationship between civil society and the Catholic church in China are valuable references for researchers seeking to understand the church’s role in China. In China’s Catholics, he uses Robert Putnam’s republican model of civil society to examine whether the Catholic church in northern China exhibits the characteristics of civil society. His conclusion is that the Catholic church there does not show the substance of civility suggested by Putnam (Madsen 1998: 22–23). Madsen’s study of the Catholic church in China provides a useful entry point for later researchers, regardless of whether they agree with his findings. The following working definition of civil society formulated by the Centre for Civil Society of the London School of Economics is a useful framework for understanding what constitutes civil society: Civil Society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-­based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, self-­help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups. (Centre for Civil Society 2004)4 As a faith-­based organization the Catholic church can contribute to the development of civil society. I refer to the above definition in formulating three hypotheses to assess whether the Catholic church in China contributes to the development of civil society characteristics. There are both a government-­approved open church and an underground church in Chinese society. Being registered with the government, the open church has legal status and is supervised by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA). The underground church refuses to register as a social institution under a government body and is therefore deemed illegal. Generally speaking, the government controls the open church through the CPA, and suppresses the underground church through the Public Security Bureau. Between

Civil society and the Catholic Church   125 the government and the open church there exists a type of vertical relationship of authority and dependence. However, many priests from the open and underground churches resist government control and seek religious freedom. Seeking religious freedom is an affirmation of civil rights and can be seen as representing the shared interests, purposes and values of Catholics and citizens in wider society. Hence: Hypothesis 1: The more the Catholic church seeks religious freedom, the more she demonstrates the characteristics of a civil society. The boundaries between the Chinese government and the Catholic church are complex, blurred and negotiated. The relationship between the government and the open church is far from the ideal of a civil society because the latter operates under the coercive control of the former, whereas the relationship between the government and the underground church is close to the ideal of a civil society because the church exercises self-­governance and seeks independence from the state. In reality, there are priests from the open church who resist government control and priests from the underground church who are able to communicate well with government officials. Therefore, the relationship between the government and the church should be understood not only from the perspective of organizational form, but also in terms of the power relations between the two parties, particularly whether priests are able to take collective action in search of religious freedom. Hypothesis 2: Regardless of whether the relationship between government and the church is one of conflict or cooperation, the more the church seeks religious freedom through collective action, the more she demonstrates the characteristics of a civil society. There are a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms in the Catholic church that vary in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. China’s open and underground churches develop in different spaces that greatly affect their institutional forms. Some individual churches are placed under the supervision of the CPA institutionally, and some insist on following only the Vatican as they resist the interference of the CPA. There are a variety of relationships between the open and underground churches, including those characterized by conflict, competition, negotiation, compromise and cooperation. The ‘apostolic mandate’ granted by the Vatican deeply affects the legitimacy and power of the open and underground bishops, including the loyalty they receive from fathers, sisters and laity. Hypothesis 3: There are multiple relationships between the open and underground churches, including those characterized by conflict, co-­existence and collaboration. Regardless of the nature of these relationships, the more the church seeks religious freedom through collective action, the more she demonstrates the characteristics of a civil society.

126   S.-H. Chan

Data and research method This sociological study uses the method of field research to investigate the Catholic church in mainland China. Today the study of the Catholic church continues to be a sensitive topic. Field research allowed me to enter parishes and meet with priests and laity in person. I chose three Catholic dioceses as the subjects of study: Cangzhou diocese in Hebei Province, Mindong diocese in Fujian Province, and Wenzhou diocese in Zhejiang Province. The reason for choosing the combination of these dioceses located in northern, southern and eastern China is that they each represent a unique model of the church’s relationship with the state. In Cangzhou diocese, the open church is stronger than its underground counterpart. In Mindong diocese, the underground church is stronger than the open church. In Wenzhou diocese, the open and underground churches are more or less equal in power. These different models could together project a clearer picture of the condition of the Catholic church in China. I conducted my fieldwork in Cangzhou diocese in February and March in 2007, interviewing a total of 16 priests and laity in both the open and underground churches. Two fieldwork studies were conducted in Mindong diocese. The first trip was made from May to June 2007, when 12 priests and laity from both the open and the underground churches were interviewed. In the second trip made in December 2008, I conducted further in-­depth interviews with some of the priests and laity I had met on the first trip. The purpose of the second interviews was to ask them to comment on my draft and to clarify some issues. I also conducted two fieldwork studies in Wenzhou diocese. The first trip was made in June 2007, when ten priests and laity from both the open and the underground churches were interviewed. The purpose of the second trip made in January 2009 was also to ask the interviewees to comment on the draft and clarify some issues that had arisen in the first round of interviews.

The role of the Catholic Church in building civil society This section looks into the dioceses of Cangzhou, Mindong and Wenzhou to examine whether they have demonstrated to the development of civil society characteristics. Cangzhou diocese Cangzhou diocese is located in the eastern part of Hebei Province. Both the open and underground churches have a presence in Cangzhou diocese. The bishop’s office and the Sacred Heart Cathedral of the open church are located in the Dazhangzhung in Xian County. Open church bishop Li Liangui has an ‘apostolic mandate’ conferred by the Pope. There are 65,000 Catholics in Cangzhou diocese, including 100 priests, 270 nuns and 100 seminarians. The underground church is led by Bishop Zhang Weizhu, who is also recognized by the Vatican.

Civil society and the Catholic Church   127 Bishop Zhang manages a small Catholic community with several priests and 1,400 Catholics (Charbonnier 2008: 90–98).5 Collective action seeking religious freedom Although both the open and underground churches in Cangzhou diocese resist government control, they use different strategies to do so. The government exercises control over the open church through the CPA and the Religious Affairs Bureau. In response to this controlling mechanism, priests occupy key CPA positions in Cangzhou diocese and thereby weaken its function. Furthermore, priests do not allow government officials to attend their meetings and simply report to them after the meeting instead. On many occasions, priests have been able to oppose government officials directly and have therefore been obliged to employ more skillful means to deal with them. One good example of their use of such a tactic is the Xuzhou diocese ordination incident. On 30 November 2006, the CPA arranged an Episcopal ordination for Father Wang Renlei in which he was to be ordained as the auxiliary bishop of Xuzhou diocese in Jiangsu Province, but the ordination was not approved by the Pope. On 29 November, the officials of the Religious Affairs Bureau asked Bishop Li Liangui of Cangzhou diocese and Bishop Feng Xinmao of Hengshui diocese to go and check up on some church properties in Hebei Province, but in fact took them to take part in the ordination ceremony in Xuzhou diocese. On 30 November, Bishop Li left the guest house early in the morning without being noticed by the officials thereby avoiding attending the ordination ceremony. The way in which Bishop Li chose to respond to government control was characterized by skillful avoidance rather than open defiance.6 The Public Security Bureau exercises control over the underground church through the suppression of its priests or by persuading them to comply with government policy. For example, the Public Security Bureau arrested Bishop Zhang and had him imprisoned on charges of organizing illegal activities for which he served four months in jail in 1998. After being released, he went to work in Xinxiang diocese in Henan Province. In January 2001, the Public Security Bureau arrested him again and put him in a guest house for 18 months. While Bishop Zhang was being detained, the government officials sought to persuade him to become bishop of Xinxiang diocese if he complied with the ‘one association, one conference’ rule,7 the ‘Three-­Self ’ principles and the religious policy of the government. Bishop Zhang declined to cooperate despite the incentives offered. This example shows that the government officials have tried to co-­opt the bishop of the underground church into the political system, but have not been successful. The boundaries between the church and the government Generally speaking, the open church has legal status in society, but is supervised by the CPA and the Religious Affairs Bureau. The underground church is illegal

128   S.-H. Chan and could therefore be regarded as a self-­organizing religious organization independent of the state in the Chinese context. On the face of it, the open church is subject to state coercion in a situation indicative of the absence of civil society, whereas the underground church operates independently of the state in circumstances close to the civil society ideal. According to the definition of civil society suggested in the previous section, one can conclude that the underground church contributes to the essential characteristics of a civil society. The question lies with the open church. Although there is a vertical relationship of authority and dependence between the open church and the government, its bishop nevertheless resists government control. We could argue that the open church also seeks to advance religious freedom under the constraints of the political system, particularly through the efforts priests have made to preserve the autonomy of the church. This act of resistance could be seen as a push for more space in civil society in general. In this regard, the open church does contribute to the characteristics of a civil society. Interaction of actors in the church The open and underground churches are in conflict in Cangzhou diocese. The open church is organizationally stronger than the underground church because its bishop has the Pope’s ‘apostolic mandate’, giving him support from Catholics in the region. Although the underground church bishop is also recognized by the Pope, it cannot organize religious activities openly due to its illegal status. As a result, the church can survive only as a small religious community. The bishops of the open and underground churches in Cangzhou diocese have met with each other and negotiated the possibility of uniting the two hierarchies. During the meeting, the open church bishop emphasized that he had papal recognition and therefore had legitimacy within the Catholic church hierarchy. However, the underground church bishop criticized him for violating the prin­ ciples of the ‘Eight-­Point Directives on Dealing with China’ issued by the Vatican, particularly through his CPA participation in Cangzhou diocese (Lam 1997: 172–176).8 The negotiation did not yield fruitful result. After the meeting, the two hierarchies continued to work separately, thereby maintaining a power structure of a strong open church and a weak underground church in the diocese. The negotiation between the open and the underground church bishops described above can be understood as rational-­critical discourse among actors or groups in civil society (Calhoun 1993: 273–274).9 They both used religious principles to support their position. Even though their negotiation was not successful, both parties resist government control and search for autonomy of the church, though they do so in varying degrees and in different capacities. Mindong diocese Mindong diocese is located in the northeastern part of Fujian Province. The diocese comprises nine counties with a total of 30 parishes. Most Chinese

Civil society and the Catholic Church   129 Catholics live in Fuan City, Ningde and Xiapu. Mindong diocese had approximately 80,000 Catholics in 2008. The open church has an official patriotic bishop not recognized by the Pope who leads about five priests in the diocese and oversees a total of fewer than 10,000 Catholics. The bishop’s office is located in Ningde. The underground church has a bishop recognized by the Pope who leads 45 priests, 88 nuns and 400 lay catechists and is responsible for approximately 70,000 Catholics (Charbonnier 2008: 525–527).10 Collective action seeking religious freedom The open church was reinvigorated around 1978 and 1979 after the Cultural Revolution came to an end. Father Zhang Shizhi and a small number of priests began to conduct mass in the region. He became the official diocesan bishop in 1985 and assumed the CPA position in Mindong diocese. He passed away in 2005. During the time Bishop Zhang led the diocese, a young underground seminary student named Zhan Silu indicated his willingness to join the open church. He received theological education and graduated from the Sheshan Seminary in Shanghai in 1989, after which he was ordained. The CPA appointed him auxiliary bishop of Mindong diocese in 2000. However, the Vatican did not approve his appointment. The open church was largely sidelined due to Zhan’s illegitimate position in the Catholic community, as can be discerned from the respective proportions of the Catholic population who followed the open and underground churches. The open church can be considered an extension of state power and therefore as indicative of an inadequate degree of religious freedom. As for the underground church, a number of priests released from prison at the end of the Cultural Revolution returned to Mindong. They organized the underground church and secretly celebrated mass on Sunday. The underground church provided training for lay catechists in 1978 and received young men as students in an underground seminary in 1980. In 1984, the underground church invited a bishop from Tianshui diocese in Gansu Province to ordain a bishop and three priests. Since then, the bishop and three priests have become the leaders of the underground church. From 1984 to 1987, the underground church further ordained 28 young men into the priesthood.11 Given that local government officials knew a policy of suppression could never wipe out the underground church, they turned to a new way to handle the problem. They negotiated with the priests that the church would be allowed free rein to run their religious activities provided that they complied with certain rules. The local government added new rules in the years that followed and their changes were met with a positive response from the underground priests. Based on the understanding that developed, the local government could maintain social order in the local region and the underground church could organize its religious activities. In sum, the underground priests resisted local government control and changed the behavior of the government officials, thereby preserving the auto­ nomy of the church and advancing religious freedom in Mindong diocese.

130   S.-H. Chan The boundaries between the church and the government The power relation between the open church and the government can be characterized as a vertical relationship of authority and dependence. The government controls the church through the CPA and the church is obliged to follow the orders of government officials. To use the concept suggested by Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan, this is a form of ‘state corporatism’. State corporatism refers to a system in which the state recognizes one and only one organization as the sole representative of the sectoral interests of the individuals, enterprises or institutions that comprise that organization’s assigned constituency. The state determines which organizations will be recognized as legitimate and forms an unequal partnership of sorts with such organizations. (Unger and Chan 2008: 48–49) Such a power relation is inconsistent with the ideal of a civil society. In comparison with that between the open church and the government, the boundary between the underground church and the government is complex. On the one hand, the underground church is a self-­organizing religious organization independent from the state. On the other hand, the underground priests negotiate with government officials and are permitted to run the church under local government’s stance of tolerance. The key question is whether the compromise reached between underground priests and government officials means the priests’ collective action represents a search for religious freedom or renders their government relationship one of informal state corporatism. The data I collected in my fieldwork show the underground priests requested that government officials respect the traditions of the Catholic faith in the course of negotiations. They indicated they would support the work of local government officials if it did not violate their faith. In return, the government officials would tolerate religious activities organized by the underground priests in the local region. In sum, the underground priests modified the coercive power the government exerted over the underground church to expand the sphere of religious freedom. In Mindong, the underground church appears to act as an autonomous social organization. Such an organizational form represents the characteristics of a civil society. Interaction of actors in the church The relationship between the open and underground churches in Mindong is a complex one reflecting elements of both conflict and cooperation. On the matter of faith and teaching, the underground priests have criticized the open church bishop for violating the principles of Catholic doctrines. On other matters, the underground priests have developed a relationship of limited cooperation with the bishop of the open church. One good example is the purchase of land and the building of churches. Since 2003, the government policy has stated that priests

Civil society and the Catholic Church   131 who want to build churches have to obtain the agreement of the open church bishop before making their application to government bodies. On matters of this nature, underground priests have to secure support from the open church bishop. The open church bishop has cooperated with requests made by the underground church priests by approving land purchase and construction plan applications they have initiated. It is noteworthy that although there are two Catholic church hierarchies in Mindong diocese, the influence of the underground church is stronger than that of the open church, from which we may conclude that the actual organizational form in the region is closer to the civil society model than to that of state corporatism. Wenzhou diocese Wenzhou diocese is located in the northern part of Zhejiang Province.12 The open and underground churches co-­exist in Wenzhou diocese, and have a confrontational relationship with each other. In 2009, there were 110,000 Catholics in Wenzhou diocese, including 70,000 in the open church and 40,000 in the underground church. The bishop’s office and the Cathedral of St. Paul are located in Zhouzhaici Lane. Bishop Zhu Weifang has the ‘apostolic mandate’ from the Vatican, making him the Diocesan Bishop of Wenzhou. The underground church bishop Shao Zhoumin is also recognized by the Vatican as the Titular Bishop of the diocese. Between the open and the underground church, there are churches of the ‘middle-­path’. Located in the parish of Longgang in Cangnan, these churches form part of the organizational structure of the open church, but their priests and lay Catholics have built positive and trusting relationships with the underground church. The parish of Longgang has approximately 50,000 Catholics (Charbonnier 2008: 512–515).13 Collective action seeking religious freedom The relationship between the open and underground churches in Wenzhou diocese is more complex than those seen in the dioceses of Cangzhou and Mindong. Two different groups exist in the open church; the first can be called the ‘pro-­government’ group and the second the ‘pro-­dialogue’ group. The small number of people constituting the ‘pro-­government’ group follows the orders of the CPA and other government bodies. The majority of priests and lay Catholics belong to the ‘pro-­dialogue’ group, which advocates negotiating with government officials on matters regarding the rights and interests of the church. They work with the government in matters which they consider do not violate their faith and resist government control in matters on which they disagree. They also resist the ‘pro-­government’ group to prevent government intervention. Simply put, although the two conflicting groups exist side by side in the open church, the ‘pro-­dialogue’ group represents the majority who make an effort to preserve the organizational autonomy of the church.

132   S.-H. Chan Although the underground church bishop has been recognized by the Vatican, he represents a church that is illegal under the Chinese political system. The underground church defies the government and criticizes the open church for taking part in the CPA. From April 2000 to October 2001, the local government sent public security officials to the village of Linjiayuan to demolish underground church buildings on three occasions and fierce confrontations between public security officials and Catholics took place on the sites (Justice and Peace Commission of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese 2004: 38). As for the ‘middle-­path’ group between the open and underground churches, although the position of this group was initially close to that of the underground church, its attitude subsequently changed after numerous debates with the ‘pro-­ dialogue’ group of the open church. The ‘middle-­path’ group now also advocates negotiating with government officials as a means of seeking religious freedom and autonomy of the church. The following example illustrates the position of the ‘middle-­path’ group. In 1999, the government officials of Zhejiang Province demanded that the priests establish a CPA in Cangnan. At that time, auxiliary bishop Wang Yijun of Longgang parish suggested they establish a CPA faithful to the Pope. Leading a team of priests and lay Catholic leaders, Bishop Wang negotiated with government officials to add the following sentence to the ‘Constitution of the Catholic Patriotic Association in Wenzhou’: As Catholics, we hold the basic principles of Catholic faith, follow the teaching of the Bible, observe the doctrines, the teaching and the rules of the church, administer the church from the spirit of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic succession of Peter. This sentence affirms that the priests of Wenzhou diocese accept the authority and leadership of the Pope in the Catholic hierarchy, as opposed to adhering to the slogan ‘independence and autonomy, administer the church by oneself ’ advocated by the government. This position is close to that of the ‘pro-­dialogue’ group in the open church. The boundaries between the church and the government The above analysis suggests the existence of three different boundaries between the church groups and the government in Wenzhou diocese. The first boundary lies between the ‘pro-­government’ group and the government. Similar to the government relationship of the open church in Mindong diocese, their relationship can be described as one of state corporatism. The second boundary is between the underground church and the government. Similar to the underground church in Cangzhou diocese, the underground church in Wenzhou diocese is a self-­governing religious organization independent from the state. The third boundary is that demarcating the relationship between the ‘pro-­ dialogue’ group, the ‘middle-­path’ group and the government. These two groups

Civil society and the Catholic Church   133 advocate dialogue with government officials and seek religious freedom through negotiation. Their status is similar to that of the underground church of Mindong diocese. A noteworthy observation is that these two groups have been successful in forcing the government to give ground in negotiations. One good example of this success is that government officials agreed to add a sentence recognizing the authority and leadership of the Pope in ‘The Constitution of the Catholic Patriotic Association in Wenzhou’ in 1999. Interaction of actors in the church There are antagonistic relationships between the ‘pro-­government’ group and the ‘pro-­dialogue’ group in the open church, and between the open and underground churches. However, the ‘middle-­path’ group is able to communicate with both the open and underground churches and has built working relationships with the two groups. The conflict in the open church surrounds the fact that a small number of priests and lay Catholics have been co-­opted by the government and have complied with the orders of government officials. Other priests who are faithful to the Pope have made efforts to weaken the power of these pro-­ government priests. In practice, they do not celebrate mass and sacrament with them, nor do they conduct funeral services for pro-­government priests who pass away. The isolated position of pro-­government priests in the church makes it difficult for government officials to exert their influence in the church. The conflict between the open and underground churches revolves around the question of whether priests should engage in dialogue with government officials. The open church priests consider this to be the correct strategy to safeguard the interests of the church. However, in the eyes of the underground church priests, the open church priests had betrayed the Pope. Although the open church priests and lay Catholic leaders tried to explain their positions to the priests of the underground church, their pleas fell on deaf ears. Looking at the matter from another angle, while both the open and underground priests resist government control, they act in different ways. The ‘middle-­path’ group appreciates the common ground that exists between the two sides, and plays an active role in communicating with both parties. In sum, Catholic priests and lay Catholics who seek religious freedom through different strategies constitute the majority, whereas the number in the ‘pro-­ government’ group is insignificant. Wenzhou diocese as a whole displays the characteristics of a civil society.

Conclusion This chapter employs evidence collected from three Catholic dioceses in China to examine the role of the Catholic church in constructing civil society. The research findings can be summarized as follows. First, both the open and underground churches have a presence in each of the three Catholic dioceses examined here. Although the ‘pro-­government’ group in the open church follows the

134   S.-H. Chan policy of the government, such as in the dioceses of Mindong and Wenzhou, it often works in isolation and finds it difficult to lead the church. In contrast, most of the priests in the open and underground churches make efforts to seek religious freedom and resist government control. Religious freedom is an integral component of civil rights, including the rights of religious belief, association and assembly. Catholic priests seeking religious freedom can be seen as an effort to build civil society from the religious realm and affirm their civil rights as Chinese citizens. Second, the three dioceses discussed in this chapter play host to a variety of Catholic groups. Multiple boundaries can be identified between these groups and the government, including those reflecting relationships of support, negotiation and opposition. Pro-­government groups that support the government are weak in the dioceses, whereas groups advocating stances of negotiation and opposition are strong. The evidence shows that the majority of Catholic priests and laity seek to achieve religious freedom and autonomy of the church through different strategies and the resources available in their region. The final theme to emerge from the evidence is that there are also multiple relationships among Catholic groups in the Catholic church, including relationships characterized by cooperation, communication, conflict and isolation. Catholic groups adhere to different principles derived from the Catholic faith or to directives issued by the Vatican. They debate with each other, arguing over the ‘right’ position and strategies for seeking religious freedom. The diverse range of groups found in the Catholic church is similar to the wide spectrum of social groups commonly seen arguing for their shared interests, purposes and values in a civil society. Based on the above research findings, I now discuss in more depth the role of the Catholic church in constructing civil society in contemporary China. The emergence and development of civil society in China is a central issue for social researchers. Some researchers find that many non-­governmental organizations choose to rely on the government rather than seeking independence from the government to secure resources for organizational survival. These organizations are actually government-­organized non-­governmental organizations (GONGOs), rather than NGOs in the sense commonly understood in the West (Chan 2005: 20–41). This kind of relationship between NGOs and the government can also be described as a form of ‘dependent autonomy’ (Lu 2009). It is in such a context that the contribution made by government resistance within the Catholic church to the construction of civil society can be seen. The emergence and development of a civil society depends on actors in organizations who seek shared interests, purposes and values for wider society rather than reflecting the interests of the state. In this sense, the Catholic church could be seen as an actor which practices civil rights and implements the ideal of civil society in today’s China. Researchers are also concerned with the phenomenon of popular protests in China. While China is undergoing a rapid social restructuring process, many Chinese citizens in different sectors have organized themselves to fight for their

Civil society and the Catholic Church   135 rights and interests and oppose government policy. Some popular protests movements have been successful in changing government policy, whereas others have failed (Lee 2007; Cai 2010). The resistance of the Catholic church can be understood as a form of popular protest in Chinese society. It is noteworthy that the defiance of the Catholic church not only has advanced religious freedom to a certain degree, but also has forced the government to adjust its policy in response to church demands. Evidence illustrating the beneficial impact of such resistance can be found in the dioceses of Mindong and Wenzhou. One of the essential features of civil society is that social organizations oppose state intervention in civil society and make an effort to change state power. The Catholic church has been doing this over the last 30 years. Although I consider the Catholic church has made a contribution to the construction of civil society in China, it shows only a nascent spirit of civil society due to her theological and organizational limitations. The Catholic church in China today seeks religious freedom mainly to protect the rights and interests of the church, and she has not paid an equal amount of attention to other civil rights and to safeguarding the rights of citizens generally in society. Priests and lay Catholics have rarely expressed the views of the Catholic church on social issues by taking part in debates in the public sphere. There is no organization such as the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church in China. The Catholic church will play a more active role in the construction of civil society if priests and lay Catholics take citizenship and civic virtue seriously after the introduction of Catholic social teaching in China. This will also require a change in the political environment in which the government respects civil rights, allows civic participation, and adopts a more tolerant attitude toward the growth of civil society in China.

Notes   1 This research project is supported by the General Research Fund (HKBU 2430/06H) of the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The author wishes to thank Richard Madsen, Francis Lim, Carsten Vala and other participants at the ‘Christianity in Contemporary China: Socio-­cultural Perspectives’ conference, as well as Anthony Lam and Robert L. Montgomery for their helpful critiques of an earlier draft, but is fully responsible for the analyses and interpretations presented herein.   2 See the special issue on ‘ “Public Sphere”/“Civil Society” in China? Paradigmatic Issues in Chinese Studies’, Modern China, 19(2), April 1993.   3 Ibid.   4 This working definition of civil society is closer to the liberal model of civil society, which shows my analyses and interpretations of the role of the Catholic church in China are in the same direction.   5 The data were collected during my field trip to Cangzhou diocese in 2007.   6 A. Stephens (2006) ‘China: USCIRF concerned about attempts to restrict and control Catholics’, United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, 20 December 2006. Online. Available: www.uscirf.gov/index.php?option=com_content &task=view&id=1114&Itemid=1.   7 The ‘one association, one conference’ rule refers to the Catholic Patriotic Association and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference.

136   S.-H. Chan   8 The ‘Eight-­Point Directives on Dealing with China’ was issued by Cardinal Josef Tomko in 1988; it stated what position Catholic priests should take towards the policy of ‘self-­selection and self-­ordination’ advocated by the CPA.   9 By rational-­critical discourse, I refer to the ideal speech situation suggested by Jürgen Habermas in which actors could access discourse, listen to another’s speech and present recognizably ‘good’ arguments in the public sphere, which could form wills and opinions guiding political action. 10 The data were collected in my 2007 and 2008 field trips in Mindong diocese. 11 See ‘China: four Fujian underground clerics released after one-­year detention’, UCA News 22 October 1991, dispatch no. CH3260/633A,8. 12 A Brief History of Wenzhou Catholic Church, 1, 25–30 (Chinese language),Wenzhou: Catholic Wenzhou Diocese, 2006. 13 The data were collected during my 2007 field trip in Wenzhou diocese.

References Brook, T. and Frolick, B.M. (eds) (1997) Civil Society in China? New York: M.E. Sharpe. Cai, Y. (2010) Collective Resistance in China: Why Popular Protests Succeed or Fail, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Calhoun, C. (ed.) (1992) Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge: MIT Press. Calhoun, C. (1993) ‘Civil society and the public sphere’, Public Culture, 5: 267–280. Cao, N. (2010) Constructing China’s Jerusalem: Christmas, Power, and Place in Contemporary Wenzhou, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Casanova, J. (2001a) ‘Religion, the new millennium and globalization’, Sociology of Religion, 62(4): 415–441. Casanova, J. (2001b) ‘Civil society and religion: retrospective reflections on Catholicism and prospective reflections on Islam’, Social Research, 68(4): 1041–1080. Centre for Civil Society, London School of Economics (2004) ‘What is civil society?’ Online. Available: www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CCS/What_is_civil_society.htm (accessed 30 October 2006). Chan, K.M. (2005) ‘The development of NGOs under a post-­totalitarian regime’, in R. Weller (ed.) Civil Life, Globalization, and Political Change in Asia: Organizing between Family and State, 20–41, London: Routledge. Chan, S.-H. (2011) ‘Rethinking the role of the Catholic church in building civil society in contemporary China: the case of Wenzhou Diocese’, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, 2: 177–193. Chan, S.-H. (forthcoming) ‘Changing church and state relations in contemporary China: the case of Mindong Diocese’, The China Quarterly. Chan, S.-H. and Lam, S.K. (2002) ‘The transformation and development of church-­state relations in contemporary China: a case study of the Catholic church’, Ching Feng, 3(1–2): 93–128. Charbonnier, J. (2008) Guide to the Catholic Church in China 2008 (in Chinese), Singapore: China Catholic Communication. Deng, Z. (2008) State and Society: Study of Civil Society in China (in Chinese), Beijing: Peking University Press. Gagnere, N. (1998) The Catholic Church and the Rebirth of Civil Society: Elite Convergence, Mobilization and Democratic Transitions in East-­Central Europe, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Oklahoma. Gao, B. and Yuan, R. (eds) (2008) Blue Book on Civil Society Development in China (in Chinese), Beijing: Peking University Press.

Civil society and the Catholic Church   137 Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge: Polity Press. Ho, B. (1997) The Democratic Implications of Civil Society in China, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Justice and Peace Commission of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese (ed.) (2004) Bird in the Cage: Freedom of Religious Belief in China, Hong Kong: Justice and Peace Commission of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese. Kean, J. (1988) Democracy and Civil Society, London: Verso. Kindopp, J. (2004) The Politics of Protestantism in Contemporary China: State Control, Civil Society, and Social Movement in a Single-­Party State. Ph.D. thesis, George Washington University. Ku, A. (2002) ‘Beyond the paradoxical conception of ‘civil society without citizenship’ ’, International Sociology, 17(4): 551–570. Lam, S.K. (1997) The Catholic Church in Present-­Day China: Through Darkness and Light, Hong Kong: The Holy Spirit Study Centre. Lee, C.K. (2007) Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt, Berkeley: University of California Press. Lu, Y. (2009) Non-­governmental Organizations in China: The Rise of Dependent Autonomy, London: Routledge. Ma, Q. (2006) Non-­governmental Organizations in Contemporary China: Paving the Way to Civil Society? London: Routledge. Madsen, R. (1998) China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society, Berkeley: University of California Press. Madsen, R. (2000) ‘Chinese Christianity: indigenization and conflict’, in E. Perry and M. Selden (eds) Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, 2nd edn, 271–288, New York: Routledge. Madsen, R. (2003) ‘Catholic revival during the Reform Era’, in D.L. Overmyer (ed.) Religion in China Today, 162–181, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Madsen, R. (2004) ‘Catholic conflict and cooperation in the People’s Republic of China’, in J. Kindopp and C.L. Hamrin (eds) God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-­State Tensions, 93–106, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Madsen, R. (2008) ‘Religion and the emergence of civil society’, in B. Gilley and L. Diamond (eds) Political Change in China: Comparisons with Taiwan, 79–94, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Putnam, R. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Unger, J. (ed.) (2008) Associations and the Chinese State: Contested Spaces, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Unger, J. and Chan, A. (2008) ‘Association in a bind: the emergence of political corporatism’, in J. Unger (ed.) Associations and the Chinese State: Contested Spaces, 48–68, New York: M.E. Sharpe. Weller, R. (ed.) (2005) Civil Life, Globalization, and Political Change in Asia: Organizing between Family and State, London: Routledge. White, G., J. Howell and X. Shang (1996) In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

9 The emergence of Christian subcultures in China Beginnings of an inculturation from the grassroots? Katrin Fiedler Introduction Alongside the numerical growth of Chinese Protestant Christianity, qualitative changes are happening within the Christian population. Gone are the days when elderly, barely literate women would constitute the majority of church members in any given congregation. Today, Chinese Protestants come from a variety of social and economic backgrounds. In addition to the flourishing of the church proper, a number of intellectuals have emerged who conduct research on Christianity from different disciplinary angles, including theology, history, philosophy, and literature. This ongoing social diversification of the Christian population (in the widest sense of the word) has not only diversified existing congregations. Different types of Christian communities have emerged which differ both in terms of their believers’ social profiles and in the way they interpret the gospel. In this chapter, I argue that these groups constitute Christian subcultures, meaning congregations or clusters of congregations made up of believers of similar social backgrounds whose interpretation of the gospel via particular frames differs from the Chinese Protestant mainstream. Among these groups are the Wenzhou ‘boss Christians’ with their emphasis on entrepreneurism, the ‘healing Christians’ with their quest for health, and urban ‘culture Christians’ with their reading of Christianity as a value system. In each of these subcultures, Christians develop their own understanding of the gospel, be it its ‘healing’ qualities, its ‘enlightening’ function, or its ‘enriching’ nature. Following, I offer a brief description of each group, highlighting why it constitutes a subculture in the Chinese Christian context. In a second step, I explore for each subculture how far its appropriation of Christianity can be seen as an act of theological inculturation. The emergence of a number of distinct theologies, however uncodified at this point, seems to mark the beginnings of a process of inculturation from the grassroots. This contrasts with perceptions by official Protestant leaders, who maintain that China has not brought forth any indigenized theologies yet, and who urge church related theologians to engage in efforts for ‘theological reconstruction’ (shenxue sixiang jianshe).

Emergence of Christian subcultures   139

Theoretical framework and sources In this chapter, I understand the term subculture broadly as a culture that is distinct enough to be recognized as special and different from the mainstream culture of which it is an offspring. According to this working definition, Christian subcultures are distinct groups within the broader framework of Christianity in the Chinese context. My usage of the term subculture therefore differs significantly from the way it is commonly used in the social sciences. It does not carry overtones of deviance and counter-culture (for a recent overview and discussion of theories on subculture, see, for example, Jenks 2005), since the groups which I examine do not spring from a desire to provoke or to design a counter-culture of Christianity or society at large, although they have largely developed outside of official religious structures. Among the best studied and most distinct subcultures are youth cultures, hence the term subculture is often synonymous with youth culture. This clearly does not apply to the Chinese case, where freedom of religious belief only applies to citizens aged 18 and above. Neither are the groups examined in this chapter recognizable through their visible ‘otherness’ in form of codified clothing styles, nor do they ascribe specific importance to the ‘meaning of style’ (Hebdige 1981). The subcultures discussed here are formed solely through their theologies and their social actions, which distinguish them from the Protestant mainstream in China. One of the assumptions underlying this chapter is the idea that the values and behaviours typical of a subculture have to be shared by a group of people who inhabit a common space. It is this shared space – be it strictly geographical as in the case of Wenzhou’s ‘boss Christians’ or more spread out as in the case of the ‘culture Christians’ – which makes the representatives of this subculture into a group. Just as the notion of culture requires a number or people that participate in it, the group factor is also a constitutive element of a subculture. Conversely, the existence of certain theological ideas within isolated individuals does not suffice to create Christian subcultures. For example, Christian businessmen whose running of their business affairs is influenced by their faith do not only exist in Wenzhou. In this volume, Joy Tong offers insights into the business culture of overseas Chinese entrepreneurs in mainland China (Chapter 11). However, only in Wenzhou has the geographical concentration of Christian entrepreneurs produced a unified theology, behaviour and ultimately group identity which constitute the ‘Wenzhou brand’ of Christianity and make it into a subculture. Likewise, the quest for healing dominates the faith life of Christians all over China, both in rural and urban settings. However, only when this quest is characteristic of entire congregations is it appropriate to speak of a local subculture. Inculturation, which will be used synonymously with the term indigenization in this chapter, describes a process by which the Christian gospel interacts with a local host culture and ultimately produces a new brand of theology. Inculturation therefore means more than transplanting Christian religion to a new place; it describes the development of a new theology which consists neither entirely of

140   K. Fiedler its original ‘home theology’ nor of the ‘host culture’ but a mix of the two. For those adhering to this indigenized form of theology, the process of indigenization means transforming something alien into something of their own; it is a process of transformation through appropriation. Well-known examples of indigenous theologies that are at the same time a reflection of their social and political environment are Korean minjung theology and Latin American liberation theology. Methodologically, this chapter relies on existing studies and is therefore restricted in its argumentation to a literature review. This limits the scope of this chapter not only because little sociological field research has been done on the ‘culture Christians’ and the ‘healing Christians’, but also because in the case of the ‘healing Christians’ and the ‘boss Christians’, few first-­hand written sources from within these groups exist. The subcultures discussed below are defined through their specific ways of interpreting the Christian message, yet these ideologies have different ways of manifesting themselves. While China’s ‘culture Christians’ have produced a bulk of literature and being a ‘culture Christian’ manifests itself largely in producing that particular type of text, the theologies of the ‘boss Christians’ and the ‘healing Christians’ are ‘oral theologies’ or ‘practical theologies’; they are therefore harder to grasp through a literature review. In this chapter, I therefore approach the latter two subcultures also through the actions of the persons practising these variations of Protestantism in so far as these actions can be inferred from the existing literature. With this approach, I follow Adam Chau’s action-­oriented approach of analyzing religion, the ‘doing of religion’ or, in this case, a ‘doing of theology’ (Chau 2006: 75). The theology underlying a specific form of religiosity manifests itself not only in form of scriptural evidence or preached sermons, but also in other activities as practised by believers. Chau differentiates between five modalities of ‘doing religion’, namely the discursive/scriptural modality with an emphasis on (sacred) texts, the personal/cultivational modality with its quest for personal transformation through meditation, qigong and the like, the liturgical/ ritual modality with its focus on elaborate religious rituals, the immediate/practical modality with an emphasis on simple religious practices, and finally the relational modality, which stresses the relationship between humans and deities or ancestors by building temples, making pilgrimages and so on (ibid.). While Chau’s approach is not originally geared towards Christianity, his system of religious modalities is also helpful for analysing the Christian subcultures discussed in this chapter, because it allows us to approach these subcultures not only through the scriptural evidence, but also the ‘behavioural evidence’ they produce.

‘Boss Christians’ – the ‘enriching’ nature of the gospel In recent years, Chinese researchers have coined the term ‘boss Christians’ (laoban jidutu) to describe the Christian entrepreneurs who dominate church life in and around Wenzhou, a phenomenon which has by now even caught the

Emergence of Christian subcultures   141 attention of mainstream media (Landau 2010). With its long Christian history, Wenzhou is also dubbed ‘China’s Jerusalem’. This name refers both to the number of churches which grace the cityscape as prominent landmarks and to the percentage of Christians within the local population, which is estimated to be between 12 and 20 per cent (Landau 2010; Cao 2009: 33). Outside of Christian circles, Wenzhou has become well known for its economic success. This success has been linked to the ‘Wenzhou model’ of doing business, a term which refers to family-­owned businesses of rural origin which have become export hubs for products and human resources within the global economy (Cao 2009: 34, 43). In his study of ‘boss Christians’, Cao Nanlai demonstrates that Wenzhou’s Christian entrepreneurs transfer the ‘Wenzhou model’ of business management to church affairs. They speak of developing ‘trademark churches’, outsource religious work such as preaching in order to create a specialist preaching workforce, and pool church resources for big events such as evangelization meetings. Even more than their business-­inspired church management it is the underlying theology which makes Wenzhou’s ‘boss Christians’ into a Christian subculture in the Chinese context. With their profit-­oriented world view, they clearly diverge from the teachings of most Chinese churches. The official Protestant church, i.e. the preachers, theologians, and institutions affiliated with the China Christian Council and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, encourages believers to be economically active, but at the same time warns them against putting their heart where the money is (Fiedler 2000: 210). This doctrine clearly reflects the conflicting interests which shape the Protestant church in China today, with a remaining influence of fundamentalist otherwordly theologies on the one hand and the need to support the government’s economic policies on the other hand (see, for example, Xiao n.d.). In contrast, the theology revealed by Wenzhou’s Christian entrepreneurs is reminiscent of Max Weber’s Protestant work ethic. Elements of this ethic are the understanding of economic success as a sign of being blessed by God and a constant drive to re-­invest and strive for further development. Cao quotes a local church leader and businessman as follows: If you repay all your debts [immediately], then you have got the feeling that there is nothing to worry about and you won’t be motivated to work very hard. [. . .] If you pay all your debts [immediately], then the development of your business – er, not your business, your church – is hampered. (Cao 2009: 36, 45) Although a number of important differences exist – for example regarding the attitude towards conspicuous consumption – the ‘boss Christians’ themselves emphasize the parallels of their ethics with Max Weber (who continues to be discussed in Chinese academia, see, for example, Long 2000). Neither Cao’s investigation nor other studies conducted with Chinese Christian businesspeople do suggest the existence of a ‘pure’ Protestant work ethic among Chinese ‘boss Christians’ (see, for example, Chen 2009: 339f.) However, Wenzhou’s

142   K. Fiedler ‘boss Christians’ explicitly acknowledge the theology which drives them; they speak of the ‘Wenzhou church model’ and try to establish it as a brand (Cao 2009: 33, 42, 35). Altogether, with their theology which clearly differs from the theological mainstream as well as their explicit identity as adherents of the ‘Wenzhou church model’, the ‘boss Christians’ form a distinct subculture within the contemporary Protestant church in China. A number of elements within the worldview of Wenzhou’s ‘boss Christians’ point to Chinese popular religion and traditional behaviour patterns. These elements mark the beginnings of a process of inculturation. The friendliness towards entrepreneurism, which differs markedly from the Christian fundamentalist fear of ‘mammonism’, echoes folk religious ideals of wealth. To acquire wealth, both in this and the afterlife, is a central concern in folk religious practices, and a specially designated deity – caishen – is entrusted with this task. The idea of material needs and, in consequence, material blessings dominates Chinese popular religion. Continuing with this logic, prosperity is seen as a sign of being blessed by the gods. In the worldview of China’s ‘boss Christians’, the boundaries between business and the gospel become blurred. They see the flourishing of their personal businesses and of church property as a sign of God’s blessing for their work, a theology which evokes the traditional approach to wealth, prosperity and religion in the Chinese context. By showing off their business success through the building of elaborate church buildings, they consciously use business success as a way to evangelize. This willingness to engage in conspicuous consumption, even if it is in honour of God, is again rooted in the traditionally favourable view of wealth. Altogether, the blurred boundaries between personal faith, evangelization and business success in the ‘Wenzhou model’ pave the way for an ideological shortcut where business success equals the gospel and indeed almost becomes the new gospel. For China’s more fundamentalist Protestants, this veers dangerously close to the much-­feared ‘mammonism’. With their pragmatic attitude towards religion, the ‘boss Christians’ come close to Chinese folk religious attitudes. As Cao point out, the ‘Wenzhou church model’ is a product of the double identities of Wenzhou bosses as entrepreneurs and Christians and helps them to reconcile the two (Cao 2009: 34). This ability to integrate different religious or philosophical views is more typical of traditional Chinese religious practices than mainstream Christianity (in China and elsewhere), which is usually concerned with the notion of religious purity. Besides espousing Christian values that resonate with traditional ideas of wealth and fortune, Wenzhou Christianity has come to play a functional role similar to that of popular religion. Yip mentions villages in the Wenzhou area where Christian blessings have replaced traditional rites for important public or family events (Yip 2003: 40). Another example where Christianity functionally replaces traditional practices is highlighted by Gao Shining and Yang Fenggang. In their study of Catholic entrepreneurs, they examine business owners’ faith as a source of trust and social capital. They suggest that the Christian faith with its belief in the equality

Emergence of Christian subcultures   143 of all people enables business owners to transcend the traditional preference for family and friends when it comes to matters of trust (Gao and Yang 2009: 324, 326). While the overall need for a personalized source of trust can be considered traditional, it is adapted to the modern context by transferring it to a new source. Here, like elsewhere, Christianity comes to be an adapted functional equivalent of traditional behaviour patterns. For Wenzhou’s ‘boss Christians’, the gospel is ‘enriching’ not only because it allows them to prosper. The gospel also helps entrepreneurs to accumulate social capital, because their spirituality adds depth to the perception of their personalities as uneducated and emotionally shallow nouveaux riches (Cao 2009: 33). Moreover, the Christian identity provokes changes in entrepreneurs’ business practices which can result in a competitive advantage. Tong reports how Christian businessmen refrain from bribery and extended forms of social networking in favour of enhanced service and professionalism (Chapter 11 in this volume). In some ways, the business practices of Chinese Christian entrepreneurs therefore differ from the Chinese mainstream, and the process of religious inculturation remains partial. For example, Christian company owners try to avoid gift-­giving and ‘wining and dining’ business practices (Chen 2009: 332). Also, while the overall emphasis on wealth echoes Chinese folk religion, Chinese Christians object to luck and gambling as ways of accumulating wealth (see Weller 1995: 116) and emphasize the need of prospering in a morally legitimate way. Therefore, the adaptation to the local Chinese context is full of ambiguities and ultimately creates a new context.

