On 11 June 2009, the University of Macau (UM) will hold a talk by Prof. Lian Xi of Hanover College, Indiana, USA on “Homegrown Christianity in China: Past, Present, and Future” at 6:30-7:30 pm in L105, Luso-Chinese Building. Prof. Xi is a renowned expert on Christianity in China, and has a new book soon to come out entitled: Redeemed by Fire: The Shaping of Popular Chinese Christianity in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, forthcoming).
This talk presents Prof. Xi’s main findings on grassroots Protestant Christianity in modern and contemporary China, explores the transformation of Protestant Christianity in China from an alien faith preached and presided over by Western missionaries into an indigenous religion of the masses, and introduces the audience to the major indigenous sects that arose outside the missionary establishment in Republican period.
In the post-Mao era, the spiritual progeny of those sects has emerged as the mainstay of the underground church movement and as some of the leading “evil cults” well acquainted with the wrath of state exorcists. For all the peculiarity of each group, the homegrown Christianity of the Chinese masses has been characterized, as a whole, by a potent mix of evangelistic zeal, charismatic ecstasies, and a fiery eschatology frequently tinged with nationalistic self-assurance. As both a religious and a social movement, it has emerged amidst the upheavals of modern China; with a current membership that rivals that of the Chinese Communist Party—and the ability to galvanize China’s millions into apocalyptic convulsion and messianic exuberance—it is destined to play an important part in shaping the country’s future. Despite its foreign origin, this development signals an evolution of popular religion in modern China in which Christianity joined local beliefs in supplying the core ideology of millenarian movements. Having spilled beyond the boundaries of Western theology and practice, popular Chinese Christianity has also helped form the contemporary tide of the Christianity of the global South and East.
The presentation will be in English and all are welcome.