1.1 Introduction
Christianity flourishes in areas suffering profound dislocations amid regime change and warfare. This is particularly true for the Chaozhou-Shantou region (today’s Chaoshan ) in northeastern Guangdong Province. This edited collection explains the appeal of Christianity in Chaoshan , as it transitioned from a stage of disintegration in the late imperial era into the cosmopolitan and entrepreneurial region it is today. The chapters draw on the latest archival research and fieldwork by international and Chinese scholars to argue that Christianity played multiple roles in Chaoshan , facilitating mutual accommodations and adaptations among foreign missionaries and native converts.
This work builds on two conventional approaches to the study of Christianity in modern China. The first method involves exploring this global-turned-local religion under the framework of Western modernity, narrating the role of foreign missionary enterprises in indigenizing Christianity and that of native converts as active initiators of faith and practices (Ling 1999; Lutz 2008). Rather than being subordinate recipients, the Chinese proved to be competent church administrators and learned theologians from the beginning, making the Christian message more relevant to fellow countrymen than did the missionaries (Wang 2007; Wu 2005; Yang 2014). Some native church leaders went so far as to separate themselves from the missionaries and to integrate the theologies and liturgies of Western Christianity into local culture (Constable 1994; Lian 2010). The second approach is a China-centered one that juxtaposes foreign missionary enterprises with independent preachers and congregations, thereby highlighting the Chinese reception of the Gospel, especially among commoners, and their unique contributions to the churches (Austin 2007; Clark 2011; Harrison 2013; Sweeten 2001). Studying the biographies of home-grown revivalists such as Dora Yu (Yu Cidu 1873–1931), John Song (Song Shangjie 1901–44), Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng 1903–72), and Wang Mingdao (1900–91) reveals to us this trend. These leaders were once affiliated with the denominational churches, but they broke away from the mission institutions and reinvented themselves as faith-based evangelists. Some eventually created independent congregations, such as Watchman Nee’s Little Flock, also known as the Assembly Hall (juhuichu) or Local Assembly (difang jiaohui), and Wang Mingdao’s Beijing Tabernacle (Beijing Huitang). Dora Yu and John Song were praised for their revivalist teachings and assumed greater spiritual authority than that of the missionaries (Harvey 2002; Lin 2017; Roberts 2005; Wu 2002). In addition, scholarly studies into the True Jesus Church (Zhen yesu jiaohui) and the Jesus Family (Yesu jiating) revealed a strong spirit of independence from the mission institutions in the Republican era (1911–49). The importance of native agency in localizing the Gospel and church management stands out as the signature focus of this trend (Bays 1996: 309, 2011; Mungello 2015). According to Ryan Dunch (2014: 336–7), these linear frameworks are derived from the ideological environment of post-1949 China, where separating Chinese from global churches was part of Communist antireligious policy. This leads to a scholarly investigation of when Christianity became wholly indigenous and by what criteria that can be assessed.
Instead of dichotomizing the global and local ties of Christianity, this book acknowledges a symbiotic relationship between localizing Christian faith practices and maintaining fellowship with the global church. It historicizes Western missionaries and native Christians as effective forces in maintaining global–local religious ties and the state–society balance. It argues that the trajectory of Christianization in maritime South China should be seen as a process of civilizational change that inspired individuals and communities to construct a sacred order capable of empowerment in times of chaos and confusion. Once global Christianity rooted itself in Chaozhou as a truly indigenous religion through the Christianization of family genealogies and lineage networks , native congregations acquired a level of autonomy that permitted a greater role for faith-based institutions in community governance.
1.2 Why Chaozhou?
Chaozhou (Prefecture of Tidal Wave) is not a homogeneous region; it is composed of many linguistic, cultural, social, and ethnic groupings. Its complex and diverse religious landscape is even harder to comprehend. Conventional generalizations are problematic because of the following methodological limits. First, geographically, Chaozhou is in Guangdong Province on the South China coast, an area far from the central and provincial governments and notorious for its long history of inter-/intra-village violence ( xiedou ). The Chaozhou dialect was the dominant language along the coast of the prefecture, whereas the Hakka dialect was widely spoken in the poorer interior. Those people who lived between the Chaozhou- and Hakka -speaking areas were bilingual, widely known as semi-Hakkas (banshanke). The native sons were notorious for their volatility, as exemplified by the Chaozhou braves (Chaoyong). These feisty and troublesome men were recruited by the late imperial Qing government to crush the Taiping rebels in the mid-nineteenth century.