‘Healing Christians’ – the healing nature of the gospel I use the term ‘healing Christians’ to refer to those congregations where healing experiences are the main factor for Christian conversions, and where the gospel is predominantly read through the lens of healing stories and healing expectations. Since most of the sources dealing with healing in the Chinese Christian context refer to rural settings, I describe ‘healing Christians’ as a rural phenomenon, although similar congregations will likely also be found in urban settings. Healing, ‘or more accurately the widespread belief in it’ (Hunter and Chan 1993: 145), is one of the main reasons, if not the main cause of conversion to Christianity in the Chinese countryside (Oblau 2007: 1434; Deng 1997), with up to 90 per cent of conversions linked to healing experiences (Währisch-Oblau 2002: 69). Chinese researchers corroborate the importance of health problems in the context of Christian conversions (Jin 2005: 26; Liang 2006: 75). These healing experiences occur over a series of steps which include disease, Christian prayer with the sick, a healing experience and finally the patient’s conversion to Christianity (Yip 2003: 33). Both the healing experiences and the related testimonies of believers and converts follow established patterns. Claudia Währisch-Oblau interprets the healing stories as a form of oral theology, a theology of the poor which contains elements of liberation (from stifling helplessness), protest (against fate and a

144   K. Fiedler fatalistic outlook on life), empowerment (by bringing God on one’s side), democratization (of faith practices), encouragement (for others to believe), and tangibility (by establishing tangible and living proof of God’s power and presence in the world) (Währisch-Oblau 2001: 96f.). Even more than these elements with their connotations of liberation theology it is the quasi-­miraculous nature of healing stories which is problematic for the official church. It brings healing experiences dangerously close to ‘superstitious practices’, which are illegal in the Chinese context. Correspondingly, although it acknowledges the possibility of prayer, official church doctrine stresses the importance of seeking medical help. Courses for Chinese evangelists emphasize the following points: (1) prayer for the sick is a biblically sound practice, yet must not replace proper medical help, (2) illness is not a sign of demonic possession, and (3) healing is a faith experience, but not the sole purpose of Christian faith (Währisch-Oblau 2002: 75). In spite of being constantly confronted with illness and healing experiences as factors that contribute to church growth, Chinese theologians have not yet addressed these issues in form of a ‘healing theology’, unlike Western mainstream churches, which have (also in response to Pentecostalism) rediscovered healing as a holistic dimension of the gospel and developed comprehensive theologies of healing in recent years. Neither is the ‘healing theology’ as practiced at the grassroots a sophisticated theological system. Instead, Christianity is reduced to a set of basic tenets surrounding questions of physical and spiritual healing and fortune. In some cases, Christian paraphernalia like the Bible are made into liturgical objects intended to ward off evil and bad health, a practice which is reminiscent of the use of traditional amulets (Yip 2003: 34). Downplayed by many observers as utilitarian conversions, the healing stories are particularly interesting from the point of view of inculturation. On a structural level, the pragmatist attitude revealed by many sick persons who ‘try out’ Christianity after traditional religions or remedies have failed, echoes the utilitarian attitude with which Chinese folk religious believers often approach religion, helped by the syncretistic tendencies within Chinese folk religion which allow different religious ideas and deities to coexist next to each other. Because humans and super-­humans (ancestors, Gods, and ghosts) are bound together by needs and their mutual fulfilment – the need to be cared for and looked after, whether in this or an afterworld – religious actions become transactions, and acquire a pragmatic nature. Into this folk religious universe Jesus Christ comes as an alternative option, often a new and last remedy for those seeking health. As testimonies of healed patients show, Jesus is worshipped because he turns out to be the more powerful God (Oblau 2007: 1434; Yip 2003: 41). This corresponds with the traditional folk religious worldview where the ranking of a deity is dependent on his or her performance: ‘The believed degree of efficacy (ling) or “efficacious response” (lingying) is the most important determinant of a deity’s ranking in the local world of spiritual power’ (Chau 2006: 241). Christian believers thus incorporate Jesus Christ as the ultimate healer into this traditional worldview:

Emergence of Christian subcultures   145 This is the image of Christ in the hearts of many Chinese believers [. . .], Jesus is a ‘great doctor’ in whose name sickness can be cured and devils cast out, he is a ‘great saviour’ who can bestow wealth and a long life. (Liang 1999: 29) Given that ideas of accountability and reciprocity inform traditional religious transactions in the Chinese context, it seems only natural that after a healing experience a patient and perhaps even his or her family convert to Christianity out of gratitude (Yip 2003: 37f.). Linked to these ideas of accountability and reciprocity is the ‘healing Christian’ understanding of health as a sign of being blessed and, conversely, of ill health as an outgrowth of sin, as a sign of having morally failed and of not being blessed (Yip 2003: ibid.). The underlying ideas of divine rewards and retribution are more in line with folk religious ideas than Protestant mainstream theology. Throughout Chinese history, physical wellbeing has been equalled with a state of blessedness, as the extensive quest for health and longevity in Daoist practice shows (Währisch-Oblau 2002: 78). By reducing Jesus Christ to a healer, ‘healing Christians’ follow folk religious concepts which often ascribe certain tasks to specialized deities, such as the Earth God, the God of Wealth, Mazu and others. Many rural converts become only gradually aware of the need to abandon their former gods if they want to become adherents of the more exclusivist Christian religion. For China’s rural ‘healing Christians’, Christianity is what Sun Shanling and others have called ‘Chinese popular Christianity’ (Zhongguo minjian jidujiao) (Yip 2003: 28), a functional alternative to Chinese popular religion (Yip 2003: 34, 40). In sum, Calling on spiritual beings for healing and exorcism has long been a core feature of Chinese religious life. Its Christian version requires a new orientation of the believer, but is not a radical innovation; on the contrary it maintains the essence of the tradition. (Hunter and Chan 1993: 146) However, there is also a new element to the religiosity of ‘healing Christians’. As Claudia Währisch-Oblau points out, the healing practice in Chinese congregations differs from other cultural contexts (and the Chinese folk religious context) in that it is very democratic – any believer can engage in prayer for the sick (Währisch-Oblau 2002: 70). This democratization of what used to be a specialist preoccupation modernizes a traditional pattern of behaviour, much in the same way as ‘boss Christians’ adapt traditional patterns of trust.

‘Culture Christians’ – the ‘enlightening’ nature of the gospel Of the three groups discussed in this chapter, China’s ‘culture Christians’ (wenhua jidutu) were recognized first. I use the term ‘culture Christians’ as shorthand for all those who engage in academic research on Christianity from a sympathetic point of

146   K. Fiedler view and identify to a certain extent with Christian values and questions. Because many of these intellectuals are not practising Christians, some ‘culture Christians’ reject the expression. Despite the obvious problem of using a name for a group which is partly rejected by the group itself, Fredrik Fällman also resorts to the term ‘Cultural Christians’ in his book (Fällman 2008). In order to underline the disputed nature of the term, in this chapter I use the expression with quotation marks. A look at a recent compilation of Sino-­Christian theological articles shows which themes dominate the discussion these days (Li and Yang 2010). Discussions on how to translate western Christian works into Chinese, the possibility of transferring Western theology into the Chinese context, and the question of the overall prospects for a Sino-­Christian theology abound. Translations and interpretations of Western theologians as well as comparisons with traditional Chinese concepts continue to be the foundation of this approach to Christianity, yet with the discussion of Sino-­Christian theology as a phenomenon, the debate has reached a meta-­level of discussion. With their links to the academic world, China’s ‘culture Christians’ are an urban phenomenon. While for Wenzhou’s ‘boss Christians’ and the ‘healing Christians’ the actual community is important, the ‘culture Christians’ rely less on the congregational aspect of Christianity, and are a geographically more disparate community. Chen Cunfu also remarks on the disparateness and individuality of the ‘culture Christians’ (Chen 2010: 191). Much of what characterizes ‘culture Christians’ sets them apart from the established churches, and their subculture marks the fringes of the Chinese Christian population in the widest sense of the word. He Guanghu, one of the best-­known ‘culture Christians’, points out that many do not attend worship services because of the low level of preaching in China as well as Chinese cultural notions about ‘scholarship’ (He 2004: 224). In that sense, the transition between ‘genuine’ Christian believers and ‘strong proponents of Christianity’ is a gradual one. The attitude revealed here resembles that of many intellectuals in Western societies who still adhere to Christian ideas and values but do not participate actively in church affairs. It contrasts strongly with that of ordinary Chinese Protestants, who distinguish between the ‘saved’, who attend church services and pray regularly, and ‘others’, and do not recognize the possibility of a middle way. While the majority of Chinese Christians stress the importance of individual salvation, for China’s ‘culture Christians’, the interest in Christianity is ultimately rooted in a secular quest. These academics examine Christian theology for what it may have to offer to contemporary Chinese society and culture. In contrast with young urban churchgoers, for ‘culture Christians’, ‘Faith is seen as a purely private matter. A new foundation for values in general has priority over personal gain and liberation’ (Fällman 2008: 103). Only with such a new understanding of faith and God were Chinese academics able to overcome their disbelief in God, as Li Pingye explains: However, when [. . .] God came to be seen as the creator of the universe, the foundation of existence, the ultimate philosophical principle, the personification

Emergence of Christian subcultures   147 of ethical force or natural law, or as the God who is love; [. . .] when modernist Christian theologians could do away with old fashioned emphases on the afterlife, human sin, redemption, and the pitting of belief against unbelief, and instead stress concern for and involvement in this world, [. . .] then many of the ideological obstacles to Christian faith were removed. (Li 1995: 63) It becomes clear that the ‘culture Christian’ God as ‘ultimate philosophical principle’ has little in common with the healer of the ‘healing Christians’, or in general the personal God worshipped at the Protestant grassroots. Visions of God as described above are more reminiscent of the ‘Cosmic Christ’ propagated by church intellectuals like Bishop Ding Guangxun (K.H. Ting) in their efforts to create a theology suitable for the Chinese context (see his article on the Cosmic Christ in Wickeri 2000). While many of the notions discussed by the ‘culture Christians’ are derived from, and still fall within the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy, it is precisely their doing away ‘with old fashioned emphases on the afterlife, human sin, redemption, and the pitting of belief against unbelief ’ which makes them suspect and un-­spiritual in the eyes of church-­ related theologians. Progressive intellectuals like Bishop Ding Guangxun (K.H. Ting) who espouse similar ideas are a tiny minority within the Chinese Protestant church; ‘culture Christians’ bear the additional stigma of being extra ecclesia. As a result, there is virtually no dialogue between church-­related theologians and the proponents of a ‘Sino–Christian theology’. ‘Culture Christians’ lack the implicit recognition as members of the church which ‘boss Christians’ and ‘healing Christians’ have. For the most part deeply steeped in the foundations of Western theology, China’s ‘culture Christians’ discuss theological issues with a sophistication rarely achieved by theologians at China’s Protestant seminaries. Unlike the ‘healing Christians’ and even the ‘boss Christians’, any contextual elements in their theology will not be a product of ignorance or theological reduction, but rather a conscious adaptation to the Chinese context. The fact that the transformation of Chinese culture with the help of Christian concepts is at the heart of this movement means that aspects of inculturation are a constitutive element of ‘culture Christian’ theologies. Among the topics discussed by ‘culture Christians’ are despair, faith, hope, and love, but also individuality, salvation and modernity, and the relationship between being Chinese and being a Christian. Early on in the ‘culture Christian’ debate, the Christian emphasis on forgiveness and redemption sparked the interest in Christianity in a country in dire need of reconciliation after the Cultural Revolution. Some scholars argued that the Christian ideal of reconciliation would be a meaningful basis for such a process of social reconciliation. Contents aside, the biggest link to tradition lies in the role these intellectuals adopt, which is highly reminiscent of the Confucian intellectual. By taking on the task of searching for and defining a guiding culture for their country, these intellectuals continue to play the role of the Confucian literati.

148   K. Fiedler He Guanghu also mentions the ‘fear of the grassroots’ as a typical Confucian heritage, i.e. a fear of the literati over mingling with less educated persons (He 2004: 222). Fällman echoes this observation when he remarks on the ‘arrogance’ of the ‘new Calvinists’ towards persons of other faiths and convictions (Fällman, Chapter 10 in this volume). The sophistication of their academic discourse as well as the personal history of China’s ‘culture Christians’ are testimony to their strong belief in education and the value they attach to the intellect over emotion. Again, this attitude is reminiscent of the Confucian heritage and sets these intellectuals apart from many practising Christians, who value emotional displays of their faith as signs of being staunch believers blessed by the Spirit. By attempting to create a Christianity without religion, the ‘culture Christians’ not only echo theologians like Jürgen Moltmann, but also bring Christianity into the shape and function originally played by Confucianism and later Marxism, i.e. a secular ideology intended as guiding culture.

Summary and conclusion The emergence of Christian subcultures in China is a seemingly contradictory development, since it contains both elements of diversification and homogenization. On the one hand, it highlights the ongoing social diversification of Chinese Christianity; on the other hand, it marks the reconstitution of at least parts of the Christian population into more homogenous subgroups. Among the subcultures examined here, only the ‘boss Christians’ with their clear Wenzhou roots are a geographically distinct group. ‘Healing Christians’ and ‘culture Christians’ can be found all over China. However, even the ‘Wenzhou model’ is slowly evolving into a non-­geographical notion, and Wenzhou ‘boss Christians’ themselves try to establish their identity as a brand name. With its church model that is starting to go beyond geographical boundaries, the Wenzhou brand of Christianity can almost be considered a proto-­ denomination. The emergence of Christian subcultures can also be read as part of a current movement towards stronger theological and ecclesiological profiles of individual congregations, a development which causes some observers to fear the resurgence of denominationalism in the Chinese context. The emergence of differing theologies through the subcultures described here is also symptomatic of the loose ecclesiological identity of the established Protestant church, which creates space for alternative theological identities. In this context, the interest of many ‘culture Christians’ in Calvinist theology with its emphasis on church discipline is particularly noteworthy. Of the subcultures examined here, only the ‘boss Christians’ and the ‘culture Christians’ are aware of a group identity, while the ‘healing Christians’ consider themselves ‘Christians’. If we consider a conscious and separate identity a prerequisite for the existence of a subculture, the ‘healing Christians’ fail on this account.

Emergence of Christian subcultures   149 All groups discussed in this chapter deviate to some extent from Chinese mainstream Protestant theology and official doctrine. The emergence of Christian subcultures described in this article, in particular of the ‘boss Christians’ and the ‘healing Christians’, is therefore also symptomatic of the growing distance between the official church, its doctrine and institutions, and Christian faith as it is lived at the grassroots. As official theologians are still struggling to produce an indigenized theology through ‘theological reconstruction’, a second move towards indigenization is happening at the grassroots, albeit different from what urban Christian theologians would want it to be. While official attempts at creating an indigenized Protestant theology propagate high culture concepts like the ‘Cosmic Christ’, at least some of the nascent grassroots theologies with their emphasis on health or prosperity draw on folk religious impulses and concepts. This divergence may explain why official church theologians overlook the inculturation which is happening at the grassroots. The various subcultures discussed in this chapter highlight the breadth of possible experiences that form part of Chinese Christianity today. They are also highly divergent among themselves and reveal fractures or tensions that are part of Christianity as a whole. One such faultline would be the question of modernity. While the secularized, ‘culture Christian’ approach and also the pragmatic attitude of the ‘boss Christians’ can be labelled modern, the expectation of miracles which is linked to the ‘healing gospel’ shows strong pre-­modern elements (Währisch-Oblau 2001: 87). Another tension would be the question of intellectualism, where ‘culture Christians’ and ‘healing Christians’ contrast sharply with each other. Likewise, the ‘healing gospel’ is deeply entwined with economic poverty, while prosperity is the basis of the gospel the ‘boss Christians’ adhere to. Finally, different practices of hierarchy and democracy can be found in different subcultures, from the flat hierarchies of the healing Christians to the minute hierarchies among Christian intellectuals. ‘Here at Xi’an Normal University, there are different Bible study groups for professors, for assistant professors and for students’, recounts one observer.1 Coming back to Chau’s system of religious modalities, the ‘boss Christians’, ‘healing Christians’, and ‘culture Christians’ can be seen as embodying different modalities. While representatives of each group may incorporate aspects of different modalities into their lives, the focus for the ‘culture Christians’ would be the discursive/scriptural modality, for the ‘boss Christians’ it would be the relational modality, and for the ‘healing Christians’ it would be the immediate/practical modality. With these foci, the three subcultures examined here revert to the modalities traditionally emphasized by their corresponding socio-­economic groups: intellectuals cultivate a scriptural approach to religion, entrepreneurs focus on the relational aspects of religion, and peasants emphasize the immediate-­practical aspects of engaging in religion. The subcultures examined here vary in their degrees of inculturation. Perhaps most ambivalent is the case of the ‘culture Christians’, who seem more intent on changing Chinese culture through the incorporation of (Western) Christianity than on sinicizing Christianity. Still, the role they adopt is rooted in the Chinese Confucian tradition. While the ‘boss Christians’ adapt above all their way of

150   K. Fiedler running the church, the ‘healing Christians’ incorporate Christianity into their existing worldview in a way that borders on syncretism, and thus follow the generally strong Chinese tendency to ‘harmonize opposites’ (Yip 2003: 30). From an orthodox Christian point of view, syncretism would also mean heresy. The subcultures analyzed here, though different from the church’s mainstream, would not be labelled unorthodox by church leaders. However, at least for the ‘healing Christians’ the tendency towards syncretism underlines the contextual nature of their Christian faith (cf. Yip 2003 on syncretism and heresy: 39). For the individuals concerned, the act of adopting Christian faith (in the widest sense of the word) and of interpreting it in a contextual way carries both elements of novelty (through a new worldview) and familiarity (through the return to traditional practices and roles). This return to the familiar means that Christianity comes to be a functional equivalent to the worldview it has replaced. In the healing practices espoused by many grassroots Christians, Yip sees a ‘realization of Protestant substance in form of Chinese popular religion’ (Yip 2003: 42). As he points out, converts explicitly reject elements of their former system of belief, yet remain deeply entrenched in its concepts for their interpretation of Christianity. This observation is also largely true for the other groups examined in this chapter. Both the ‘boss Christians’ and the ‘culture Christians’ transfer traditional reference systems, such as ideas about wealth or high culture concepts regarding the role of intellectuals, onto a new system of belief. China’s Protestant Christians and their communities have never been entirely homogenous. Until today, a number of indigenous Christian groups with historical roots exist, most notably the True Jesus Church and the Jesus Family. Many of these established indigenous groups, which could likewise be described as ‘Christian subcultures’ and even proto-­denominations, were shaped by charismatic leaders (Lian 2010). The subcultures discussed in this chapter, however, have developed for the most part in a more democratic fashion. Still, with their contextualized interpretations of the gospel, they add to the multiple faces of Christianity in China and contribute to the conversion of the former ‘alien religion’ (yangjiao) into something that is, at least in certain places and social spheres, part of contemporary Chinese culture.

Note 1 Dr. Christian Wollmann, former guest teacher at Xi’an Normal University, in a conversation with the author on 20 May 2010.

References Cao, N. (2009) ‘Boss Christen: Religionsbusiness nach dem ‘Wenzhou-­Modell’ der Wiederbelebung des Christentums [Boss Christians: The Business of Religion in the ‘Wenzhou Model’ of Christian Revival]’, China heute. Informationen über Religion und Christentum im chinesischen Raum, 161: 33–46. For the original English version of this article, see ‘Boss Christians: The Business of Religion in the ‘Wenzhou Model’ of Christian Revival’, The China Journal, 58: 63–87.

Emergence of Christian subcultures   151 Chau, A.Y. (2006) Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chen, C. (2010) ‘ “Wenhua jidutu’ xianxiang de zonglan yu fansi [A concise overview of and reflections on the phenomenon of ‘Culture Christians”]’, in Q. Li and X. Yang (eds) Xiandaixing, chuantong bianqian yu hanyu shenxue [Modernity, Transformaton of Tradition and Sino-­Christian Theology], Shanghai: Huadong Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 186–194. Chen, S. (2009) ‘Fuyin haishi lirun? Dangqian Zhongguo jidutu qiyejia shangye lunli yu guanli de gean jianxi’, in X. Zhuo and Z. Xu (eds) Jiduzongjiao yangjiu Vol. 12, Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 327–343. Deng, Z. (1997) Bridge: Church Life in China Today, Hong Kong: Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1997 issues (Vols 81–86). Fällman, F. (2008) Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contemporary China, Lanham, Boulder, New York: University Press of America. Fiedler, K. (2000) Wirtschaftsethik in China am Fallbeispiel von Shanghaier Protestanten: Zwischen Marx und Mammon, Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde. Gao, S. and Yang, F. (2009) ‘Zongjiao xinyang yu shichang jingji: Zhongguo tianzhujiao qiyejia xinyang yu xinren wenti diaocha’, in X. Zhuo and Z. Xu (eds) Jiduzongjiao yangjiu Vol. 12, Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 306–326. He, G. (2004) ‘Ursachen und Merkmale des wachsenden Interesses am Christentum unter chinesischen Intellektuellen’, China heute. Informationen über Religion und Christentum im chinesischen Raum, 136: 222–224. For an English version of this article, see G. He (2003) ‘The Causes and Features of the “Christianity Upsurge” among the Chinese Intellectuals’, Centre for Multireligious Studies, Faculty of Theology, in University of Aarhus (ed.) Christian Theology and Intellectuals in China, Occasional Papers No. 5, 41–47. Hebdige, D. (1981) The Meaning of Style, London: Routledge. Hunter, A. and K.-K. Chan (1993) Protestantism in Contemporary China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jenks, C. (2005) Subculture: The Fragmentation of the Social, London/Thousand Oaks/ New Delhi: Sage. Jin, Y. (2005) ‘Jidujiao de ‘mada xianxiang’ tanzhe: yi Henan Huangchuan Chengguan jiaohui wei kaocha duixiang. [An Exploration into the ‘Magdalena Phenomenon’ (the Predominance of Women) of Protestant Christianity: A Case Study of Chengguan Church in Huangchuan, Henan]’, Chaohu xuebao, 74: 24–29. Landau, C. (2010) ‘Christian Faith Plus Chinese Productivity’, BBC News, www.bbc.co. uk/news/world-­asia-pacific-­10942954 (accessed 27 August 2010). Li, P. (1995) ‘The Attitude of Contemporary Chinese Intellectuals Towards Christianity’, in P.L. Wickeri and L. Cole (eds) Christianity and Modernization: A Chinese Debate, Hong Kong: Daga Press. Li, Q. and X. Yang (2010) Xiandaixing, chuantong bianqian yu hanyu shenxue [Modernity, Transformaton of Tradition and Sino-­Christian Theology]. Shanghai: Huadong Shifan Daxue Chubanshe. Lian, X. (2010) Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China. Yale: Yale University Press. Liang, J. [Leung K.-L.] (1999) ‘Rural Christianity and Chinese Folk Religion’, China Study Journal, 14: 22–34. Liang, L. (2006) ‘Shehui zhuanxing yu zongjiao guiyi: yi jidujiaotu wei duixiang de kaocha [Social Transformation and Religious Conversion: A Survey among Christians]’, Shijie Zongjiao Yanjiu, 2/2006, 72–81.

152   K. Fiedler Long, X. (2000) ‘Jidujiao yu zibenzhuyi: yanjiu yu shenshi [Christianity and Capitalism: Research and Detailed Views]’, in X. Zhuo and Z. Xu (eds) Jiduzongjiao yangjiu Vol. 6, Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe. Oblau, G. (2007) ‘Himmlischer Arzt, Fürsprecher, Mahner und Weiser: Das Christusbild in chinesischen (evangelischen) Zeugnissen der Gegenwart’, in Roman Malek, S.V.D. (ed.) The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, Vol. 3b, St. Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica and China Zentrum. Währisch-Oblau, C. (2001) ‘God Can Make Us Healthy Through and Through: On Prayers for the Sick and the Intepretation of Healing Experiences in Christian Churches in China and African Immigrant Congregations in Germany’, International Review of Mission, 90: 87–96. Währisch-Oblau, C. (2002) ‘Heilungsgebet und Heilungszeugnisse in den chinesischen Gemeinden: Versuch eines interkulturellen Verstehens’, in Evangelisches Missionswerk (ed.) Heilung in Mission und Ökumene (Weltmission heute No. 41), 69–91. For an English version of this article, see ‘Healing Prayers and Healing Testimonies in Mainland Chinese Churches: An Attempt at Intercultural Understanding’, China Study Journal, 14: 5–21. Weller, R. (1995) ‘Matricidal Magistrates and Gambling Gods: Weak States and Strong Spirits in China’, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 33: 107–124. Wickeri, J. (ed.) (2000) Love Never Ends: Papers by K. H. Ting, Nanjing: Yilin Press. Xiao, Y. (n.d.) Qiantan tianguo weidu nei jidutu de caifuguan [A Preliminary Analysis of the Christian Attitude towards Wealth within the Realms of the Kingdom], unpublished master’s thesis, Nanjing: Nanjing Union Theological Seminary. Yip, C.-W. (2003) ‘Protestantisches Christentum und Volksreligion in China: Ein Fall von Synkretismus?’, in Christentum chinesisch in Theorie und Praxis, Hamburg: Evangelisches Missionswerk, 27–60. For the original English version of this article, see ‘Protestant Christianity and Popular Religion in China: A Case of Syncretism?’, Ching Feng, No. 3–4/1999.

10 Calvin, culture and Christ? Developments of faith among Chinese intellectuals Fredrik Fällman

In contrast to the ‘Cultural Christians’ of the 1980s, Chinese Christian elites today form ‘intellectual house churches’. Distancing themselves from their inspirers they worship together and see the Church as a base for their cultural and political activities. Community is no longer equal to collective or non-­ modern but rather something sought for. This has provided for an intriguing setting with culturally liberal intellectuals, artists and writers who worship in Christian house fellowships. Emphasis has been more on Culture and Christ than on China, but in recent years another C has come into play, and that is Calvin. But why Calvin? What Reformed tradition is actually transmitted in China? This article investigates these communities and how their faith and ecclesiology relate to their social involvement. There is also a preliminary analysis of the ‘Calvin’ element, its origin, its meaning and implications for Chinese intellectuals, and possibly also for the Christian development in China.

Background In the 1980s and 1990s a handful of Chinese elite intellectuals made headlines when they claimed to be ‘Christ-­followers’, however not attending church services, not being baptised or agreeing on certain dogmatic issues. They came from non-­religious backgrounds and soon became of interest to the registered church in China. Bishop Ding Guangxun was among the first to call them ‘Cultural Christians’ (Ding 1998: 418–419). They had a strong driving force to change society morally and to lay a foundation for ‘a new modernity’ on Chinese and Christian ground. The leading representative of this phenomenon was Liu Xiaofeng (b. 1956), currently professor of philosophy at Renmin University of China in Beijing. He published extensively on theology in the 1980s and became well known through his book Zhengjiu yu xiaoyao (Salvation and Easy wandering, 1988) (ISCS 1997; Fällman 2008). Liu and his generation laid the foundation for the relatively flourishing religious studies landscape of contemporary China. It is notable that in principle, the whole of this development of ‘academic theology’ took place outside the churches, whether registered or unregistered.

154   F. Fällman

A ‘new generation’ of Cultural Christians? Liu Xiaofeng and other Cultural Christians had elements of jiuguo thinking in their writings, but even more so was their involvement pointed at ‘saving intellectuals’. That aspect might still be a factor for the younger generation of Christian intellectuals, but the development has taken a different turn. Many intellectuals have become outspoken Christians, worshipping together and having faith as a driving force for their social and political actions. These have discarded the ‘Cultural Christian’ identity and contradict what Liu Xiaofeng envisaged as ‘Cultural Christianity’, an individual form of faith and worship that would be in line with modernity as he saw it. Instead a number of high profile unregistered congregations have emerged in the largest Chinese cities in recent years, counteracting predictions that the processes of modernization would make religion less relevant and attractive in China. Despite differences in worship and identity the younger generation still share ‘Culture’ and ‘Christ’ as foci of attention. The writer and critic Yu Jie (b. 1973) and bestseller author Bei Cun (pen name for Kang Hong, b. 1965) have proposed to ‘evangelize culture’ (wenhua fuyinhua),1 arguing that ‘for long Chinese Christians, evangelists and the Church have seriously neglected the merits of writing, and the creation of Christian literature, music and art as well as academic research’. They also claim that besides ‘simple and crude gospel tracts’ Chinese Christians have not produced anything comparable to ‘Tolstoy’s Resurrection, Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-­Dame . . . Bach’s “St Matthew Passion” . . . da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” ’. Moreover, the Chinese Church has failed to produce theologians on the level of Augustine and Martin Luther, as well as ‘historically great men that strive to turn the tide of national politics like Martin Luther King and Archbishop Tutu’ (‘Fakanci’, Fangzhou 2005). Yu Jie and Bei Cun are both members of the politically high profile congregation Fangzhou (The Ark) in Beijing. Yu Jie and some other Fangzhou members are also behind the publication of a magazine called Ganlanzhi (The Olive Branch), first named Fangzhou. Yu Jie and Bei Cun have expressed a strong commitment to free artistic expression as a necessary cultural phenomenon. Through their writings, cultural criticism and artistic expressions they take part in cultural life, and at the same time express their Christian faith. Elite intellectuals who are Christian leaders and at the same time endorse and appreciate non-­Christian cultural expressions are rare also internationally. This ‘new generation’ also includes academic theologians, and one example is Professor Sun Yi at Renmin University of China. He has contributed to contemporary Chinese theology through his studies of Søren Kierkegaard and his work on Calvin and the Reformed tradition. Sun Yi is also an elder in the Shouwang Church in Beijing, an important ‘New Calvinist’ unregistered congregation. Among other things Sun Yi has published a collection on ‘Calvin and Sino-­Christian Theology’ together with Stephen Chan (Chen Zuoren), an overseas Chinese theologian from Seattle University, and an important foreign force for intellectual Christian development in China (Chan and Sun

Calvin, culture and Christ?   155 2010). Shouwang Church received much media attention during Spring 2011 when they could no longer rent previous long-­time worship premises, and in protest started worshipping outdoors, leading to massive police surveillance and detentions (Bristow, 12 April 2011).

‘New Calvinism’ – trends and terms Cultural openness and social involvement, paired with political criticism, makes this a fascinating and rather unexpected development. The gradual influence among these elites by what they call ‘Calvinism’ has provided for some interesting contradictions. Calvinism suffers from some term confusion in China and in the debate there is often a careless mix of terms such as Calvinism (  jia’erwen zhuyi) and Puritanism (qingjiao zhuyi). While originally a derogative used by opponents, the term ‘Puritan’ today seems to signify purity, morality and adherence to original Puritan principles (Miller and Johnson 2001). Guizheng zong and gaige zong are two translations for ‘Reformed’ in Chinese, but there is a difference in tone as guizheng translates as ‘return to the correct’, while gaige means ‘reform’ and is the common word for ‘reform’ in Chinese. Calvinism has in history been linked closely with church discipline and it was a major element in early Calvinist churches. Strict church discipline is exercised only in a minority of denominations today, but the idea is still intact in many churches (Gorski 2003: 19–22). The term ‘New Calvinism’ is used in the West for a recent revival of strict Calvinist principles within traditionally evangelical or Pentecostal denominations. Church discipline is also increasingly enforced in these groups. I have chosen ‘New Calvinism’ as the term to apply also to the recent Chinese development for the many similarities with the situation in the USA. The original Swiss Reformed churches are today comparatively moderate in comparison with ‘New Calvinists’, and tradition and legacy are somewhat turned around in this new development. Calvin in China Historically, Protestant mission to China was formed by a number of denominations and missions with varying theological standpoints. The Presbyterian Board of America started work in China already in 1843 and was later followed by other European missions of a Reformed background, making up a substantial part of foreign missionaries in China before 1949. After 1949 all missionaries had to leave China, and in 1958 ‘united worship’ was implemented among Protestants, abolishing all denominations (Gu 2008). Western missionary heritage is fading fast in China, even if one can find traces here and there. There are also attempts to revive denominations. At the same time the official Church is struggling to find its identity and theology with much internal tension as a result. One example is the campaign for ‘reconstructing theological thinking’ (shenxue sixiang jianshe) run by the China Christian Council (CCC) and the Three-­Self

156   F. Fällman Patriotic Movement (TSPM) since 1998. Calvinist or Puritan teachings are not visible in this context, and most congregations around China are evangelical, charismatic and/or Pentecostal. The year 2009 was that of the ‘Calvin Jubilee’, the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth, which was celebrated around the world. In CCC/TSPM, however, only a few individuals publicly expressed their interest, most notably Rev. Dr. Wang Aiming, Vice President of the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary (Jinling xiehe shenxueyuan). Wang wrote and edited a series of articles on Calvin and his legacy in Jinling shenxuezhi (Nanjing Theological Review). Wang has a doctoral degree in theology from the University of Basel and a thorough knowledge of Calvinist tradition. His assessment of Calvin in the Chinese context is interesting since he claims that post-­Mao knowledge and reception of Calvin is primarily based on the reading of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism (Wang 2009: 179–194). Wang Aiming sees three primary images of Calvin in China: 1) one of the founders of historical Protestantism, 2) a dictator and the spiritual source of fundamentalism and predestination, 3) the founder of ‘modern capitalism’. Considering Wang’s position within the CCC/TSPM framework there might be political overtones to his analysis, but it is nevertheless important and stands out as a single exception from the registered church in China on the importance of Calvin and his legacy. However, Wang does not comment on ‘New Calvinists’ among young intellectuals. He stresses the significance for the Church in China to see beyond the sometimes ‘fundamentalist’ image of Calvinism and look to its strong tradition of social responsibility. Trying to assess the overall academic interest in Calvinism in China I made use of the China Knowledge Resource Integrated Database (CNKI). I found that of the around 4300 articles mentioning Calvin or Calvinism in CNKI until the end of 2010, around 20 per cent were published in 2009 or 2010 and only 8 per cent before 1990, showing the great interest developing especially in the 2000s.2 Seemingly, Calvin did not attract much attention in the spiritually and intellectually open period in the mid 1980s where all kinds of philosophical ideas entered and re-­entered China. One of the leading journals of that time, Culture: China and the World (Wenhua: Zhongguo yu shijie), with an otherwise unproportional selection of theological articles, had not even one article focusing on Calvin or Calvinism (Gan 1987–88). SDX Joint Publishing (Sanlian shudian) published Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion in a new Chinese translation in 2010. Martin Luther’s and Calvin’s theses on government were also collected and printed together in 2004 as a publication called Lun zhengfu (On Government) (Calvin 2010; Luther 2004). Here the ideas of the Reformation have a direct political function and serve as an example of and inspiration from ‘the modern West’ to the Chinese context. Such publications are a legacy from the Cultural Christians, and a continuation of the publication work they started in the late 1980s. The articles found in CNKI are often introductory in nature, but there is an increasing number of scholarly and analytical material making use of Calvin’s theories.

Calvin, culture and Christ?   157 The foreign factor In 2009 British newspaper the Guardian online rather surprisingly commented about ‘the flourishing New Calvinists’ in China (Brown 2009). The Guardian in 2009 ran a whole series of articles on Calvinism, and also on the recent development of ‘New Calvinists’ in the USA. The main source for the article on China appears to have been one person, Dr. May Tan (Chen Yeyu), a well-known Presbyterian female theologian and church leader from Singapore. Dr. Tan here becomes a symbol of one factor in the development of ‘Calvinism’ in contemporary China, ‘the foreign factor’. Individual Christian leaders as well as churches and mission organisations interact with Chinese Christian individuals and whole congregations. Major actors here are overseas Chinese and Mainland exiles. Rev. May Tan is Chaplain of the Global Institute of Theology, a programme of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC), and linked to an ecumenically oriented and moderate form of Reformed tradition (Global Institute of Theology 2010). She appears to have a good insight into Chinese church reality, but still delivers a statement like this: ‘Christians will become the majority of university students [in China] . . . that could happen’. It is similar to other recent speculative arguments like those in David Aikman’s book Jesus in Beijing from 2003, where he believes that China will have 30 per cent Christians in 30 years. Such statements play a double role, analysing but also nurturing the actual phenomenon, providing a desired image for the Western audience (Brown 2009; Aikman 2006: 191, 287). Another important source for ‘New Calvinist’ message to China is Rev. Dr. Samuel Ling (Lin Cixin), director of the mission organization China Horizon (Zhongguo zhanwang) in the USA and ordained within the Presbyterian Church in America. This is a more conservative denomination, not to be confused with the larger, more mainstream Presbyterian Church (USA). Ling is a frequent contributor to Jiaohui (Church China), a well-­read web and PDF journal (www. churchchina.org), and he is behind its publisher the China Christian Internet Mission, CCIM (Wangluo jidu shituan). Samuel Ling is very clear with his intention to spread a ‘correct’ interpretation of Reformed theology, especially in China (Ling 2010): What is really worth questioning is the kind of theology influenced by Karl Barth, neo-­orthodoxy, Emil Brunner and Jürgen Moltmann. This wave has already swept away both overseas Chinese and Mainland churches . . . many ‘evangelical’ Bible scholars almost completely do not recognise Biblical inspiration in their Bible explanations. What do then these people mean with ‘Reformed’? This label points to ‘anyone who does not like non-­Reformed or anti-­Reformed theology’. Wouldn’t that be the same as if someone would consider ‘evangelical’ to be the same ‘anyone who likes Billy Graham’? Barth, Moltmann and Brunner were among the most important theologians for the Cultural Christians in the 1980–90s, and it is clear that ‘New Calvinist’

158   F. Fällman orthodoxy does not allow for such thinking as these represent. It is ironical that Karl Barth was a Reformed pastor in Switzerland, in direct connection with the origin of the Reformed church. New Calvinists in the USA have mostly emerged within the large evangelical denominations as the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary since 1993 has a president who is an outspoken ‘Calvinist’, R. Albert Mohler (b. 1959). During his presidency he has strictly enforced older Baptist documents that can be interpreted to support the idea of unconditional election (Southern Baptist Convention 1858, 2000a). Mohler’s actions led to the resignation of teaching staff from the seminary. The revised Southern Baptist Faith and Message Statement of 2000, that Mohler took part in revising, limits the office of pastor only to men, and shows the increased tendency towards explicit complementarianism among ‘New Calvinists’ (Southern Baptist Convention 2000b; Hansen 2006). The Southern Baptist Convention was prohibited from working openly in China in 1997 when CCC discovered that the SBC International Mission Board operated a so-­called ‘two-­track’ policy, cooperating not only with the CCC but also with unregistered churches (Han 1997). Nevertheless, the Southern Baptists are still very active in China and in recent years have made ties also with intellectual groups, not only with charismatic congregations and networks in China. Their role in the influence of ‘New Calvinism’ in Chinese intellectual circles cannot be underestimated. From a Chinese perspective there are not many direct comments, but Wang Aiming has made a general comment on American influence: ‘Calvinism in China has been mixed and often confused with Evangelicalism or modern Puritanism which involves radical disciplines for individual moral and spiritual life’. This is a useful description not only of the situation in China, but also of developments in the USA (Wang 2009). Law and discipline Quite a few of the more outspoken young Christian intellectuals are lawyers or law scholars. They take an active part in weiquan (rights protection) activities and voluntarily help poor and vulnerable people for free, practising Christian social responsibility. In their profession they are accustomed to the analysis and interpretation of laws, to follow the words of the law, and to have a clear framework to deal with all possible circumstances. Chinese legal tradition has elements of both Legalism, advocating state primacy over individual autonomy, and Confucianism, emphasizing ‘rites’ (li) in the form of norms and customs to serve as guidelines, not necessarily the letters of the law. John Calvin was originally trained in law at the Universities of Orléans and Bourges, and the Westminster confession also deals with details of Mosaic Law and its interpretation. It is no coincidence that a ‘New Calvinism’ that explains the world through Bible texts and Calvin’s writings, almost as law text, would appeal to Christian lawyers. Acknowledging the natural law of God’s Creation they also affirm the need for secular laws and a separation of Church and State.

