Conversion to Protestant Christianity in China and the ‘supply-side model’: explaining changes in the Chinese religious field

Abstract

In this article, I put the ‘supply-side model’ advocated by religious economists to an empirical test. The ‘supply-side’ model in some measure already constitutes a move ‘beyond the market’, as it seeks to expand and enlarge the economic interpretation of religion by linking it to a concept of networks and social tensions and integrating the concept of religious and cultural capital. In applying the model to the (dynamics of the) historical growth of Protestantism in 19th and early 20th-century China, I examine three distinct aspects of the conversion process: the supply-side (missionaries), the demand niches (Chinese converts), and the question of ‘strict’ churches. Arguing that the religious background of Protestant converts – their rootedness in Chinese popular religion – determined this process throughout, I seek to develop an understanding of religious competition, supply and demand that takes cultural interpretive frameworks into account.

Keywords:

• theory of religion
• religious economy
• China
• Christianity
• Protestantism

Acknowledgements

This article has been long in coming. Much of the initial research (especially with regard to the theoretical framework) was conducted during my research fellowship at the College of Cultural Studies, University of Constance, Germany in 2007-8. I wish to thank the College for its intellectually stimulating atmosphere and generous support. Thanks also go to Hubert Seiwert, Christian Meyer and two anonymous reviewers for providing valuable comments on this and earlier versions of my text.

Notes

¹I am drawing here on discussions at the two conferences mentioned in the introduction to this volume, as well as on the comments of an anonymous reviewer on an earlier version of this paper.

²It is interesting to observe that the term ‘compensator’, defined as ‘a belief that a reward will be obtained in the distant future or in some other context which cannot immediately verified’ (Stark and Bainbridge 1985: 6, cf. Stark and Bainbridge [1979]), has disappeared from the religious economic vocabulary in ‘Acts of Faith’, possibly because of its pejorative overtones. Note, however, that the concept of put-off rewards itself has been retained (Finke and Stark 2000: 88). By the same token, ‘utility’, another important term in earlier works (cf. Iannaccone [1998: 1479]) is also conspicuously absent in the more recent book. It is important to note, also, that Stark and Finke (2000: 41) have rejected the label of ‘Rational Choice Theorists’.

³Thus, another important distinction – that between cult and sect – has also disappeared. Both were understood as deviant religious communities; however, cults were thought to be situated ‘outside the conventional religious tradition(s) of a society’ (Stark and Bainbridge 1997: 104; cf. also Stark and Bainbridge [1979, 1985: 24–26]; Stark [2003: 261–262], which latter was originally published in 1996), while sects exist within these traditions. In terms of China, Protestant Christianity in the early 19th century would have constituted a cult, as would Buddhism at the time of its first appearance more than a thousand years earlier.

⁴The distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘culture’ seems to be meaningful here, wherefore I have added the emphasis. The alternative term of ‘cultural capital’ (Stark 2003: 261) seems to suggest a loose cultural framework rather than the transfer of knowledge and mastery of a religion as suggested in Acts of Faith.

⁵It is for this reason that my analysis largely excludes the urban, often more liberal, sector of Protestantism.

⁶This terminology is not confined to the religious-economy model. A similar terminology substituting ‘rewards’ with ‘goods’ – an explicit echo of the Weberian concept of ‘salvation goods’ or Heilsgüter – is used by Stolz (2008: 61).

⁷The one noteworthy exception was Xinjiang (at the time a Special Administrative District), where the ratio of employed workers reached 48% of communicants, but this was due to low membership figures.

⁸For the importance of these ‘number games’ cf. Bays (2003: 185). For the mid-1990s, Währisch-Oblau (1996: 530) quotes estimates ranging from 8.5 million to more than 65 million Protestants, dismissing the latter as unsubstantiated. Fiedler (2010: 72) allows for a maximum of 40 million, but considers estimates of 25–30 million as most credible. Aikman (2003: 6–8) gives the decidedly most optimistic figures, estimating the combined Protestant-Catholic strength at more than 80 million as opposed to the official claims of only 21 million.

⁹In context of this paragraph, the term ‘charismatic’ (in quotation marks) is not used to denote a charismatic form of Christianity (as above), but points to a grassroots version of Christianity that tends to be independent of guidance by professional and academic theologians.

¹⁰One would have to determine for each of these groups to what extent state persecution plays a role in their successes or failures, but this clearly surpasses the limitations of this article.

¹¹Bruce (2000: 42) talks about the supply-siders’ lack of ‘reference to differences in theology or ecclesiology’ – an understanding that must be broadened for the purpose of this article.