Visibility in Dilemma: Institutional Work in the Regulatory Practices of Protestant Churches in Wenzhou, China

Abstract

Although scholars have explored the regulatory governance of Christianity at the local level, less attention has been paid to the ambiguity, tension, and inconsistency of the religious policies imposed by the central government and its challenges to local bureaucrats’ regulatory practices. Offering insight into the theory of institutional work, this article intends to address this gap, revealing how local bureaucrats in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, employ contextual solutions (e.g., discursive work, selective implementation, and operational work) to repair the top-down policy problems they encounter. In the post-Mao era, the visibility of local Protestant organisations, in a physical and metaphorical sense, has been entangled with contradictions in religious regulations and the central-local discrepancy.