Calvin, culture and Christ?   159 Church discipline is the practical implementation of a ‘legal’ view of the Biblical message. According to the discipline manual of Shouwang Church in Beijing church discipline has the following functions (Shouwang Church 2009a): [it] helps us to eliminate sin in the church (the old yeast), makes the church become ‘a new batch’, and in this way the church can not only continue to be God’s lampstand, but also prevent other people from being influenced by this sin (1 Cor 5:1–8). This is also a warning to the church, and will make others fear. The manual has not only met support, but has been questioned on different grounds. Issues brought up by critical Shouwang members are often in regard to possible ‘offending of private secrets’, that disciplined members may be hurt, and the very basic issue if the church should not, and cannot declare anyone guilty of sin. The manual has four chapters dealing with different issues, namely: (1) marriage (pre- and extramarital sex, homosexuality and remarriage), (2) life (violence, abortion and euthanasia), (3) faith (idols and heresies), (4) other issues (greed, drugs, deceit, accusing elders). There is also a lengthy introduction, justifying and explaining discipline as such. Disciplinary measures involve exclusion from serving in the congregation from one year and up, exclusion from communion from half a year and up, and also expulsion from the congregation. Expulsion is reserved for those who refuse to confess or repent. Nothing indicates which issue is more common, if any issue is stressed, or if any tendency can be seen. Historical research has revealed that sexuality related cases made up the majority in Reformation era England and Scotland, in contrast to the Netherlands, where social offenses were dominant. In France and Germany heterodoxy cases were more common. Such tendencies may also reflect the social backgrounds of Calvinist communities in the different countries, where in Geneva and the Netherlands most people had a merchant middle class background, and in France to a larger extent peasant background. Comparatively few noblemen and learned elites became Calvinists, and the strict discipline and stern atmosphere of Calvinist communities also turned away many people of all kinds of backgrounds (Gorski 2003: 55–59). Elect, elite and democratic Contemporary Chinese ‘New Calvinists’ seem to defy historical tendencies of Calvinism. Most of them have no Christian background and all grew up in the atheistic environment of the PRC. Strict discipline and a stern atmosphere seem to attract. For those born in the 1980s there is an added element of commercialism to their bringing up, which complicates the scene but which is basically also a distraction to spiritual search. Most of the leading Chinese ‘New Calvinists’ belong to the intellectual elites, even if they may have grown up in the

160   F. Fällman countryside. Added to these conflicting factors is the need for very basic Christian education among new believers in China. The systematic and structured element of Calvinism provides for this. It fits very well a scholarly community in the sense that it is focused on logical explanations, and reason can be an integral part of theological investigation. John Calvin did not refute reason, but attached an instrumental role to it, making it a tool for investigations towards ‘true wisdom’. He said: ‘there is one kind of understanding of earthly things; another of heavenly’ (Calvin 2006: 272). Such an answer may very well be intriguing to an educated Chinese youth who seeks change and simplification in life. The development of ‘New Calvinists’ in China is a sort of ‘imagined community’. Although nationalism is not the driving force behind the movement, strong sentiments for China still lingers heavily just below the surface for some of these ‘New Calvinists’. Many share a relentless criticism of the Chinese government that, however justified, can also be a tool for self-­promotion and for overseas support. They feel the need to create a complete alternative to the current regime and the fluctuating society. Their faith is reinforced through the clear doctrines of Calvinism, and the reassurance from Max Weber that it will provide for modern development and capitalism. By studying Calvin and the early Puritans one acquires the right mind-­set and becomes a part of the imagined community of ‘(Chinese) Puritans’. This community also sees itself separate from other denominations, from ‘liberal’ ethics and depraved political thought. However, merely speaking the language is not enough; you must also share the vision that seems to create another China, a democracy on constitutional ground with rule of law, with full religious freedom and based on Puritan ethics. The learned elites in China have a long tradition of both perceived and real social responsibility. They have felt obliged to intervene when the rulers make mistakes and the country is on the path of destruction. Tu Weiming among others has argued strongly for the need of contemporary ‘public intellectuals’ (gonggong zhishifenzi) involved both politically and culturally. Chinese Christian intellectuals also agree on this need. From their Calvinist perspective they want to speak out on social inequalities and point to the need for political change, thus following Chinese intellectual tradition but remoulding its preconditions. However, the majority of ‘public intellectuals’ in contemporary China are not Christians, and may even disagree strongly with the Calvinist perspective. According to Yu Jie there are only a handful of ‘public intellectuals’ in China who openly share his rather pointed perspective of ‘living a Puritan life, having a conservative political outlook, and a Reformed faith’. Lamenting on the lack of these qualities among Chinese intellectuals, he sees himself and the few other (‘less than ten’) sharing his views as the very spearhead of development (Yu 2010). One attraction of Calvinism in contemporary China is the view that Calvin inspired modern democracy, both through his theological writings and also through the social order and system set up in Geneva during his time there. It is sometimes claimed that the representative form of government is inspired by the

Calvin, culture and Christ?   161 Genevan system, and this is an argument for the current Chinese development. There are, however, many who have questioned this interpretation and it is possibly a matter of subjective reading. Ernst Troeltsch argued that Calvin was ‘as anti-­democratic and authoritarian as possible’, but also agreed that Calvinism ‘can be in agreement with democracy without sacrificing the religious idea’. Such seemingly opposing statements may be symbolic of the debate on Calvinism and democracy. For a thorough discussion of this topic it is not enough to analyse only Calvin, but also John Knox, Theodore Beza and other of Calvin’s contemporaries. For Chinese ‘New Calvinists’ there are no doubts, however, since it serves their effort to change society, both spiritually and politically. Calvinism can undoubtedly serve as an inspiration for resistance, and the ‘New Calvinist’ movement is partially also resistance, both to a morally fragmenting society and to an undemocratic state and party. For Calvin the secular government was a tool in God’s hands, and it should be a concern for any Christian in the process of ‘Christianizing’ society. This view may also serve as the foundation for the idea of ‘evangelizing culture’ as mentioned above (Kingdon and Linder 1970: 1–3, 8–10, 15–17). In their resistive mode, ‘New Calvinists’ in China tend to see themselves as creating a ‘New Geneva’, which in the case of contemporary China is primarily the big cities, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu etc. The sense of a Chinese ‘Geneva’ also strengthens their vision of radically changing China and the Chinese society. It is interesting to note the continuous reference to Max Weber and his conclusions about capitalism, faith and social development. Weber’s work is taken as a pretext for the assumptions or presumptions of Yu Jie, Fan Yafeng and other intellectuals. One of the main sources for Weber’s book was not Calvin, but the British Puritan theologian Richard Baxter (1615–91), as presented in chapter 5 of Weber’s book. Since Puritan ideas are more at the core of the ‘New Calvinist’ movement than Calvin himself this is not strange, but also not visible to the common reader or listener. Calvin has become more and more known among Chinese intellectuals in recent years, but not many know Baxter, and he is hardly mentioned in ‘New Calvinist’ publications as Xinghua. It is surprising that intellectual elites readily refer to Max Weber’s work and assume it for an indisputable fact that Protestantism, and especially Calvinism, did provide the foundation for capitalism and democracy. Alternative interpretations and questioning of Weber’s theories are not mentioned, nor any rebuttal of Weber’s critics, it is merely presented as a fact. This polarized and in some respect also essentializing way of presenting one’s argument must be a deliberate choice. In a lecture that Yu Jie presented in 2010 he claimed (Yu 2010): [I]n the whole Puritan system, Lutheranism was later almost like a regional denomination, and did not like Calvinism or Reformism become a global denomination. Moreover, it did not have the same impact on freedom and the economic system as Calvinism. This point we can see from Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

162   F. Fällman This statement somehow sums up the phenomenon of recurring Calvinism in China and globally. There is the lack of understanding for other perspectives by naming Lutheranism ‘regional’. There is also the self-­assured position of speaking for the leading, progressive ideological (and spiritual) force in global society, to be ‘right’. Calvinism may certainly be on the rise around the world today, but there are a number of regions where it is quite marginal. From a more neutral perspective Calvinism, in its new form, is gaining foothold rapidly in the USA, possibly in China and in some parts of Africa and Latin America. In other parts of the world, also in China, charismatic and Pentecostal churches are the fastest growing, and also the Catholic Church develops in Africa and Latin America. The World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF ) both claim membership of 70–80 million worldwide. One can thus very easily refute Yu Jie’s statement about Calvinism being ‘more global’ than Lutheranism. The geographic notion may not have been his point, but more to show the social and political potential of Calvinism in the contemporary Chinese setting. The current interpretation of Calvinism is simply more fit for ‘the resisting elite’ that Yu Jie would like to represent. This kind of presentation also draws a dividing line between two ‘factions’ within this small circle of Chinese intellectuals. Those stressing the connection between Calvinism, capitalism and democracy are in favour of the simplified analysis of Weber, and also stress more the political implications of faith. It was also here that the notion of ‘evangelizing culture’ was proposed. The other ‘faction’ has its focus on Puritan faith and its implications for one’s personal life more than any direct socio-­political impact. There is a certain tension between these ‘factions’ since those focusing on faith interpret their socio-­political responsibility differently from the more political group, of which Yu Jie is the foremost representative. It is, however, difficult to know whether the whole Fangzhou congregation stands behind Yu Jie, but he attracts large crowds on the rare occasions he is allowed to speak publicly in mainland China, and his articles and books reach a large readership. For the group with faith in focus, with representative persons as Tianming (Jin Yongkui, b. 1968) and Sun Yi (both in the Shouwang Church in Beijing), there is also a social involvement, however not directly political. In the Beijing context of Shouwang and Shengshan congregations the stress on cultural expression is much more limited but still recognised. In 2009 Xinghua (Almond Flowers) published an article criticising Bei Cun for ‘lacking the true artistic practice to make people believe’. The article also criticises Bei Cun for his ‘excessive obsession to portray sin’ and how he uses literary elements and not ‘the transcendent force’ to express the salvation from sin (Yin 2009: 126–127). This ‘faction’ adheres more closely to the original Calvinist principle of honouring the offices of worldly power and authority as such, seeing authority as God-given, and accordingly also the office bearer. However, Calvin’s writings provide for exceptions to this rule as not to obey men more than God. Also, there is a firm belief that God will punish those who rule unjustly, misconduct in office and abuse power. One example of such protest against abuse of power is the

Calvin, culture and Christ?   163 long struggle of Shouwang Church to find a legal solution for their place of worship and also to officially register the congregation with the authorities (Shouwang Church 2008). Gender, equality and complementarianism It is surprising that young well-educated women in contemporary China, brought up in a secular and comparatively equal context, can voluntarily choose to join a religious congregation where they are not equal to men. Most Protestant denominations today allow for full equality of men and women, and ordination of women is not an issue. However, in the ‘New Calvinist’ movement the idea of complementarianism is an important feature. This applies also to China. The charter of Shouwang Church in Beijing even says that already ordained women joining the congregation cannot continue as pastors but should be called ‘teachers’ (jiaoshi) (Shouwang Church 2009b). Complementarianism is not necessarily a Calvinist feature, and the Eglise Protestante de Genève, a direct follower of Calvin’s reformation in Switzerland, has chosen to elect a woman president three times since the 1980s. All church offices are open for women in the Swiss reformed church and the understanding of freedom seems to be quite different than among ‘New Calvinists’. Also the WCRC has recommended all member churches not ordaining women to ‘seriously reconsider their position’ (Rosenhäger 1993). Samuel Ling seems to play a central role for the Chinese development. In 2002 he translated ‘The Danvers Statement’ into Chinese, a basic document for contemporary complementarians. The Statement was published in 1987 by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an organization formed earlier the same year in the USA ‘to address . . . concerns over the influence of feminism not only in our culture but also in evangelical churches’ (Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood 2002). This standpoint of the ‘New Calvinists’ is consistent with their other beliefs, but more difficult to comprehend in the present context. The around 25 million members of CCC/TSPM churches are led by an increasing number of female pastors in congregations where ‘evangelicalism’ (in its broadest sense) is prevalent. The ordination of women has not been much of a public issue within the registered Chinese church, at least not in written documents. Even though Chinese women are more independent today than possibly ever before, patriarchal structures still linger, both in the countryside and in the power structures. There are hardly any women in the top echelons of the state and the party. Mao Zedong once said that ‘women hold up half the sky’, and this well fits the complementarian view of equality, that women hold their ‘half ’, while men take care of their ‘half ’. It is close to a traditional Confucian family view, and also relevant with regard to human possibilities and capacities. Should women stay in their places, taking care of household and children, while men can cultivate themselves to be junzi – and pastors and elders in the church? An ordained woman pastor in late 2009 published an article in the Shouwang Church magazine Xinghua on her troubled understanding of the position of

164   F. Fällman women within the church. She describes how she struggled with the ideas of ‘authority’ (quanbing) and ‘submission’ (shunfu) in the Bible, and how she experienced the role of women in the Church (Shuangyan 2009: 39–45). She served fourteen years as a preacher and eventually ordained pastor, led congregations, but always experienced difficulties when holding power. The first house church she attended was very strict and stressed the submission of women. The writer uses the word mengtou for submission, literally meaning ‘to cover one’s head’. This is the expression used in 1 Corinthians 11 describing the need for women to be veiled during worship and to carry a head cover as symbol of authority. She was ordained and struggled with the identity and position of women in the Church, but as described in the article she has found peace in submission to God’s authority, in that apparently also to the authority of male members in her congregation. In the same issue of Xinghua, Rev. Tianming, one of the Shouwang founders, has written on the topic of ‘Head covering and the mark of serving authority’ (Tianming 2009: 46–51). He concludes: [I]n China of this age, in regard to our culture, it would be very difficult to directly cover your head, but I really hope that we will have such a mark expressing our submission to authority, expressing this order of creation. Sisters should express even more the beauty of women as created by God, and brothers should express even more the appearance of men as created by God, thus manifesting the glory of God himself and also the order of his creation. The issue of submission is particularly noteworthy in a contemporary Chinese setting, considering the unwilling submission, or perhaps better subjugation to party and state regulations and power struggle whims of national or local leaders. Willing submission to God’s authority and order, for women also the willing submission to men, must be based on faith, trust and love, which makes it the opposite of submission to the party, and thus a desirable choice. This submission is totally opposite to what happens in society generally with fragmented morality and commercial freedom. The Christians choosing ‘New Calvinism’ want to break with society around them, living ‘in the world’ but not wanting to be ‘of the world’ (1 John 2:15–17). The notion of submission to God’s authority and also the order of creation between men and women simplifies many things, many choices, and may provide an order for daily life that many seek in a society with weak foundations. ‘New Calvinists’ in China seek a faith that is not only a spiritual outlet, but also provides clear rules for their personal lives and at best also a social agenda. Such a selective but conclusive way of choosing religion is a sort of paradoxical representation of individualism and modernity.

Conclusion The phenomenon of ‘New Calvinists’ in contemporary China is primarily a development among the well-educated in the big cities of eastern and central

Calvin, culture and Christ?   165 China. The most outspoken persons are often well-known cultural figures and elite intellectuals, while some are also trained theologians with important pastoral functions. It is a multi-­faceted phenomenon, but very much oriented to the elites in society, in that way resembling the Cultural Christians of the 1980–90s. These groups cannot easily gain influence over the majority of Pentecostal and charismatic movements or the CCC/TSPM, but the important thing for them is to be right, to break the new and correct path. In the way ‘New Calvinists’ present their message in China today it is a selected message, limited to fit certain objectives, consciously or unconsciously. It is most unlikely that the handful of scholars in China with profound theological knowledge have not heard of or had the possibility to read, translate and introduce alternative interpretations of Calvinism. Interestingly texts and explanations always refer to Calvin and sometimes other early Reform leaders, but rarely to contemporary American ‘New Calvinists’, who quite obviously lead the way for what is happening in China today. Such practice is contradictory or maybe complementary to the reverence of texts that is visible in this movement. Considering the Confucian tradition of memorizing texts and the value attributed to the standard texts of Chinese tradition this could be an explaining factor. A more surprising element is the lack of objective textual criticism when dealing with certain texts, especially as many of the involved hold academic degrees and some work at academic institutions. When Yu Jie quotes Weber to his liking he knowingly spreads his own limited interpretation, and withholds information to underline his point, politically and theologically. Although the Chinese ‘New Calvinists’ may have only a limited influence on mainstream churches in China, unregistered or registered, they are part of the intellectual elite and have a rather strong voice in the public discourse. In intellectual circles they are a definite factor of influence, among party-­state elites a matter of concern. This is very clearly confirmed in discussions on the idea and importance of ‘public intellectuals’. In September 2004 Southern People Weekly (Nanfang renwu zhoukan) published a list of ‘50 public intellectuals’ with wellknown names such as Xu Youyu and He Weifang. Among the 50 was also Wang Yi, a Chengdu law scholar, writer and church leader. This publication sparked a debate on the idea of ‘public intellectuals’, including criticism from the party magazine Nanfeng chuang (Window of the South Wind), calling instead for ‘citizen intellectuals’ (gongmin zhishifenzi). The latter would ‘truly represent’ the citizens and not only speak for them, often only with their own benefits in mind, as Nanfeng chuang claimed ‘public intellectuals’ do. This call from the party passed by rather unnoticed (Nanfeng chuang 2004). Wang Yi soon after published his own list with added names such as Yu Jie, Liu Xiaobo, Wang Lixiong and Ding Zilin (Wang 2004). With faith as primary driving force this handful of Christian ‘public intellectuals’ stands out in the contemporary Chinese intellectual landscape. Christian scholars, writers, poets, lawyers and artists are an increasingly strong and critical voice in the Chinese public debate, and a small but increasing number of these belong to ‘New Calvinist’ fellowships or congregations. Many of them were becoming or were already rather well known when they became Christians in the

166   F. Fällman last five to ten years, and those who have turned to Calvinism have sharpened their political standpoints and become more ideological than before. Calvinism has provided an answer to issues of all kinds, both personal and socio-­political.

Notes 1 The notion of ‘evangelizing culture’ is inspired by ideas from Dr. Jonathan Chao (Zhao Tian’en) (1938–2004), an evangelical leader and scholar from Taiwan. Chao led China Ministries International (Zhongguo fuyinhui) and proposed to ‘Christianize Culture’ in the Chinese setting. 2 CNKI is a national Chinese database for academic journals and theses of all subjects, www.cnki.net. The search was done on the full text of all articles. Many articles show no reference to a Calvin related topic in the title line and mention Calvin in a non-­ theological context. The oldest retrieved article was from 1956. The material was retrieved during November and December 2010.

References Aikman, D. (2006) Jesus in Beijing, Washington: Regnery Publishing. Bristow, M. (2011) ‘Chinese Shouwang church vows to hold more services’, BBC News Asia-­Pacific, 12 April 2011 (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-­asia-pacific-­13048472). Brown, A. (2009) ‘Chinese Calvinism flourishes’, Andrew Brown’s Blog, The Guardian online, 27 May 2009 (www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/may/27/ china-­calvin-christianity). Calvin, J. (2006) Institutes of the Christian Religion, Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Chan, S. and Y. Sun (2010) Jiaerwen yu hanyu shenxue [John Calvin and Sino-­Christian Theology], Hong Kong: Logos and Pneuma Press. Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (2002) ‘Danvers Statement Danfu xuanyan’ (www.cbmw.org/images/multilingual/chinese/danvers.pdf; translated by Samuel Ling). Ding, G.X. (1998) Ding Guangxun wenji, Nanjing: Yilin chubanshe. ‘Fakanci [Foreword to the first issue]’ (2005), in Fangzhou, no. 1, inside cover (no publisher given). Fällman, F. (2008) Salvation and Modernity: Intellectuals and Faith in Contemporary China (revised edition), Lanham: University Press of America. Gan, Y. (ed.) (1987–88), Culture: China and the World [Wenhua: Zhongguo yu shijie], vols 1–5, Beijing: Sanlian. Global Institute of Theology (2010) ‘Coordination and faculty’ (www.globalinstituteoftheology.org/coordination.html). Gorski, P.S. (2003) The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gu, M.F. (2008) ‘The post-­denominational era: Chinese churches on the way towards unity’, in The WCC and the Ecumenical Movement in the 21st Century, World Council of Churches Programme (www.oikoumene.org/en/programmes/the-­wcc-and-­theecumenical-­movement-in-­the-21st-century/relationships-­with-member-­churches/60thanniversary/contest/essay-­the-post-­denominational-era.html). Han, W.Z. (1997) ‘Zhi haiwai Zhongguo jiaohui pengyou de gongkai xin [Open letter to the friends of the Chinese Church abroad]’, Tianfeng, 12: 8.

Calvin, culture and Christ?   167 Hansen, C. (2006) ‘Young, restless, reformed: Calvinism is making a comeback and shaking up the church’, Christianity Today, September issue, 32–38. ISCS (Institute of Sino-­Christian Studies) (ed.) (1997) Wenhua jidutu: xianxiang yu lunzheng [Cultural Christian: Phenomenon and Argument], Hong Kong: Institute of Sino-­Christian Studies. Jiaerwen (Calvin) (2010) Jidujiao jiaoyi [Institutes of the Christian Religion], trans. Zhen Yaocheng et al., Shanghai: Sanlian shudian. Kingdon, R.M. and R.D. Linder (eds) (1970) Calvin and Calvinism: Sources of Demo­ cracy?, Lexington: D.C. Heath. Ling, S. (2010) ‘Cong wujie dao xinshang: gaigezong xinyang dui Zhongguo jiaohui de baogui jiazhi [Commending the treasures of the reformed faith in the Chinese Church: from misunderstanding to appreciation], Jiaohui, 23: 17 (https://www.churchchina.org/ files/201005/cc1005.pdf ). Luther and Calvin (2004) Lun zhengfu [On Government], ‘Gongfa yicong [Public Law Translation Series]’, Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe. LWF (Lutheran World Federation), ‘Who We Are’ (www.lutheranworld.org/lwf/index. php/who-­we-are). Miller, P. and T.H. Johnson (eds) (2001) The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. Nanfeng chuang (2004) ‘Gonggong zhishifenzi yu gongmin zhishifenzi [Public intellectuals and citizen intellectuals]’, October (http://media.people.com.cn/GB/4917716. html). Rosenhäger, U. (1993) ‘Introduction’, in Walk, my sister: The ordination of women. Reformed perspectives, Studies from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, vol. 18 (www.warc.ch/dp/walk/01.html). Shouwang Church (2008) ‘Beijing Shouwang jiaohui shenqing dengji guocheng dashi ji [Record of events for the process to apply for registration for Beijing Shouwang Church]’, Xinghua, 1: 18–39. Shouwang Church (2009a) ‘Zhixing jiaohui jilü zhi yiyi ji jieshi [The meaning and explanation of carrying out church discipline]’, section 2 in Beijing Shouwang jiaohui jilü shouce [Beijing Shouwang Church Discipline Manual], Beijing (www.shwchurch1. com/files/guanyuwomen/gywmDetail.aspx?cDocID=20090922155326532601). Shouwang Church (2009b) ‘Beijing Shouwang jiaohui zhangcheng (2010 nian xiudingban) [Charter of Beijing Shouwang Church (2010 Revised Version)]’, Xinghua, 4: 21–30. Shuangyan (2009) ‘Jidutu nüxing jiazhi de xunzhao [Seeking the value of Christian women], Xinghua, 4: 39–45. Southern Baptist Convention (1858) SBTS Abstract of Principles, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (www.sbts.edu/about/truth/abstract). Southern Baptist Convention (2000a) The Baptist Faith and Message (www.sbc.net/bfm/ bfm2000.asp). Southern Baptist Convention (2000b) Southern Baptists and Women Pastors (www.baptist2baptist.net/printfriendly.asp?ID=58). Tianming (2009) ‘Mengtou yu fu quanbing de jihao [Head covering and the mark of serving authority]’, transcript of sermon given by Tianming, 21 June 2009, Xinghua 4: 46–51. Wang, A.M. (2009) ‘The importance of John Calvin for the Protestant Church in China’, in C. Stueckelberger and R. Bernhardt (eds) Calvin Global: How Faith Influences Societies, Geneva: Globethics.net.

168   F. Fällman Wang, Y. (2004), ‘ “Yingxiang Zhongguo de gonggong zhishifenzi” lingwai 50 ren (yi) – fu Renwu zhoukan mingdan [Another 50 “Public intellectuals that influence China” (1) – additional list of names in Renwu zhoukan]’ (http://blog.boxun.com/hero/ wangyi/97_1.shtml). WCRC (World Communion of Reformed Churches), ‘About WCRC’ (www.wcrc.ch/ node/31). Yin, S. (2009) ‘Bei Cun de qiliang gushi [Bei Cun’s desolate stories]’, Xinghua, 2: 126–127. Yu, J. (2010) Jiating jiaohui de gongkaihua yu Zhongguo shehui de minzhuhua [The opening of the house church and the democratization of China], lecture given at the Transition Institute (Chuanzhixing shehui jingji yanjiusuo), Beijing, 24 April (www. zhuanxing.cn/html/forum/362.html).

11 Christian ethics and business life An ethnographic account of overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs in China’s economic transition Joy Kooi-­Chin Tong China’s market reforms have made it go from having one of the world’s most backward economies to having its most dynamic economy. However, alongside the rapid economic development, the culture of corruption and exploitation due to the lack of morality has become widespread. The 2008 melamine-­milk scandal, which involved 300,000 infant victims, reflects one aspect of the problem. There have been voices from politicians and intellectuals advocating that China should adopt religion as one possible source of constructing a new business morality in its modernization efforts. Among these voices, there are an increasing number of people who argue that Christianity could play a role in rebuilding China’s moral order (Aikman 2003; Bays 2003; Zhao 2006). Significantly, at the same time, empirical studies on Christianity in China (Chen and Huang 2004; Cao 2007) show that a new group of ‘boss Christians’ has emerged. Unlike the stereotyped understanding of Chinese Christians as old, female, and low-­educated peasants, ‘boss Christians’ are male and educated entrepreneurs who are adept at integrating Christian values into their businesses. Studies (Yang 2007; Li and Yang 2008) also demonstrate that Christian-­owned corporations in China are following Christian ethics, such as integrity, which contribute to workplace practices that are more rational, moral, and legal. These phenomena remind us of Weber’s (1992) thesis on the Protestant ethic. According to Weber, there is an elective affinity between Protestant values – especially in terms of their motivational significance – and ethical economic behaviors in modern Western capitalism. Weber argued that Protestantism inculcated a set of virtues in its adherents that produced a Protestant character, which in the appropriate setting became the self-­disciplined and rational entrepreneurs who contributed to the development of early capitalism. However, in his application of the Protestant analogy to China, Weber (1951) argued that China and its religious traditions, that is, Confucianism and Taoism, were not congenial to modernization due mainly to China’s traditionalism. This claim is controversial among Chinese studies scholars especially after the economic growth of Japan and the four Asian tigers, which were seen as having a ‘Confucian society’, attracted worldwide attention. Scholars argued that they found counterparts to a Protestant ethic in Confucianism and took Weber to task for his Eurocentric and erroneous analysis of Asian religions (Yu 1987, 1997; Berger and Hsiao 1988;

170   J.K.-C. Tong Redding 1990; Tu 1991). These studies have been significant in pointing out the importance of Confucianism in providing an economic ethos that fuels the Asian economic development. However, because of their focus, these scholars have inevitably neglected Weber’s original argument on the Protestant ethic and the actual influence, if any, of Christianity and Christian ethics in Asia, including China. Such limitation is also due partly to the fact that Christianity was insignificant in numbers and influence in the past decades in China. With the change of society after the economic reform, noting that Christianity1 is the fastest growing religion in the emerging market economy of China, we can now explore, using more empirical data, the issues of Christian ethics and their effects on business behaviors in China. Recognizing that China’s modern capitalism was not initiated by Christians or any religious groups, I will not examine the macro-relationship between religion and China’s capitalism. My purpose is instead to explore one aspect of the Protestant ethic: how, and to what extent, has Christianity cultivated its adherents’ characters, attitudes, and business practices in China? I will explore this issue at the micro-level, namely, from the subjective understanding of individuals. This chapter seeks to contribute to existing studies that examine Christianity’s influence on Chinese economics. It approaches the issue, however, from a different perspective, that of overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs working in China. Ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the United States have been the largest group of foreign investors in China, especially after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989. They occupy more than 80 percent of China’s total foreign investments (Chen and Hu 1997; Huang 1998) and employed 18 to 20 million people at the end of 1994 (Tracy and Lever-­Tracy 1997). Their critical role in providing the capital and expertise to fuel China’s economic growth has earned them the name of ‘the mother’ (Cheng 1994) or ‘one of the twin engines’ of China’s economic miracle (Lardy 1995). Given their economic and religious influence in China and noting that many of them are religious people, it is important to take this into account to gain a more comprehensive overview of the potential religious influence on China’s economy. This study focuses on the Christians among the overseas Chinese. By doing so, it seeks to debunk the myth of ‘overseas Chinese Confucians’ as espoused by scholars (e.g., Berger and Hsiao 1988; Tai 1989; Redding 1990; Tu 1991; Hefner 1998), which was typically evident in Redding’s (1990: 2) argument: ‘Directly Confucian ideals . . . make Confucianism the most apposite single-­word label for the values which govern most of their [overseas Chinese] social behavior’. Through providing an ethnographic account of Christian entrepreneurs, this chapter aims to stimulate a more multi-­dimensional perspective of overseas Chinese entrepreneurship and business values.

Research and profile of respondents The data was collected through participant observations and in-­depth interviews. Throughout my fieldwork in Shanghai from 2007 to 2008, I completed 60

Christian ethics and business life   171 2

interviews with overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs. The interviews were semi-­structured and open-­ended, including questions about conversion and religious participation experiences, business and managerial practices, marriage and family life. Most interviews were conducted at their offices and tape-­recorded. Further, I conducted extensive participant observation by attending activities held in their companies such as luncheon meetings, employees’ gatherings, and Bible study sessions, and those held in their churches including small group meetings, committee meetings, and marriage conference. During my fieldwork in China I stayed with two entrepreneurs’ families, from Taiwan and Malaysia respectively, and at a worker’s dormitory owned by a businessman from Hong Kong. Through daily interactions, I looked for opportunities to verify my answers and talk to many more people who knew these entrepreneurs, including their family members and friends. Respondents were obtained through use of the snowball method. This study has focused mainly on the particular group of overseas Chinese residing in Shanghai. Shanghai was chosen as my field site because it has been one of the main cities for overseas Chinese investments in China. Equally important, Shanghai has historically been the center of mission works in China. Its importance for Christianity in China today can be understood from the fact that both the Chinese Christian Three-­Self Patriotic Movement Committee and the China Christian Council are headquartered in Shanghai. It is the place in China where Christianity and foreign business ventures have met and produced fruitful results. However, recognizing the uniqueness of Shanghai in its development, this research should be seen as a primarily study of an always ignored yet increasingly important group. The profile of my respondents is summarized in Table 11.1. My respondents, 20 of them women, consist of ethnic Chinese business owners, CEOs, managers, and professionals. Most business owners that I interviewed were Taiwanese; a large number of them were new converts. Those CEOs or senior managers that I interviewed were mainly people from the United States and Singapore; they were assigned by multinational corporations to head the Chinese office because of their familiarity with the language and culture. They had generally converted to Christianity through campus ministries in the US and had served actively in local churches before returning to China. In terms of age as a Christian, half of the respondents had been in the faith for more than 20 years. Among the 13 respondents who became converts to Christianity after they entered China, ten of these individuals converted because of family or business problems. In general, the sample represented a group of relatively spiritually mature Christians, if age as a Christian is to be taken as indicative of spirituality. To study the influence of Christian ethics on business practices, I will in the following paragraphs examine four specific relationships that reveal businesspeople’s moral stance toward the corrupt practices that are commonly found in China’s transition economy: the relationship between businesspeople and (1) local bureaucrats; (2) clients and suppliers; (3) employees; and (4) women. The first two relate to the practices of corruption; the third, labor exploitation, and the fourth, sexual immorality.

172   J.K.-C. Tong Table 11.1  Profile of respondents Female

Male

Total

(a) Nationality Taiwan Singapore America Malaysia Hong Kong Canada Korea

14 3 2 1 0 0 0

21 4 5 4 3 2 1

35 7 7 5 3 2 1

(b) Age group 31–40 41–50 51–60 >60

5 11 4 0

5 20 11 4

10 31 15 4

(c) Marital Status Married Divorced Single

5 6 9

37 2 1

42 8 10

(d) Years in China Up to 5 years 6–10 years 11–20 years

11 8 1

10 13 17

21 21 18

(e) Position in company Owner CEO/GM or equivalent High Rank Manager or equivalent Professional

10 1 7 2

15 16 9 0

25 17 16 2

(f) Business type Manufacturing Trading Construction Retailing and wholesaling Food Cosmetic Professional services Finance

7 3 2 3 1 0 4 0

19 5 5 1 1 2 6 1

26 8 7 4 2 2 10 1

(g) Years of being a Christian Up to 5 years 6–10 years 11–20 years >20 years

8 2 2 8

8 5 4 23

16 7 6 31

14

33

47

6

7

13

(h) Conversion Before coming to China After coming to China

Christian ethics and business life   173

Relationship with local bureaucrats Many overseas Chinese, especially Taiwanese, investments in China are characterized by small- and medium-­sized independent manufacturing firms, with 400–800 employees and an average investment of US$1.5 million (Hsing 1998). By keeping their initial investments small and within the authority of local government, the Taiwanese investors negotiate directly with low-­ranking local bureaucrats. The success of their investments therefore results largely from the linguistic and cultural affinity, including an understanding of saving face, social eating, gifts and money giving between the investors and the local officials (Huang 1998). For example, Hong, the Taiwanese chief executive of a semi-­ conductor manufacturing factory, mentioned that he had repeatedly received calls, or ‘threats’, from competing local agencies asking him to give the very costly leftover materials to them in exchange for various privileges. As a Christian, he was caught in this dilemma as he was personally unsure of whether he should even release these materials or to which agency he should give them if he decided to do so. Obviously, for people such as Hong, their ability to deal skillfully with the corrupt practices is thus at the heart of their business success and their ethical challenges in China. Lv is a Singaporean who has three construction companies in different cities in China. She mentioned that dealings with local bureaucrats and tax payment were her most difficult tasks; regional differences in law enforcement due to variations in local leadership made it difficult for her to decide what to do. She complained that the policy was unreasonable, if not transparent, and imposed unbearable burdens on a small law-­abiding company like hers by putting her at a competitive disadvantage to more ruthless operators. Thus when someone informed her that the tax was negotiable, she managed to claim an extra deduction of 3 percent. But the result caused new headaches, how should that 3 percent, returned to her later, be used? She could share the money with the tax officer, or do nothing but prepare for a higher tax rate the next year or something worse. She opted for the latter but since then she was worried that she would receive more inspections from supervising institutions. In response, Lv imposed a rigorous check on her accountant to make every detail transparent. She said, ‘It is these daily practices, not any life and death issue, that constitute the biggest challenge to my values!’ This comment is further illustrated by another incident that happened in her company. Her company has had an endemic problem in getting clients to clear their bad debts. The situation was particularly serious in 2007. Her manager persuaded her to bribe local officials to help solve the debt from government-­owned enterprises while others suggested that she resort to force. It was not easy for her to see her company running into financial crisis but she decided to use a legal way, i.e. issuing lawyer letters, and ‘prayer’. To the surprise of many, a few major clients took the initiative to pay off their balance before the end of the year. Everybody was happy with that miraculous result, albeit with different interpretations; her staff took it as a ‘lucky thing’, but for her, it was ‘a work of God’ that honored her faith.

174   J.K.-C. Tong Such regular personal struggles can be devastating. Yet, luckily, as Lv mentioned, it is not a totally lonely battle: ‘I always share my problems with my church’s group and ask for intercession’. During my fieldwork, I did on many occasions witness the capacity of such mutual support. One example was a new and small ‘men’s discussion group’ that was started by two overseas Chinese Christians in Shanghai in 2008. This group focuses on issues related to bribery and other forms of corrupt practices in China. There are about 20 to 30 participants at each meeting. Christians who are more senior in their businesses or have been in China longer are assigned to be in charge of the discussion sessions, where ethical principles and consequences are discussed and personal stories shared. A few of my respondents who attended the meeting mentioned that the open transfer of information and the joint problem-­solving arrangements were helpful in providing them with moral support and techniques to deal with problems faced in business.

Relationship with clients and suppliers In China’s transition economy, it is common for contracts to be decided by connections, especially political connections, as well as bribes. A deviant type of guanxi is widespread and necessary; activities such as socializing with or bribing clients and suppliers are typical and are seen by many as part of the unique way of the Chinese type of networking. Lim’s story might illustrate what most Christians think of the test of integrity for businesspeople in China when dealing with clients. A Singaporean businesswoman in her early fifties, Lim started her interior design business in Shanghai in 2000. In early 2007, she was engaged in a serious bid for three big projects in Beijing. Being aware that other bidders were prepared to pay bribes, she decided to follow. Yet her struggle was so strong that she had to stop her middleman from paying the bribe. She lost the three projects. But six months later she was surprised to see that the client visited her office in Shanghai and asked if she would take over the projects, which had been started in April but the contract was broken prematurely because of poor services and bribery scandals. Trying to avoid further legal problems, the client decided to find someone who was ‘clean and professional’. Lim was happy about the result. When she was asked why she would persist in her principles despite all the risks that involved, Lim said, You know the consequences . . . I don’t think it is worth risking my eternal salvation for short-­term profits. . . . Like any businessperson, I used to do many wrong things, but now at least I try not to repeat it. I want to see how God can help me in such situations [of not giving a bribe] . . . I’ve seen God helping me in many unexpected ways. This gives me the courage to stand my ground. . . . If he can bless you with great profits without you trying to be clever, then why do you want to use human ways to do your business? Her comment shows that she does not perceive immoral practices as merely an unpleasant business culture; neither is it simply an illegal or unethical conduct. It is seen as a sin – to refrain from it is not a preference, but a religious command

Christian ethics and business life   175 that one needs to obey even if it incurs a cost. Just as the 35-year-­old Zhao, who was a sales manager of a phone company, mentioned, I cried twice when I worked in that company; one was when my boss asked me to give kickbacks to a big client; I was devastated and wept that night. I decided that I would not do that. When I told my boss, he was mad at me. I knew all my effort was gone and I wouldn’t be able to survive in this company or maybe in this industry. That night I cried again, but that was with a sense of relief and peace. It was hard but I knew I did the right thing. True enough, he was later asked to leave the company and was still looking for a job when we met. With this idea of religious sanctions in mind, perhaps it is more understandable why people such as Lim and Zhou would want to pay the high cost of keeping their integrity when they see the clashing of the rules of the kingdom of God and those of the sinful earth, that is, ‘human ways’. Nevertheless, in order to survive, they have to strive for alternative ways to combine their values and business in a way that can help them to excel, rather than impede them, in the market. This can be highly challenging as moral values often imply more self-­imposed restrictions, which are in contrast to the prevailing Chinese custom of earning quick money through short-­cuts. I met Jin, a Singaporean and the CEO of a manufacturing company with more than 200 employees, through a mutual friend, who insisted that I should talk to him. Jin is well known among his peers because he not only applies his values in his family (he and his wife home-­school their three sons between the ages of 12 and 19), but also in his ‘biblical’ company. His company was one of the top in its industry in 2007 with a 30 percent net profit, so even the overseas headquarters have adopted his management skills in its many offices worldwide. He said, I ran everything by Biblical principles and nothing else. But I don’t tell them this is from the Bible. . . . Of course this is a difficult calling. People fail and we have all issues. But the basic principles are there. And there is something called ‘Character First’3 that teaches us humility, responsibility, sacrifice, benevolence. We have implemented it for 8 years. People begin to understand that this is our culture. For example, we don’t do under table. I always tell my people that if the door is closed, then we don’t go. When we treat our vendor we also treat them fairly and justly. I know many people don’t pay vendors on time. But we always pay on time. It is unnecessary but we think it’s the right thing to do. In our policies in the way we treat our customer, vendors and our people, we based on Christian values. They [customers] know we don’t sell things that they don’t need to them. They know whatever questions they have, we resolve. No questions ask. We don’t try and put the blame on them. Many times that was the customer’s faults we also helped them. Jin’s practices are rare but not exceptional. About one-­third of my respondents have intentionally incorporated Christian values to varying degrees into their

176   J.K.-C. Tong corporate culture – they attempt to set moral guidelines such as fair negotiation with suppliers, using religious materials as a resource for management and employee training and hiring like-­minded people for important positions in finance or human resources, for example. Yet, it should be mentioned that Jin enjoys certain advantages not shared by his peers: his company is financially strong, he was a successful CEO of his company’s Singapore branch, and he is a staunch Christian who knows his beliefs well. This explains why Jin manages to achieve success without compromising his principles, which include not entertaining clients. But for small business owners, who also intend to shun activities that go against their beliefs, can they afford the luxury of not participating in social drinking and bribe giving, which are used by others to secure clients? If so, how do they make up for their lost chances? I found that there are alternative ways that such Christians normally use to find clients. First, as implied by Jin, fostering long-­term trusting relationships with clients through professional business performance will no doubt lead to verbal recommendations to potential clients. Second, it is through Christian networking. As mentioned by Backman (2001: 217) in his study of Indonesian Chinese businesspeople, ‘one of the most important venues for fervent networking among overseas Chinese in Asia has become the church’. This is shown through Ray, a founder of an overseas Chinese Christian fellowship in Shanghai and an owner of a human resource company. Ray acquires a great deal of business from the businesspeople in the fellowship. Many of my respondents have sought his help in finding suitable employees for they companies. Christian networking is especially helpful for people with business in the service sector such as restaurants and real estate. Third, these Christians believe that by abiding by God’s principles, God will bring them suitable clients. As mentioned by Tan, a 45-year-­old Taiwanese and an owner of a foreign trade business, Every morning we pray for our business and we really think God can provide our needs. When I first started this business I spent a lot of my time in attending networking functions and trade exhibitions but the results were not obvious. Now in retrospect it’s striking to see that several of my important and long-­term clients are God-­given – they found my company in the directory or walk-­in. Of course I give a very reasonable price and professional service to keep them. These stories illustrate how religion can provide resources and alternative ways of doing things for adherents who want to apply their religious values in relating with their clients.

