Item Details

The Undercurrent Coming to the Surface: Pentecostal Strategies, Entrepreneurship, and the Nation State in the Chinese World

Issue: Vol 19 No. 1 (2020)

Journal: PentecoStudies

Subject Areas: Religious Studies

DOI: 10.1558/pent.41047

Abstract:

This paper explores the convergence and divergence in the development of Chinese Christianity and the global surge of Pentecostalism by focusing on the evolution and expansion of an indigenous Pentecostal sector in Chinese Christianity. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork among prosperous urban church communities in coastal southeast China and the growing Chinese merchant diaspora in Europe, I show that the Pentecostal undercurrent sustained by mostly charismatic women and their rural networks has come to surface and been increasingly transformed by an entrepreneurial male-dominated prosperity gospel. The surfacing of this Chinese Pentecostal undercurrent under the current context of China’s state-led modernization and global business outreach has resulted in a combination of entrepreneurial logic, spiritual renewal, and emotional nationalism in a self-envisioned Chinese-led global mission movement, contributing to the growth of a neo-Pentecostal sector of post-Mao, globalizing Chinese Christianity.

Author: Nanlai Cao

View Original Web Page

References :

Anderson, Allan. "Introduction: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia". In Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang (eds), Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia. London: Regnum Books International, 2005.

André, Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (eds). Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Austin-Broos, Diane J. Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226924816.001.0001

Austin-Broos, Diane J. "Jamaican Pentecostalism: Transnational Relations and the Nation State". In Corten André and Ruth Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Bays, Daniel. "Christian Revival in China: 1900-1937". In Edith L. Blumhofer and Randall Balmer (eds), Modern Christian Revivals. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Bays, Daniel. "Indigenous Protestant Churches in China, 1900-1937: A Pentecostal Case Study". In Steven Kaplan (ed.), Indigenous Responses to Western Christianity. New York: New York University Press, 1995.

Bays, Daniel. "Chinese Protestant Christianity Today". The China Quarterly 174 (2003): 494-5. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009443903000299

Cao, Nanlai. "Boss Christians: The Business of Religion in the 'Wenzhou Model' of Christian Revival". The China Journal 59 (2008): 63-87. https://doi.org/10.1086/tcj.59.20066380

Cao, Nanlai. Constructing China's Jerusalem: Christians, Power and Place in Contemporary Wenzhou. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Cao, Nanlai. "Urban Property as Spiritual Resource: The Prosperity Gospel Phenomenon in Contemporary Coastal China". In Amos Yong and Katy Attanasi (eds), Pentecostalism and Prosperity: The Socio-Economics of Global Charismatic Movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Cao, Nanlai. "Elite Christianity and Spiritual Nationalism". Chinese Sociological Review 9 (2012): 27-47. https://doi.org/10.2753/CSA2162-0555450202

Cao, Nanlai. "Renegotiating Locality and Morality in a Chinese Religious Diaspora: Wenzhou Christian Merchants in Paris, France". The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 14.1 (2013): 85-101. https://doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2012.739198

Cao, Nanlai. "Gender, Modernity, and Pentecostal Christianity in China". In Robert Hefner (ed.), Global Pentecostalism in the 21st Century. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Cao, Nanlai. "Spatial Modernity, Party Building, and Local Governance: Putting the Christian Cross-removal Campaign in Context". The China Review 17.1 (2017): 29-52.

Chow, Alexander. Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination in Chinese Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198808695.001.0001

Cline, Erin. "Female Spirit Mediums and Religious Authority in Contemporary Southeastern China". Modern China 36.5 (2010): 520-55. https://doi.org/10.1177/0097700410372921

En, Hui. "Comments on Spiritual Cultivation Meetings". Tianfeng 9 (2005): 18-19.

Fällman, Fredrik. "Culture and Christ? Developments of Faith among Chinese Intellectuals". In Francis Khek Gee Lim (ed.), Christianity in Contemporary China: Socio-Cultural Perspectives. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Fulton, Brent. China's Urban Christians: A Light that Cannot be Hidden. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2015.

Huang, Jianbo. Dushi li de xiangcun jiaohui: Zhongguo chengshi hua yu mingong Jidujiao [Country Churches in Cities: Urbanization and Christianity of Migrant Workers in China]. Hong Kong: Logos and Pneuma Press, 2012.

Hunter, Alan and Chan, Kim-Kwong. Protestantism in Contemporary China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511627989

Inouye, Melissa Wei-Tsing. China and the True Jesus: Charisma and Organization in a Chinese Christian Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190923464.001.0001

Kang, Jie. "The Rise of Calvinist Christianity in Urbanising China". Religions 10.8 (2019): 481. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10080481

Kao, Chen-Yang. "The Cultural Revolution and the Emergence of Pentecostal-style Protestantism in China". Journal of Contemporary Religion 24.2 (2009): 171-88. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537900902816657

Koesel, Karrie J. "China's Patriotic Pentecostals". Review of Religion and Chinese Society 1 (2014): 131-55. https://doi.org/10.1163/22143955-04102002b

Lauterbach, Karen and Vähäkangas, Mika (eds). Faith in African Lived Christianity: Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004412255

Lee, Joseph Tse-hei. "Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China". Church History 74.1 (2005): 68-96. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640700109667

Lian, Xi. Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. https://doi.org/10.12987/yale/9780300123395.001.0001

Martin, David. Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

Nyíri, Pál. "Moving Targets: Chinese Christian Proselytising among Transnational Migrants from the People's Republic of China". European Journal of East Asian Studies 2 (2003): 263-301. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006103771378428

Oblau, Gotthard. "Pentecostal by Default? Contemporary Christianity in China". In Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang (eds), Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia. London: Regnum Books International, 2005.

Pan, Junliang. "Rethinking Mediumship in Contemporary Wenzhou". Review of Religion and Chinese Society (2019): 229-52. https://doi.org/10.1163/22143955-00602005

Starr, Chloë. "The Chinese Church: A Post-denominational Reality?". In Stanley D. Brunn (ed.), The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2015.

Vala, Carsten. The Politics of Protestant Churches and the Party-State in China, God above Party? New York: Routledge, 2017. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315178202

Yang, Fenggang and Ebaugh, Helen Rose. "Religion and Ethnicity among New Immigrants: The Impact of Majority/Minority Status in Home and Host Countries". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40 (2001): 367-78. 

https://doi.org/10.1111/0021-8294.00063