Second, the long coastline of Chaozhou, known for its tidal waves (from which it gets its name), reoriented both Christians and non-Christians from an inward-looking Great Wall mentality that opposed contact with foreigners, to an outward-looking maritime culture that seized overseas opportunities and embraced new ideas and practices from abroad. Let us imagine that you grew up in Chaozhou. Even if you had never seen the ocean before, you saw rivers daily and imagined them widening out into the South China Sea. You had a picture of this great body of water in your mind from descriptions heard from travelers to Southeast Asia, Shantou merchants, and foreign missionaries coming upriver. You might wonder about the appeal of global Christianity. You might also imagine leaving home one day for a world of countless opportunities, of crowded commercial cities like Shantou , Hong Kong, Bangkok , and Singapore, and of tropical fruits and exotic commodities. By contrast, if you were born in the mountainous interior of neighboring Jiangxi Province, you might not think about the outside world at all and might spend your entire life in an isolated village settlement.
Third, the recent innovation of Chaozhou Scholarship (Chaozhou xue) by Rao Zongyi, initially funded by wealthy merchants of Chaozhou origin in Hong Kong, and now endorsed by the Chinese municipal and national authorities, addresses the Confucian literati’s representations of Chaozhou in classical literature. These scholars are mainly concerned with the Confucianization of this maritime frontier and pay little attention to the divergent languages, cultures, economies, and ethnicities in Chaozhou. Neither do they discuss what constituted Chaozhou in different temporal and spatial settings. People from the traditional political and cultural center of Chaozhou prefectural city and Shantou often dismiss those in the Hakka interior as less Confucianized and look down upon people from the districts of Haifeng and Lufeng.
Fourth, those scholars who study Chaozhou culture apply varying methodologies to investigate the diverse religious landscape. Some view doctrinal teachings and religious rituals through the lens of anthropology, folklore studies, and administrative control. Historians of Christianity in Chaozhou explore religion along sectarian lines, focusing on the experiences of American Baptists, English Presbyterians, Roman Catholics , and Seventh -day Adventists and giving scant attention to faith practices cutting across denominations . One notable example of faith practices behaving in this way was a significant group of Christians that existed inside, or alongside, the mainline denominations and displayed a distinctly maritime religious ethos. They had little need for any strict confessional church structure; and they did not care about participation in any nationwide Christian organization with a clear Chinese nationalistic purpose and identity. They made concerted efforts to blend their unique denominational identities into territorial and lineage structures, and intermarried across denominations while holding onto their ecclesiastical and community lives. As with other global Christian movements, Christianity in Chaozhou represented an enduring religious subculture in which local believers asserted continuity with their past and projected a unifying sense of identity among themselves in the present. Bounded by this notion of historical solidarity, Christians in Chaozhou considered themselves to be heirs to the Baptist, Catholic , Presbyterian, and Seventh -day Adventist movements. They adhered to their faith as a symbolic identity and a source of comfort and solace in the face of unpredictable risks in life.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the region had become the local headquarters of the fast-growing American Baptist and English Presbyterian movements. A maritime society with entrepreneurial and sociocultural connections with Hong Kong and Southeast Asia, Chaozhou had a long tradition of overseas migration. Since the eighteenth century, countless natives left their families to find work in Siam (now Thailand ), planning to return to China upon retirement. While living abroad, they maintained contact with their home villages through strong kinship and native place ties, which provided an effective network of support. In the 1830s, American Baptist missionaries who preached among Overseas Chinese in Siam chanced upon a way to reintroduce Christianity to the Chinese mainland (Christianity was banned as a heterodox religion there in 1724). They encouraged Overseas Chinese ...