Relationship with local employees There is much talk in China about overseas Chinese factory owners who exploit workers. Studies (Lee 1998; Huang 1998) show that labor control in China by

Christian ethics and business life   177 overseas Chinese is usually military-­like and punishment-­oriented. The reasons behind such an unequal and exploitative relationship are complicated. In addition to the ‘big rice pot’ mentality, which developed under a communist system that assumed the state would guarantee jobs for life, one important reason is that most workers in factories are young and low-­educated workers from poor inland provinces in China. As they are not socialized into being ‘modern’ workers that can satisfy their foreign owners, they are thus frequently seen as ‘irresponsible and lacking motivation’, who deserve to be controlled in a mean and often unethical way. It is under this background that managing people poses a central challenge to overseas Chinese Christian owners and determines their ethical performance. Ida, a Taiwanese woman in her fifties, was promoted to the role of human resources director for Greater China in 2002. This is an American-­based food company with approximately 600 employees in its Shanghai headquarters. The company had been plagued by bitter disputes when Ida joined as it had just gone through an internal restructuring that left many employees both frustrated and mistrusting. A few days after she took on her new position, she received a call from the company’s factory workers asking her for an informal meeting. She traveled for a few hours to reach the factory. She was quickly surrounded by thousands of angry workers and bombarded with inflammatory complaints. It was only with the help of a few others that she managed to appease their anger and have a talk with them. The workers told her that she was the first high-­ ranking manager, in fact, she was the first HR director who could even speak Chinese, who went to the factory alone and who had shown an interest in their problems. But her boss was shocked to learn of her seemingly ‘careless’ actions; he thought any meetings with the workers at that point of time would definitely end up in disaster. Ida’s reply was surprising to her boss; she said instead of feeling upset by such a confrontation, she felt sympathetic towards the workers. Through the negotiation process Ida had gradually earned the trust of the workers, but the situation did not improve overnight and the headquarters in the United States complained about attempts to demonstrate too much compassion when solving issues. She sighed, ‘I am sure I lost credibility with my boss, but it is hard to always make everybody happy with what you do’. Ida carefully avoids sharing her faith at work, as she thinks that this can invite stereotyping and defensiveness. But she is eager to live out her faith. Her view represents a common understanding among overseas Chinese Christians concerning how faith and business should integrate – there were about 26 of my respondents who share a similar view that faith is more effectively shared through one’s actions instead of rhetoric in a business context. Ida said, I don’t say I’m a Christian, but still people know. If I do anything good, like I value my family time, or I don’t believe in fengshui but trust in hard work, they’d say, sometimes in front of me, ‘You Christians are different’. Mark’s account serves as another illustration of the transformative power that faith can have on management of people. Mark, a Hong Konger in his fifties, is

178   J.K.-C. Tong the Chinese president of one of the biggest cosmetic chains in China. This international company arrived in China in 1995 and has since brought in US$300 million in Chinese sales in 2005. One important factor responsible for his success is the company’s people management principles. Mark said: We often mention about doing good things, doing ethical things . . . in our business model, we make it a point that if you do these things, you will be rewarded. Not only spiritual reward . . . but . . . monetary form, including the growth of your business. . . . We calculate credits and bonus based on a system that reflects our values. If you follow the values you’ll be successful in this business. Melody, a 24-year-­old local Chinese from Guangzhou, started to work part-­time in Mark’s company when she was an undergraduate student. She became a full time staff and a Christian in 2007. She said: When I first heard about the golden rule and go give and other business values in this company I was very surprised . . . I never learnt that. Even if I had learnt that I would never know why I should do that. I fell in love with this company when I first attended its meeting. My mother was against it but I was so firm in my heart because it actually gave me meaning in life and work . . . he [Mark] is very humble and I think he is really a servant leader. He is in such a high rank but he will help in small things like carry thing and serve others. How can he do that if it is not because of his faith? . . . I decide I want to have the same faith as them. Interestingly, in the local church in Guangzhou where I met Melody, there were about seven young women that became interested in Christianity after joining Mark’s company. This example shows that a smart combination of values and business has not only provided moral and intangible incentives for people to work hard, but has the ‘unexpected consequence’ of bringing people into the kingdom of God, not through persuasion or coercion but through a different style of managing people.

Relationship with Chinese women Another tension, which often does not relate directly to business ethics but can be linked closely with business life, is the sticky relationship between foreign businessmen and Chinese women, or more concretely, sexual exploitation of Chinese women by foreign businessmen. An important reason behind this is the custom, practiced in business communities in China, of making connections with clients or local officials through the practice of offering sexual entertainment. Shen’s study (2003) claims that ‘China and Chinese women have become the feminized bodies economically and sexually penetrated by masculine Taiwanese capitalism and businessmen’.

Christian ethics and business life   179 The story of sexual exploitation, nevertheless, seems to go the other way round for Christian businessmen. Kuo, a 37-year-­old Malaysian businessman who frequently travelled between Shanghai and Zhejiang, mentioned he was lured by his ‘local secretary’ in Zhejiang, a woman offered by his Chinese business partners. Feeling guilty after several trips, he decided to seek the help of his pastor and since then reduced the length of his travels and also carried piles (hemorrhoid) medicine in his pockets to prove that sex was inconvenient for him. ‘This strategy is so far so good’, he laughed. For businesspeople such as Kuo, the main reason that keeps them from ‘falling into temptation’, as they frequently described it, is the understanding that as God is omnipresent, he will bestow divine blessings and punishments based on one’s actions. The story of Xu, a handsome 38-year-­old owner of a computer business, might illustrate this point. Xu was a womanizer before conversion; at least five of his babies had been aborted by different women. But after a horrible incident in which he was robbed and nearly stabbed to death, he realized his wrongdoings and turned to God. With the help of fellow Christians from the businessmen’s fellowship, he slowly changed his previous lifestyle and subsequently married a Christian woman. But their baby died prematurely. He interpreted the loss as a punishment for his sin. His regretted past has nevertheless made him sterner in his faith; now he often travels to different Christian groups to share his testimony: I used to go to karaoke every night. If I didn’t go, I felt very uncomfortable. But I decided to go less after my conversion. I tried very hard to reduce it to two nights per week, spending other nights in attending church activities, etc. Then after a few months, I slowly reduced it to twice a month, once a month, and finally once a few months . . . I don’t go anymore now. It is about submitting my body to my will. Realizing the seriousness of sexual temptation, many of my male interviewees have taken precautions to prevent them from succumbing to it, which include not going out alone at night or traveling with female employees and calling home daily when they are on business trips. The Christian fellowship again plays a significant role. For example, a group that I observed used to practice a system of accountability to prevent its members from submitting to sexual temptation during their business trips. It had a peer system that assigned each member who indicated willingness to participate with a peer to call his partner to ascertain that person’s whereabouts. If the partner was on a business trip, the peer would make a daily call to his hotel room so that they could share their needs and pray together over the phone. A few people who participated in this system mentioned that such a close network has indeed helped them greatly in avoiding sexual temptations as well as in preventing poor business decisions when they were away from home and church. Further, seven out of my 60 respondents, all Christians for more than ten years, mentioned that they not only practice self-­discipline, but also institutionalize it

180   J.K.-C. Tong through implementing certain policies within their companies. Steven, a Singaporean boss of a newly established manufacturing firm with around 200 workers, has stated that an employee would be fired or demoted if he is caught having an extra-­marital relationship. One of his salespeople was recently fired because of this action. Another company requires its managers to bring their families along when they are assigned to a new city. In another case, the company does not encourage its salespeople to entertain clients at either a karaoke or a bar; expenses at those places are thus not allowed to be reimbursed. In addition, many companies emphasize family values as part of their corporate culture; activities such as seminars on family values, company family trips and assistance with family problems are occasionally practiced.

Conclusion Based on a qualitative study of 60 overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs in Shanghai, this chapter seeks to examine how Christian faith has an influence on Chinese business practices. I approached the issue through analyzing business-­ related relationships of Chinese Christians with local bureaucrats, clients, employees, and women. Through these relationships, one’s moral stance toward corrupt practices and one’s ethical attitudes in relating to others in business activities are often revealed. This study shows that personal piety, which seems unrelated to economic behaviors, is in fact one primary force in the formation of Christians’ business ethics in a secular society such as China. This might be a surprise to non-­ believers or the larger business culture, which tends to separate personal faith from workplace behavior. The cases presented here show that these people were less accepting of unethical behavior such as giving bribes, tended to believe in Biblical moral absolutes, shun activities that go against their beliefs, turn directly to prayer for solutions to their business problems, and emphasize cultivating character. This finding, in underlining the role of faith in motivating and changing believers’ attitudes and behaviors toward a direction that is moral, supports Weber’s thesis that belief can redirect economic behavior through inculcating a set of virtues that shape the character and the life order of believers. Also, this study shows that there exists a significant group of Christian entrepreneurs within the community of overseas Chinese in China. Unlike our typical assumption that links them to neo-­Confucian entrepreneurs, there is a sizable group of overseas Chinese Christian businesspeople who are actively pursuing management strategies that are based on Biblical principles and who are participating in Christian networking. Instead of deriving their values from Confucianism, their behaviors are more an implementation of Christian values. Lastly, perhaps most importantly, this study shows that Christian ethics have influenced Chinese business activities, directly or otherwise. As indicated in the introduction to this chapter, China today is on the brink of a values crisis. However, in facing the crisis, as argued by Hamrin (2008), China lacks

Christian ethics and business life   181 widely accepted and effective moralizing agents. The family, village, and neighborhood all have been seriously weakened, first by socialism and then by urbanization; socialist values are seriously discredited; Confucianism as a philosophy lacks an organized mass base; and variants of Buddhism and folk religion have not proved to be modernizing agents. Despite the general view that sees Christianity as irrelevant to the issue of market and morality in China (Hanafin, 2002), this chapter has attempted to show the many ways that Christian values can be applicable and are able to contribute to market behaviors. It shows how some Christians perceive their business problems not only as issues to be fixed but as ethical and faith challenges; this reinterpretation then leads to a seriousness of purpose and a steadfastness that might otherwise be lacking. A side-­effect for Christians’ alternative business practices is that they may help transform business culture in China. This study thus provides evidence showing how Christianity could exert a latent capacity to play a critical role in rebuilding China’s moral order.

Notes 1 In this chapter, Christianity refers specifically to Protestant Christianity. 2 I define overseas Chinese as self-­described Chinese who were born and raised outside of China. People from Taiwan and Hong Kong are included because their business and religious behaviors are generally more similar to those of the rest of the overseas Chinese than mainland Chinese (Redding 1990). 3 Character First is a leadership development program that uses character as a foundation for its training. It is not a religious program but it has a strong Christian flavor.

References Aikman, D. (2003) Jesus in Beijing, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing. Backman, M. (2001) Asian Eclipse: Exposing the Dark Side of Business in Asia, Singapore: John Wiley. Bays, D. (2003) ‘Christian Protestant Christianity Today’, The China Quarterly, 174: 488–504. Berger, P. and Hsiao, H.M. (eds) (1988) In Search of an East Asian Development Model, New Jersey: Transaction Books. Cao, N. (2007) ‘Christian Entrepreneurs and the Post-­Mao State: An Ethnographic Account of Church–­State Relations in China’s Economic Transition’, Sociology of Religion, 68: 45–66. Chen, C. and Huang, T. (2004) ‘The Emergence of a New Type of Christians in China Today’, Review of Religious Research, 46: 183–200. Chen, Q. and Hu, S. (1997) ‘An Analysis of China’s Utilization of Foreign Investment’, The Study of Overseas Chinese Affairs, 72(2). Cheng, X. (1994) ‘Research Note on the “Chinese Economic Zone” ’, International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas, Bulletin 2(2) :3–4. Godley, M. (1981) The Mandarin-­Capitalists from Nanyang: Overseas Chinese Enterprise in the Modernization of China 1893–1911, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

182   J.K.-C. Tong Hamrin, C.L. (2008) China’s Protestants: A Mustard Seed for Moral Renewal? Available: www.aei.org/publications/filter.social.pubID.27992/pub_detail.asp (accessed 18 September 2008). Hanafin, J.J. (2002) ‘Morality and the Market in China: Some Contemporary Views’, Business Ethics Quarterly, 12(1): 1–18. Hefner, R. (ed.) (1998) Market Cultures: Society and Moralities in the New Asian Capitalisms, Boulder, Colorado: Westview. Hsing, Y. (1998) Making Capitalism in China: The Taiwan Connection, New York: Oxford University Press. Huang, C. (1998) ‘The Organization and Management of Chinese Transnational Enterprises in South China’, Issues and Studies, 34(3): 51–70. Lardy, N. (1995) ‘The Role of Foreign Trade and Investment in China’s Economic Transformation’, The China Quarterly, 144: 1065–1082. Lee, C.K. (1998) Unraveling the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women, Berkeley: University of California Press. Li, X. and Yang, F. (2008) Jidujiao lunli yu shehui xinren de guanxi jiangou [Christian Ethics and The Construction of Social Trust], available: www.360doc.com/content/10/11 24/17/164198_72080049.shtml (accessed 10 October 2011). Redding, G. (1990) The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism, Berlin and New York: Walter de Greuter. Shen, H. (2003) ‘Making Taiwanese Transnational Taiwan Capitalist Class in China’, paper presented at annual meeting of American Sociological Association, San Francisco. Tai, H. (ed.) (1989) Confucianism and Economic Development: An Oriental Alternative?, Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute Press. Tracy, N. and C. Lever-­Tracy (1997) ‘A New Alliance for Profit: China’s Local Industries and the Chinese Diaspora’, in T. Menkhoff and S. Gerke (eds) Chinese Entrepreneurship and Asian Business Networks, London: Routledge. Tu, W.M. (ed.) (1991) The Triadic Chord: Confucian Ethics, Industrial East Asia and Max Weber, Singapore: Institute of East Asian Philosophies. Wang, G. (1995) ‘The Southeast Asian Chinese and the Development of China’, in L. Suryadinata (ed.) Southeast Asian Chinese and China: The Politico-­Economic Dimension, Singapore: Times Academic Press. Weber, M. (1951) The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, New York: Macmillan. Weber, M. (1992) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons, London and New York: Routledge. Yang, F. (1999) Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities, University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Yang, F. (2007) ‘Zhongguo de shichang zhuanxing zhong de jidutulunli [The Chinese Protestant Ethic during the Market Transition in China]’, in X. Yao (ed.) Chinese Culture and Christianity, Hong Kong: CGST Press. Yu, Y. (1987) Zhongguo jinshi zongjiao lunli yu shangren jingshen [Modern Chinese Religious Philosophy and Spirit of Merchantman], Taipei: Lianjing Chuban. Yu, Y. (1997) ‘Business Culture and Chinese Traditions: Toward a Study of the Evolution of Merchant Culture in Chinese History’, in G. Wang and S. Wong (eds) Dynamic Hong Kong: Business and Culture, Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press. Zhao, X. (2006) ‘You jiaotang de shichang jingji yu wu jiaotang de shichang jingji [A Market Economy with Church and a Market Economy without Church], Esquire, January.

12 Saints, secrets, and salvation Emergence of spiritual–religious groups in China between 1978 and 1989 Kristin Kupfer Introduction Starting in 1978, spiritual–religious life in China has manifested a strong and diverse awakening due in large part to the weakening ideological and organizational control of the Communist Party. Christianity has recorded the most dynamic growing number of followers, especially among the mostly autonomous ‘house churches’.1 These churches often mix aspects of both Western charismatic revival and Pentecostal movements. Under the influence of folk religion and Protestantism, spiritual–religious groups like ‘Teachings of the Soul’ (Linglingjiao) or ‘Society of Disciples’ (Mentuhui) have mushroomed within the countryside. A systematic analysis of Christian-­inspired, spiritual–religious groups in China after 1978 is still missing. Existing studies present contradictory interpretations of the phenomenon: while the Chinese government and some scientists portray these groups as harmful and dangerous ‘heretical teachings’ (xiejiao), other studies present these groupings as harmless and oppressed victims of the Chinese authorities.2 Hence, this chapter aims to contribute to a better understanding of these groups by exploring their emergence. The adjective ‘spiritual’ is added to the term ‘religious’ to capture the more fluid conceptions of the supernatural of the groups which are not linked to only one particular tradition. Spiritual–religious groups are defined as having a charismatic founder or leader, a sophisticated, mostly hierarchical organizational structure, as well as teachings of healing and salvation. The adjective ‘Christian-­inspired’ points to a relationship with Christian precepts and practices – these groups draw on terms, concepts, rituals, and organizational forms of Protestantism. The spiritual–religious groups analyzed here are understood as belonging to a ‘religious social movement’. Building on related literature, religious social movements in this study are defined as collective and sustained efforts to create and develop a system of beliefs and practices concerned with ultimate meaning and the existence of the supernatural challenging or changing of dominant beliefs and practices (Kniss and Burns 2004: 711f.). Individual groups are understood as organized units within this Christian-­ inspired, spiritual–religious movement.

184   K. Kupfer

Theoretical considerations: a spiritual–religious field, strategic capacity, and resources Given that there is still no comprehensive study on Christian-­inspired, spiritual–religious groups in China after 1978, I have chosen to focus this chapter on the question of how these groups have emerged rather than on why, with the latter pointing more toward a macro-­level analysis referring to political, social, and economic structures. Following Rucht, this study asserts that the dynamic of social movements can only be comprehended in relational terms as they seek allies and face opponents during their process of emergence and development (Rucht 2004). Their interactions are understood as structuring a spiritual–religious field. Three categories of actors are considered to be important for the analysis of a field of social movements: the party-­state, which frames the rules of the spiritual–religious field; societal actors (like other religious movements and groups as well as media or scientific institutes); and the groups themselves, which are supposed to challenge the authority of the party-­state over the field (McAdam and Scott 2005). The category ‘party-­state’ relates to any organizations within the Chinese political regime, including party organs and state organs. Although some studies on religious policy point to differences or even contradictions among various party-­state organizations (e.g., Leung 2005), due to the limitations in scope of this chapter, the party-­state is regarded as one analytical unit. The formation of spiritual–religious movement comprises a five-­step process:3 first, a leader is motivated to initiate a spiritual–religious group; second, its teachings must be conceptualized by the leader; third, he or she must gain social acceptance of these ideas; fourth, the commitment of potential followers must be maintained and new adherents recruited; fifth, the group must find its place within the overall field, also in face of other actors and changing circumstances arising from their actions and interactions with one another. To examine how these spiritual–religious groups have emerged, this chapter utilizes Marshall Ganz’s concept of ‘strategic capacity’ (Ganz 2003, 2004). Within this study, ‘strategic capacity’ is understood to be composed of the following resources: organizational resources (understood to include ‘agents’, which refers to individual components, be it persons or institutional units, therefore also taking up Ganz’s original idea of leadership), and ‘structure’ (comprising the overall organizational design), ideational resources (including norms, values, language, symbols, through which identity is created vis-­à-vis the spiritual–religious sphere, Lofland 1995), and finally, actional resources. These are related to McAdam’s concept of six hurdles to be tackled by leaders in developing social movements (McAdam 1996) and cover three areas: finding new recruits, sustaining commitment and control of current adherents (morally and materially), and working toward realization of stated goals.

Saints, secrets, and salvation   185

Emergence of Christian-­inspired groups within a twofold spiritual–religious field For contextual orientation in my discussion later on, I wish to highlight two developments in China over the last three decades. First, the transformation of the political system from a totalitarian type toward an authoritarian one – basically characterized by a gradual withdrawal by the party-­state from overall control to granting limited freedoms to Chinese citizens – created space for new organizational and ideational dynamics from within the population. Still, the Chinese government has established institutional frameworks for the monitoring and guidance of society. Within the spiritual–religious realm, the party­state opted mainly for organizational control as religious communities needed to register with one of the five officially sanctioned ‘patriotic’ religious associations. Reasons for this were multifold. One, the integration and mobilization of religious believers for building a modernized and strong China (United Front strategy). Certain religious practices, like Daoist or Buddhist temple-­based worship, have come to be regarded as part of national culture and religious sites could attract tourists as well as overseas investment by Chinese (He 2000; Feuchtwang and Wang 1991). Other religious practices, however, were regarded as potential challenges to diplomatic relations. After the political transformations in Eastern Europe, in which the Church played an important role, the Chinese party-­state regarded influence from overseas Christians as potential threat to the Communist regime. Consequently, monitoring and repression of Christian activities outside the officially registered congregations increased. The Chinese government still turns to repressive measures whenever a group challenges their organizational and ideational authority, as the case of the clampdown on the Buddhist-­inspired Falungong movement has shown (Holbig 2000; Tong 2002). Second, the gradual withdrawal of the state created gaps and upheavals, especially in the social security system and ideological orientation, forcing individuals to cope with increasing competition, expanding choices of goods and ideas, and weakening traditional family bonds due to increasing migration. People were searching for (new) meanings and stable social relationships in a rapidly changing society. Apart from loose social networks often based on familiarity (same hometown, same school or university), autonomous civic organizations providing material and/or spiritual support have been rare due to state-­regulations (Zheng and Fewsmith 2008). Against this background, spiritual– religious groups emerged as an attractive answer, providing meanings as well as community. The following analysis discusses the organizational, ideational, and action-­directed resources of the groups and relates them to the resources of the party-­state and/or relevant societal actors. The analysis does not focus on case studies but instead on identifying general characteristics which will be illustrated with representative examples.

186   K. Kupfer Organizational resources of Christian-­inspired, spiritual–religious groups Leadership A majority of the groups’ founders were peasants in their fifties and sixties. Most leaders initially used their own homes as a base for recruiting followers and slowly expanding their activities. While younger, especially male rural residents have left their hometowns to seek educational or job opportunities within the cities, with the elder generation staying behind, longing for meaningful relationships, social recognition, and support. The leaders had detailed knowledge of the Bible, as can be recognized in the names and the teachings of the groups. Under the influence of family or friends, they got in touch with Protestant, mostly non-­registered, congregations, chiefly influenced by the Pentecostal or Charismatic movement. The main congregations are the ‘True Jesus Church’ (Zhen Yesujiao) and the ‘Group of the Shouters’ (Huhanpai).4 In China’s rural areas, communities follow an evangelical tradition and, due to lack of churches or harassment of local authorities, many believers congregate at homes for religious worship. Wu Yangming, the founder of the ‘Established King’ (Beiliwang), was born in 1945 in a village in Anhui Province and became a Christian in 1979. Then, in 1983, he joined the ‘Shouters’. After reading in the Gospel of Luke (2:34) about Jesus as the ‘anointed king’, Wu decided to start his own group and named it the ‘Anointed King’ in 1988 (Chen and Zhang 2001: 59, 67ff.). Hua Xuehe, leader of the ‘Teachings of the Soul’ (Linglingjiao), was born in 1949 and worked as a primary school teacher in a Jiangsu Province district. In 1979, Hua joined the ‘True Jesus Church’, resigning his teaching post as well as his party membership (Jiang 2000: 157). The family of Xu Shengfu, the founder of the ‘Grade of Three Servants Group’ (Sanbanpurenpai), also belonged to one of the earlier families to be converted to Christianity in his home village Lingliu, in Zhenping County, Henan Province. Most leaders endured punishment in labor camps or prisons due to ‘illegal religious activities’ even before they started to found their own group (Wu 2005: 65f.; Liu/Deng 2006). It seems that these punishments not only did not stop them from participating in ‘illegal religious activities’; they strengthened these people’s commitment to their cause. Like members of many other religions, Christians might regard suffering and hardship as tests from God to nurture their spiritual growth. As Wu Yangming stated: ‘Being locked up by the Public Security one time means succeeding in the Spirit for one time. We didn’t commit any sin, the cadres of the CCP are evil demons, we use the Gospel to save China’ (Wu 2005: 66). Additionally, three types of spiritual resources can be found among the leaders of the Christian-­inspired groups: a call or spiritual revelation, the experience of suffering, and an ascribed charisma. Xu Shengfu, head of the ‘Three Grades of Servants Group’, received a revelation after several days of fasting (Boxun 13 October 2006). Wu Yangming, head of the ‘Established King’,

Saints, secrets, and salvation   187 described his experience of a call in a statement given to the Public Security Office after his arrest. While reading the Gospel of Luke, he was struck by the word ‘established’ and could not grasp its meaning. After repeated prayers, Jesus appeared in his dream, entrusted him with preaching the Gospel, and anointed him the ‘Established King’. After awaking from the dream, not only did every word in the Bible appear clearly to him, but also his call to be the ‘resurrected Jesus Christ’ (Deng 1996). ‘To endure bitterness’ not only describes the life resembling how most Chinese people grew up during the 1950 and 1960s; it is also a familiar spiritual resource within the Chinese political and philosophical context. The Communist Party praised ‘enduring’ (ren), for example, as part of the ‘spirit of Lei Feng’ or, even earlier, the ‘Old Tibet spirit’. Within a broader social context, ‘enduring’ is not only part of Confucian ethics, but also part of various poetic narratives (Chen 2008; Luo 2 July 2011). Within the Christian context, narrating a life of suffering relates to the life and figure of Jesus. Unlike Hua, however, not all leaders refer directly to Jesus. In a biography of its leader, Xi Shengfu, published by the ‘Three Grade of Servant Group’, Xu is referred to as ‘servant of the Spirit’, just like other preachers before him, such as Wang Mingdao or Ni Tuosheng (Boxun 13 October 2006). In a rather extensive biography on Hua, suffering is linked to various different themes: hardships of a poor life, success in spreading the Gospel, and protection of God (Boxun 12 October 2006). Various followers gave testimonies of Hua’s spiritual charisma and loving care for his followers. Some compared Hua as being ‘more praiseworthy than the beauty of spring’ or as being a ‘Red Sun arisen from Jiangsu [Hua’s birthplace]’ (Wu 2005: 81f.). Structure The typical organizational structure of the Christian-­inspired groups tends to compose of five to seven administrative levels with different posts arranged according to spheres of responsibility. The leaders of all these religious groups tended to claim absolute authority. They often place relatives or close friends in important positions within the hierarchy (Boxun 13 October 2006; Wang 2000: 171; Li 1996: 30). The organizational structure of the ‘Anointed King’ is representative of that of other similar groups (see for example Figure 12.1). The ‘Supreme God’ leader, Liu Jiaguo, left his wife and daughter at the beginning of the 1990s after he met Zhu Aiqing. Because of her detailed knowledge of the Bible, Zhu instructed Liu on theoretical concepts and scriptures for his teachings, rising to the second highest rank within the group. The ‘Four Living Things’ (si huo wu) formulated the ‘interior policy’ (nei zhengce) as well as the teachings of the group and functioned as ‘Standing Companions’ (chang peiban) of the ‘Supreme God’. Personal bodyguards who served the leader were responsible for helping him at meals, with dressing, and with washing, a practice also known as the ‘Way of Resurrection’ (Wang 2000). The hierarchical stages spanning from ‘Same (Level) as the Supreme’ through ‘The Seven Angels’ are specific developments of the ‘Teachings of the Supreme God’.5 Similar positions assigned to

Supreme God liu jiaguo

God Mother (zhumu) (2) Honored Father (zhanglao) (24/8) 1 Same (Level) as the Supreme (zai zhu shang) Goddess of Longing Desire (panwang zhu) Goddess of Tender Grace (ciai zhu) Goddess of Trust (pingxin zhu) Goddess of Expectation (dengdai zhu) Goddess of Strength (jiangu zhu) Goddess of Rubies (hong baoshi zhu) Four Living Things (si huo wu) Goddess of Grace Goddess of Fine Gold Goddess of Brightness Goddess of Pearl (xiuli zhu) (jingjin zhu) (kaixin zhu) (zhenzhu zhu) Task: accompaniment of the Supreme God and Co-planning of the Internal Policy (nei zhengce); Spreading of the Teachings The Seven Angels (qi tianshi) Goddess of the Crown (guanmian zhu) Goddess of Double Luck (shuangxi zhu) Goddess of Lilies (baihelijan zhu) Goddess of Praise (zanmei zhu) Goddess of Brightness (liangguang zhu) Goddess of Pursuit (xunqiu zhu) Power Holder (quanbing) General Power Holder of the Province (sheng zongquanbing) (17) Power Holder of the Province (sheng quanbing) Main Power Holder of the District (zheng xianquanbing) Vice-Power Holder of the District (fu xianquanbing) Various Staff Workers (tonggong), divided at district and community levels Leader (dailing) Host Families (jiedai jiating) at district and community levels, offering shelter for members and serving as meeting places Followers

Figure 12.1 Organizational structure of the ‘Teachings of the Supreme God’ (sources: diagram © Kristin Kupfer. Created by author based on Chen and Zhang 2001, Jiang 2000, and Li 2000).

Saints, secrets, and salvation   189 specific tasks – such as evangelizing, responsibility for holding meetings, receiving followers from other provinces, taking care of finances – can be found in the organizational structure of other groups as well (Jiang 2000; Li 2000; Wu 2005). Regarding organizational models given in the Bible, it is hard to deduce a Christian source for this rather sophisticated organizational network of the groups. Organizational structures of traditional Chinese secret societies, however, look very much alike.6 For example, the ‘Teachings of the Eight Trigrams’ (baguajiao) organized themselves in eight horizontal groups, with a so-­ called ‘triagram division’ (fengua) being responsible for a certain territory. Within these, several hierarchical ranks were given names like ‘Guard of the Whole’ (quanshi), ‘Guard of Transmission’ (chuanshi), or ‘Guard of Grain’ (maishi) (Li 2000: 24). The ability of the Christian-­inspired groups to develop such complex organizational resources points either to a lack of appropriate organizational resources of the state and/or to an unwillingness of the local government units to implement religious policy. First, the local Public Security Bureaus have been mainly in charge of handling illegal – meaning not registered with the local Bureau of Religious Affairs – Christian-­inspired groups. They have dealt with these groups on a reactive, not a proactive or pre-­monitoring basis (Center for Religious Freedom 2002). Therefore, the institution with potentially the most expertise, the Bureau of Religious Affairs, did not have much influence. As Feuchtwang (2000) mentions, resistance from more leftist-­oriented cadres at some local institutions hindered a coherent, professional setup within the religious field. Second, as with other policy areas, central government authority/control over organs at lower levels had been a problem noticed early on within the spiritual– religious realm. Coastal provinces often practice a more liberal policy which might have been connected to their early and frequent exposure to overseas and foreign visitors. Interior provinces, however, seem to suffer more from religious persecution (Lambert 1994; Gänßbauer 2004). Besides state-­policy inability or unwillingness to prevent organizational buildup of the groups, the groupings have positively profited from the fact that the officially sanctionized church congregations belonging to the ‘Three Self Patriotic Movement’ (TPSM) only offered a weak organizational structure for believers, especially when it came to social prestige and chances to rise in the administrative structure. Many ‘Three-Self ’ congregations do not have a fixed membership system and do not emphasize the structural/communal significance of the Christian faith (Xie 2010). Internal communication Apart from a complex hierarchy, codified behavior and disciplinary measures were key elements of the organizational resources of the Christian-­inspired groups. There are two reasons for this. First, the non-­registered status of the groups made them potential targets for suppression by the authorities and forced them to develop measures to avoid being discovered by the police (Wu 2005: 229).

190   K. Kupfer For example, to strengthen its internal organization, the ‘Disciples Society’ pursued a highly exclusive marriage practice, whereby group members were only permitted to marry among themselves. Non-­members were referred to as ‘people outside the gang’ (Li 2000: 19; Tan and Kong 2001: 251ff.). They also set up special ‘Truth Groups’ or ‘Small Control Groups’ to investigate violations of their highly detailed rules, a practice also common in ‘Teachings of the Soul’. The respective titles of documents, such as ‘Temporary Rules for Administration of the Renaissance of All Things’, resemble the language of the Communist Party (Jiang 2000: 132f.). In order to reinforce the concept of ‘being chosen’ and ‘being saved’ from calamities and the end of the world – and also to reinforce the followers’ subordination as well as to foster group identity – groups linked various rituals with submission to the community. Before initiation, candidates of the ‘Teachings of the Supreme God’ had to sign a ‘declaration of intention’ and submit a resume (Li 2000: 204; Wang 2000: 170f.). The ‘Church of the Almighty God’ (Quannengshen jiaohui) requested that potential members sign a ‘Guarantee Warrant’ upon entering the group before receiving the group’s publications (Wu 2005: 225). The website of the group offers some hints as to what might happen to people who do not obey the group’s ways. It presents some 877 cases from all over China about ‘Christians who resisted the Almighty God’ (the group only targets believers of the Christian faith). According to these case descriptions – which provide a last name, age, professional and/or religious background, as well as a very specific location (down to village level) – illness, financial ruin, and in many cases death came upon these people as a punishment from the ‘Almighty God’ (Ge zongpai shoulingdao bei shen huayu zhengfu de tiezheng). Additional codes of behavior reinforce identification with the group and its leader, keep followers in check, and curb apostasy. With their peculiar mixture of enforcing security in an insecure (hostile) environment, while at the same time evoking fear of being expelled from the group or of not fulfilling requirements and thus remaining isolated with no hope of ‘salvation’, the groups seemed to be able to bind followers over a considerable period of time. However, the codes of behavior have also served another function: providing followers with alternative social and moral orientations related to the proclaimed new order – a ‘paradise’ as opposed to the sufferings and injustice in this life. The rules of ‘Teachings of the Soul’, which were referred to as the ‘Ten Commandments’, order followers to ‘love God Jehovah, to not worship other idols, to praise the name of God, to not make false declarations in the name of God, to respect the Sabbath day, to be filial to one’s mother and father, to not kill, to not rape, to not steal, to not make false testimonies, and to not be greedy for money’ (Jiang 2000: 135, 160). The ‘Three Grades of Servants’ request that their followers lead a steady life. They should not play majong, not smoke, not rape, not watch useless TV programs or read useless books. They should not go to a Karaoke bar, a sauna, or to other places of entertainment. Lifestyle should be modest, with no useless talking. Followers are requested to search for a pure life; they should acquire knowledge which is valuable to their work for ‘the Spirit’.

Saints, secrets, and salvation   191 The rules also forbid marriage and advocate separate living for men and women (Radio Liangyou 12 December 2007; Boxun 13 October 2006). Finances Donations by their followers were the most important source of income for these groups. Following the tradition of the first Christian communities as described in the Bible, the group of the ‘Anointed King’ asked everyone to donate one tenth of his respective income to the group. Individual accounts stated that the sum of collections might have amounted to as much as RMB30,000. The ‘Shouters’ also practiced tithe: members from the cities were supposed to donate 10 percent of their income, and peasants 10 percent of their harvest (Wu 2005: 256). The ‘Three Grades of Servants Group’ mentioned that they only depended on the donations of their followers. They emphasized that they did not depend on any governmental support. When followers travelled to proselytize, other sisters and brothers were expected to host them for free (Boxun 13 October 2006). As related to the proclaimed doomsday in the teachings of several groups, donating was conceptualized as an investment in the future. ‘Give one Yuan now, and you will get back 1,000 Yuan later’, was one of the slogans associated with the ‘Teachings of the Supreme God’.7 Some groups also resorted to business activities. The ‘Three Grades of Servants Group’ was said to have set up enterprises throughout the 1990s. Followers, who were hardworking and lived modestly, contributed to the great wealth accumulation of the group (Deng 2006). The ‘Teachings of the Soul’ leased a piece of land in the name of a dress and adornment company and started a fishery business. Likewise, the ‘Group of the Shouters’ initiated a marketing company with support from the United States as well as Taiwan (Wu 2005). The ‘Grade of Three Servants Group’ set up twenty enterprises worth RMB5.8 million (Deng 2006). For some groups, the selling of publications became one source of income. From June 1999 through February 2001, a sub-­branch of the ‘Group of the Shouters’ in Fujian Province earned some RMB50,000 from the selling of books (Wu 2005: 265). Foreign funding seems to play a considerable role in some of the groups. Some sources have mentioned possible foreign funding for the ‘Church of the Almighty God’ due to their high bonus payment for recruiting each new follower. Besides, their website is maintained in the United States, where their publishing company is also located (Radio Liangyou 12 December 2007; Chinese Christian Life Web 24 January 2005). Followers Information concerning followers of Christian-­inspired groups in the initial phase is nearly non-­existent. With regard to the above-­stated background on the worldly and spiritual identity of the founders, early followers were mostly fellow believers from the founders’ respective home communities.

