Surviving the State, Remaking the Church: A Sociological Portrait of Christians in Mainland China

by Li Ma, Jin Li

This sociological portrait presents how Chinese Christians have coped with life under a hostile regime over a span of different historical periods, and how Christian churches as collective entities have been reshaped by ripples of social change. China's change from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, or from an agrarian society to an urbanizing society, are admittedly significant phenomena worthy of scholarly attention, but real changes are about values and beliefs that give rise to social structures over time. The growth of Christianity has become interwoven with the disintegration or emergence of Chinese cultural beliefs, political ideologies, and commercial values. Relying mainly on an oral history method for data collection, the authors allow the narratives of Chinese Christians to speak for themselves. Identifying the formative cultural elements, a sociohistorical analysis also helps to lay out a coherent understanding of the complexity of religious experiences for Christians in the Chinese world. This book also serves to bring back scholarly discussions on the habits of the heart as the condition that helps form identities and nurture social morality, whether individuals engage in private or public affairs. ""Li Ma and Jin Li have written an unusually valuable book on the recent history of Christianity in China. Unlike too many others (often speculative or ill-informed), they support their general narrative with extensive ethnographic research. The individuals they have interviewed provide fascinating insights into conversions in prison, the Christian 'harvest' from the Tiannamen Square massacres, effective evangelism at McDonald's and Starbucks, the emergence of Christian NGOs, ongoing tensions between believers and the Chinese Communist Party, the surprising emergence of self-conscious Chinese Calvinist theology, and much more. The result is extraordinary insight concerning perhaps the most important scene of Christian development in the world today."" --Mark Noll, Professor at the University of Notre Dame ""Ma and Li have given us an invaluable set of voices from China's Christian world. Through patient combing of printed texts and many hours of interviews with people today, they allow Chinese Christians to speak for themselves and let us understand how Christianity has become China's fastest-growing--and one of its most influential--religions. Understanding China requires understandings its faiths and beliefs, and especially those of its youngest but most dynamic faith: Christianity."" --Ian Johnson, Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, Author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao ""Readers in the West and the East alike are keen to know more about life in China, both today and in the recent past. For Christian readers, this eager curiosity extends to the churches of China, the majority of which remain officially illegal and are often hidden. What does it mean to be a Christian in China today? How do today's Chinese Christians remember the past? Why have they come to faith? What difference does Christianity make in their lives? Sociologist Li Ma and her husband, theologian Jin Li, have interviewed over 100 Chinese Christians from various parts of the nation. Their voices, so seldom heard, come through with amazing force. This book reveals the hearts and minds of Chinese Christians as never before."" --Joel Carpenter, Director, Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin College ""Surviving the State, Remaking the Church is a truly illuminating book. Based on interviews with Chinese Christians, it provides valuable glimpses into the remarkable stories of how the Chinese churches survived during the era of the most severe repression. It also provides vivid and thoughtful accounts of the many contemporary challenges facing Chinese Christians even as their churches continue to flourish."" --George Marsden, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Notre Dame Li

Genres: China

226 pages, Hardcover

Published December 11, 2017

Reviews

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb, informative, and deeply moving. Based on book research (which it usefully presents in a more readable style than some of the heavily academic sources), on years of participant-observation, and most valuably on extensive interviews with Christians from across China, these Chinese scholars aim to give a personal yet objective account of several important aspects of Christian communities and of individual Christian lives, aspirations, dashed hopes, struggles, ideals, charitable work, etc. in the PRC over the last few decades. Although there are plenty of generalisations and inferences, as such a large topic demands, particularly in the context of restricted access to information, attempts to suppress relevant research, institutional inertia, a climate of uncertainty and so on, the extensive quotations from the authors' interviews with hundreds of (largely urban, mostly but not exclusively well-educated) Christians nevertheless give a vivid and very human picture of the complexities, suffering and joys of this fast-growing (from 1 million Protestants in 1949 to 60+ million today) movement. The chapter on how the 1989 crackdown drove many people into the arms of "religion" was full of dark ironies and hope. So easy to forget the upheavals and confusion and injustices of the late 80s and early 90s when you live among the whitewashing propaganda lies of today's even less forgiving incarnation of post-totalitarianism...

The ongoing tragedies of official hostility to the churches, to all kinds of civil society, to any academics who dare to express alternatives or questions, to all kinds of self-expression also come out very clearly, in the statistics and in the words of those whose faith in the system and the Party has been destroyed by its oppression and corruption. This large scale tragedy is seen in individual psychological anguish repeated millions of times over and in the costs borne by society riven with all kinds of problems family, relational, educational, environmental, etc. Thankfully there is light in that darkness. This book gives us a glimpse of such light.

[Joann Pittman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent!