The Undercurrent Coming to the Surface

Abstract

This paper explores the convergence and divergence in the development of Chinese Christianity and the global surge of Pentecostalism by focusing on the evolution and expansion of an indigenous Pentecostal sector in Chinese Christianity. Drawing on extended ethnographic fieldwork among prosperous urban church communities in coastal southeast China and the growing Chinese merchant diaspora in Europe, I show that the Pentecostal undercurrent sustained by mostly charismatic women and their rural networks has come to surface and been increasingly transformed by an entrepreneurial male-dominated prosperity gospel. The surfacing of this Chinese Pentecostal undercurrent under the current context of China’s state-led modernization and global business outreach has resulted in a combination of entrepreneurial logic, spiritual renewal, and emotional nationalism in a self-envisioned Chinese-led global mission movement, contributing to the growth of a neo-Pentecostal sector of post-Mao, globalizing Chinese Christianity.

Leaps in the womb of Asia: Transformative intercultural discipleship in a sacred space

“…The voices of the "silent majority" derived from the rural Pentecostal/ charismatic church movement, called by scholars as "quasi-Pentecostalism" (Bays, 2012) or "Pentecostal-style Protestantism" (Kao, 2013), carried on the wave of urbanization have been largely neglected, even though their leaders remain key actors of the Chinese church movement. Although fragmentary ethnographic studies on the theological and ecclesial development of some groups have been researched (Cao, 2010(Cao, , 2020Kang, 2016Kang, , 2019Kao, 2013;Keating, 2012;Xin, 2009), the gap to fill remains large, and in-depth missiological and theological reflections are mostly absent in the current arena. In addition, the nuances of Christian discipleship within Chinese contexts grounded in lived experiences have not been explored in depth in a geo-politically sensitive state (Yang et al, 2017: 3-9).…”