192   K. Kupfer Looking at the motives for joining the Christian-­inspired groups, several observations can be made. The quest for healing has been a dominant motivation for many followers. Faith healing has been an important component for Protestant believers, especially in rural areas (Währisch-Oblau 1999). Many joined such groups based on witness accounts or their own experience of healing. Healing also included a psychological dimension, related to the stress and frustration suffered in everyday life. Protection against evil was often closely related to this point. Participation also fostered feelings of worthiness and status. Suffering from social isolation or an unhappy family life, women in particular considered these groups a chance for new social relations. Based on available information, it is difficult to judge whether followers consciously chose a particular group, rejecting the possibility of joining another, or whether it was simply a choice based on availability.8 Material and spiritual incentives can often be difficult to separate. Rapid economic development and social change have generally affected personal relationships, which represent vital social security in Chinese society. Social security systems, especially in the countryside, were not introduced until the mid-­1980s. By 2003, only some 20 percent of the rural population was covered by collective medical services, as the system lacked public funding or did not enjoy the trust of the peasants (Hussain 2005). Although the state-­ owned Chinese People’s Insurance Company began to operate in some areas, peasants still regarded illness as a major source of insecurity (Schädler 2001: 287). Relatives and friends have been one important source of financing. However, due to migration and the dissolution of ‘work units’ which also provided a stable and long-­term social setting, relationships have become more temporary. Limited high-­quality services – for instance placing a child in a top school as the most suitable preparation for university entrance examinations, obliging nurses to look after patients particularly well, or securing an appointment for an operation at a well-­known hospital – put competitive pressure on relationships. The groups provided the followers not only with a non-­ competitive communal setting, but also with spiritual consolation and support in the wake of social problems. Ideational resources Names and symbols used by the Christian-­inspired groups basically pointed to their Christian base. Groups of the ‘Anointed King’ or the ‘Teachings of the Soul’ also appealed to potential followers with a non-­Christian background as powerful and spiritual. The teachings of religious groups are centered on the task of physical and spiritual healing, and to some extent the salvation of their followers by, and reunion with, a higher moral authority. Healing was understood as a process equally related to body and mind. The causes of illness were therefore diverse: besides individual physical and psychological malfunctions, diseases were interpreted as signs of immoral behavior. The groups spread the notion that illnesses or unfortunate incidents are the result of possession by ‘evil spirits’ or ‘demons’ and related to sinful conduct as

Saints, secrets, and salvation   193 defined by various codes of behavior. Hence, people who had already tried various hospitals and treatments in an effort to cure their illness or had experienced a number of ‘unsatisfactory events’ were more disposed to believing in the help of spiritual powers. Within the groups’ teachings, the state of the body was linked to the moral state of character, as well as to the state of the cosmos. Illness, but also the decay of morality and social values, was proclaimed to be a sign of approaching ‘doomsday’ (shijie mori) (Wu 2005: 44).9 Prophecies concerning a ‘doomsday’ scenario in connection with a vision of salvation for the followers form a second aspect of the groups’ ideational resources. The ‘Teachings of the Soul’ stated: ‘Doomsday has come, epidemics will descend on the world, and there will be hunger, floods and locusts’ (Wu 2005: 43, 55). Only two groups, the ‘Anointed King’ and the ‘Teachings of the Supreme God’, connected the year 2000 with the end of the world. However, these groups ceased to have broader influence and even ceased to exist before this concrete date was reached. With regard to the above-­mentioned millenarian vision, all leaders of the Christian groups propagated that only their followers would survive the imminent calamities and escape being condemned to hell. Consequently, belonging to such a group was tantamount to being ‘saved’ (Li 2000: 208ff.). As material possessions were also no longer ‘reliable’, members were supposed to give them, in the form of a ‘donation’ or an ‘offering’, to the leader as an investment in their own salvation and future life. The group of the ‘Anointed King’ promised a ‘tenfold multiplication’ of the presented goods in the upcoming ‘Heavenly Kingdom’ (Kang 1996). While the millenarian vision might be linked to the Book of Revelation, none of the groups refer to this book or any other parts of the Bible directly. Their apocalyptic framing, however, also follows the rich tradition of millenarian and messianic thinking within Chinese popular religious movements. Following the traditional ‘teaching of the three epochs’ (sanshijiao), groups conceptualized history as a moral and social regress caused by a degenerating cosmological order (Dunstheimer 1971; Wakeman 1977: 209; Li 2000: 29; Topley 1963: 371f.). Natural catastrophes and social grievances were linked to cruel and corrupt rulers, which were said to have lost the traditional base of legitimacy, the  ‘Mandate of Heaven’. Linked with nationalist aspirations against the ‘non-­ Han’ rulers of the Yuan and, later on, the Qing dynasties, groups like the Buddhist-­inspired White Lotus movement or groups of the Triads tradition envisioned salvational hope with the advent of the future Maitreya Buddha (Milefo) or the ‘Unborn or Eternal Venerable Mother’ (Wusheng laomu) (Overmyer 1981: 160; Wakeman 1977: 209). Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the ‘Society of God Worshippers’ which later coalesced into the Taiping movement, presented himself as the younger brother of Jesus and promulgated the beginning of a new reign based on egalitarianism and a strict moral code (Spence 1996). Some of the Christian-­inspired groups offered a more vivid picture of the current era. According to the ‘Society of Disciples’ in this ‘new era of God’ – a time of eternal sources of wealth and food – ‘what is asked for will be received, what is sought will be found’. In a ‘world of equals’, poverty, injustice, and

194   K. Kupfer falsehood would no longer exist (Li 2000: 221). The overall vision presented by the ‘Church of the Almighty God’ is a reunion of believers with God in a new ‘era of nation’ through the second coming of Christ. To reveal my glory to the people of the future world. . . . Let the people all come in front of my jade throne, let them see my face. . . . This will be the climax of my plan and the aim of my working. Let ten thousand states worship God, let ten thousand mouths acknowledge him, let ten thousand people trust, let ten thousand people return to obedience. (Hua zai rou nei xianxian [The Words Appear in Flesh], Neibu shiyong (Internal Use): 128, 192–193) Actional resources I nward- O ­ riented Resources : P ractices

The number of assemblies taking place among groups during one week varies, but most of them consider either Saturdays or Sundays as one important day of assembly. In the case of the ‘Teachings of the Soul’, a bigger assembly takes place each Wednesday and Saturday, and on other days members gather in smaller groups. The ‘Three Grades of Servants’ advised their subgroups to meet at least twice a week. Everyday meetings were also encouraged (Boxun 13 October 2006). As a reaction to rising persecution, meeting points for communal activities had to be kept secret and constantly changed. Normally, meetings were still held at the homes of members, for the number of participants would normally not exceed eight. The ‘South China Church’ (Nanhuajiaohui) bought several houses in Hubei Province to be used as meeting points. The meetings would generally be held late in the evening; members would arrive alone or in small groups and were urged not to use their mobile phones (Wu 2005: 239). Chinese accounts often emphasize that many of the activities happened at night, contributing to these groups’ reputation as mysterious and illegal (Wu 2005: 267). Nevertheless, nightly gatherings can also indicate the necessity for concealment. During assemblies of the Christian-­inspired groups, one main activity was ‘speaking in tongues’. Within some groups, for example the ‘Teachings of the Soul’, some members ‘translate’ the uttered words of others, serving as a ‘spiritual medium’ (Jiang 2000: 373). As their name implies, the ‘Shouters’ shout the words ‘Lord!’, ‘Amen!’, and ‘Hallelujah!’ as part of their services, believing this will help liberate their spirits to be able to receive the word of God. The ‘Full Scope Church’ claims that crying loudly will lead to the path of rebirth and salvation, and the ‘Teachings of the Soul’ practice the singing and dancing of ‘soul songs’ and ‘soul dances’. Subgroup gatherings of the ‘Anointed King’ group had this particular ceremony: a chair covered with red cloth was put onto a table in the middle of the room. After female and male members had entered the room separately and had sat down on the ground, the leader of the group (normally a

Saints, secrets, and salvation   195 woman) sat upon the chair and started preaching. The ‘Teachings of Soul’ admission ceremony used obvious Christian elements, like blessing by laying hands on the candidate and recitation of the ‘Ten Commandments’ (Jiang 2000: 161). Communal prayer has been a common activity for the groups. The ‘Teachings of the Lord God’ has adapted a slightly changed version of the Common Prayer, focusing more on fulfillment of personal wishes than on the will of God: ‘God, you savior, who created Heaven and Earth, have mercy on our Lord God, begging Lord God to listen to our prayers, to hear our calls to his ears, begging the God Savior to not give any calamities to my family, and no danger, grant my family health and me patience, give peace to my family. Thank you, Lord!’ (Wu 2005: 51). Singing and songs have also played an important role in delivering messages to the followers. The ‘Society of Disciples’ has written several songs related to the key ideas of their teachings and activities. To strengthen the identification of their members with the group and to train them for their task of evangelizing, the ‘Full Scope Church’ conducted various ‘training classes’ for their members. Long-­term classes ran for half a year, shorter ones from one to three months. The classes covered topics from church-­ building to doctrines. After the course concluded, people were divided into groups of two or three and sent outside to spread the Gospel and the respective interpretations of the groups. During participation in the classes, however, no contact with the outside world was allowed; the members even used fake names to cover up their identities (Wu 2005: 116f.). The ‘Group of the Three Grades of Servants’ also conducted special training classes. During these classes, they practiced a ‘military-­like administration: fixed times for rest, getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning to do body and mind exercises, arranged time for praying, reading the Bible, practice of preaching’ (Boxun 13 October 2006). Outward - O ­ riented Resources : Recruitment/Public Relations

One of the most vital tasks of Christian-­inspired groups was proselytizing. The ‘Three Grades of Servants Group’ named proselytizing a ‘duty of every follower’ (Boxun 13 October 2006). The assignment of different posts to a particular region was a common feature of network organization. The key technique of proselytizing was face-­to-face communication, first of all among relatives and friends. This direct means of communication left a strong impression on others and also made the potential convert more reluctant to reject the speaker and his message (Li 1996: 29f.). The organizational structure of ‘Teachings of the Soul’ was closely related to their missionary work. They divided Chinese territory into three ‘parts’. The appointed head of the respective ‘part’ was responsible for the establishment of smaller administrative units for the purpose of evangelizing (Jiang 2000: 159). Group members would go to local Christian congregations, seemingly just pretending to be fellow followers. After a process of familiarization and talks about the Christian content, group members would introduce potential new adherents

196   K. Kupfer to their own group (Wu 2005: 66). Several groups also offered material incentives, like mobile phones or a ‘salary’ for each newly recruited follower (Li 2000: 231). Nonmaterial incentives for recruitment were the ‘testimonies’ (zhengjian) of members, especially related to healing. The groups used several techniques to avoid detection from the authorities. The ‘Full Scope Church’ informed participants only about the meeting time, and later on somebody would pick people up and guide them to the meeting place. Followers used public telephones, but only for two or three calls. If someone was paged and didn’t call back within a couple of minutes, the caller left the phone booth. On mobile phones, no numbers were saved. According to Wu, during the initial phase of development, the teachings of the Christian-­inspired groups were mainly spread by word-­of-mouth, leaflets, and small booklets (Wu 2005: 26; Li 2000: 198f.).10 Considering their millenarian teachings, one might expect a more aggressive style of proselytizing. In the context of three specific groups, accounts do give more concrete evidence for activities that oppose state organizations. For instance, the ‘Group of the Shouters’ is said to have founded the ‘Mainland China Administrative Base’ (Zhonghua dalu xingzheng zhishizhan) in Anhui in 1994 and issued the slogan ‘Fight for state power, establish the power of the King, conquer the power of Satan’. They were also reported to have shouted at meetings: ‘The Church faces three big enemies, first the ‘Three-­Self Movement’, second the Communist Party, and third the government’, and ‘We will kill those who listen to the government’ (Li 2000: 192).11 Members of the ‘Teachings of the Supreme God’ are supposed to have held their first ‘national congress’ in Hunan province in April 1996 in order to broaden their organizational structure. The leader had announced the establishment of a ‘Heavenly Kingdom’ with ‘the Supreme God as core leader’ and propagated the ‘encirclement of the cities from the countryside’ (Chen and Dai 1999: 251). It is unclear, however, whether the groups pursued political aims in the first place or whether they got politicized only after local authorities started to persecute them.

Concluding remarks This chapter has analyzed the resources of Christian-­inspired, spiritual–religious groups in relation to their emergence in a spiritual–religious field dominated by party-­state actors as well as influenced by resources of related societal actors. The emergence of Christian-­inspired groups has been founded on their leaders’ ability to mobilize ideational as well as organizational resources formerly utilized by the party-­state, mixing them with and/or redefining them in relation to Christian and/or folk religious ideas. The core of the groups’ ideational as well as organizational reference systems encompasses the notions of social security and harmony along with a longing for paternalistic guidance and communal support. These ideas reflect some of the core principles of socialism as stated by the CCP (Xinhua 2002).12 However, in the wake of the reform era after 1978, these ideals have been subject to growing

Saints, secrets, and salvation   197 competition and pluralism of a market economy. The above-­described changes have served as a background for the ideational resources of the groups. Affected personal relationships (guanxi) through rapid economic development, social change, and the lack of alternative communal organizations have emerged as important factors for the mobilized organizational resources of the groups. The aforementioned familiarity and longing for paternal guidance has served as a key point for the emergence of charismatic leaders invoking their charisma as a ‘potential released in explosion of social movement and invention when internal and external disturbances and dissatisfactions sharpen boundaries between a present that does not live up to traditional expectations which are remembered’ (Feuchtwang and Wang 2001: 19). Contrary to Max Weber’s notion of charismatic authority, which is rather opposed to tradition or restoration (Weber 1921), but following Feuchtwang and Wang, I would argue that the leaders of the groups presented here have based their authority on a revival and redefinition of paternalistic guidance of the Mao Zedong era (cf. Feuchtwang and Wang 2001). Furthermore, the emergence of Christian-­inspired leadership figures is closely interwoven with the development of Protestantism in China. Following an argument by Hunter and Chan, many of these Christian-­inspired groups could even be seen as a further adaptation of Christianity to a Chinese cultural environment, most evident in their usage of folk religious concepts (Hunter and Chan 1993). A complex concept of health and harmony has served as the key ideational resource for the emergence of the groups. That the physical need for healing has been able to attract a large number of followers has once again reinforced the already stated observation of rather deficient, deteriorating, or overpriced health services, with the party-­state slowly having withdrawn from their former role as a free provider of social services (Heberer 2006: 81f.; Hussain 2005). However, the groups have been able to extend the concept of physical healing or well-­ being to the dimension of social and even cosmic harmony. The Christian utopian version is that of a ‘heavenly kingdom’, a total, often apocalyptic break with the past and the worldly realm. However, their proclaimed societal outlook has also resembled that of a nostalgically remembered Mao era. As Ole Brunn put it: ‘Christianity has been the closest rival and most determined alternative to Marxism-­Leninism in the battle against the old social order, and they shared between them a number of revolutionizing concepts and virtues: equality, humility, sincerity, self-­discipline’ (Brunn 2003: 93). Besides providing potential adherents with a validation and interpretation of their dissatisfaction and suffering, groups also present a freely available method – their actional resources – for not only enduring, but ultimately overcoming individual physical as well as psychological feelings of illness and/or dissatisfaction. Additionally, training in various skills, acquiring knowledge, social status, and even financial rewards has offered adherents new perspectives on life. To foster group solidarity, the founders have not only drawn on Christian organizational resources but also on traditional concepts of Chinese folk religion

198   K. Kupfer and secret societies (Chesneaux 1971; de Groot 1903; Cai 1998). Few of the groups seem to be really stressing an egalitarian community as Christian ideas would suggest. There might be different reasons for this. First, although the respective founder will have familiarized himself more or less with the principle of equality within the house churches, his ambition for total control tends to induce a highly hierarchical structure. Second, due to the influence of traditions of secret societies and the dominance of the CCP, he perceived this structure as being the only possible one for running the group effectively. Third, he found the structure useful in satisfying his members’ aspirations of status and power as well as bolstering their commitment to the group, especially in younger women facing strong barriers to social elevation within rural communities. The groups themselves can be understood as a symbol for the contradicting dynamics within the Chinese development. While on the one hand they serve as compensators and innovators of ideational meaning and organizational belonging, they have also created new tensions and setbacks. First, with many members having joined these networks on a kinship basis, membership has sometimes created tension between family members due to principles of inclusion and exclusion, enforced within the Christian-­inspired groups. Violent measures by followers of the ‘Church of the Almighty God’ have been reported widely within the house churches and also the official churches (Chinese Christian Life Web 24 January 2005). Second, several groups favor their concept of healing over medical treatment and even advise followers not to see a doctor. If they can’t get cured while being within the group, they should blame their own insufficient commitment and effort. This is also described as a trigger for doubts by the followers (Li 2000: 185; Wang 2000: 171; Henan Nongcunbao 2000). Third, the hierarchical organizational structure and the respective charismatic leader of the networks point to paternalistic structures. Some teachings reflect an overzealous, non-­pluralistic approach to reality. The movements were so successful not because they created innovative resources or even ideas of freedom and equality, but because they offered a revived rendition of the old sinicized version of Communism.

Notes   1 The term ‘house churches’ refers to smaller congregations that are not registered as part of the official Protestant church. They are often connected through personal networks and characterized by, among other things, lay preachers and a spiritual-­ emotional presentation of the services; see Love 1996.   2 For state policy on Christian-­inspired groups, see Kupfer 2004.   3 Modified after the Two-­Step Process of Bainbridge and Stark 2003: 59–60.   4 On the ‘True Jesus Church’, see, for example, www.truejesusmission.org (accessed November 10, 2009); on the ‘Shouters’, see, for example, the Bereans Apologetics Research Ministry, www.thebereans.net (January 1, 2007) and ‘ “Local Church” Information Site’, www.lcinfo.org (accessed November 29, 2007).   5 A more detailed search for the sources of the naming would be of great value. The ‘Four Living Things’ and the ‘Seven Angels’ might derive from the Book of Revelation (4:7 and 8:2).

Saints, secrets, and salvation   199   6 According to Zhu De, the organizational structure of secret societies functioned as a model for the cell system of the Chinese Communist Party: Foreign and Chinese reactionaries charged that the cell system of the Chinese Communist Party was an alien idea imported by the Russian Bolsheviks. When I [the author Smedley, KK] mentioned this, General Zhu dismissed it as a stupid if not a deliberate fabrication. . . . The cell system, he said, was an old Chinese secret society, and the Tongmenhui had taken it over from the ancient Gelaohui. (Chesneaux 1971: 240)   7 As financial fraud has been one of the most frequent crimes of which the groups have been accused, information in Chinese sources after 1999 should be handled with care. However, Wu states at the beginning of his chapter on finance in a footnote: At present, most mainland scholars and government officials describe the financial matters of the heretical groups from the viewpoint of destruction. This book places extra emphasis on decribing financial matters of heretical groups from an inside functional perspective, to analyze their sources of finance and their use. (Wu 2005: 253)   8 Yip notes of his analyzed cases that, for many people, the Christian communities had the same function as popular religion before, just in a more effective way (Yip 1999: 137).   9 Epidemics and locusts are not only symbols of the world’s end in the Bible, but they also strike up feelings of fear due to events in Chinese history. Especially the locust plague of 1959, a result of Mao Zedong’s mindless ‘Anti-­sparrow campaign’ at the beginning of the ‘Great Leap Forward’, is still considered to be one reason for the great famine in the following three years, having caused the death of at least 30 million people. 10 For a complete list of all groups’ publications, see Wu 2005: 26–29. 11 Unlike other citations, these slogans are not documented with respective reference to the group’s publications or any kind of source information. Various Chinese publications listed these slogans, raising doubts about whether or not they copied it from other second-­hand sources. 12 For the concept of ‘harmonic society’ (hexie shehui), having been fostered by the Chinese leadership since 2005, see Renminwang, October 24, 2008.

References Bainbridge, W.S. and R. Stark (2003) ‘Cult formation: three compatible models’, in L.L. Dawson (ed.) Cults and New Religious Movements: A Reader, Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Bereans Apologetics Research Ministry (1 January 2007) ‘The Teachings of Witness Lee of the ‘Local Church’ (Church of Recovery)’, Online. Available: http://thebereans.net/ arm-­wlee.shtml (January 1, 2007). Boxun (12 October 2006) ‘Puren de jianjie (Short Introduction to the Servant)’, Online. Available: www.peacehall.com/news/gb/china/20062262341.shtml (accessed October 12, 2006). Boxun (13 October 2006) ‘Jiaohui jianjie [Short Introduction to the Church]’, Online. Availabe: www.peacehall.com/news/gb/china/20062262341.shtml (accessed October 13, 2006). Brunn, O. (2003) Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination between State Orthodoxy and Popular Religion, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.

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Part IV

Negotiating boundaries

13 The house church identity and preservation of pentecostal-­style Protestantism in China Chen-­yang Kao

Introduction Yen and her husband both worked as goldsmiths in Shanghai. In 2004, Yen started having dreams about having long conversations with her husband’s dead grandfather. It was, she supposed, the dead man’s spirit appearing and disturbing her. Her husband found her sometimes saying nothing all day, looking worried, and sometimes quarrelling with everybody. She became disoriented, and was sent to a hospital. Doctors diagnosed her as having mental disorder, but her situation did not improve after staying in hospital. At this time, Yen’s family brought a Taoist priest, who decided that Yen was possessed by two malevolent spirits, and had to return to the couple’s hometown, H town, in Fujian coastal area, so as to receive extended exorcist rituals. Following this instruction and on returning to H town, she became more violent, and started hitting her husband and tried to drown her baby in the sea. Yen was hence sent to live with a female shaman in a Buddhist temple for a month, but to no avail. The family heard that the Protestant house church group in their town was reputed for being capable exorcists, and, after some inner battle, sought the help of Jesus. They took away statues of gods, ancestral altars and related religious articles in the house, and invited Christians praying for them everyday. Yen regained normality after a week, and most of the family members subsequently turned to the Christian faith. In H town, there are two types of Protestant groups. One is the government-­ authorized TSPM (Three-­Self Patriotic Movement) church, congregating in a chapel which was rebuilt on a historic structure that dates back to the 1890s. Another is an unregistered house church, which separated itself from the TSPM congregation in 1994, and has grown rapidly since then. Ten years after the split, the house church consisted of almost two-­thirds of around 400 local Protestants. The division pervades the whole H area, made up of 16 villages and towns, with H town as the township. When I did my field research in 2004 and 2005, there were three TSPM chapels in the whole H area, but the house church boasted 14 congregations. In villages and towns where a TSPM congregation and a house church co-­existed, house-­church Protestants always outnumbered TSPM Protestants. Followers of the house church attributed the success of their churches to

208   C.-Y. Kao their unofficial and autonomous status, while they regarded TSPM as a compromising church. This is clearly stated by my house church informants: since their church conforms more to God’s teachings, God shows His approval by granting them ‘spiritual gifts’ such as faith healing and exorcism, and hence the growth of their church surpasses that of the secularly oriented TSPM church. Many scholars notice that ‘miracles and wonders’ have significantly contributed to drawing of people to the Protestant church in China since the 1970s, especially in rural areas (Bays 2003; Hunter and Chan 1993; Lambert 1991, 1999; Leung 1999; Oblau 2005; Tang 2005). While the ‘biblical supernaturalism’ (Lambert 1999: 110) is accepted by both TSPM and the house church, some researchers are aware that the house church tends to be more experiential than the TSPM. Reviewing the house church features of worship, for example, Hunter and Chan (1993: 85) pointed out that ‘home meetings are the ideal environment for healing, miracles and a charismatic form of worship with a strong emotional charge, compared to the relatively austere public services’. The close association between unofficial churches and charismatic phenomena is also noted by Dunch (2001: 201) when he describes the new Protestant movements emerging since the 1970s, which are usually outside the official scope, and can be typified by its Pentecostal style. These observations show that if we broadly split Chinese Protestantism into TSPM churches and house churches, the latter puts more emphasis on personal ‘spiritual gifts’ and manifestation of ‘miracles’ than the former. It is, of course, not to say that every house church in China is Pentecostal-­style. As far as I am aware, this contrast between official and unofficial churches becomes blurry when we move our investigation from rural areas to cities. Nonetheless, rural house churches seem to have ‘elective affinity’ with Pentecostal-­ style religiosity, to use Max Weber’s concept. This chapter is an attempt to explore this elective affinity. Analyzing the case of the H area, I investigate the interconnection between these believers’ choice of withdrawing from the official TSPM church, the house church identity they construct, and their largely Pentecostal-oriented faith. I show that these unofficial Christians deploy a set of anti-­TSPM discourses derived from the anti-­ missionary discourses of a Chinese indigenous preacher, Wang Mingdao, so as to maintain their individualized charismatic powers. In so doing, they are equipped to resist bureaucratic controls and justify their Pentecostal-­style practices. Their identity construction involves a rejection of institutional, ecclesiastic authority, allowing them to preserve the decentralized religious form that they have been accustomed to. Through illustrating the association of the house church identity with Pentecostal-­style religiosity in this case, this chapter hopes to provide an insight into the vitality of Protestantism in contemporary China.

The origin and re-­birth of a Protestant group The origin of Protestant groups in the H area can be traced to the work of Anglican missionaries of the Church Missionary Society in the nineteenth century. When Fuzhou City opened to foreign trade and allowed foreigners to reside in

The house-church identity   209 the city in 1840s, the H area became one of the earliest Protestant mission fields in China. The first converts belonged to a trader family named Ho in the downtown of the H area, the H town. In the late nineteenth century, the Ho family built a chapel in H town, and slowly managed to bring three other families into the Christian faith. The Christian advance in H town ran through a clear clan line. In this quasi-­single-surname town, more than 80 percent of inhabitants shared ‘Huang’ as a surname, while nearly all Protestant converts belonged to other minor families. Excluded from the mainstream of local society, converts benefited from the protection of British consular power and the opportunity for social mobility provided by the Christian educational system. After the communists came to power, the chapel was shut down in 1955. During the Vietnam War, Christians in this area tended to be suspected of being American special agents. They denied their faith; a few turned back to traditional religion. Protestantism was revived in H town during the Cultural Revolution, in a quite unexpected way. I shall begin with the story of Peter. Peter’s father was accused of corruption during the Cultural Revolution and imprisoned. Peter, his mother, little brother and sister started to live a pitiful life. As the family of a political criminal, they experienced alienation from relatives and neighbors. With stomach and liver troubles, Peter’s mother was often bedridden. She looked for every hidden god she could find in the area to ask for protection. These were proved useless when their house was destroyed by a typhoon, and the family was left with no place to stay. At the age of 15, Peter started a small business. He sold yellow fish in Fuzhou City, returning with cigarettes for sale in the H town. One day, when Peter was peddling in H town, an old woman came to him. She seemed somewhat insane; people in the H town called her ‘the madwoman’. The madwoman patted Peter’s shoulder, and said to him, ‘Little brother, would you like to believe in Jesus?’ Peter was curious. ‘Jesus? What is Jesus? I have never heard of it. I have worshipped many gods, but more worshipping has brought more misfortune. Is there any god better than Guangong and Mazu [Chinese gods]?’ ‘Believing in Jesus is very good’, the madwoman replied. This ‘madwoman’, belonging to the Huang lineage, had had contact with the Christian faith, and had started to evangelize to local people around 1970. Illiterate and inarticulate, she could not explain the Christian doctrine. She simply went to neighbors’ and relatives’ houses and sang Christian hymns to them, telling people ‘you should believe in Jesus and get rid of superstitious things, and the Lord will protect you and give you peace’. It is said that she converted at least 12 households during the Cultural Revolution. Several of these people become my informants. Believers did not know much about Christian doctrine. I was repeatedly told that at that time they did not really know what they believed. Their Christian faith was characterized by their experiences that praying to Jesus produced efficacious results. Healing, exorcism, visions, dreams and prophecies were the major elements of their testimonies. From the late 1970s onwards, this new-­born Protestant group grew rapidly and expanded to other villages in the H area. Reports associate this growth with some extraordinary incidents. In numerous

210   C.-Y. Kao stories, Christians came to pray for some sickly or demon-­possessed persons after doctors, Taoists priests and shamans failed to deal with the affliction, and successful healing of such a person was viewed as proof of their God being the most powerful one. Consequently, the healed persons’ families, relatives, friends, and neighbors would turn to the Christian God. In the local Protestant group, Peter and a stonemason, Brother Ho, were two believers who were considered as having special gifts in healing and exorcism. The two men became leaders among local Protestants. In 1977 and 1978, Peter did some manual work in Fuzhou City. During this period, he went to a few underground Christian meetings and listened to sermons of elderly believers. On coming back to the H town, he shared what he had heard in Fuzhou, and took up the teaching role within the group. Brother Ho, a descendant of the oldest Christian family, gradually came back to Christian faith between 1977 and 1979, and found himself especially gifted in driving ‘evil spirits’ away. When the local Protestant community joined with the TSPM and reclaimed the chapel in 1981, Peter and Brother Ho received several months training in Fuzhou City to be qualified as state-­approved preachers. Afterwards, Brother Ho served as a lay church leader in the H town, and Peter was appointed a County TSPM minister.

Wang Mingdao’s anti-­TSPM discourse and the construction of the house church identity Peter worked as a Three-­Self minister from 1981 to 1984. In 1984, he was suspected of spreading heretical teachings and suspended from duty for three months. One main reason for Peter’s suspension related to the content of his preaching. Peter’s preaching had always been full of stories of ‘miracles and wonders’ that he had experienced. Such topics, however, were prohibited by most local governments’ religious regulations (Chao and Chong 1997: 500; Hunter and Chan 1993: 76). The TSPM also announced that Peter might be a heretic. This suspicion damaged the young minister’s reputation greatly. Believers kept their distance from him. Peter was very frustrated, and moved to his wife’s family home in the O village. When the three-­month suspension was over and Peter was allowed to resume his ministerial duties, he found his enthusiasm had been dampened. He left the TSPM and started his own house church in the O village. A year later, a few old-­generation house church ministers started to visit Peter’s group. These old ministers had been jailed from the 1950s to the late 1970s because they had refused to join the TSPM. I call these people ‘hard-­line’ house church ministers, for they are strong theological critics of the TSPM. They formed a distinct anti-­TSPM tradition that can be dated to the 1950s. In the 1950s, some Protestant pastors, ministers and believers became dissatisfied about the politicized TSPM churches as well as the modernist teaching that TSPM leaders engaged in for seeking a ‘common ground’ with the Party’s United Front ideology (Cook 2003; Harvey 1998). These dissenters not only withdrew from TSPM churches but also strongly criticized the TSPM hierarchy and questioned

The house-church identity   211 its loyalty to the Christian faith. For many of them, churches under the TSPM had deteriorated and were no longer true churches. The only thing Christians could do was to leave these defective churches and form autonomous groups. Most of the separatist leaders were arrested in the 1950s. Some died in prison; others were released in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through plugging into the network and discourse of the ‘hard-­line’ house church movement, Peter learned to construct his house church identity. He was transformed from a minister outside of the TSPM to one who was firmly anti-­TSPM. To further elaborate this anti-­TSPM tradition, in the following, I introduce the life and teaching of its representative figure, Wang Mingdao. Wang Mingdao (1900–91) is the ‘spiritual leader’ of many house churches today. His essays published in 1954 and 1955 openly challenged the institution and rhetoric of the TSPM, and have become highly influential in shaping the house church tradition. Wang was born in a family with close connections to foreign missionaries. He went to primary and secondary schools run by the London Missionary Society, and then took a teaching job in a Presbyterian school. As a young, earnest Christian familiar with Western missions, Wang gradually developed a feeling that the problem of corruption in churches had seriously damaged the purity of faith, and this problem was entangled with the continuing Western control over churches and Christian institutions. Later he became convinced that the Bible taught only baptism by immersion, and he received a re-­baptism in 1921. Consequently, he was dismissed by the school, and separated himself from any official association with missionary organizations since then (Wang 1996: chapters 2–4). Wang became a well-known Christian preacher and writer in the late 1920s. He led an independent indigenous congregation in Beijing, and believed that only a financially and organizationally independent church would keep the integrity of the faith. The principle of Wang’s ministry was to adhere firmly and solely to what he saw as the biblical truth, and not to compromise with any human authority. To maintain the freedom to do so, he had to not only break his ties with the Western churches, but also to resist imperialistic and nationalistic encroachment. During the Japanese occupation, he faced enormous pressure to join the Japanese sponsored church association; his church was the only one in Beijing that remained independent till the end (Wang 1996: chapter 5). When the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement was set up in the early 1950s, with the aim of purging ‘imperialist poison’ from the Chinese church, Wang Mingdao was accused of serving the purpose of imperialism because he refused to join the TSPM. In response, he published several essays which explicitly criticized the legitimacy of the TSPM as a Christian institution, implicitly launching an attack on the United Front organization and accusing it of attempting to bring Protestantism into conformity with the ideology of the nation-­state (Harvey 1998). First, he pointed out that the top leaders of the TSPM were theological modernists who denied the authority of the Scripture and the godhead of Jesus Christ. He called these TSPM leaders ‘unbelievers’, and asked Christians to leave organizations led by them (Wang 1996: Appendices, 25–65). Moreover, he

212   C.-Y. Kao criticized those leaders for submitting their ultimate loyalty to political authority rather than to God (Wang 1996: Appendices, 74). Finally, and most significantly, he proposed that for the sake of the integrity of the faith, Christian churches should not form any type of organization. In 1955 Wang concluded his last article with the following words: A final word, in all seriousness. We will not unite in any way with these unbelievers, nor will we join any of their organizations. And even with true believers we can only enjoy spiritual union. There should not be any kind of formal, organizational union, because we cannot find any teaching in the Bible to support it. Our attitude in matters of faith is this: all truths that are found in the Bible we accept and hold. Whatever teachings are not in the Bible we totally reject. For our loyalty to God we are ready to pay any cost that is required. We shall shrink from no sacrifice. Misrepresentation and slander can never intimidate us. . . . We take our stand on Christian doctrine. WE, BECAUSE OF FAITH! (Wang, ‘We, because of faith’; translation cited from Harvey 1998: 152) Significantly, Wang Mingdao did not provide a theory of separation of religion and politics. His main point was that the TSPM as a mediating institution was not sacred and thus could not be a source of religious authority. He addressed the issue of political control of religion in his proposition that any mixture of secular power and sacred power would bring impurity to the faith. For Wang, any institutional power had to incorporate some human authority and, therefore, by definition, could not be a proper source of Christian authority. Thus, he actually took a radical sectarian standpoint to resist political interference. Considering his argument was derived from his earlier idea that a pure church should separate itself from missionary associations, we can say that the ideological ground for his house church identity came from the anti-­missionary discourse of the indigenous Protestant movement. In 1955 Wang Mingdao was arrested as a counter-­revolutionary. For about a year he was placed under relentless psychological pressure to confess his supposed crimes, and eventually submitted a confession admitting his complicity with imperialism. He and his wife were released, but when all attempts to bring Wang under the TSPM failed, he and his wife were arrested again several months later. After more than two decades of imprisonment, Wang Mingdao regained freedom in 1980. He died in 1991. In 1988, Peter was introduced to Wang Mingdao and his wife during a visit. Wang Mingdao laid hands on him and prayed for him. This was a significant experience for Peter. He told me: From this experience I learnt that I should walk in the way of the house church and keep on the pure faith. Since then I have got a solid mind. I saw how seniors have suffered for the Lord. They had been imprisoned for such a long time; they still persisted. Compared with them, we are so little!

The house-church identity   213 Wang Mingdao’s anti-­TSPM ideology legitimized Peter’s ministry outside the TSPM. Now, Peter learnt to see his church not as an alternative to the official one, but as the only God-­approved church in the H area.

Negotiating the structure of religious authority Peter’s house church identity demonstrated a remarkable ability in the H area to draw TSPM congregations to its camp. From the 1990s onwards, four TSPM village meeting points were transformed into house churches, and subsequently experienced significant growth. In another five places, a TSPM congregation and a house church co-­exist, but the house church always outnumbers the TSPM. In addition, eight house churches have also been established in villages where there had been no Christian congregation before. In general, the house church has spread and expanded far more rapidly than the TSPM. To gain an insight into the success of unofficial churches in this area, I shall review the course of the schism in the H town in accordance with an analysis of the structure of religious authority. The Ho family had stood for the local Protestant tradition, a tradition interrupted by suppressive measures during the Cultural Revolution. Peter, with his spiritual gifts and qualification to be a TSPM minister, assumed a leadership role in the early 1980s. In terms of Max Weber’s typology, his leading role in the church was based on a combination of charismatic and legal authority (Weber 1963). Brother Ho, who worked closely with Peter, was also well known for his charismatic gifts. After the group reclaimed the chapel, his leading role derived strength from another source – he was a member of the Ho family. Thus, Brother Ho’s authority belonged to a charismatic-­ traditional combination. A detailed analysis of my informants’ accounts reveals that when the congregation moved from house meetings to the chapel, there was a shift of emphasis from charismatic to traditional authority. When Peter left the H town in 1984, the ministry team was led by Brother Ho. Later, the congregation was allocated a pastor by the TSPM. The pastor soon found that in order to compete with existing leadership based on the charismatic-­traditional authority, he had to stress the bureaucratic type of authority that he represented. The pastor, therefore, emphasized the significance of the state’s regulatory policies, such as the prohibition against preaching to people under the age of 18. In addition, the pastor introduced election of executive committee members as a way of reorganizing the power structure of the church, in order to downplay the role of Brother Ho’s group. Brother Ho and his co-­ workers interpreted these changes as ‘taking something worldly into the church’. In retrospect, they viewed the whole course of power struggle as a conflict between the biblical principles and those of the world. Gradually people working with Brother Ho and those close to the pastor formed two distinct groups. However, the conflict itself did not legitimize a schism; as one of Brother Ho’s co-­workers says, ‘But, on the other hand, we did not know how to get out [of the TSPM]. We seemed to know that some of this was incompatible with the Bible, but we did not know how to get out. In the past, there was only the Three-­Self ’.

214   C.-Y. Kao In 1994, Brother Ho’s group was accused of corruption by church members associated with the pastor. Those now belonging to the house church insisted that the case against them was fabricated. After Brother Ho, following the county TSPM’s instructions, had lent money from the church’s offerings to another TSPM church for a construction project, the pastor’s group accused him of having pocketed the money himself. As the collision turned physically violent, Brother Ho withdrew from the chapel, and started holding meetings at his house. Only a few believers followed him; even his aunt and one of his uncles stayed in the chapel until they died. It was only after this incident that Brother Ho and his co-­workers embraced Peter’s anti-­TSPM discourse and learnt to define the Three-­Self church as ‘a religious organization’, a term connoting the official church to be merely a human thing without spiritual reality or being of sacred nature. After the split, the house church grew steadily. In 2004, the house church had a congregation of over 200 people, more than double the number in the chapel. The reason of growth will be discussed in the following sections.

Placing the house church identity The house church identity is often interpreted from the perspective of church-­ state relationship. For example, Kindopp (2004) suggested that the house church movement in China derives from resistance to the tight government control over religious activities. In this regard, Protestant house church Christians resemble Chinese Catholics who reject ‘patriotic’ bishops lacking Vatican approval, Tibetan Buddhists who remain loyal to the Dalai Lama, Uighur Muslims who resist patriotic education campaigns, and Falun Gong adherents who have been subjected to brutal repression since 1999. The tension between religion and politics is indeed an important dimension of the house church option and constitutes an element of the house church identity. Nevertheless, we should not overstate its significance for the house church identity. While scholars tend to see the house church option as resistance to state religious control, individual house church members may not hold such a clear political view. The issues of state control and religious policy were of no concern to most house church members whom I spoke to. Moreover, if we define the house church identity as rejection of the unity of church and state, it implies that the TSPM identity may involve such a unity. But most TSPM Protestants would not accept this explanation. We hence face the difficulty of finding an attitude that may distinguish most house church Protestants from those going to the TSPM churches. A better way to distinguish their respective identities is to start with an idea that is clearly rejected by house church Christians but tends to be endorsed by TSPM Christians. In the H area, I suggest, this idea is the status of the TSPM as an ecclesiastical structure. The Protestant group in this place joined the TSPM in the early 1980s not because they agreed to accept state control through this organization, but because they considered the TSPM a Christian institution, and a local church one of its branches. The TSPM offered many kinds of Christian resources that the local church lacked. For example, the TSPM provided Peter

The house-church identity   215 with training so that he could become a qualified preacher. At the time when Peter felt that he needed more inputs to improve his preaching, he often listened to sermons in a main TSPM chapel in Fuzhou City. To be an official minister, Peter was willing to be assigned to preach in this or that chapel every week; he agreed that the TSPM had the institutional power to organize church affairs. Rather than taking this institutional power as a form of state control, Peter thought the TSPM exerted a form of sacred power which he, as a minister, must obey. In the same way, later, for Brother Ho’s group, the pastor might be disappointing, but the TSPM’s bureaucratic hierarchy that the pastor represented was sacred. As the above quoted words, they did not know how to go out of the TSPM. They did not know, because they had no ideological resources to break this sacred canopy. To break it, they had to be convinced that the TSPM institutional power was political, not sacred, in essence. Significantly, Brother Ho told me that when he was in the TSPM church, ‘What we did not understand was that the Three-­Self was a religious group’. The term ‘religious’ (zongjiao), in contrast to the word ‘spiritual’ (shuling), emphasized the secular nature of the TSPM. Later, Brother Ho ‘understood’ this, when he started his house group and Peter came to communicate the house church anti-­TSPM discourse to him. In light of this, for a Protestant turning from the TSPM to the house church, the most crucial thing was to reject one’s previous view that the TSPM was an ecclesiastical structure which exerted sacred institutional power. Nevertheless, denying that the TSPM had an ecclesiastical structure was not enough. The difficulty in leaving the TSPM was that ‘in the past, there was only the Three-­Self ’. They could not replace one ecclesiastical structure with another. If they chose to leave the TSPM, they might become Christians without a church. If they were to establish an alternative, autonomous church, they had to believe that an institutional ecclesiastical structure was not necessary, or even view it as undesirable. Their house church discourse therefore not only denies the sacred nature of the TSPM but also involves the idea that a truly God-­ approved church is one without any institutional authority. To achieve this, house churches often claim that they organize the church according to the Bible, where, in the New Testament, we cannot see any organizational structure governing local churches. It is important to note that this discursive strategy had been first employed by Wang Mingdao in the 1950s, who argued that Christian union was spiritual rather than organizational. In short, for TSPM Protestants, joining this organization is a matter of course because the TSPM is the only ecclesiastical structure available in China. In response, house church Protestants have to hold that a Christian group does not need to belong to any ecclesiastical structure in order to be a church. In fact, they tend to take a more radical position and suggest that the idea of ecclesiastical structure is not biblical, and the institutional power such structure exercises are secular rather than sacred in nature. In the H area, the house church identity has been characterized by a profound distrust of religious guidance and exercise of power through the ecclesiastical organization. To realize the will of God, they

216   C.-Y. Kao believe, with Wang Mingdao, that one has to distinguish God’s words from man’s opinion. Believers can be spiritual, but a religious organization cannot. Hence I propose to characterize their house church identity as a tendency to reject any institutional power as a source of Christian authority.

