Materiality in the absence of the church: Practising protestantism during China's Cultural Revolution

ABSTRACT

This article begins by presenting a paradox, wherein Protestant converts during China's Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) proclaimed to turn to a faith that had been deprived of authorized forms of religious mediation. Inaccessible to religious authorities, Protestantism was differentiated from Chinese popular religion by its repudiation of material images, but nonetheless, Protestants developed ways to practise their faith that included the improvizational handling of materials. Dematerialization and rematerialization worked together to forge a semiotically defined Protestant identity in which oral communication with the divine took precedence over tangible religious objects. This semiotic feature accorded Jesus with enduring power and divinity that could not be deprived by the devastation of religious buildings, icons, and scriptures, giving Protestantism an edge over local cults. Employing Webb Keane's concept of semiotic ideology, I demonstrate how Protestantism maintained its distinctness and began to grow in the absence of the church.

KEYWORDS:

• Protestantism
• China
• the Cultural Revolution
• semiotic ideology
• materiality

Acknowledgements

Early versions of this paper were presented at National Chengchi University, Academia Sinica, and the 2019 East Asian Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Conference. I received helpful responses from both audiences. I am grateful to Wei-ping Lin, Chris White, Shu-li Huang, Ke-hsien Huang, and Jen-chieh Ting for their productive comments and suggestions. Finally, I thank two anonymous reviewers; their engaged reviews have shaped this paper in important ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, ROC (Taiwan) under Grant [MOST 105-2410-H-001 -053 -MY2].