Abstract
This essay explores the rise of Protestant Christianity at the contemporary stage of China’s globalization as a unique social and cultural phenomenon. Globalization can be seen as not only a homogenization process in political and economic terms, but also a process in which religious ideas and moral principles spread around the world. While in an earlier phase of globalization lack of Christianity was once constructed as a moral argument to ban Chinese migration to the Christian West, in the current context of China’s aggressive business outreach and mass emigration Christianity has become a vital social force and moral resource in binding Chinese merchants and traders in diaspora. By linking the rise of a sinicized version of Christianity in secular Europe with China’s present-day business globalization, I hope to suggest a new transnational framework for studying Chinese Christianity, which has often been examined in the nation-based political context of church-state relations, and for rethinking it beyond the static, decontextualized system of world religions.
Highlights
IntroductionThe last two centuries have witnessed the intertwined development of religion and state secularism in the global context of nation-building
The Nexus of Religion and GlobalizationThe last two centuries have witnessed the intertwined development of religion and state secularism in the global context of nation-building
With the rise of a powerful international discourse on nation-building, the type of religiously inspired self-imposed moral isolation among Chinese Christians in diaspora as described above might continue to heighten. While this sinicized version of Christianity offers an alternative to the secular Chinese project of nation building by addressing the “China dream” in spiritual terms, it seems unlikely to contribute to the building of a global civil society with an insular island mentality
Summary
The last two centuries have witnessed the intertwined development of religion and state secularism in the global context of nation-building. Due to the exclusion-era law prohibiting the immigration of the wives or families of Chinese, there was an extremely skewed sex ratio among the Chinese in the U.S during the first half of the twentieth century, and white missionary-led churches in the bachelor society of Chinatown served as important “rescue homes” for women facing the serious problems of concubinage and prostitution (Cayton and Lively 1955) Both in China and the Chinese diaspora early Western missionaries conceived. Chinatowns in Paris and Rome, have formed transnational church networks that originate in China, and whose operations largely rely on ethnic trading communities and networks This is a story of multidirectional religious transmission under globalization, rather than an overwhelmingly unidirectional movement from the global center to the passive margin or the cultural penetration and reconstruction of Chinese society by the west that characterizes the early modern phase of globalization (see Casanova 2018). The following analysis puts emphasis on issues concerning Christianity and community formation among the Chinese diaspora in France and Italy, the organization and social impact of Chinese immigrant churches, and the development trajectory of Chinese Christianity in the contemporary post-modern, post-secular global age
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