Pentecostal-­style religiosity and the house church identity In the early 1980s, there were only TSPM Protestants in the H area. Nevertheless, two decades later, there were more house church Protestants than those going to the TSPM churches. Why had house churches been doing better during those 20 years? To explain this development, I propose that the house church today can be understood as a Pentecostal-­style movement which is a continuation of a decentralized religious form that originated from the Cultural Revolution. Pentecostal Christianity evolved in the early twentieth century. It places the supreme importance on possession by the Holy Spirit as the second pivotal Christian experience after conversion. This experience of ‘baptism in the Spirit’ is marked by powerful ‘signs and wonders’ including speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing and exorcism. Pentecostals focus more on the experiential dimension than on correct doctrinal belief or obedience to church hierarchies (Robbins 2004). As indicated above, scholars have noticed that Protestant churches in China, especially the unofficial ones, often manifest some typical Pentecostal features such as decentralized church structure and experiential emphasis. However, except followers of Pentecostal traditions, Chinese believers seldom practice speaking in tongues and they do not have a theory regarding the superior importance of the Holy Spirit in Christian life. The Chinese Christian life is Pentecostalism without a Pentecostal theory. I have elsewhere identified the emergence of this Pentecostal-­style religion in China as a product of the Cultural Revolution (Kao 2009). The Cultural Revolution eradicated and demolished organized religion and transformed the local religious field into a cultural space that featured supernaturalism, individualistic practice and female religiosity. The surviving Protestantism was deprived of religious authorities such as the Scripture, ministers, church organization and tradition, and came to adapt to the local religious-­cultural space. In this process, the decentralized Protestant religion learned to respond to indigenous expectations by manifesting some Pentecostal practices, such as healing and exorcism, and its idea of spiritual warfare echoed a typical cultural feature of global Pentecostalism. However, since religious activities had been permitted again, with the return of Protestant religious authorities, the Pentecostal-­style religion tended to give way to more established forms of Protestantism, because it lacked discursive resources to resist institutional control and denominational influences. In the H area, Christians in different villages and towns have left the TSPM for a variety of reasons. In some cases local leaders were influenced by the house church discourse and decided to withdraw, while in other cases a lay leader’s charismatic authority has given rise to serious conflict with a TSPM pastor

The house-church identity   217 exercising bureaucratic authority, as we see in H town. The charismatic leader, Brother Ho, also embraced the house church identity after leaving the TSPM. In still other cases, external influence and internal conflicts emerged at the same time. Common to every case was the fact that the lay leader who initiated the separation had been a local evangelist or a person with charismatic gifts before the return of TSPM institutional authority. The followers of house church had been very accustomed to a decentralized religious structure and put great emphasis on their own personal charismatic power. They have not been used to conforming to any institutional authority. However, they have lacked justification, in Christian terms, for breaking with the TSPM’s existing, self-­proclaimed ecclesiastical structure. Thus, when the house church discourse told them that the TSPM was a human-­mediated authority without sacred validity, they were relieved to end their unhappy marriage with it. Against this background, we can understand why house churches grow faster and more new churches are being initiated than the TSPM congregations. Protestant breakthrough and expansion in the H area was often associated with practices of healing and exorcism, and the house church growth also followed the same pattern. In the H area, Protestants believed to have spiritual gifts, such as Peter and Brother Ho, are the kind of people who are more likely to come into serious conflict with the bureaucratic authority and break away from the TSPM. Brother Ho told me that after he left the TSPM, TSPM church members would still come to seek help from him. When the TSPM pastor became aware of this, he permitted believers to seek Brother Ho’s prayer but forbad them to listen to Brother Ho’s preaching. As we can perceive from this interesting instruction, due to Brother Ho’s withdrawal, ‘spiritual gifts’ had left the TSPM church. Not surprisingly, when the charismatic elements of the church tend to leave the TSPM and form autonomous house churches, the latter tend to experience more remarkable growth. It is striking that in the H area the house church discourse has been very different from that of Wang Mingdao. In the 1950s, anti-­TSPM discourse was primarily focused on the modernist-­fundamentalist debate. In the H area, nevertheless, the same discourse is employed to justify individualized charismatic powers that resist bureaucratic control. Wang Mingdao attempted to defend the space for following the teachings of the Bible as he understood it. Today, these grassroots leaders use Wang Mingdao’s instruction, ‘Obey God, not man’, to create a space for maintaining, developing and deploying their charisma. I have proposed that the Pentecostal-­style Protestantism in China is a form of Pentecostalism without a Pentecostal theory, vulnerable to the return of religious authorities. In the case of the H area, this Pentecostal-­style religiosity is most incompatible with bureaucratic authority. Since, in China today, the only existing ecclesiastical institution is the TSPM, a church can freely develop Pentecostal characteristics without the need of a Pentecostal theory, as long as it disconnects itself from the TSPM institution. The house church identity, I speculate, may have provided a functional substitute for Pentecostal theology in justifying and supporting Pentecostal-­style religion in China.

218   C.-Y. Kao

Conclusion The ‘elective affinity’ between the house church and Pentecostal religiosity sheds light on the division between the TSPM churches and house churches today from the perspective of global Pentecostalism. The second half of the twentieth century has witnessed the decline of the churches in the west and the upsurge of Christianity in parts of the non-­western world (Woodhead 2004: 386). The expansion of Christianity in post-­colonial societies has been particularly related to the growth of Pentecostal-­charismatic Christianity. It is estimated that by 2000, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians were increasing by 19 million each year worldwide, making this form of Christianity ‘perhaps the most successful social movement of the past century’ (Jenkins 2002: 8; 63). When Pentecostal-­charismatic Christianity started to demonstrate its globalizing power in the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese Protestantism, under the Cultural Revolution, was deprived of religious authorities, yet subsequently manifested some Pentecostal features. The growth of Protestantism in China, therefore, is considerably attributed to the rise of an indigenous form of Pentecostalism, constituting a part of the worldwide Pentecostal phenomenon. Moreover, in view of the role of the house church identity in preserving Pentecostal religiosity in resistance to the TSPM bureaucratic control, the proliferation of the house church in contemporary China strongly indicates that this Chinese indigenous Pentecostalism continues to be an important religious dynamic that brings about church growth. The Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to regulate religion has produced significant, yet unexpected, consequences on the part of Protestantism. It does not prevent Pentecostalism from flourishing in China, but gives it an indigenous shape, characterized as ‘a Pentecostalism without a Pentecostal theory’. Under China government’s religious supervision mechanism, the maintenance of this Pentecostal-­style religion first and foremost lies on breaking away from the TSPM bureaucratic authority rather than on the elaboration of the importance of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life. The boundary between Pentecostal religiosity and evangelical forms of Protestantism becomes far more blurred in China than elsewhere, and Chinese Protestants who practice Pentecostal style of faith may lack a clear Pentecostal identity. Meanwhile, the house church discourse not only breaks the sacred canopy of the TSPM as an ecclesiastical structure, but also helps to construct new, sectarian sacred canopy in preserving Pentecostal-­ style Protestantism. All these show that the Party’s continuing effort to dominate religion results in a complicated unofficial and Pentecostal phenomenon in China’s religious landscape. This development, in turn, may challenge the capability of the Party to impose hegemony over Chinese society.

References Bays, D.H. (2003) ‘Chinese Protestant Christianity Today’, China Quarterly, 174(2): 488–504. Chao, J. and R. Chong (1997) A History of Christianity in Socialist China (in Chinese), Taipei: CMI Publishing.

The house-church identity   219 Cook, R.R. (2003) Fundamentalism and Modern Culture in Republican China: The Popular Language of Wang Mingdao, 1900–1991, PhD dissertation, University of Iowa. Dunch, R.F. (2001) ‘Protestant Christianity in China Today: Fragile, Fragmented, Flourishing’, in S. Uhalley Jr. and X. Wu (eds) China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, Armonk, NY: ME Sharp: 195–216. Harvey, T.A. (1998) Challenging Heaven’s Mandate: An Analysis of the Conflict between Wang Mingdao and the Chinese Nation-­State, PhD dissertation, Duke University. Hunter, A. and K. Chan (1993) Protestantism in Contemporary China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jenkins, P. (2002) The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kao, C.-Y. (2009) ‘The Cultural Revolution and the Emergence of Pentecostal-­style Protestantism in China’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 24(2): 171–188. Kindopp, J. (2004) ‘Policy Dilemmas in China’s Church-­State Relations: An Introduction’, in J. Kindopp and C.L. Hamrin (eds) God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-­State Tension, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution: 1–24. Lambert, T. (1991) The Resurrection of the Chinese Church, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Lambert, T. (1999) China’s Christian Millions, London, UK and Grand Rapids, MI: Monarch Books. Leung, K. (1999) The Rural Churches of Mainland China since 1978 (in Chinese), Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary. Oblau, G. (2005) ‘Pentecostals by Default? Contemporary Christianity in China’, in A. Anderson and E. Tang (eds) Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, Oxford, UK and Costa Mesa, USA: Regnum: 411–436. Robbins, J. (2004) ‘The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33: 117–143. Tang, E. (2005) ‘ “Yellers” and Healers: Pentecostalism and the Study of Grassroots Christianity in China’, in A. Anderson and E. Tang (eds) Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, Oxford, UK and Costa Mesa, USA: Regnum: 467–486. Wang, M. (1996) Wushinianlai [The Fifty Years], Hong Kong: Bellman House Publishers. Weber, M. (1963) Economy and Society, 2 volumes, edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich, Berkeley and Los Angeles, USA and London, UK: University of California Press. Woodhead, L. (2004) Introduction to Christianity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14 Making sense of China’s state-­society relations Unregistered Protestant churches in the reform era Teresa Zimmerman-­Liu and Teresa Wright A frequent topic of debate among scholars of Chinese society concerns the level of social dissatisfaction and the stability of authoritarian rule in the PRC. Underlying this debate is a key question: are state-­society relations in China inherently conflictual (and thus likely to provoke political instability) or cooperative (and thus likely to promote political stability)? This question is difficult to answer because there are multitudinous examples of both conflict and cooperation between social groups and the Chinese party-­state. Depending on which examples are highlighted, a compelling argument can be made in either direction. Rather than focusing on the seemingly irresolvable question posed above, this paper seeks to explain how state-­ society relations can be simultaneously conflictual and cooperative, and under what circumstances a particular interaction between a social group and ruling authorities is likely to be more or less harmonious. To investigate these questions, this paper focuses on unregistered Protestant churches in China’s reform era. What is an ‘unregistered Protestant church’? China’s ruling Communist Party grants legal existence to five religions (Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism), but only under government-­affiliated ‘patriotic’ associations. For Protestants, this association is the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement (Zhongguo jidujiao sanzi aiguo yundong weiyuan hui; hereafter, TSPM).1 In order to register, a religious group must submit a preliminary application, a document of approval from the TSPM, records of assets and proof of the right to its meeting place, a membership list, and a constitution (Homer 2010: 57). In addition, the group must agree to the ‘three fixes’ (san ding): a fixed meeting place, leader, and area of coverage. The group also must pledge to eschew the inclusion of individuals below the age of 18. If a Protestant religious group does not register, its legal status is unclear. Some unregistered groups have been branded cults (xiejiao) and thus have been viewed as illegal, but many others have not been given such a designation, and as a result have existed in a sort of limbo. In part, unregistered Protestant churches are worthy of study simply due to their sheer size: recent estimates of the number of unregistered Protestants in China range from 50 to 200 million – a figure that even at a minimum rivals the number of Chinese Communist Party members today (80 million as of 2011) (Vala 2009; Homer 2010: 61; Hatthaway 2010; Xinhua 2011).2 Moreover, unregistered Protestant church members have made a conscious choice to remain

China’s state-society relations   221 independent of CCP control, and also have experienced some success in establishing regional and national networks (Kindopp 2004: 136). In addition, unregistered Protestant churches form an ideal case study because their relations with party-­state authorities span a wide spectrum, ranging from extremely conflictual to remarkably cooperative. Through an examination of both primary data and secondary research on the interactions between unregistered Protestant groups and particular party-­state authorities in China’s reform era, this chapter finds that while these relations appear to exhibit inexplicable variability and flux, each interaction can be explained by the intersection of clearly discernable variables. The first variable is location: urban authorities appear to be much more lenient and non-­violent than rural authorities in their treatment of unregistered Protestant church members, and in some provinces and cities officials seem more tolerant than in others. The second variable is personal connections (guanxi): unregistered church groups and individuals with closer personal ties to local authorities tend to be treated with more tolerance. The third variable consists of political and material pressures on local authorities – repression rises when they are in need of money or have quotas to fulfill, or when a national ‘strike hard campaign’ (yanda huodong) is in effect. The fourth variable is the behavior of unregistered religious group members; more public and challenging actions are more likely to be met with repression, whereas more secretive and circumscribed behavior is more likely to be tolerated. These variables offer a coherent explanation of the complexity of unregistered Protestant church-­state relations in China today.

Data sources and approach Supplementing the rich data that can be found in the existing scholarly literature on unregistered Protestant groups, this chapter taps several additional sources. First, it consults reports prepared by human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and the China Aid Association. Second, the chapter examines primary documents produced by various levels of the Chinese party-­state, as well as primary documents and auto-­biographical accounts produced by members of unregistered Protestant churches. Third, the chapter references non-­academic studies by foreign journalists and observers who have extensive contacts with mainland Chinese unregistered Protestant churches.3 Fourth, the chapter utilizes information reported in nine roughly two-­hour interviews undertaken in 2009 and 2010 by the authors. The respondents included former unregistered Protestant church leaders and members currently residing in the US who are still in contact with unregistered churches throughout China, and human rights lawyers who have defended these individuals. Five of the nine respondents were in leadership positions in large unregistered Protestant churches or church networks when they were in China. At the time of the interviews, all of those respondents were active in Chinese Christian churches in the US that minister to unregistered Protestant churches throughout China. Fifth, this chapter draws on the personal experience of one of the co-­authors. Teresa Zimmerman-­Liu was a member for

222   T. Zimmerman-Liu and T. Wright 30 years (1978–2008) of a Christian church that has been illegal in China since 1952. She was employed and later volunteered as a translator in the church’s publishing com­panies in Taipei and the United States from 1983 to 2001. Since 2002, she has helped nearly 100 mainland Chinese members of her church and other unregistered churches obtain asylum and become settled in the US. She also has done freelance translation and interpretation work for the China Aid Association. Clear patterns emerge from these data sources, revolving around the four variables listed above. To be sure, one could also posit other variables that might impact unregistered Protestant church-­state relations. However, our consultation of available data on the topic indicates that these four variables capture the most important influences on these relations. Our approach does not purport to be scientific; rather we employ a Weberian methodology wherein we review the array of details at our disposal, and search for patterns within the complexity. At the same time, we recognize that our four variables often overlap. Yet by examining each variable separately, it is easier to see when and why a given interaction may be more or less conflictual, and when and why it might shift.

Scholarly literature Most existing studies of unregistered Protestant groups focus on the Chinese party-­state’s attempt to regulate and control them (Carlson 2005; Homer 2010; Kindopp 2004; Lee 2007; Potter 2003; Spiegel 2004; Yang 2006). They conclude that although the CCP has worked to forge a clearer, more reasonable, and effective policy, governing authorities and religious group members remain dissatisfied with the status quo, and church-­state tensions remain sizable. A smaller but notable body of work has focused on the behavior and scope of unregistered Protestant churches. In addition to documenting the clever recruitment strategies employed by these groups (Vala and O’Brien 2008; Yang 2005), these studies detail the geographic distribution and historical development of various unregistered Protestant churches, leaders, and networks (Cheng 2003; Huang and Yang 2005; Hunter and Chan 2007; Kindopp 2004; Vala 2009; Vala and O’Brien 2008). Our aim here is to answer a question that arises from these existing works, but is never squarely addressed or examined: how can we offer an over-­ arching explanation of the dramatic variation in relations between unregistered Protestant groups and China’s governing authorities? As noted above, despite the great complexity and variation in relations between unregistered Protestant groups and governing authorities, clear patterns emerge that revolve around four distinct variables. In reality, these variables are often intertwined. Yet each variable’s logic is different from the others, and thus warrants separate attention.

First variable: location The first variable that shapes interactions between government authorities and unregistered Protestant church members is locational. In general, unregistered

China’s state-society relations   223 Protestant churches in cities have less leeway than those in rural areas. This pattern results from two factors: (1) the greater population density of urban areas, which makes it more difficult for unregistered churches to escape detection by the authorities; and (2) the more competent and numerous staff in urban government bodies tasked with oversight of religious groups. In one area of rural Shaanxi province in the mid-­1990s, for example, there were no offices specifically charged with monitoring religious affairs. Free from official oversight, an unregistered Protestant group built a 1,000-seat church structure. Soon, unregistered groups in eight other small rural towns in the area also had built fairly large church structures (Lambert 2006: 265). Similarly, Kindopp (2004: 128) reports that ‘in rural areas [in the 1980s], many geographically isolated [unregistered] house churches organized into diffuse networks’. In large cities, such behavior could never proceed undetected. At the same time, however, when urban authorities crack down on unregistered Protestant groups, they tend to do so in a manner that is much less violent than is the case in rural areas. Urban officials do not appear to harass unregistered church members as frequently, and when they do, their actions seem to be less offensive. Rural officials are reported as being more apt to harass unregistered church members. They also seem to be more violent in their actions and more likely to levy fines or to confiscate valuable items from the homes of unregistered church members. In addition, more instances of being sent directly from the police station to labor re-­education are reported by unregistered Protestants from rural areas.4 There are marked differences in treatment by police officials in the event that unregistered church members are taken in for questioning. A Chinese human rights lawyer who defends members of illegal religious groups in China noted that urban police interrogate without violent means (even though their interrogation methods constitute torture by international standards).5 In contrast, this human rights lawyer reported that rural police routinely use physical violence against unregistered church members and even their lawyers (Interview #4). Moreover, rural police sometimes levy arbitrary fines when they round up unregistered church members (Interview #2). Local police have the authority to send offenders directly to labor re-­education for up to three years, and they tend to use this authority more commonly in rural areas (Interview #9). Overall, there appear to be significant differences in the way urban and rural officials interact with unregistered Protestants. At the same time, relations between unregistered church members and party-­ state authorities vary by province and region (Lambert 2006: 225–277; China Aid Association 2010). Unregistered churches in China’s eastern coastal region6 seem to enjoy a much greater amount of autonomy and freedom than is the case in other geographic regions.7 Officials in Xinjiang are perhaps the strictest in the country against unregistered Protestants (Interviews #7, #9).8 The provinces of Sichuan, Jiangxi, Tianjin, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, Inner Mongolia, and Yunan also are reportedly relatively unfavorable to unregistered Protestants (Lambert 2006: 225–277; Interviews #7, #9).

224   T. Zimmerman-Liu and T. Wright

Second variable: personal connections (guanxi) The second variable that shapes interactions between party-­state officials and unregistered Protestant church members is personal connections (guanxi). These connections fall into four categories, as described below. First, unregistered church members who are officials or relatives of government officials usually receive special treatment. Those with official government jobs reportedly are not treated as roughly by the police as are church members without government positions. They typically are not put in prison as long as they hold their government post (Interview #4). Similarly, unregistered church members who are the family members of government officials are not harassed as often (Interview #7). For example, Lambert relates that in rural northern Henan province in the early 1970s, an unregistered Protestant church met openly in the house of the village Brigade Secretary. Because the Secretary’s wife was believed to have been miraculously healed through the prayers of unregistered church members, the Secretary turned a blind eye to the meetings (Lambert 2006: 88). The second category of guanxi is a personal relationship with officials cultivated by unregistered church members. Although some unregistered churches refuse to use this kind of tactic (Interview #9), others visit the local police station with gifts for the officers (Interview #8). Unregistered Protestants also establish guanxi by cooperating with the police. Respondents report that in practicing their Christian faith, they try to be polite to the police officers keeping them under surveillance. After a period of time, the surveillance officers may decide that these Protestants are good people. Some such officers even warn the unregistered Protestants of raids and crack-­downs (Interviews #3, #7). Hence, there appears to be wide variation in how and whether this type of guanxi is used or cultivated, but it does seem to be effective for the groups that can achieve it. The third category of guanxi is a relationship between unregistered church members and the leaders of churches that are registered with the government’s officially sanctioned Protestant organization, the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM). Some pastors in TSPM churches are sympathetic to unregistered Protestants (Kindopp 2004: 131–132; Chapter 4 by Vala and Chapter 8 by Chan in this volume). If they hear that an unregistered church is raided, they will tell the police that the meeting had been carried out under the auspices of the TSPM. Often, the unregistered Protestants will then be released, and they will not be harassed as much in the future (Interview #5). At other times, unregistered church leaders coordinate with the TSPM pastors to bring in foreign preachers or to hold large events. In these instances, the police may insist that the events take place in a TSPM facility, but they usually do not cancel the activity (Interview #7). Conversely, respondents reported that some TSPM pastors were helpful at first, but would suddenly turn on the unregistered churches after police pressure or if they became jealous of unregistered church success (Interview #5). If the TSPM leaders in an area oppose a certain unregistered church or an unregistered church leader, that person or group typically is harassed by police even more severely than usual (Interview #7).

China’s state-society relations   225 The final kind of guanxi that affects unregistered Protestants is their relationship to foreign human rights groups or churches. If after being arrested, unregistered church leaders are put onto an international human rights watch, things tend to go better for them (Interviews #3, #6, #9). One of the tactics used by Chinese human rights lawyers who defend members of underground religious groups is to post the charges and other trial documents on the Internet (Interview #6). If it appears that church leaders will be sentenced to life imprisonment under China’s cult laws or if they face additional charges punishable by death, church members often will get the word out to international human rights organizations (Zimmerman-­Liu archives). If the news appears in the foreign press, the charges frequently are reduced (Interviews #6, #9). Thus, having a channel to foreign human rights organizations can be very beneficial to the unregistered churches. Yet, ties to foreigners or foreign groups also can be dangerous. Along with increasing the likelihood that a group will be entered on the government’s illegal cult list, if the Chinese government is embarrassed by too much international attention in a high-­profile case, governing authorities have been known to take revenge on the group several years later (Interview #9).9 Overall, personal relationships (guanxi) cause huge variance in the relations between government officials and unregistered Protestant churches. Furthermore, the kinds of personal relationships causing variance are multi-­faceted and complex. These relationships intersect with the other variables to create the specific type and intensity of a given group’s relations with regime authorities.

Third variable: political and material pressures on local authorities The third variable that shapes relations between unregistered churches and the state is political and material pressure on local authorities. In part, this variable shifts in accordance with yearly cycles when local officials have to meet quotas for report deadlines or national directives related to holidays and anniversaries, or when local officials require extra money (for example, prior to the Chinese New Year). Local police stations must submit quarterly reports of their work efforts, and one way for them to fill up arrest quotas is to round up known unregistered Protestants. The Protestants do not usually resist arrest, and thus taking them in is easier for the police than going after dangerous criminals. In the weeks before Chinese New Year, local police reportedly also tend to arrest and fine unregistered Protestants (Zimmerman-­Liu). In addition, local officials typically are instructed to take known ‘reactionary elements’ (fandong fenzi) into custody just before important national holidays (such as May 1 and October 1), and the anniversary of certain events (such as June 4). Unregistered church leaders frequently fall under this category (Zimmerman-­Liu).10 Similarly, when central authorities announce a national effort to crack-­down on ‘reactionary’ or ideologically suspect ‘elements’, local officials often feel pressure to repress unregistered Protestant groups. For example, when the ruling Chinese Communist Party launched the Anti-­Spiritual Pollution Campaign in

226   T. Zimmerman-Liu and T. Wright 1983, many unregistered Protestant church leaders were arrested (Lambert 2006: 94–97; Zimmerman-­Liu). Roughly ten years later, there was a serious crackdown against unregistered churches across the nation (Interview #3). With the launch of a nationwide effort to suppress the Falungong in 1999, central authorities viewed Protestants more favorably than members of the Falungong, and local authorities thus felt little pressure to focus on unregistered Christian church members (Aikman 2003; Interview #2). In 2001, for example, unregistered Protestant church leader Yuan Xiangchen was performing out-­of-town baptisms at a riverbank. According to Yuan, ‘the local police showed up . . . and asked, “Are you Falungong?” When told no, they responded, “Okay, carry on” ’ (Aikman 2003: 60). Simultaneously, however, the CCP promulgated new, more stringent anti-­cult laws. In 2001, local authorities severely cracked down on house church groups that ran afoul of these laws due to their connections to foreign churches, networks in several provinces, publication ministries, leadership training programs, and/or rapid increases in membership. International human rights organizations intervened in a few of the more high profile cases, and things loosened up for a few years. In the regions of these high profile cases, retaliatory crack-­downs against house church members were carried out years later after the international human rights furor had died down (Interview #9; Zimmerman-­Liu). Another repressive spike occurred in late 2002–early 2003, when the CCP’s top post shifted from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao (Kindopp 2004: 140). The last major national crackdown against groups deemed threatening to the state began just prior to the 2008 Olympic Games (China Aid 2008: 9–22). In general, when crack-­down movements such as these are announced by central authorities, local officials are pressured to engage in more repressive actions against unregistered Protestant groups.

Fourth variable: unregistered church behavior The final variable that shapes interactions between government authorities and unregistered Protestants consists of the actions of unregistered church members themselves. Certain actions make it easier for the unregistered churches to continue in relative peace. Other actions bring certain reprisal. In general, the more cautious and secretive groups experience less harassment than groups that are more open and assertive. Unregistered church members often take great pains to be secretive. Most churches divide up into smaller groups for regular meetings (Interviews #1, #7). One respondent reported that they did not have a set place for church gatherings; instead, they would rotate among the houses of the members or go to another city and meet in a hotel (Interview #1). Other respondents reported meeting in special hidden locations, such as secret attic rooms or in businesses after hours (Interviews #7, #8). Some church members who host meetings build into their homes secret escape exits and hiding places for church leaders (Interview #9). Others install sound-­proofing in the walls before inviting church members to their homes (Interview #7).

China’s state-society relations   227 In addition to the secrecy of meeting places, respondents emphasized the need for quiet services (Interviews #2, #6, #8, #9). When gathered, unregistered church members – particularly in dense urban areas – avoid singing hymns loudly, instead praying silently (Interviews #3, #9). If the neighbors are bothered by the noise, they may report the unregistered church members to the police (Interviews #2, #9). Unregistered church members are also very careful going to and from their gatherings. They arrive alone or in pairs from 30 minutes before the scheduled start time to 30 minutes after, and they leave in the same way (Interviews #8, #9). Secrecy also is very important when it comes to notifying church members of the time and place for the next church gathering. Several respondents noted that known unregistered church leaders are frequently subject to wire-­tapping by government officials (Interviews #1, #3, #9). In many cases, to know the time and place of the next gathering, members have to attend the previous gathering. Leaders in some groups tell one person, who tells another, and so on. Other leaders buy single-­use cell phones several times a month, and go to remote places like rural mountains or cemeteries to phone church members (Interview #9). Some groups use the internet for communication, but this can be quite dangerous, and unregistered church members have been caught communicating by email (Interview #7). When unregistered church members gather quietly in small groups in their homes or closed businesses, and when they do not communicate outside their own small circle, government officials typically seem to leave them in peace (Kindopp 2004: 140; Interviews #2–4). If church members decide to move their activities to a public place (such as a park or restaurant) they are more likely to come into conflict with officials (Interviews #1–4, #7). If unregistered church members want to go on a picnic together, they report feeling safest when they go to remote rural areas (Interview #3). Conversely, active evangelism on the part of unregistered Protestants – especially that which produces rapid church growth – is likely to incur official harassment. One of the biggest triggers of repression is an evangelical ministry that crosses provincial lines (Interview #1, #7). A repressive official response also can be elicited when evangelists attract the ‘wrong’ kind of converts, such as human rights activists or political dissidents (Interview #2). Some unregistered church members try to avoid this problem by sharing their faith with only close friends and relatives (Interviews #2, #3). Others use the internet to run background checks on potential new members (Interview #3). Unregistered churches and unregistered church pastors that insist on carrying out a Christian gospel ministry are more apt to be arrested, especially if they contact foreign preachers (Interview #7) or organize leadership training programs; furthermore, they are more likely to be categorized as a ‘cult’ (Interviews #1–4, #7, #9). This is especially true of groups that preach to students and young people (Interview #4). Another activity that seems to inevitably incur official wrath is the ownership, publication, or distribution of Bibles and other religious publications (Interviews #2, #3, #7, #9). Importing Bibles is particularly dangerous because it shows a connection to foreign entities (Interview #2). Religious publications, including Bibles, are available for purchase in China, but only through official TSPM

228   T. Zimmerman-Liu and T. Wright outlets. Non-­TSPM religious publications are illegal. Nonetheless, unregistered Protestants involved with publications ministries persist in their work, as they believe that it is essential to train new converts in what in their view are the true doctrines of Christianity.11 Unregistered churches that plan to be active in evangelism and publication work tend to teach new converts that they need the mindset of a martyr (Interview #3). They train them to hide their tracks on the way to and from church activities, and they ensure that at the beginning of each service, all attendants know the escape routes. People from out-­of-town are paired with locals to facilitate escape (Interview #9). And finally, they train their members to literally turn the other cheek in the event that they are raided by the police. In sum, the behavior of unregistered church members has a profound impact on their relations with ruling authorities. As with the other variables described herein, church member behavior intersects with the other variables to create the specific characteristics of church-­state relations in a given case. Yet overall, more conciliatory, law-­abiding, small-­scale, and quiet unregistered church activities tend to be tolerated, while actions that are more public, expansive, and defiant typically elicit a negative official response.

Illustrations A look at some real-­world cases of interactions between specific unregistered Protestant churches and party-­state authorities illustrates the ways in which these variables intersect to produce a particular kind of relationship. When most or all variables align in a negative fashion, greater repression and conflict results, and when most or all variables align in a favorable direction, more harmonious relations are found. In most cases, the four variables align in dissimilar ways, as in when a national crack-­down is in effect, yet a particular group has favorable guanxi with local authorities. In situations such as this, relations between a particular church group and party-­state authorities will fall somewhere between the extremes of repression and cooperation. Similarly, as shown in the third case below, when one of the four variables shifts in a particular church-­state relationship, the nature of that relationship may be transformed. When this occurs, it may be possible to assess the relative importance of each variable. A respondent from an unregistered church in a large city on the southeastern coast of China described a situation in which all variables aligned favorably. Both aspects of its locational variable were quite favorable. Some members of the church were related to Party officials; church leaders cultivated guanxi with local officials; the church leaders enjoyed a good relationship with TSPM leaders in the city; and many church members had connections with Christians outside China. Hence, all aspects of the second variable were quite favorable. The members of this unregistered church were quite discreet. They held their meetings after hours in a business building with fully soundproofed rooms. The respondent reported that this particular unregistered church was able to carry out a full range of church activities with a minimum of difficulty (Interview #7).

China’s state-society relations   229 In contrast, a respondent from an unregistered church in rural Hubei Province described a situation in which all the variables aligned unfavorably. Both aspects of the locational variable were unfavorable. None of the members had connections with the Party, and the church members did not attempt to bribe or otherwise cultivate ties with police or TSPM officials. They had no connections with foreign groups, either, so the guanxi variable was totally unfavorable to them. In addition, the church members were exceedingly zealous, developing an evangelistic network in 17 different provinces. The church also had its own seminary training program and an extensive publication ministry. Church membership was growing rapidly in 2001 when China began a crack-­down on unregistered churches with publication ministries that crossed provincial lines, designating such groups ‘cults’. Consequently, many members were forced to sell their homes in order to pay the numerous fines levied on them. Others had all items of value confiscated from their houses during police raids. After church leaders were arrested and faced life imprisonment under the cult laws,12 foreign human rights groups intervened to get the charges reduced. Several years later, church members who had not been imprisoned faced additional reprisals and harassment. Members in rural Hubei Province continue to be harassed by local officials through the present (Interview #9). This example epitomizes a situation in which all the variables align unfavorably. A third respondent, Brother X, described situations in which the four variables shifted or counter-­acted one another. Brother X grew up in a Christian household in a city in Xinjiang province. The TSPM pastor of his home town protected unregistered Christians. This pastor’s efforts spared the unregistered churches in his city, despite the fact that Xinjiang is one of the hardest places for unregistered churches to operate. Later, he moved to a city in Hubei Province – an area that is also unfavorable to unregistered churches, though not as severe as Xinjiang. The TSPM pastor of the new city was favorable to Brother X’s new unregistered church when he first arrived, but after a year or so, the TSPM pastor changed his mind about the church, and it became very difficult for the group to continue meeting. Brother X noted that in accordance with their belief in evangelism, group members were somewhat open about where and when they met. After the TSPM pastor turned against them, their meetings frequently were raided by the police, and the members’ books and Bibles were confiscated. Since coming to America, Brother X has received reports that members of the group who remained in China were arrested and beaten when the police raided an unregistered church gathering (Interview #5). This case shows how unregistered churches with good guanxi and moderate behavior in an unfavorable location can operate in relative freedom, but if the guanxi changes, a church that has not experienced problems previously can suffer harassment even though the other variables remain the same. More broadly, this case suggests that guanxi may be the most important of the four variables. Further, this case implies that relations between most unregistered churches and governing authorities typically are neither entirely cooperative nor entirely conflictual, and are constantly in flux.

230   T. Zimmerman-Liu and T. Wright

Conclusion As illustrated in the examples described above, in any given case all four variables intersect with one another, often in overlapping ways. Yet by separating out each variable, a clearer understanding of the causes of variance in church-­ state relations emerges. Along with shedding light on relations between unregistered Protestant churches and local authorities, an understanding of the nature and impact of these four variables helps to make sense of the contradictions and complexity that characterize state-­society relations in China today. In general, it appears that the locational differences in rural and urban authorities’ treatment of unregistered Protestant churches also apply to other social groups. For environmental, farmer, labor, and other non-­Party groups as well, it appears that in the countryside there is more leeway to act independently and even flout official policy, yet also a greater likelihood of violent treatment should local authorities decide to crack down. Similarly, China’s southeastern coastal regions appear to allow greater freedom to not just unregistered Protestant churches, but virtually all social groups, while the environment is much stricter in China’s interior and border areas. In addition, favorable guanxi ties appear to protect not just unregistered Protestant groups but other social groups as well. With regard to the third variable – political and material pressures on local authorities – the case of unregistered Protestant churches appears to be somewhat different than other social groups, due to the unclear political status of unregistered churches, and also due to the authorities’ perception that unregistered Protestant church members are docile, easy ‘marks’ for quota fulfillment or financial shakedowns. In terms of the behavior of group members themselves, other kinds of social groups that are small and/or engage in low-­key activities that do not draw public attention are more likely to be tolerated by governing authorities than are larger, more public, and/or confrontational groups. In sum, by understanding the impact of each of the four variables described herein, one may see clear patterns that underlie the relations between not only unregistered Protestant groups and China’s governing authorities, but church-­ state and society-­state relations more broadly. Though undeniably complex and eternally shifting, these relations are not entirely random and inexplicable. If China’s ruling party-­state truly seeks a ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui), it would do well to alleviate the political and financial pressures that drive local authorities toward repressive behavior; to professionalize cadre behavior in the countryside; and to encourage soothing ties of guanxi between the party-­state and social group representatives. Yet however successful the CCP may be in these respects, it has relatively little ability to control the behavior of social group members, and in the case of many of China’s unregistered Protestant churches, heterodox beliefs and actions are unlikely to abate. Thus, while there is hope for more conciliatory state-­society relations to emerge, tensions between unregistered Protestant groups and China’s governing authorities are likely to persist.

China’s state-society relations   231

Notes   1 ‘Three-­self ’ refers to self-­propagating, self-­supported, and self-­governed. The intent is to ensure that religious groups are free of any external (i.e., foreign) influences – a concern that derives from the Western missionary role in bringing Christianity to China.   2 Most scholars lean toward the lower estimate of unregistered Protestants.   3 The best known such works are Aikman 2003 and Lambert 2006.   4 Possible explanations for these differences include rural officials’ relative dearth of economic resources and lack of oversight by higher-­level governing authorities.   5 For example, urban house church members describe being deprived of sleep for 48 to 72 hours at the police station after their meetings were raided. During this time, the police yelled and swore at the detainees, threatening them or their family members. At times food and drink were withheld until the detainees gave the police information.   6 Provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Shenzhen.   7 Most sources generally attribute this relative laxness to the importance of wealthy house church members to the locality’s economic prosperity. In places like Wenzhou city in Zhejiang province, a number of wealthy businessmen who also are members of house churches have used their economic clout to persuade government officials to give the house churches a great amount of freedom (Aikman 2003: 179–191; Interview #7; Zimmerman-­Liu; Chapter 11 by Tong in this volume).   8 These respondents believe that Xinjiang is particularly unfavorable to house church Christians because it is under military rule and because government authorities see such persecution as a way to score points with the largely Muslim population in the region. For more on the intersection of ethnicity, religion, and politics in Xinjiang and Tibet, see Gladney 2003: 451–467 and Kapstein 2003: 230–269.   9 Personal archives of the co-­author include flyers for crackdowns in an area that had had a high-­profile, internationally known case. These items were dated the month after the last prisoner on human rights watch was released from prison and allowed to escape to the US. Later, clients from that region reported that the crackdown was even carried out by teachers in the schools (Zimmerman-­Liu). 10 Statements of charges against house church members frequently accuse them of being ‘reactionary elements’. 11 Most importantly, they take issue with the TSPM’s acceptance of the CCP (rather than Jesus) as their primary leader; its emphasis on ‘love of country’ over ‘love of religion’; and its dismissal of any belief in the second coming or a kingdom of God. 12 One faced the death penalty for additional charges, which were later dropped.

References Aikman, D. (2003) Jesus in Beijing, Washington, D.C.: Regnery. Carlson, F. (2005) ‘China’s New Regulations on Religion: A Small Step, not a Great Leap Forward’, Brigham Young University Law Review, 3: 747–797. Chan, A.H. and Chan, K. (2007) Protestantism in Contemporary China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chan, K. (1994) ‘Religion and Society in Mainland China in the 1990s’, Issues and Studies, 30(8): 52–68. Chang, C. (1983) ‘The CCP’s Policy toward Religion’, Issues and Studies, 19(5): 55–70. Cheng, M.M.C. (2003) ‘House Church Movements and Religious Freedom in China’, China: An International Journal, 1(1): 16–45. China Aid Association (2007) ‘Annual Report of Persecution by the Government on Christian House Churches within Mainland China: January 2006–December 2006’, Midland, TX: China Aid.

232   T. Zimmerman-Liu and T. Wright China Aid Association (2008) ‘Annual Report of Persecution by the Government on Christian House Churches within Mainland China: January 2007–December 2007’, Midland, TX: China Aid. China Aid Association (2009) ‘Annual Report of Persecution by the Government on Christian House Churches within Mainland China: January 2008–December 2008’, Midland, TX: China Aid. China Aid Association (2010) ‘Annual Report of Persecution by the Government on Christian House Churches within Mainland China: January 2009–December 2009’, Midland, TX: China Aid. Gladney, D. (2003) ‘Islam in China: Accommodation or Separatism?’ China Quarterly, 174: 451–467. Hamrin, J.K. and Lee, C. (eds) (2004) God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-­State Tension, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute. Hatthaway, P. (2010) ‘How Many Christians are there in China?’ Asia Harvest. Hatthaway, P. and Yun, B. (2002) The Heavenly Man, Grand Rapids, MI: Monarch Books. Homer, L.B. (2010) ‘Registration of Chinese Protestant House Churches under China’s 2005 Regulation on Religious Affairs: Resolving the Implementation Impasse’, Journal of Church and State, 52(1): 50–73. Huang, J. and Yang, F. (2005) ‘The Cross Faces the Loudspeakers: A Village Church Perserveres under State Power’, in F. Yang and J. Tamney (eds) State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies, Leiden: Brill. Hunter, Alan and Chan, Kim-Kwong (2007) Protestantism in Contemporary China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kapstein, M.T. (2003) ‘A Thorn in the Dragon’s Side: Tibetan Buddhist Culture in China’, in M. Rossabi (ed.) Governing China’s Multi-­ethnic Frontiers, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Kindopp, J. (2004) ‘Fragmented yet Defiant: Protestant Resilience under CCP Rule’, in J. Kindopp and C.L. Hamrin (eds) God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-­State Tension, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute. Lambert, T. (2006) China’s Christian Millions, Grand Rapids, MI: Monarch Books. Lee, J.T. (2007) ‘Christianity in Contemporary China: An Update’, Journal of Church and State, 49(2): 277–304. Potter, P. (2003) ‘Belief in Control: Regulation of Religion in China’, China Quarterly, 174: 317–337. Rosen, P.G. and Rosen, S. (2004) ‘Introduction: Popular Protest and State Legitimation in 21st Century China’, in P.H. Gries and S. Rosen (eds) State and Society in 21st Century China: Crisis, Contention, and Legitimation, New York, NY: Routledge. ‘Rules Safeguard Religious Freedom in China’ (2004) China Daily, 20 December. Spiegel, M. (2004) ‘Control and Containment in the Reform Era’, in J. Kindopp and C.L. Hamrin (eds) God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-­State Tension, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute. Tamney, J.B. and Yang, F. (eds) (2005) State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies, Leiden: Brill. Vala, C. (2009) ‘Pathways to the Pulpit: Leadership Training in ‘Patriotic’ and Unregistered Chinese Protestant Churches’, in D.L. Wank and Y. Ashiwa (eds) Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Vala, C. and O’Brien, K. (2008) ‘Recruitment to Protestant House Churches’, in K. O’Brien (ed.) Popular Protest in China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

China’s state-society relations   233 Wank, D.L. and Ashiwa, Y. (eds) (2009) Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Xin, Y. (2009) Inside China’s House Church Network: The Word of Life Movement and Its Renewing Dynamic, Lexington, KY: Emeth Press. Xinhua (24 June 2011) ‘Chinas Communist Party members exceed 80 million’, Online. Available: www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/663145/Chinas-Communist-Partymembers-exceed-80-million.aspx. Yang, F. (2005) ‘Lost in the Market, Saved at McDonald’s: Conversion to Christianity in Urban China’, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44(4): 423–441. Yang, F. (2006) ‘The Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China’, Sociological Quarterly, 47: 93–122. Yang, M.M. (1994) Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Zhang, J. (2005) ‘Chinese Consultative Body Chair Attends Religious Affairs Study Class’, Xinhua, 26 January. Zimmerman-­Liu, T. Personal archives.

