Urban Property as Spiritual Resource: The Prosperity Gospel Phenomenon in Coastal China

Abstract

Since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 and the subsequent withdrawal of foreign missionaries, Protestant Christianity has been thoroughly indigenized in China by weaving itself into ritual forms, sets of cultural assumptions, and the fabric of power relations derived from immediate local realities. In the absence of a central interpretative authority, organizationally independent church groups are often divided along rural/urban lines, by theological differences, and due to varying relationships with the state apparatus. Pentecostalism has been the most active and dynamic of all Chinese Christian groups outside the officially controlled church system in part due to its ability to adapt to changing local circumstances and its emphasis on people’s direct religious experience. In the last few decades of dramatic economic development, the growth of the Pentecostal sector of Chinese Christianity seems to have become increasingly pronounced in certain regions. This has to do with the rapid expansion of new urban church space informed by the emerging prosperity gospel movement. This chapter explores the socio-economic dynamics of urban Christian revival in post-Mao China with a focus on the rise of the prosperity gospel in developed coastal regions. I first place this prosperity gospel in the historical context of Pentecostal development in modern China.