ID | 162845 |
Title Proper | Removing transcendence |
Other Title Information | regulating christianity in southwest China in the 1950s |
Language | ENG |
Author | Liang, Yongjia |
Summary / Abstract (Note) | The article analyzes primary sources about regulating Catholic and Protestant communities in Dali, Southwest China, during the heyday of the People’s Republic. It was a process of sophisticated containment, inltration, spying, and coercion, with a corresponding restrained use of violence. is is surprising given that, rst, both Catholic and Protestant communities were small and, second, that violence against other potential threats—counterrevolutionaries and landlords—was severe. I suggest the goal for the local Department of United Front ( 統戰部 tongzhan bu) was not to eradicate Christianity by force but to divide the church into those who would submit themselves to the communist utopia and isolate the hard-core devotees with the expectation that both would eventually die out without “contaminating” the emerging socialist subjects. e regulatory process was one in which the state power attempted to remove the Christian transcendence with a communist one. e article challenges the state-society dichotomy underlying the study of Chinese religiosity, especially the claim of “militant atheism,” which depicts the People’s Republic of China’s early policy on Christianity. |
`In' analytical Note | China Review Vol. 18, No.4; Nov 2018: p. 85–105 |
Journal Source | China Review 2018-12 18, 4 |
Key Words | Christianity ; Southwest China ; 1950s |