15 A Three-­Self Protestant church, the local state and religious policy implementation in a coastal Chinese city1 Mark McLeister Introduction This chapter will analyse how an individual ‘Three-­Self ’2 Protestant church negotiates with the local state in order to serve its own perceived needs. While earlier studies have focused on either compliance or resistance in face of religious policy, we will examine the development of personal relations and negotiation with local state actors by church workers in order to further church projects. We will outline a range of church activities while focusing on one particular proselytising strategy. The task of proselytising is regarded as central to the existence and purpose of the church and is further catalyzed by a growing sense that the End Days3 (mori) are imminent, an issue which is sensitive for the state. Various activities conducted in this church occupy a grey area in what local religious policy allows and yet continue often with the knowledge of local state actors, as Chau (2009) has noted with reference to popular religion. By way of introduction, we will highlight themes within contemporary scholarship on religion-­state interactions in the context of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Some notable studies have been done of religion-­state relations emphasising the historical context from which the contemporary situation is derived (Bays 2004; Yu 2005). Recent scholarship has also highlighted the over-­ simplification of the religion-­state relationship into dichotomies of state control over religion or resistance of religious groups towards the state (Dunch 2008; Ashiwa and Wank 2009). The growing literature on contemporary local-­level studies of the main religious traditions in China touches on the interactions between religious groups and the state at the grassroots. This scholarship seeks to describe and explain these complex relationships and has muddied the waters of the state control or religious resistance paradigms through a variety of approaches. There is no space here to give a detailed overview of the literature on issues of state-­religion interactions but I mention here just a few examples. Dean (1998) focuses on Daoist groups from the perspective of historical anthropology; Madsen (1998) adopts a civil society approach in his study of Tianjin Catholics, while Lozada’s (2001) ethnography focuses on the localisation of Catholicism. Similarly, Hillman (2004) analyses the issue of localism in his ethnographic analysis of a Hui community while Borchert (2005) and Yang and

A Three-Self Protestant church   235 Wei (2005) use the religious economy framework in their analyses of Buddhist temples. Chau (2006) focuses on the agency of actors in his analysis of legitimacy in popular religion, while Chan and Lang (2007) and Wank (2009) adopt institutional approaches in their works on popular religion and Buddhism respectively. We will return to this particular approach below. Despite this rich body of literature on a range of religious traditions, little scholarship has focused on Protestant groups in general or Protestant Three-­Self churches in particular at the local level.4 Recent ethnographic studies on individual churches in both rural (Huang 2003; Liu 2006) and urban (Wu et al. 2009; Zhao 2010) settings provide insight into a variety of aspects of church life and the nature of Chinese Protestantism but do not focus in detail on how churches relate to the local state. Vala (2009) deals with the role and influence of the state in the training of church leaders, arguing that the training process weakens state control. Cao’s (2007) ethnographic study of church-­state relations in Wenzhou focuses on the ability of Christian groups to negotiate with local state organs and argues that these negotiations are facilitated by the wealth of ‘boss Christians’. While the case of Wenzhou is an interesting one, it does not demonstrate the possibilities for church-­state relations when not backed by economic capital which influences local state approaches to groups who contribute in significant ways to the local economy since this fits with state priorities on economic development. In seeking to fill this gap in contemporary scholarship, and based on recent field research,5 this chapter provides insight into our understanding of Protestantism in particular, and religious groups more generally, in seeing how church workers interact with local officials. We will also see what these interactions reveal about how religious policy is implemented in a geographical location not yet covered in the literature. Our point of departure with regard to a theoretical approach will be the institutional framework as proposed by Ashiwa and Wank (2009). Their approach views institutions as rules which ‘constitute community, shaping how individuals see themselves in relation to others, and providing a foundation for purposive action’ (Sweet et al. 2001 in Ashiwa and Wank 2009: 8). This framework ‘emphasise[s] formal institutions, mostly in the state, that are codified in constitutions, laws, and policies, . . . [and also] consider[s] such informal institutions as networks, practices and ideas in society as dynamically interacting with formal state institutions’ (Ashiwa and Wank 2009: 8). The advantages of this approach are, first, that it allows us to break down the party-­state into the various departments and offices involved in the management of religious groups (an important point also made by Zimmerman-­Liu and Wright in Chapter 14 in this volume). Furthermore, in identifying these actors, this approach allows us to see ‘multiple political processes’ (Ashiwa and Wank 2009: 4–5). In our analysis of the actual interactions between the various actors, we will draw on Bourdieu’s (1986) concepts of social, cultural and symbolic capital (1986: 47a). These forms of capital are equated with power in that, together, they have a direct bearing on the ordering of power dynamics; that is, social actors with these forms of capital possess power to ascend particular interests in social relations. We will consider the

236   M. McLeister positive effects of social capital such as social relations and connections (guanxi) and which also allow the exchange of cultural capital. For our purposes, we will focus particularly on the importance of cultural capital in its objectified and institutionalised forms. Objectified cultural capital may take the form of qualifications, certificates or books, while in its institutionalised form consists of universities, seminaries or churches. We will also take into consideration how these capitals are perceived within the social structures in which our various actors operate, referring to what Bourdieu terms symbolic capital. We begin by introducing the field-­site, Huanghaicheng,6 and providing a detailed description of one of the urban churches there, focussing particularly on activities which occupy a grey area with regard to religious policy. This will include discussing perceptions of religious policy and the strategies the church uses to proselytize and expand. State actors with which church workers have contact will be highlighted in the discussion. The chapter will finish with a summary and conclusion.

Huanghaicheng and Enlin Church Huanghaicheng is a coastal city on China’s eastern seaboard (huadong) and its urbanised area has a population of two million people.7 It is a high-­tech industrial city boasting several large education institutes. Huanghaicheng has a history of foreign missionary activity and at least ten separate Protestant denominations before 1949, including indigenous churches. Only one church remained open after the establishment of the Three-­Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and ‘united worship’ (lianhe libai) in the 1950s. This church closed during the ‘Cultural Revolution’ and reopened in 1982. Huanghaicheng has eight Three-­Self churches (tang) and countless ‘meeting points’ (juhuidian) and ‘small groups’ (xiaozu). These churches are registered with the local Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) (zongjiaoju) or Section (RAS) (zongjiaoke) and are managed by the local TSPM Committee. Churches must have a recognised trained pastoral worker who could be a preacher (chuandaoren), elder (zhanglao), assistant pastor (jiaoshi) or pastor (mushi). While churches are supervised by the TSPM, the status of meeting points is less straightforward. About one-­third of meeting points in Huanghaicheng are ‘registered’ (dengji) with Religious Affairs and liaise with the TSPM through a church. Other meeting points have not or do not wish to register. Lastly, there are small groups led by Protestant believers with connections to a TSPM church or meeting point. These groups are either not large enough to register or remain disconnected from the TSPM. These differ from small groups found within TSPM churches which serve as a basis for Bible study (see below). Enlin Church reveals with particular clarity the interactions between church leaders and local state actors. The majority of activities in Enlin Church are found throughout the churches in Huanghaicheng. The church is located near the main shopping area of a newly urbanised part of Huanghaicheng and is led by Preacher Zhang (Zhang jiaoshi)8 whose leadership style is a defining feature of

A Three-Self Protestant church   237 Enlin Church’s relations with the local state. Zhang converted to Christianity when he was in primary school when his parents and siblings converted. They were all baptised by the pastor who now heads up the City Two Committees (shi lianghui). The church they initially belonged to was unregistered (‘jiating jiaohui’) and several of his relatives currently lead unregistered churches in Huanghaicheng.9 After leaving school and spending time in a large Three-­Self church outside Huanghaicheng, Zhang attended a TSPM seminary in another part of China after convincing a key faculty member of his desire to study.10 Zhang’s degree – a form of objectified cultural capital – should not be underestimated (see below). After graduating, Zhang returned to Huanghaicheng to complete his probation in a Three-­Self church. After violating church principles in his personal life he was asked to resign, losing his status as a registered ‘preacher’. Despite his resignation, Zhang was still liked by his colleagues, including the head of the City Two Committees. These connections became more significant later. Here, we begin to see Zhang’s skills in developing social capital – seen in his ability to ‘make connections’ (gao guanxi) in order to ‘get things done’. After his resignation, he opened a restaurant (requiring good social connections). However, he still wanted to establish a church in his home district. Funded by ‘brothers’ from his home Three-­Self church, he travelled for a year visiting churches (registered and unregistered) and making contacts across China. This further enhanced his social capital and he learned how churches were managed and how they interacted with the state. On returning to Huanghaicheng, Zhang, his wife and close relatives began meeting together, handing out gospel leaflets (fuyindan) and inviting people to their meeting. Their numbers increased and they borrowed a ‘meeting certificate’ (juhuizheng) from a group of elderly people who had already registered with the district RAS. Their meeting was visited by a Religious Affairs official who saw a sign that Preacher Zhang had erected outside their meeting place. This was Zhang’s first encounter with the district RAS official, Department Chief Dong (chuzhang), from the Legal Department11 (fazhichu) in the district government. Dong is the sole Religious Affairs official in the district and only manages Protestant and Buddhist groups.12 Dong told Zhang that they could not meet using a certificate issued to someone else. Zhang, mobilising his accumulated social and cultural capital, appealed to his degree from a TSPM seminary and his close relationship with the head of the City Two Committees. Undoubtedly, the symbolic value of these two factors secured his use of the certificate.13 As Preacher Zhang motivated believers to get involved, the new congregation expanded, and they continued to ‘spread the gospel’ (chuan fuyin). They moved into larger premises. After another two years the congregation had expanded to over 300 (predominantly young) people14 and they moved again into a factory building. At this time a local police officer came to conduct safety checks and ‘recommended’ a fire and safety equipment company that belonged to one of his relatives. Zhang firmly but politely declined his offer. He told me, ‘You can’t be too polite with those from the local police station. If you give into them once,

238   M. McLeister they’ll keep coming back for more.’ Incidentally, in 2010, this same officer reported the church to the City Public Security Bureau (PSB) (shi gonganju) for running an ‘education programme’ without permission. The issue was not resolved before I left Huanghaicheng. We see in the personnel and organisation of Enlin Church a combination of orthodox and unorthodox practice. In 2009 there were four full-­time paid (quanzhi daixin) staff at Enlin Church. Because Zhang lost his credentials, the church has no officially recognised preachers. Zhang will have to take an examination before a ‘preaching certificate’ can be reissued to him although the City Two Committees and Religious Affairs view the certificate as a mere formality and prefer to focus on his ability to lead Enlin Church and work with the Protestant community and the local state. This arguably highlights the importance of social capital in the interactions between church and state. It also suggests the extent to which Religious Affairs seek to legitimate those who choose to work with the state as well as the perceived need to retain TSPM-­trained workers. Zhang appears to operate no differently from the recognised preachers in Huanghaicheng’s other TSPM churches and is the vice-­ chairperson of the district TSPM Committee. This further demonstrates Zhang’s legitimisation by the City Two Committees and Religious Affairs. Zhang claims that he would find it more difficult to operate in this way were he not in his home district, emphasising the importance of his position in local networks. Zhang is the main church leader and his wife oversees the church choir. (The choir often travelled to other churches to give performances. While I was in Huanghaicheng, the choir went on an unofficial15 trip visiting other registered churches, some of which were in a neighbouring province.) The other two paid staff at Enlin Church, both referred to as ‘teacher’, graduated from ‘underground seminaries’ (dixia shenxueyuan) before meeting Zhang and being invited to work with him.16 One leads the work for children and youth and the other oversees music and ‘pastoral visits’. Other training is provided by unpaid ‘teachers’: one from another province, the other a Korean national. The first teacher had previously been a senior leader in a large unregistered church network and was involved in establishing ‘underground Bible training courses’ (dixia shengjingxueban). The Korean national, supported by his church in Korea, ran ‘discipleship training’ (mentu xunlian) courses until discovered by the authorities. Department Chief Dong requested Preacher Zhang not to allow foreign nationals to teach in the church. It is significant that no one was punished by the authorities. This demonstrates the degree of security in Zhang’s position and the reluctance of the local state to get into conflict with the Korean community because of the role Korean investment plays in Huanghaicheng’s economic development. After this incident, the Korean began to oversee the Enlin Church magazine. We see again Zhang investing in social capital to benefit the church as well as the importance of his connections with the Korean community. A large number of people are also involved in ‘hospitality’ and ‘evangelism’ teams.

A Three-Self Protestant church   239 Zhang also focuses on training and central to Enlin Church are the small groups (xiaozu) which form the basis for ‘spiritual growth’ (lingli chengzhang). Newcomers are expected (but not forced) to join a group which meets weekly. The groups increase rapidly in size. Each has a ‘group leader’ and ‘assistant leader’ who takes over when the group grows and divides into two. The formation of these groups has created a tight-­knit community in which Zhang is held in high regard. It is not difficult to see Enlin Church as an institutionalised form of cultural capital in which Zhang himself is embedded. Dong is reluctant to use heavy-­handed tactics in dealing with Zhang as he knows the influence Zhang has in the congregation. There is also a small group for practising English through Bible study which serves as a training ground for sending people abroad to spread the gospel as part of ‘Back to Jerusalem’, a mission-­oriented project to complete world evangelisation. This ‘movement’ is generally associated with unregistered churches in China rather than Three-­Self churches (see Hattaway et al. 2003 and Tobias Brandner, Chapter 5 in this volume). The group has English-­speaking foreigners helping at times and had thirty members at one point. The group leader is convinced that they were investigated by the National Security Agency (NSA)17 (guojia anquanju) because they used English and had foreign help. Preacher Zhang is sometimes approached for information from NSA personnel regarding foreigners attending the church but he never gives them details because he believes the Bible teaches ‘never to give up another believer’. So, the presence of foreigners does concern state security organs but they use ‘soft tactics’ in their approach. Enlin Church has a busy calendar demonstrating the perceived importance of Bible study, collective activities and the need to ‘spread the gospel’. Each week there are early prayer meetings, an afternoon prayer meeting, a well-­attended ‘youth’ meeting, the usual Sunday worship meetings and training for staff. The church also operates a ‘Sunday School’ (zhurixue)18 with more than thirty children divided into three classes. They are taught Bible stories, songs and crafts. Related to this work is a parenting class (jiazhang ke) attended by (mainly single) mothers (this is the ‘education programme’ which has brought Zhang trouble). Programmes are also run for teenagers to study the Bible, foreign languages and evangelism. Communion (shengcan) is administered by an elder or pastor from the City Two Committees as are baptisms which are performed annually in Enlin Church. Those seeking baptism register their name, age, occupation and contact details19 as well as questions regarding their faith.20 These details are kept as records for the church. Zhang does not allow outsiders to see them.21 Christmas (shengdanjie), Easter (fuhuojie) and Harvest Thanksgiving (gan’enjie) are all celebrated at Enlin Church. These festivals are celebrated with long meetings made up of performances, singing and an appeal for people to believe. The church building is always packed and some people even stand outside. Lunch and gifts22 are given to those who attend.23 Of particular importance in revealing the dynamics of church-­state interactions at the local level are church activities which occupy a grey area with regard

240   M. McLeister to religious policy. These mainly relate to proselytising and the status of minors but other activities such as glossolalia and exorcisms, not uncommon in the Three-­Self churches in Huanghaicheng, also attract negative attention from local authorities because they are associated with ‘feudal superstition’ (fengjian mixin), seen as a politically destructive force (MacInnis 1989: 404, 442–443). We focus here on leafleting which is an important activity for Enlin Church. Handing out gospel leaflets is a major method of proselytising in Huanghaicheng. According to Preacher Zhang, however, religious policy does not allow for proselytising (xuanchuan xinyang) outside of recognized ‘venues for religious activities’ (zongjiao huodong changsuo) which includes leafleting. In 2009, Enlin Church printed and distributed 20,000 Christmas service invitation cards, and tens of thousands of gospel leaflets are distributed in the city each year. The church provides these for free and believers are encouraged to hand them out. On the front of the leaflets is the Bible text John 3:16 and the words ‘Knowing Jesus is the most beautiful blessing in this life’. The back of the leaflets contain group photographs of smiling church members. The contents of the leaflets vary but typically contain an introduction to the Protestant message under headings such as ‘Who was Jesus really?’, ‘Protestantism is not superstition, Jesus is the saviour’, or ‘Science proves faith [is true]’. They also include details of church meetings, events, church contact details (including ‘QQ’ address) and transport to the church. This demonstrates to people the openness of the church. There has been some development in the dialogue between Enlin Church and the local state over time. Preacher Zhang often leads the leafleting teams and in the past Department Chief Dong called Zhang to ask him to stop. Zhang and another relative were taken to the PSB24 for questioning regarding leafleting when they first set up the church. Zhang leafleted in shopping areas and they warned him not to do it again. He reasoned with them on two accounts. First he said, the message they share with people is a good one. Second, if they do not leaflet, ‘evil cult’ (xiejiao) groups will. After a while they stopped taking him to the PSB and phoned him instead. Now, Dong asks him not to leaflet on major holidays such as National Day.25 Zhang says he agrees to this in order to ‘respect those in authority’ because, he claims, this is what the Bible teaches. We need to be open in spreading the gospel. . . . Now if you give out [gospel] leaflets you won’t be arrested (juliu). We usually go out [leafleting] on a Thursday and a Saturday. A lot of people come [to our church] because they have been given a leaflet. There used to be some trouble when we did this but not now. They [PSB] used to come and check up on what we were doing. We usually go out on the street to hand out [leaflets]. We hand out more when the weather is better. . . . If you do something really out of the ordinary [linglei] it isn’t good. We want to do things within the law. We can see several different political processes at work here. There is no doubt that Department Chief Dong recognises that Zhang is prepared to work to some

A Three-Self Protestant church   241 degree with the state and it is in Dong’s interest to encourage this, albeit within limits. Dong does not want Zhang to retreat from the TSPM (his extensive connections would allow him to do this), a phenomenon which has occurred in TSPM churches in other parts of China (Vala 2009). At the same time, Dong wants to ensure that the influence of unregistered religious groups (including ‘evil cults’) does not become significant since they are seen as negative forces in society and destructive to ‘social harmony’ (shehui hexie). While leafleting is essentially a prohibited activity, Dong needs to give registered Protestants space to operate if they are perceived as being involved with state projects, which in this case centres on preaching ‘orthodoxy’ and promoting social harmony. Apart from Dong (RAS) and the PSB, Urban Management (chengguan) personnel also try to prevent the church from leafleting.26 The Enlin Church team who leaflet seek to do so in a manner different from others who leaflet. This reveals the strategies which they have developed and which are taught to new believers. Leafleting is done before Enlin Church’s two largest meetings and on these occasions a large group will go to the busiest places in the district. They have usually prepared some form of dance and some church songs. This attracts a crowd and makes it easy to give out a lot of gospel leaflets in a short amount of time. Zhang says that this method was developed through experience: We know how to do it now. We perform dances and then sing first to get a crowd and then give out the leaflets last. We pick up the leaflets that people have dropped and if they are clean, we hand them out again. The Urban Management (chengguan) people used to come and get angry with us because of the litter but now we make sure we pick up the discarded ones. The hospitality team greet passersby on the main road outside the church before the Sunday meeting. The team are uniformed and bring with them a makeshift sign pointing to the church.27 They hand leaflets to people and invite them in. They are never worried about getting into trouble. Large numbers of gospel leaflets are also handed out by church members during the week: I have seen them ‘in action’ myself. We see, then, the importance of Zhang’s degree as cultural capital and his social capital in his durable relationships within the City Two Committees, the Korean community and his home district. The Enlin congregation is also a form of institutionalised cultural capital which Religious Affairs knows he has firm leadership of. We also see how Zhang mobilizes this capital for church projects permitting him to function as a recognised preacher and also allowing him to conduct activities which are officially prohibited.

Perceptions of law and policy Perceptions of religious policy are shaped by the more general cultural attitudes toward law in which flexibility and pragmatism play a significant role. There appears no contradiction for believers to be involved in projects which they and

242   M. McLeister local state actors claim are beyond the limits of what is acceptable religious activity. A businessman in Enlin Church who also hands out gospel leaflets, when asked about the legality of leafleting, said: Actually, according to the law, anyone who gives out any leaflets should apply to Urban Management for permission. But in China people usually wouldn’t do that because the application would probably be rejected. Take the night market, for example; who’s going to apply for permission to set up a stall? What’s more, what we are spreading is good news, and this news will help create a more stable and harmonious society. It’s not like those who are selling stuff or opening a restaurant. . . . When we first started giving out gospel leaflets the Urban Management people would come and try to stop us. They were afraid of us littering and damaging the environment because people would take leaflets, look at them and then throw them on the ground. When we realised this we started to pick up the ones which had been dropped so then they couldn’t say anything. We see here two justifications for their actions. First, few people appeal to law in many aspects of daily life. One Protestant businessman who often attended Enlin Church told me that ‘the law is flexible’ (you tanxing) in many areas, including those relating to the church. Leafleting is perceived as negotiating regulations rather than ‘breaking’ laws. Second, it reveals that the message they are propagating is perceived as good for individuals and society and is aligned with the state objective of promoting a ‘social harmony’. For this reason, it is acceptable for churches to print materials in ‘underground’ printing presses, leaflet or organise other activities without permission because they are seen to be part of ‘God’s work’: a ‘God trumps everything else’ idea. Yet, teaching in Enlin Church on how believers should behave often included the idea of respect for those in authority.28 Preacher Zhang and others saw no contradiction in leafleting and the idea that he treats those who exercise state power with ‘love’ and ‘respect’. Zhang shows his respect by avoiding direct conflict through ‘reasoning’ with those in state organs who may be unreasonable. As with Boss Christians in Wenzhou (Cao 2007), pragmatism influences decisions: the work of the church can trump the work of the state. The end goal is reached by whatever means possible, although there are limits on this. For example, Zhang refused to give in to the police officer because he felt that if he gave in once, the police officer would make further demands. He is confident that his symbolic and social capital – the prestige he has within the congregation making him useful to the state and his relationship with Religious Affairs – allows him to resist these demands and there is little appeal made to the contents of rules and regulations. But this is not simply a one-­sided dialogue. The perceptions of local state personnel also affect the degree of space for negotiation of regulations. Zhang described Department Chief Dong as ‘having not much influence’ and as ‘relaxed’ thus allowing for ‘grey’ activities. Dong seldom visits the church

A Three-Self Protestant church   243 despite this being part of his responsibility. In four years Dong visited Enlin Church ‘three times at most’ and they only meet when there is an issue. Documents which come from the City RAB through Dong are supposed to be read by church staff members and then the contents communicated to the congregation. Dong relays the documents to Zhang but does not ensure that Zhang reads them. Zhang reads then discards them because he feels they are not part of church work. He knows that Dong will not interfere in the running of Enlin Church and so would find it difficult to enforce this request.

Concluding comments We have looked in this chapter at Enlin Church and its relationship to local state actors. We have seen that the implementation of religious policy is made flexible and therefore negotiable due to the perceived needs of those involved. These perceived needs are directly related to different political processes and actors draw upon various capitals in their interactions. Preacher Zhang is determined to spread the gospel (which he sees as superior to what the state offers) and build up Enlin Church. However, it is also clear that he desires to cooperate with the authorities as long as this does not conflict with his vision. Department Chief Dong seeks to manage Enlin Church and the wider Protestant community by maintaining a balance between implementing religious policy and ensuring that he keeps a working relationship with local Protestant leaders such as Preacher Zhang. Dong undoubtedly tries to avoid the kind of conflict which could result in Zhang distancing himself from the TSPM to work more clandestinely. Dong also does not want to fall into disrepute with the City Two Committees or Provincial Two Committees. In addition, Dong must promote the state project of developing a ‘harmonious society’ and involving local Protestants in this initiative. He must take into account Zhang’s position in the Protestant community and relationship with the City Two Committees. Zhang’s desire to maintain good relations with Dong make him a key actor in local church-­state interactions. Zhang’s extensive connections across the registered and unregistered Protestant communities also encourage Dong to be flexible with regard to his stance on religious regulations. It is clear that Dong recognises Zhang’s leadership ability since Enlin Church has grown rapidly in a short time. This recognition of leadership is also seen in the fact that Dong encouraged Zhang to set up a district Three-­ Self Committee (despite Zhang not taking this committee very seriously). Zhang’s cultural capital in the form of a degree from a recognised seminary also helps to legitimise his leadership position as do his relationships in the City Two Committees. Both Dong and Zhang do not wish for ‘evil cults’ to recruit from established Protestant groups and Dong undoubtedly sees Zhang as an ally in this mission. It is, therefore, not surprising that Dong has accommodated Zhang’s leafleting efforts if people are being drawn into registered religious congregations which are easier to monitor than those which are unregistered.

244   M. McLeister The activities of Enlin Church suggest that the implementation of religious policy is negotiated on two levels. First, it is negotiated in face-­to-face discussion as Preacher Zhang and others seek to make their beliefs and purposes understood with those responsible for managing religious groups. In addition, the precise form local religious policy itself takes is also negotiated in the practice and activities of the church, suggesting that policy is fluid within certain parameters. Activities of the church which are initially unacceptable to the state may become more accept­ able over time, especially if state actors can see benefits for state projects. At the same time, however, there are limits to what is acceptable to all parties involved. Zhang, for one, will not forego on his allegiance to the work of the church. We also see how Zhang perceives the limits on state flexibility. He chooses not to leaflet on national holidays, for example, out of respect for Dong. Relationships between local state actors and church workers are influenced by their acquiring and appropriate use of social, cultural and symbolic capital, and this seems to determine the extent to which religious groups can work beyond the remits of policy (Chau 2009: 233). The analysis provided here indicates how a range of factors and relationships affect the implementation of religious policy at the local level.

Notes   1 The author would like to thank Professor Francis Lim, Dr Marjorie Dryburgh and Dr Chris White for their valuable comments on several drafts of this chapter.   2 Church workers and lay people used the term sanzi jiaohui: ‘Three-­Self church’ is the closest English translation.   3 This is mentioned frequently and interpretations of Revelation and news of earthquakes, wars and famines are cited as evidence.   4 Hunter and Chan (1993) briefly analysed one Three-­Self church.   5 Data for this chapter was generated through participant observation and interviews in the Three-­Self Protestant churches in Huanghaicheng for twelve months between 2009 and 2010. Generous funding for this research was provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through the White Rose East Asia Centre (WREAC).   6 I have used pseudonyms for the field-­site, churches and all participants.   7 I refer to Huanghaicheng as the urbanised part of the city throughout this chapter.   8 Jiaoshi is used to denote a formal preacher (chuandaoren) and is not the same as jiaoshi used to denote an assistant pastor.   9 Zhang can influence how particular unregistered churches are viewed by the local authorities. He utilises his extensive connections in registered and unregistered congregations and in the Protestant South Korean community in the city. 10 The seminary only accepted applicants from adjacent provinces. 11 Dong holds a degree in Chinese Law and is not from Huanghaicheng. 12 The RAB is not uniformly structured in Huanghaicheng. It has a City RAB and district RASs but there are not personnel that deal with all five ‘official’ religions in every district. 13 This means that Enlin Church, strictly speaking, is a ‘meeting point’ even though it was formally named Enlin Church (tang) by the head pastor of the City Two Committees and has the only ‘Harmonious Religious Activities Venue’ plaque issued in the district. This plaque was issued by the City RAB through the district Religious Affairs official. There is nothing to distinguish Enlin from the other churches (tang) in Huanghaicheng making it a church.

A Three-Self Protestant church   245 14 Some are from outside Huanghaicheng but many are local and work in nearby enterprises. 15 Zhang did not seek permission from the City Two Committees or Religious Affairs. 16 It is unclear whether the City Two Committees know this but they do not hide their training/roles. 17 The NSA deals with affairs relating to foreigners’ involvement in local religious activity. Huanghaicheng has South Korean and Western missionaries working clandestinely with local Christian or other religious groups. 18 The children’s work continues during the week and holidays but the term is used throughout Huanghaicheng. 19 This does not include the personal identification number required in some locales (Wu et al. 2009: 192). 20 Zhang allows Party members or cadres who seek baptism not to fill in the form. 21 PSB personnel ask Zhang for these forms but he refuses saying they have no legal right to ask. 22 Trinkets with Bible verses stamped on them. 23 The Domestic Security Detachment (guonei anquan baowei zhidui), told Zhang they would visit during the Christmas meetings. He is unaware if they came or not. Zhang does not treat officials differently from others who come to church. 24 The PSB investigates unregistered religious activities. In Huanghaicheng they investigated the Seventh Day Adventists and the Wenzhou Church. 25 This is obviously a Chinese (political) holiday, not a Christian holiday. It is possible that Dong does not want outside officials to see such activities as this may harm his career. 26 Zhang thinks the PSB sometimes sends Urban Management personnel. 27 Zhang had a sign near the road but it was torn down by Urban Management who said it was illegal despite many businesses having signs up in the same place. Zhang felt their sign was singled out. 28 Romans 13:1–3.

References Ashiwa, Y. and D.L. Wank (2009) ‘Making Religion, Making the State in Modern China: An Introductory Essay’, in Y. Ashiwa and D.L. Wank (eds), Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 1–21. Bays, D.H. (2004) ‘A Tradition of State Dominance’, in J. Kindopp and C.L. Hamrin (eds), God and Caesar in China: Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions, Washington D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, pp. 25–39. Borchert, T. (2005) ‘Of Temples and Tourists: The Effects of the Tourist Political Economy on a Minority Buddhist Community in Southwest China’, in F.G. Yang and J.B. Tamney (eds), State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies, Leiden: Brill, pp. 87–111. Bourdieu, P. (1986) ‘The Forms of Capital’, in J.E. Richardson (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, Westport, CT: Greenword Press, pp. 241–258. Cao, N.L. (2007) ‘Christian Entrepreneurs and the Post-­Mao State: An Ethnographic Account of Church–State Relations in China’s Economic Transition’, Sociology of Religion, 68(1): 45–66. Chan, S.C. and G.S. Lang (2007) ‘Temple Construction and the Revival of Popular Religion in Jinhua’, China Information, 21(1): 43–69.

246   M. McLeister Chau, A.Y. (2006) Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chau, A.Y. (2009) ‘Expanding the Space of Popular Religion: Local Temple Activism and the Politics of Legitimation in Contemporary Rural China’, in Y. Ashiwa and D.L. Wank (eds), Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 211–240. Dean, K. (1998) Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dunch, R. (2008) ‘Christianity and Adaptation to Socialism’, in M.M. Yang (ed.), Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation, Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 155–178. Hattaway, P., B. Yun, Y.Z. Xu and E. Wang (2003) Back to Jerusalem: Three Chinese House Church Leaders Share Their Vision to Complete the Great Commission, Atlanta; London: Authentic Press. Hillman, B. (2004) ‘The Rise of the Community in Rural China: Village Politics, Cultural Identity and Religious Revival in a Hui Hamlet’, China Journal, 51: 53–73. Huang, J.B. (2003) ‘ “Sirentang” jishi: Zhongguo xiangcun jidujiao de renleixue yanjiu’, unpublished thesis, Central University for Nationalities. Hunter, A. and Chan, K. (1993) Protestantism in Contemporary China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liu, H.T. (2006) ‘Toushi Zhongguo xiangcun jidujiao: Hebei xiangcun jidujiao de diaocha yu sikao’, unpublished thesis, Central University for Nationalities. Lozada, E.P. (2001) God Aboveground: Catholic Church, Postsocialist State, and Transnational Processes in a Chinese Village, Stanford: Stanford University Press. MacInnis, D.E. (1989) Religion in China Today: Policy and Practice, Maryknoll: Orbis Books. Madsen, R. (1998) China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society, Berkeley: University of California Press. Vala, C.T. (2009) ‘Pathways to the Pulpit: Leadership Training in “Patriotic” and Unregistered Chinese Protestant Churches’, in Y. Ashiwa and D.L. Wank (eds), Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 96–125. Wank, D.L. (2009) ‘Institutionalising Modern ‘Religion’ in China’s Buddhism: Political Phases of a Local Revival’, in Y. Ashiwa and D.L. Wank (eds), Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, Stanford: Stanford University Press, pp. 126–150. Wu, Z. M., X.P. Li, J.B. Huang and X.P. He, et al. (2009) Bianji de gongrong: quanqiu diyuhua shijiao xia de Zhongguo chengshi jidujiao yanjiu, Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press. Yang, F.G. and D.D. Wei (2005) ‘The Bailin Buddhist Temple: Thriving Under Communism’, in F.G. Yang and J.B. Tamney (eds), State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies, Leiden: Brill, pp. 63–86. Yu, A.C. (2005) State and Religion in China: Historical and Textual Perspectives, Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing. Zhao, R.J. (2010) ‘Dushi zhongxin de shizijia: yige Huanan dushi jiaohui de renleixue kaocha’, unpublished thesis, Xiamen University.

16 Constructing sacred space under the forces of the market A study of an ‘upper-­floor’ Protestant church in Hong Kong Gustav K.K. Yeung Introduction Hong Kong Protestant churches are mostly located in ‘unusual’ places in urban areas. The common notion of church usually refers to stand-­alone buildings, such as cathedrals, which ‘look like’ churches. According to a recent survey, however, stand-­alone churches represent only a little more than one-­eighth of the total number of Protestant churches in Hong Kong (Wu and Fok, 2005, pp. 8–9). In contrast, over half (659 out of 1,181) of the churches are located inside commercial and residential buildings. They reside in units of buildings not because of theological beliefs or governmental intervention, but simply because of the scarcity of land in the city. As they were set up in the post-­war period, it was practically impossible for them to secure land for building stand-­alone churches. They could only construct their sacred space in upper floors units which had been built for residential or business uses, and thus are sometimes dubbed ‘upper-­floor churches’ (loushang jiaohui) or ‘first-­floor churches’ (erlou jiaohui). Unlike those buildings that have been erected specifically for religious use or those located in schools and social service centres, these ‘upper-­floor churches’ are not easily recognizable in the urban landscape. It is the intention of this chapter to explore the cultural practices of upper-­ floor churches through analysis of a case of a Protestant church residing in a commercial unit in Hong Kong. Since physical visibility and spatial configuration are two most outstanding features of the churches, the chapter will in particular focus on the spatial practices of the chosen case. Such an analysis of spatial practices greatly benefits from recent theories of sacred space, especially those aiming to reveal the politics of spatial practices. Of special interest is the way in which the spatial practices of the community of believers have been influenced by the hegemonic forces of the society. We shall argue that given the absence of direct governmental intervention on religious affairs, it is mainly the capitalist market that has exerted the fundamental shaping forces on any construction of sacred space in Hong Kong. This chapter aims to reveal some of the strategies employed by an upper-­floor church in acquiring, representing, and ritualizing a place through their spatial practices and the ways in which it resists and yet is constituted by the hegemonic forces of the market.

248   G.K.K. Yeung

Contestations in the construction of sacred space Recently there has been an increasing interest in exploring the spatial dimension of religion, with more attention paid to the cultural politics involved in the construction and maintenance of sacred space. In their review of the past theories of sacred space in the study of religion, David Chidester and Edward Linenthal (1995) distinguish between two definitions, namely, the poetics and the politics of sacred space. The poetics of sacred space is concerned about describing the substance of the sacred, locating ‘an uncanny, awesome, or powerful manifestation of reality, full of ultimate significance’ (Chidester and Linenthal, 1995, p. 15). One prominent example is Mircea Eliade’s (1959) idea of seeing the manifestation of the real (hierophany) as the essence of sacred space. The focus of the politics of sacred space, on the contrary, is on how human work is involved in the design and construction of the place. From this viewpoint, sacred space is full of ‘hard work that goes into choosing, setting aside, consecrating, venerating, protecting, defending, and redefining sacred places’ (Chidester and Linenthal, 1995, p. 17). Jonathan Z. Smith (1987, p. 105), for example, argues that ‘something or someone is made sacred by ritual’.1 Chidester and Linenthal further argue that more attention needs to be paid to the politics in the production of sacred space. In any consecration of place, contestation is unavoidable simply because of the fact there is a surplus of symbolic meanings in every sacred space available for appropriation. Amidst contestations, there are four possible modes of symbolic engagement in any production of sacred space, namely strategies of appropriation, exclusion, inversion, and hybridization. Strategies of appropriation involve the assertion of power in the legitimate and authentic ownership of a space. Strategies of exclusion are used for reinforcing the purity of a space. Because of the surplus of signification, there are always conflicts over ownership and control of the symbolic meanings in a sacred space and these two strategies cannot be final and total. Strategies of inversion ‘reverse a prevailing spatial orientation – the high becomes low, the inside becomes outside, the peripheral becomes central’. Strategies of hybridization refer to ‘practices of mixing, fusing, or transgressing conventional spatial relations’. These two latter strategies are usually employed for resistance to domination (Chidester and Linenthal, 1995, p. 19). Putting the politics of the sacred space in a wider context, we will further see that the consecration of a place is both enabled and constrained by the hegemonic cultural forces of the society. In the conceptualization of Henri Lefebvre (1991), there are two fundamental aspects of the process of space production. On the one hand, there are ‘representations of space’, conceptualized by the dominant powers, such as planners, developers, architects, and engineers. By way of architectural construction, the dominant ideology and knowledge will modify the spatial textures of a place (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 42). On the other hand, there are ‘representational spaces’, which are the spaces of everyday life of the inhabitants. The inhabitants seek to change and appropriate the space by means of symbols and images. Representational space ‘overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects’ (ibid., p. 39).

Sacred space under the forces of the market   249 The above perspectives on the production and contestation of space will help us to explore some the dynamics of the establishment of a church in a residential unit. We shall first look at the process of the acquisition of a place for building Church E.

Migrating in real estate market Since Christianity is a congregational religion, securing a place for worship and community gathering is a religious demand of fundamental importance (Davies, 1994, p. 53). To meet this demand, each group of Christians has to adopt a particular set of strategies. In the context of Hong Kong, if a group of Christians want to set up a church today in Hong Kong, the first thing they need to decide is probably how to overcome a formidable financial challenge of purchasing or renting a physical place in the real estate market. The chosen church for this case study is now situated in To Kwa Wan district near the eastern shore of Kowloon Peninsula. Of its some ninety members, about a dozen are over the age of sixty, twenty are teenagers, and the remaining are between the twenties and fifties. The great majority of them belong to the middle-­class. The church belongs to the Evangelical tradition and claim to have a Methodist background. I first came into contact with the principal pastor of the church, Pastor Chu, via a friend of mine who was his former classmate in a theological college. Pseudonyms are used for my informants, and the church is identified here as Church E. I have collected data about the church from multiple sources, including documents, interviews, direct observations, and participant-­observations in Sunday worships. The Church E was founded in 1960s by an American missionary society, which began its work in Asia in 1901. In 1953, like many missionary bodies, the society came to Hong Kong after the Communists had taken power in China (Ying 2004). It started the first two churches together with ‘rooftop schools’ in Shamshuipo, one of the poorest areas in the city.2 In 1960, Church E was established as the third missionary station of the society in Hung Hom, an old district bordering the Victoria Harbour in Kowloon. Before the building of several private housing estates on sites of former dockyards and reclaimed land in the 1980s, the residential areas in Hung Hom were mainly occupied by tenement buildings. Church E was initially located in one of these tenements. In 1969, the church moved to a purchased unit on the first floor of another tenement building about 200 metres away from the original site. The unit was of a modest size of around 100 square metres. Incidentally, the unit next door was a brothel. In addition to usual means of proselytism, such as street evangelism and evangelistic meetings, the church also adopted a then popular strategy of running a ‘reading centre’ in the early 1980s.3 On weekdays, the hall for Sunday services became a reading centre, aiming to provide a quiet place for students to do their study. However, this service came to an end three years later, due to a low utility rate. The informants attribute the failure to the adverse environment. In addition to the nearby brothel, there was the conspicuous presence of funeral service businesses in the neighbourhood.

250   G.K.K. Yeung The church was again relocated in 1988 to a larger place in another nearby tenement building. The newly bought place of around 150 square metres was composed of two connected units on the ground and first floors of a building over forty years old. Despite this, the acquisition of this new place has been considered a witness to the faith of the congregation and the divine grace. In the brief historical account of church included in the fiftieth anniversary publication of the denomination, it is said As the work of the church has continued to develop, the space of the church location became the obstacle of the development of [our] ministry. Despite the very limited reserve fund the church had, the congregation purchased a new site by faith. Because of the committed offering of brothers and sisters, our Church moved to Baker Court in Hung Hom in 27 Oct 1988, and started a new page of Church development. (A brief historical account of the development of the Church E, published in 2004) The church decided to migrate once again to the present premises in 2003, when the property market was at its bottom. Aside from the need of additional space for development, the church had also to deal with the structural defects of the building. The church at first intended to sell their unit to a developer, but the negotiation came to nothing because of the downturn of the property market. They finally sold their unit, at a much lower price of one-­third the amount previously offered by the developer, to the Urban Renewal Authority, a statutory body established by the government for urban redevelopment. After some searches, they had shortlisted two options for relocating the church. One was an office unit of nearly 600 square metres in a commercial building in Hung Hom. Some church leaders saw in this business site a large potential for evangelism among the office workers, because of its location and large size. Some leaders, however, found it worn-­out, inconvenient, and expensive. The inner settings, especially its low ceiling, were seen as not quite suitable for holding worship. Another choice was two connected units on the ground and first floors, of a size doubling that of the last church site. It was located in a newly constructed private residential high rise in To Kwa Wan area, about 1.5 kilometres away from Hung Hom. Supporters liked it for its comfortable and homelike environment. They finally chose the latter, although they then had to move out of Hung Hom, the birthplace of the church. The desire to secure a place of larger area and better conditions for development has led Church E to relocate itself several times in the past forty years. Van der Leeuw (1964) argues that the positioning of a sacred place is a conquest of space. For small churches in a densely populated city with high property prices, conquest often means buying a business or residential unit that is better value for money. The scarcity of land and the high land premium policy have engendered a culture that sees a place, even a sacred one, as an important means of investment for both individuals and institutions.4 In the eyes of many religious

Sacred space under the forces of the market   251 believers, the site of the church is a holy place where they meet God and share religious life together. From the economic point of view, however, the premise occupied by the religious community is nothing but a commodity in the real estate market. For example, it is clearly stated in the Hong Kong ordinances that one of the purposes in setting up the Urban Renewal Authority is to ‘improve the standard of housing and the built environment of Hong Kong and the layout of built-­up areas by replacing old and dilapidated areas with new development’ (Section 5, Urban Renewal Authority Ordinance). Yet in the negotiation between the Church E and the Authority, the only point in question was how much the church unit was worth. Conversely, the religious community also seems to take the logic and practice of real estate market for granted. Although a sacred place should be full of memory of religious experience and human relations, many Christians will consider relocating their church inevitable and even desirable. A larger place not only means a better opportunity for development but also represents a symbol of God’s blessing. In the eyes of believers, the acquisition of a new place was first and foremost a utilitarian and pragmatic issue. For instance, when Pastor Chu was asked if the congregation had considered renting instead of purchasing a premise, he gave a clear reason of the choosing the latter: I think Hong Kong churches . . . the Chinese people . . . not only Chinese churches . . . but all Hong Kong people will think buying a premises is safer. To me, both [buying and renting] are the same. But many people have said, if you choose to rent [a place], . . . after you have done the furnishing, he [the proprietor] knows that you can’t leave easily, you are forced to stay. Many stories say . . . we have heard many stories. If you have developed well and then rent a larger place, that is fine. Otherwise, after you have spent some money in furnishing the place, two years later, if he increases your rent, can you still leave at once? . . . Some brothers and sisters said, ‘That’s dangerous!’ In finding a new place for the church, the leaders and the congregation of Church E were most concerned with cost and benefit considerations, such as the financial affordability, the potential for evangelism, coziness, and transportation convenience. Lily Kong (2002), in her study of house churches in Singapore, points out that because of the experience of compulsory relocation enforced by the government, the church members are forced to viewed their religious place as impermanent. In the context of Hong Kong, the location of religious premises is not regulated by state planning policies but by the forces of the market. The hegemonic forces of the real estate market and consumerism exert significant impact on the location of a sacred place.

Constructing a sacred space in a business unit After the acquisition of a place in the secular property market, the congregation of Church E had to appropriate, possess, and reproduce the place. A church

252   G.K.K. Yeung relocated is no longer the same church. As Roger Stump (2008, p. 5) points out in his theorization of geography of religion, as religions have spread to different places, ‘their adherents have simultaneously influenced and been influenced by the specific contexts in which they live’, the church needed to produce a sacred space with its ideas, symbols, and rituals. Kim Knott (2005, p. 162) reminds us that churches and other places of worship are ‘one means by which religious ideas about the divine, the human community, and the ritual process of producing sacred space are given a material presence’. Sacred space is not produced in an empty place without any meanings. Neither were the spatial practices of the believers devoid of the influences of forces of the secular world. Thus the sacralization of a secular place is often the result of the contestations between the secular calculation of spatial utility and the interpretation of religious ideals, practices, and relations. On the one hand, from a secular and dominant point of view, the present unit that the church occupies is an ordinary place originally constructed by the planners, architects, engineers, and developers according to the discourse of real estate market. The space is represented by the dominant powers as one of the innumerable similar shop units in residential and commercial buildings in the city. On the other hand, religious ideas and practices take place in the site and transform it into a sacred space, thanks to the money, human talents, commodities, information, technology and professional knowledge that have flowed into it. While all these elements are inevitably under the influence of the hegemonic forces of the capitalist market, local spatial practices nonetheless can imbue the space with religious symbols and have the potential to subvert the dominant social practices of the market (Merrifield, 1993, p. 526). Through the everyday use of space, resistance to the hegemonic discourse is made possible through the symbolic spatial practices. In the following discussion, we will see that Church E has reproduced the space with its symbolic representations and worship rituals. Such symbols and rituals were intended to transform the secular place into a Christian space with elements of the Evangelical tradition to which the church belongs. A visible and leisurely sacred space The church members I interviewed all are very proud of the design of the church and regard it as one of its defining features. Pastor Chu, for example, repeatedly emphasized that despite their tight budget, they nonetheless managed to build a church with exceptionally high aesthetic standard, thanks to the presence of quite a few professional designers in their congregation. The principal designer, Wang, for example, was a graphic designer, who had been a member of the church for more than twenty years. Although the design of the new church site was planned and monitored by a designated committee, of which the pastors were members, it mainly came from the hands of Wang. Such an arrangement reflects a significant aspect of this new religious site, namely, its design is based more on aesthetic and pragmatic, rather than liturgical or theological, considerations.

Sacred space under the forces of the market   253 From the pragmatic point of view, the limitation in space requires the place to be multifunctional. The whole site has been divided into three parts – facilities spaces like offices, a pantry, and washrooms. The first floor has a main hall and a small library room, while the ground floor comprises a fellowship hall. Like many other small churches located in residential and commercial buildings, because of its small capacity, the halls and rooms in Church E are multi-­ functional. Thus although the main hall is principally designed for the use of worship in Sunday mornings, it is also the place for holding fellowships on Saturdays and Fridays and for religious education classes after the Sunday services. The fellowship hall on the ground floor is used for children’s worship in Sunday mornings and for fellowship meetings on Saturdays. Although the library room does hold a collection of biblical commentaries and spiritual books, Kan, the chairperson of the church’s Deacon Board, reminded me that it has not really performed its original designated function. In reality, except the pastors, few people actually spend their time on reading in the room. Instead, it is often used for casual chatting or fellowship sharing. During the time of worship service, it is reserved for the ‘cradle groups’ – parents with babies, allowing them to participate in the worship by watching the service through the TV set inside, so as not to disturb the congregation. In contrast, almost all these functional spaces are left idle during weekdays. Long working hours have almost totally prevented the members from joining any religious activity on weekdays. The prayer meetings on each Wednesday, for example, usually attract no more than a handful of people.

Figure 16.1  Multiple uses of space (source: image © Gustav K.K. Yeung).

254   G.K.K. Yeung This arrangement of space usage only exemplifies the idea that sacredness is not an inherent nature of a place. Although the church members revere their place as holy, glorious, and solemn, its sacredness is contingent upon the specific function it performs in a particular time. When we talk about a specific religious function of a space, we are actually referring to the religious practice carried out by a community of believers. To put it in Durkheimian terms, it is the social relations and the corresponding symbols, practices, and projects that constitute the sacredness of a place. In terms of its symbolic representation, perhaps the most intriguing principle of designing the new site of Church E is to rework the place into something that does not look like a church or at least a traditional church. Even before entering the church, one’s attention will soon be drawn to its peculiar glass curtain walls on the outside. The leaders indicated that the reason for this unusual choice is to make the church ‘visible’. The term ‘visible’ has two related meanings in the comments of the informants: the visibility of the spaces and the activities inside the church, and the visibility of the church itself. By making the inside of the church visible and transparent, the church will become visible to the people in the neighbourhood. Some church leaders use the symbol of the ‘lampstand’ to represent this visible sacred space. This symbolic term, which is taken from the Bible, usually refers to the role of the church as bearer of the light of Christ in the world. The principal designer, Wang, however, understands this identity of being a lampstand in terms of spatial perception. He explained why he put the offices and the library room near the glass walls of the first floor: We see that opposite the church is a public housing estate. So in this relatively new place, how to play the role of lampstand well? Because we are now in a unit on both the ground and first floors, so . . . from the angle of design, that is, why did I put all the things, such as the offices or the library room on the first floor, on the outer part of the unit? In fact, if you refer to the idea of lampstand, you should, as far as possible, let them [the people outside the church] feel that ‘aha, this place is fun’. That is [let them see that] some people are doing work here. Just like . . . not like that sometimes when the place is quiet, and all the people are hiding inside. And, say, from Monday to Friday, some people keep staying here, someone may be reading books, . . . and someone looks like they are chatting here. We expect, at that time [of planning], this [design] may seem to be an attraction to this neighbourhood. That is, to let them feel that ‘aha, this is a place to stop over’. Staying here for a chat, . . . letting them have some rest, sort of. Here the lampstand’s symbolism is as a place of attraction to the people living in the vicinity. To be a lampstand, the church must represent itself as a visible and fun space for stopping over. It is envisaged that the high level of transparency would allow people to feel secure. The sense of security is further enhanced by the location of the entrance. Unlike many churches on upper floors, the entrance of Church E is on the ground floor, assuring passersby that they have absolute freedom to come and leave at any time they wish.

Sacred space under the forces of the market   255 Another symbolic representation of the site is to make the church like a home. The choice of this symbol is attributed to the particular geographical location and the character of the church. Our church is in a residential building, it is natural for it to make itself into a home. (Kan, a man in his early fifties, the chairperson of the Deacon Board of the church) The people of small churches all love the feeling of being home. Now the interior design is even more like a home. . . . A small church is in essence like a family. Now it is as comfortable as a home. (Pastor Chu) The decoration and the furniture of the library room were carefully chosen to mimic a living room of a common household. The floor was intentionally covered with a coarse surface so as to convey the modest feeling of an ordinary residence. The church also has a children’s playgroup. The fellowship hall on the ground floor is the place for children’s worship every Sunday. The informants reminded me that this venue with the glass curtain walls could be seen as kind of a showcase to parents in the neighbourhood. The church leaders expect that the cheerfulness displayed by the children playing behind the glass walls could be a point of attraction. Even non-­Christian parents are welcome to send their children to the playgroup-­like services. There were actually some cases in which the non-­ Christian parents entrusted their children to the church on Sunday mornings. In addition to these symbols of lampstand, home, and playgroup, the members of the church are also delighted to have the church be ‘misrecognized’ as a place of leisure. The informants repeatedly mentioned that when the church was newly opened, some neighbours thought it would be a café or an Italian restaurant. What really matters is to brush aside all the traditional images of a church. In the above discussion, we may observe a number of interesting points. First, these meanings of the sacred space are not all planned beforehand in the original design. Some of the leaders might have the lampstand symbol in their minds during the planning, but most of the meanings only evolved from their lived spatial practices and their interactions with the neighbourhood. Second, these symbols may not be recognized, not to mention agreed upon, by all members of the church. Some symbols such as lampstand and home are more central to the whole community, others are just peripheral or even ephemeral. Third, the multifarious symbolic meanings created are examples of the strategy of hybridization. The sacred space is (mis-)recognized to be a visible lampstand, a home, a playgroup, a café, and a restaurant. They are all valid representations of the sacred space. They may be able to capture some functions or feelings that the space provides. Yet the sacred space is not really any one of these. The developer originally designed the site as a unit for doing business. The unit could have

256   G.K.K. Yeung been used as a café, a playgroup, or a restaurant, but not all at once. The spatial practice of the church, however, has mixed all this up and subverted the representation of space by the dominant forces in the real estate market. However, the spatial practices themselves are in turn influenced by the dominant forces of capitalist society. To rework the new site into a space that shows little hint of the traditional church is in accord with the principles of consumerist society. Kimon Sargeant (2000) argues that a burgeoning movement in the United States has bred a new type of Evangelical church. This new type of church, what he calls ‘seeker churches’, are ones that tailor their programmes and services to attract people (the seekers) who are unlikely to come to church. These seeker churches still hold fast to orthodox Evangelical beliefs such as the authority of the Bible and the divinity of Christ, but they want to throw out the traditional form of the church. They are ready to use any innovative and customer-­sensitive methods, in order to attract to church people who are unlikely to come to a traditional church (Sargeant, 2000, pp. 14–15). In other words, if the orthodox Evangelical beliefs can be kept intact, the seeker churches are willing to unreservedly embrace the principles of success in the consumer market, in order to spread the Gospel and prosper. Some of them have followed the models of customer-­sensitive companies so successfully that they have transformed themselves into megachurches with thousands of people attending their services weekly. The spatial practices of Church E are similarly shaped by the hegemonic forces of the consumer market. That is not to say that the church has consciously followed the model of seeker churches. The point I want to highlight is rather that under the shaping forces of the consumer market, the Evangelical idea of spreading the gospel by all possible means has been materialized in such a way that the sacred space and the activities therein can easily be represented as commodities for consumption. The potentially subversive spatial practices will then be co-­opted by the forces of consumer market again. We can find such kind of contestations again in the worship services of the church. An amiable and technologized sanctuary As in the majority of the Protestant churches, Sunday worship is the most significant ritual practice in Church E and produces the most sacred space every week. Chidester and Linenthal (1995) name ritual as the first identifying feature of a sacred space, and defined sacred space as ‘a ritual site . . . set apart from or carved out of an “ordinary” environment to provide an arena for the performance of controlled, “extraordinary” patterns of action’ (p.  9). As has been mentioned above, this set-­apart ritual site is not inherently sacred in itself, but is the product of the efforts invested in the site by a particular community of believers at a certain period of time. In specific terms, the participants of the worship service on each Sunday create their sacred space by means of their ritual practices, which are composed of the interactions between the physical settings, the audio-­visual information, the religious ideas in the mental space, and bodily presence and movements.

Sacred space under the forces of the market   257 The Sunday worship of the Church E may be seen as exhibiting some major features of the Free Church tradition of Christian worship, such as the absence of liturgical elements, the centrality of preaching, and the emphasis on the inner piety of the believers. Evangelical churches also take worship as a good means for spreading the faith. Members of Church E are often encouraged to invite family members, friends, and relatives to worship to learn about the faith (Cheung 1994). The physical settings of the main hall can be said to be another attempt to put these ideas into a place. To reflect the centrality of worship in the life of church, the main hall of Church E was chosen to be the place of worship for the simple reason that it is the largest area available in the unit. This roughly rectangular shaped area is only about 120 square metres in size. To achieve highest utility of space, plastic stack chairs are used instead of pews and placed in a rectangular manner of rows and columns. The 120 seats of this sanctuary are usually filled up by some ninety participants each Sunday. Except for a simple cross of about the size of an adult on the front-­ end wall above the platform, there is no other obvious religious symbols in this meeting place. If the cross were not installed, this hall for worship would appear to be nothing more than a well-­designed and well-­equipped function room. We may attribute this lack of religious symbolism to the inherited influence of the Reformation. As the Reformation has transformed the space of a church to one with ‘the minimization of decorative detail’ and ‘ “an absence” of signs which itself signifies the accessibility of God only through individual faith and experience’ (MacDonald, 2002, p.  70). Nonetheless Pastor Chu explained that in the original proposed design, the lighting around the platform should be able to produce ‘a glorious effect’, but the result was unsatisfactory because of the tight budget and the poor craftsmanship of the interior decorator. However, the paucity of religious symbolism does not necessary mean it is less attractive. On the contrary, this design matches the expectation of the spiritual seekers of today. For example, Ching, a lady in her thirties, had attended a traditional church for a short while before joining Church E four years ago. Inside the traditional church, she felt distanced by the solemnity and formality. She disliked the old hymns, pews, and the pastors dressed in robes, as they all had seemed to be unapproachable and indifferent. The present settings, in contrast, were much more cordial: Say in here . . . sitting down, you will have a simple feeling . . . I simply see a cross in the middle . . . basically, [this is] the only thing I can see. I can easily focus back on it. I mean, right, the feeling becomes more comfort­ able. If I were a newcomer, I could feel more comfortable when entering here. The appeal of this sacred place is its simplicity and amiability, or the absence of any mysteriousness. This sanctuary of minimum religious symbolism has certainly succeeded in reducing the barriers to newcomers.

258   G.K.K. Yeung As regards the ritual itself, there has been a shift in the style of worship. In the words of Miu, the chair of the Worship Ministry of the church, the Sunday worship has been ‘transforming’. In the past decade, the church has cautiously transformed its Sunday worship from the traditional ‘conservative’ style to what she called the new ‘bolder’ style. By conservative, she was referring to the traditional Evangelical style of singing hymns from hymnals to a piano accompaniment. The participants stand and hold the hymnals in hands while singing hymns, and sit down and listen quietly to the sermon. The bolder style exemplifies the increasingly fashionable ‘worship and praise’. In a typical new occasion, the worship will be led by a worship team composed of a precentor, a lead vocalist, and players of guitars, keyboards, and drum-­set. Lyrics of the praise songs and images will be shown on screen by using computer and projector. The lead vocalist will sing praise songs with the microphone in hand, with a smack of the pop singer appearance. Immersed in the light music resembling that of popular songs, the participants will sway their bodies gently and some of them even lift up and wave their hands in the rhythms of the music. To accommodate this new style of worship, on the platform of the main hall, in addition to a pulpit and a piano, there are now also instruments for playing band-­like music such as a keyboard and a drum-­set. A computer-­projection system is installed for showing Powerpoint slides and videos. Pastor Chu informed me that the hall can furnish very high-­standard sound effects, thanks to the talent and effort of a member who works in a television company. Some of the members, especially the young people, have strongly requested for the shift to the new style of worship that gives ‘richer’ music. Miu said the young people love this kind of music, because It is closer to the current culture. Of course I am not saying that we have to yield to the culture of young people by changing the worship. Because young people are not the centre, but God is the centre. But perhaps because nowadays people love singing karaoke, or for some reason I don’t understand, they can accept this kind of music more readily. The church leadership nonetheless did hesitate over moving completely toward the new style of worship. Although the young people had fought for the use of the worship team for more than six years, the new style was only implemented a year ago. It is partly because some older members find the music just too loud and noisy, and partly because the younger people seemed to hold an incorrect attitude. Miu recounted that At first, they thought a different kind of music and different instruments could attract more people to come, or use these as a medium to attract more people. To certain extent, it is ok to attract more people by using this kind of worship. But we have to be careful that the centre is God, not those instruments or those songs and music. . . . We hope at least they wouldn’t make it [the worship] their own performance.

Sacred space under the forces of the market   259 Currently, the church have settled the debate by offering an assortment of worship styles. The new type will be employed in one-­fifth of the services, while the dwindling conservative style represents only one-­tenth of the total. The remaining majority is in a moderate style, which is something like the ‘worship and praise’ style without the worship team. Whether it is the bolder or the moderate types, computer and multimedia technology has been integrated into the worship. Equipped by computer technology, the preachers even employ slidehows, pictures, and video clips as teaching aids in their sermons. The sacred space is filled up with musical tones, images, and videos. Sometimes, before the congregation singing the praise songs themselves, video clips with lyrics taken from Youtube are first shown on screen as interludes. The form is so close to that of karaoke that some participants actually sing along with the clips in a low voice. Even during the prayer and meditation, there is background music. Silence virtually has no place in the whole worship time. The sermons, the lyrics, the precentors’ sharing are full of therapeutic messages for individuals, encouraging each participant to brave the difficulties in their work and family life. All these characteristics of the Sunday worship of Church E echo with those of the seeker-­sensitive churches. The physical settings, the communication technology, the praise songs, the musical instrumentation, the bodily movements are all geared toward the creation of a sacred space that meets the felt needs of seekers. The multimedia technology, the pop-­song-like praise songs, and karaoke-­like video clips help create an atmosphere that the participants feel familiar and at home. The leadership nonetheless does set a boundary on the extent of the seeker-­sensitive orientation. The church’s Worship Ministry often receives many complaints from the participants, grumbling about matters such as the temperature of air-­conditioning, the quality of projected images, the effects of the audio system. Miu, the chair of the Ministry, said these complaints are not all valid, for in comparison with worshipping God, they are only peripheral issues. There is always a need to keep the forces of market from running wild.

Conclusions Through analysis of a case of an upper-­floor Protestant church located in a residential building, we have explored some of the issues of cultural politics in the construction of sacred space in the urban landscape of Hong Kong. The history of relocation of Church E has demonstrated the enormous shaping effects of the hegemonic forces of real estate market on the acquisition of a place for constructing sacred space. The selection of a site for relocation is mainly based on cost-­benefit considerations. Other relevant factors such as relationship with local community, the needs of the neighbourhood, and the memories of past experience can receive relatively little attention. In exploring the symbolic representations of the present site of the church, we have found that a number of symbols, such as lampstand, home, playgroup, and café, have been employed to represent

260   G.K.K. Yeung the sacred space. This hybridized representation of the space has successfully appropriated the site originally designed for doing business. These spatial practices of the inhabitants, namely the congregation, have to an extent subverted the hegemonic discourse of the capitalist market. On the other hand, the spatial practices of the Church E are not immune from the influence of the market. Specifically, the Evangelical idea of spreading the gospel by all means is materialized in a way that has represented the sacred space and the spatial practice therein as commodities for consumption. Finally, we have analyzed the Sunday worship of Church E. It is found that new communication technology, new musical instruments and a new worship style are employed in producing a sacred space in which the participants feel familiar and at home. The idea of solely worshipping God and the ideas of using worship as a means for evangelization and receiving consolation enter into tension when they are materialized in space. For a Protestant community like Church E that is located in a residential building in urban Hong Kong, the construction of sacred space partly entails gathering limited resources to search for a better site and making itself visible and attractive to seekers. In the course of the production of sacred space, there will be contestations between utilitarian calculations of development and concerns of human relations and religious values. How to appropriate and represent a sacred space that can resist and subvert the hegemonic forces of the market remains a continuous challenge to be overcome.

Notes 1 It is interesting that although van der Leeuw (1964) is usually relegated to the group of scholars advocating poetics of the sacred, Chidester and Linenthal have nonetheless distilled some insightful ideas from his work which can contribute to our understanding of the politics of sacred space. They note that the production of a sacred space may involve four types of politics, namely politics of position, property, exclusion, and exile. First, the positioning of a sacred space is a political act, since it involves ‘selection, orientation, limitation, or conquest’, so that ‘every establishment of a sacred place was a conquest of space’ (pp. 7–8). Second, a sacred space is also a place of power, because it is ‘appropriated, possessed, and owned’ as a property. (p.  8) The act of claiming ownership of a property may also include sacred objects, symbols, myths, and rituals. Third, to maintain the boundaries of a sacred space, some persons are excluded. As social relations are formed and negotiated in a sacred place, others are ‘left out, kept out, or forced out (p. 8). Fourth, because of modernization, modern people, in comparison with their predecessors, are in exile from the sacred, and find themselves difficult to experience it (p. 9). 2 Because of the influx of refugees in the early 1950s, the Hong Kong government was unable to build schools to provide education to the newly arrived children. The government then decided to make use of the open space in the rooftops of the newly constructed resettlement estates for running schools (Chung and Ngan, 2002). Most of these rooftop schools were run by Protestants (Ying, 2004, p. 160). 3 The popularity of using the space of the church for reading centres was probably triggered by the increase of full-­time students as a result of the implementation of universal primary education and junior secondary education policies in the 1970s. For the development of Hong Kong education in this period and the post-­war period in general, see Sweeting (1993).

Sacred space under the forces of the market   261 4 Real estate has played a very important role in the economy and hence the everyday life of people. For example, statistical figures show that from 1983 to 1992, an average of 61 per cent of capital investment of Hong Kong was in real estate. Real estate and construction-­related items account for more than 33 per cent of government revenues (Renaud et al., 1997, pp. 17–31).

References Cheung, V. (1994) ‘Ziyou chuantong de chongbai [The worship of Free Church Tradition]’, in K.N. Wang (ed.) Christian Worship Revisited, 2nd edn, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Christian Institute (in Chinese), pp. 155–187. Chidester, D. and E.T. Linenthal (1995) ‘Introduction’, in D. Chidester and E.T. Linenthal (eds) American Sacred Space, Bloomington, IA: Indiana University Press. Chung, C. and M.Y. Ngan (2002) ‘From ‘rooftop’ to ‘millennium’: the development of primary schools in Hong Kong since 1945’, New Horizons in Education: Journal of Education, Hong Kong Teachers’ Association (HKTA), 46. Retrieved from www. hkta1934.org.hk/NewHorizon/abstract/2002n/page24.pdf on 3 December 2010. Davies, D. (1994) ‘Christianity’, in J. Holm and J. Bowker (eds) Sacred Place, London; New York: Pinter Publishers. Eliade, M. (1959) The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, New York: Harcourt, Brace. Knott, K. (2005) ‘Spatial theory and method for the study of religion’, Temenos, 41: 153–184. Kong, L. (2002) ‘In search of permanent homes: Singapore’s house churches and politics of space’, Urban Studies, 39: 1573–1586. Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. MacDonald, F. (2002) ‘Towards a spatial theory of worship: some observations from Presbyterian Scotland’, Social and Cultural Geography, 3: 61–80. Merrifield, A. (1993) ‘Place and space: a Lefebvrian reconciliation’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18: 516–531. Renaud, B., F. Pretorius and B. Pasadilla (1997) Markets at Work: Dynamics of the Residential Real Estate Market in Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Sargeant, K.H. (2000) Seeker Churches: Promoting Traditional Religion in a Nontraditional Way, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Smith, J.Z. (1987) To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stump, R.W. (2008) The Geography of Religion: Faith, Place, and Space, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Sweeting, A. (1993) A Phoenix Transformed: The Reconstruction of Education in Post-­ War Hong, Hong Kong; New York: Oxford University Press. van der Leeuw, G. (1964) Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans. J.E. Turner, 2nd edn, London: Allen & Unwin. Wu, D.C.W. and A.O.K. Fok (2005) Report on 2004 Hong Kong Christian Congregations Survey, Hong Kong: Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement Ltd (in Chinese). Ying, F. (2004) Introduction to Christian Church History of Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary (in Chinese).

Index

aid 12, 74 architecture 249–60 Back to Jerusalem Movement (BJM) 79–80, 85–6, 88, 239 ‘boss Christians’ 10, 138–42, 145–50, 169, 235, 242; see also Wenzhou Boxer Rebellion movement 3, 27, 36 broadcast media, use of 11–12, 53, 81, 92 Buddhism 4–5, 20, 22, 24, 54–5, 83, 86, 110, 113–14, 181, 185, 193, 214, 220, 235, 237 bureaucracy 49, 97, 101, 171, 173, 180, 208, 213, 215, 217–18 business practices and values 10, 85, 89, 93, 141–3, 169–81 business 10, 114, 139, 141–3, 169, 171–81, 191, 209, 227, 259–60 business men/women see entrepreneurs Calvin, John 153, 155–6, 158–61, 165 Calvinism 10, 148, 155–62, 163–5 Cangzhou 126–8, 131–3 capital: cultural 6, 236–7, 239, 241, 243; economic 6, 235; social 6, 142–3, 235–7, 239, 241–2; symbolic 235–6, 244 capitalism/capitalist forces 4–5, 9, 11, 45–6, 92–3, 114, 169–70, 175, 181, 197, 247, 249, 252, 256, 259–60 Catholic Bishops’ Conference 5 Catholic Patriotic Association 5, 8, 28, 111, 124, 127–8, 131–2 Catholicism 9, 17, 20, 26–9, 99, 111–16, 123–35, 220 Catholics 1, 5, 8, 17, 23, 26–7, 61, 99, 106, 110–16, 123–35, 142, 162, 214, 220, 234

charismatic 23, 150, 183, 197–8, 213, 216–18; see also Pentecostal practices Chinese civilization 5, 19, 81 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 1–2, 4, 7, 8, 11, 22, 59, 60–5, 70–1, 73–4, 106–7, 186, 196, 198, 218, 220–2, 225–6, 230 Chinese culture and society, characteristics of 2–6, 19, 81, 84–6, 92, 101–2, 114, 134–5 Christian Council associations 5, 60, 141, 237–8, 243 Christianity, history of 1–6, 27–9, 81–4, 208–9 church buildings and real estate 142, 223, 239, 247–60 church-state relations 11, 19, 47–51, 56–7, 105–18, 123–35, 214–16, 220–30, 234–43 cinema 9, 91–102 citizens 62 citizenship, notions of 64, 66–8, 73–4, 106–8, 135 civic consciousness see civil society civil society 9–10, 38, 62–4, 66–8, 72, 123–6, 128, 130–1, 133–5, 234 Cizhong 1, 106, 114 clergy: harassment and persecution of 28, 211–12, 227; training of 49, 51, 56, 64, 129–31, 210, 226–7, 229, 235, 237–9 Communism and Christianity 2–7, 48–51, 59–66, 81–9, 101–2, 105–18, 124–5, 129 Confucianism 5, 20, 22, 34, 63, 86, 88, 147–9, 158, 163, 165, 169–70, 180–1, 187 connections see network/connections consumption 141, 256, 260 conversion 22, 33–4, 37, 53–6, 87,

Index   263 108–11, 115–16, 118, 143–5, 172, 179, 207, 209–10, 216 corruption 79, 81, 83, 85–7, 102, 169, 171, 173–4, 180, 193, 209, 211, 214 counterculture 86–9 crackdown 28, 223, 225–6, 229; see also harassment cult (s) 4, 10, 26, 55, 83, 220, 225–7, 229, 240–1, 243 Cultural Christians 139–50, 153–4, 156–7, 165 Cultural Revolution, the 4–5, 11, 22, 24–5, 50–1, 83, 88, 129, 147, 209, 213, 216, 218, 236 Dai (ethnic group) 108 Daoism 4, 5, 20, 22, 24, 87, 145, 169, 185, 207, 210, 220, 234 Deng Xiaoping 7, 25, 52, 83 denominationalism (Protestant) 36–7, 39, 46–7, 52–3, 57, 148, 216 disasters and calamities 26, 83–5, 94–5 Dulong (ethnic group) 111, 115 ecclesiastical 11, 208 , 215 economic growth/development 23, 80, 83–5, 87–8, 169–70, 192, 235, 238 entrepreneurs 5, 10, 139, 141, 143, 171–81, 242 ethics see morality ethnic minorities see minorities/minority areas; minzu; nation, the ethnic relations (with the state) 106–8, 114 evangelism see missionary activities evangelical beliefs and practices 6, 256–7 everyday life 1, 7, 18, 22, 25, 106, 192, 248, 252, 261 exorcism 17, 23, 26, 29, 145, 208–9, 210, 216–17, 240 Falungong 2, 26, 55, 185, 214, 226 films 9, 91–102 folk religion 2, 23, 25–7, 99, 142–5, 149, 181, 183, 196–7 foreign elements 20, 23, 113–14, 157, 238–9 Fujian 25, 126, 129, 207 Fuzhou 209–10, 215 globalization 34–5, 45, 85, 105, 218 Gongshan 106, 111–12, 115 guanxi (personal connections) see network/connections guojia (country) 64–6, 70, 239; see also nation, the

Han (ethnic group) 1–2, 9, 20, 106–8, 115 harassment 186, 223, 225–7, 229–30 healing 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 29, 56, 87, 99, 138–9, 143–5, 149–50, 183, 192, 196–8, 208–10, 216–17 ‘healing Christians’ 10, 138, 140, 143–50 hegemony 12, 218, 247, 251, 256, 259–60 Hebei 27, 126–7 Henan 26, 52, 79, 98, 99, 127, 186, 198, 223–4 Hong Kong 11, 84, 91, 171, 247, 249–52, 259–60 house-churches (unofficial/independent churches) 5–6, 8, 10–11, 50, 60, 79, 128, 130, 132, 153, 164, 183, 198, 207–18, 221, 223, 251, 226, 251 human rights 6, 123, 221, 223–7, 229 Huanghaicheng 236–8, 240 Hubei 23, 69, 194, 223, 229 Hui (ethnic group) 108, 110, 234 inculturation see indigenization institutionalization 5, 107, 208, 239 Internet, use of the 6, 81, 84, 227 identity 21, 45–6, 50, 53–4, 56–7, 74, 94, 105–19, 139, 142–3, 148–50, 154–5, 164, 184, 190–1, 207–8, 211–12, 214–18, 254 institutionalization 5, 8, 48, 53, 107, 124–5, 179, 184–5, 208, 212, 214–17, 235–6, 239, 241 Islam 3, 4, 20, 110, 220 intellectuals 5–6, 10, 20, 22, 34, 61, 74, 84, 99, 138, 146–50, 153–4, 156, 158, 161–2, 165–6, 169 industrialization 19, 21 imperialism 21, 27, 59, 211 indigenization 3, 23, 25, 27, 35, 47, 50, 54, 105, 109, 117–18, 138–40, 142–5, 147, 149, 211–12 Jiangxi 223 Jesuits, the 3, 27, 33, 81–2 Lahu (ethnic group) 108 lianghui see Christian Council associations literacy 109, 111 Lisu (ethnic group) 105, 109–11 Maitreya Buddha 87, 193 Mao Zedong 25, 46, 50, 53, 61, 81, 83, 88, 156, 163, 197 Marian devotions 27–8 market see capitalism/capitalist forces

264   Index materialism 142 Miao/Hmong (ethnic group) 105, 108–11 migration 11, 118, 185, 192, 250 millenarian 9, 21, 79–80, 83–5, 87–8, 193, 196 Mindong 126, 128–35 minorities/minority areas 4, 9, 20, 54, 68, 105–18, 147, 155 minzu 9, 61–2, 71, 106–8, 114–15, 118–19; see also nation miracles/miraculous deeds 17–18, 22, 24, 26, 29, 207–10 missionaries 1, 3, 7, 19–21, 24, 27–8, 31, 33–4, 38, 46–9, 59, 61, 81, 83, 105–6, 108–18, 127, 155, 208, 211 missionary activities (e.g. establishment of schools, hospitals and educational institutions) 3, 19–21, 24, 27–8, 105–16, 142, 209, 239, 249 missions 6, 32–3, 35, 47, 73, 108, 110–11, 116, 118, 155, 208–9, 211, 249 modernity 1, 5, 7, 12, 17, 19–23, 25, 27, 46, 56, 147, 149, 153–4, 164, 169 modernization 5, 19, 21, 33, 37, 85, 108–9, 154 moral discipline 20, 22, 28, 143, 148, 155, 158–9, 211 morality 10, 18, 20, 22, 27–8, 68, 71, 73, 155, 160, 164, 168–71, 178, 181 multi-ethnic 9, 115–18 Muslim 3, 55, 214, 231 nation, the 4, 7–9, 20, 59, 61–5, 71–2, 74, 105–8, 194, 211, 226 nationalism 3, 7–8, 37, 59–64, 68, 74, 87, 160 nationality 106, 114–16 Naxi (ethnic group) 1, 112–14 network/connections 6, 11–12, 26, 29, 46, 53–4, 57, 109, 118, 143, 158, 223–6, 229, 236–8 Nu (ethnic group) 1, 105, 110–13, 115 Nujiang 111, 115 overseas Chinese 10, 12, 139, 173–9 paradigm shift 7, 31–5, 37, 88, 234 party-state 2, 4–6, 8, 10, 12, 45, 59–62, 64–6, 68, 70, 72, 74, 165, 184–5, 196–7, 220–30, 235; see also Chinese Communist Party patriotism 5, 8, 61–8, 70–4, 89 patronage 57, 224–30, 239–40 Pentecostal Christianity 10–11, 19, 23, 26,

29, 155–6, 162, 165, 183, 186, 207–8, 216–18 Pentecostal practices 10, 17–26, 29, 51, 144, 207–10, 213, 217–18 political activists/dissidents 81, 227 political connections see network/ connections Pope, the see Vatican, the popular culture 9, 93, 95, 101–2, 150 publishing and distribution (religious) 11–12, 47–8, 50, 81, 84, 109, 111–12, 118, 227–8 Protestant Christianity 7, 19–20, 26, 29, 32, 63, 108–11, 138–50, 207–18, 220–30, 234–44, 247, 260 Protestant work ethic 141–3 Public Security Bureau 124, 127, 238 recruitment strategies 47, 49–50, 184, 186, 191, 195–6, 222, 228, 240, 243, 251–60 Ren, Bumei 79, 84–6 renmin (the people, compatriots) 8, 61, 63–4, 70–1, 73 ritual 18, 27, 34, 52, 54, 82, 114, 140, 142, 158, 183, 190, 207, 248, 252, 256, 258 revival/revivalist movements 1, 8, 23–5, 32, 46–50, 79–82, 87, 89, 155, 183, 197, 209 Religious Affairs Bureau 24, 75, 107, 127, 236 religious authority 2–6, 10, 111, 125, 128, 211–13, 215 religion and politics 2, 7–11, 28–9, 60–74, 107–8, 111, 119, 125, 127–31, 212, 214–16, 220–30, 234–42; see also Communism and Christianity Reform era 4, 5, 11, 19, 25, 29, 45–6, 51, 57, 59, 61, 196, 220–1 religious policy 4, 11, 20, 57, 128–35, 184, 189, 214, 226, 234–6, 240–1, 243–4 rural areas 2, 6, 21, 28–9, 51, 99, 114–17, 139, 143–5, 208, 223–30 sacred 8, 27, 53, 57, 63, 97, 212, 214–15, 217–18, 247–57, 259–60 salvation 8–9, 46–7, 50–1, 62, 78, 80, 83–4, 86, 88–9, 96, 101, 146–7, 162, 183, 190, 192–4 schism 51–3, 213 sects 23, 25–6, 57, 87 secular 8, 17–18, 20, 22–3, 29, 46, 53–4, 57, 61, 80, 88, 146, 148, 158, 161, 163, 180, 212, 215, 251–2 secularization/secularism 3, 5, 37, 148–9

Index   265 separatist/sectarian 26, 55, 69, 87–8, 211–12, 216–18 Seventh-Day Adventism 8, 45–57 Sichuan 87, 102, 110–12, 223 Shandong 79, 223 Shanghai 3, 21, 28, 47–50, 53, 129, 161, 170–1, 174, 176–80, 207 Shaanxi 26, 28, 115, 223 shrines 20, 28 signs and wonders see supernatural, belief in; miracles/ miraculous deeds social work 21, 68 space: concept of 57, 123, 128, 214–18, 247–56, 259–60; design of see architecture state-sanctioned churches 8, 10, 123–35, 213, 215; see also Catholic Patriotic Association and Three-Self Patriotic Movement subculture (s) 10, 54, 138–50 supernatural, belief in the 7, 18, 21, 26–9, 85, 88, 183; see also miracles/ miraculous deeds superstition 22, 28, 144, 209, 240 suppression see religious policy Sun Yat-Sun 83 symbolic representation 5, 17, 22, 113, 161, 248–9, 252–6, 259 symbol (s) 82, 157, 164, 184, 192, 198, 248, 251–5, 259 syncretism 2, 87, 150 Taiping Rebellion 24, 34, 83, 87 Taiwan 91, 171 Tangshan 92, 94–5, 97, 102 Taoism see Daoism Theological (Re)Construction 6, 64, 68–70, 73–4, 138, 149 theology 6, 8, 11, 21, 24, 54, 63–4, 68–70, 78, 81–7, 102, 138–49, 154–7, 217

Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) 5, 8, 19, 20, 22, 24, 35, 45–6, 48, 51–3, 57, 59–75, 78–87, 89–91, 127, 141, 155, 170, 177, 179, 185, 196, 203, 207, 210–11, 213–15, 220–2, 224–32, 234–5, 238, 241–3, 250–2, 255, 257 Tiananmen movement 81, 84, 170 Tianjin 223, 234 Tibet 1, 55–6, 106, 111–12 Tibetan/Zang (ethnic group) 1, 56, 73–4, 108, 110, 112, 114–16 Two Committees (lianghui) see Christian Council association Uighurs/Uyhurs (ethnic group) 108, 214 underground or unregistered religious groups 5–6, 8, 10, 14, 125–35, 208, 210–11, 220–30, 238–9 United Front policy 4, 24, 61, 185, 210–11 universities 3, 20–1, 33, 236 urban/metropolitan areas 2, 6, 21, 29, 46, 60, 93, 99, 138–9, 143, 146, 149, 221, 223, 227–30, 236, 247, 249–51, 260 Vatican, the 1, 4, 28–9, 111–12, 125–6, 128–9, 131–4, 214 Wang, Mingdao 11, 208, 211–13, 215–16 Weber, Max 19, 141, 160–2, 165, 169, 197, 208, 213 Wenzhou 26, 50, 102, 126, 131–5, 138–42, 148, 235, 242 Xingjiang 55, 223, 229 Yuan, Zhiming 79–83, 85–6, 88 Yunnan 1, 106–8, 110–12, 114–15, 223 Zhao, Zichen (also known as T.C. Chao, a theologian) 24, 35–6 Zhejiang 50–3, 57, 126, 131–2, 179