Abstract:
Religious institutions have played a foundational role in shaping Hong Kong’s educational landscape, yet the emergence of a religiously diverse school sector was neither intentional nor systematically designed. This paper examines how religious plurality in Hong Kong’s school system developed as an unintended outcome of colonial governance, migration, and shifting sociopolitical contexts, fostering religious diversity in ways not formally planned by the state.
The colonial government’s reliance on missionary-led education in the 19th and early 20th centuries reinforced a Christian-centric schooling structure, while Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist groups gradually carved out their own educational spaces. Unlike many postcolonial settings where religion-state relations were formalized through explicit policy frameworks, Hong Kong’s education sector evolved under minimal government intervention. As a result, religious plurality was accidentally institutionalized, as various religious groups secured footholds within the school system without centralized oversight.
By tracing the historical contingencies that shaped Hong Kong’s religious schools—colonial policies, the second half of the 20th-century migration, and post-handover educational reforms—this paper highlights how plurality emerged not as a deliberate ideological commitment but as a pragmatic outcome of governance structures and shifting societal conditions. It provides broader insights into the intersections of secular governance, religious education, and state pluralism in postcolonial contexts.
Background and Significance
Religious education in Hong Kong occupies a unique space at the intersection of colonial governance, religious pluralism, and secular state policies. While existing scholarship has considered the pluralization of Hong Kong’s religious school sector (Tse, 2020; Wong, 2018; Ho, 1996), the processes through which this plurality developed under colonial and postcolonial governance remain underexplored. By situating Hong Kong within scholarship on postcolonial religious education, secular pluralism, and state-religion relations, this study offers a case for understanding how religious diversity can develop in governance frameworks that neither prescribe nor prohibit religious schooling, particularly within a distinctive Asian context.
Method and Data
This paper is based on archival research, policy analysis, and historical interpretation of religious school governance in Hong Kong. Primary sources include: (1) colonial-era government reports on education and religion; (2) post-handover educational policy documents (e.g., Hong Kong SAR education reforms), (3) academic scholarship on religious education in Hong Kong.
By synthesizing these sources, this study traces the historical trajectory of religious plurality in Hong Kong’s school system, examining how colonial education policies continue to shape contemporary governance frameworks. This analysis is particularly relevant given Hong Kong’s position as a neoliberal Special Administrative Region (SAR) within the People's Republic of China, where religion is subject to significant state oversight.
Key Arguments and Contributions
- Religious plurality in Hong Kong’s school sector emerged unintentionally from colonial administrative practices, which privileged Christian traditions while marginalizing Asian and other non-Christian religions. Rather than resulting from deliberate diversity policies, this plurality primarily arose due to demographic shifts—including an influx of migrants and highly qualified educators with distinct religious backgrounds—and increased educational demand shaped by limited colonial involvement in social services (e.g., schooling).
- Hong Kong’s religious school sector evolved without explicit legal frameworks, shaped instead by informal agreements, missionary initiatives, and ad-hoc governmental responses. In post-1997 Hong Kong, despite reduced ideological alignment between the government and religious organizations (particularly Christian denominations), a relatively straightforward framework for religious plurality has emerged at various educational levels, supported by the notably permissive provisions of the Basic Law and related educational policies.
- Unlike many postcolonial contexts that rely on explicit education policies to define religion-state relations (e.g., Formichi, 2015), Hong Kong’s schooling system emerged through missionary-driven practices and minimal government oversight. This approach entrenched Christian privilege and perpetuated a colonial construct of ‘otherness’ (see Gearon, 2001) for non-Christian faiths. Despite the developments above, this dynamic persists into the post-handover era.
- The ‘accidental plurality’ frame offers a fresh theoretical view for analyzing religious education in both Hong Kong and other (postcolonial) contexts with comparable dynamics. Rather than perceiving religious diversity solely through top-down, state-driven policies or conflict/tension-based perspectives, Hong Kong’s case demonstrates how a pluralistic environment can emerge organically under minimal regulatory oversight. This enhances conventional narratives of policy-driven plurality by revealing alternative pathways through which diverse faith-based schooling can be established and sustained.
Conclusion
By analyzing Hong Kong’s religious school sector as a case of accidental plurality, this paper provides a new framework for understanding the intersection of colonial governance, religious education, and secular oversight. Rather than viewing Hong Kong’s religious schooling as a product of deliberate multicultural planning, the study highlights the historical contingencies and governance structures that produced a pluralistic yet largely unregulated religious school sector.
This approach engages historians of religion in education and theorists examining secularity and religious pluralism at the societal level. Furthermore, the Hong Kong case provides comparative insights for scholars investigating how religious diversity emerges in other postcolonial or semi-autonomous regions, particularly where secularity is culturally negotiated (see Bosco, 2015) rather than state-imposed.
This research deepens our understanding of religion-state dynamics in Hong Kong. It contributes to broader theoretical debates on secular pluralism, religious education policy, and postcolonial or semi-autonomous governance contexts.
Keywords
Religious plurality, Hong Kong school education, colonial and postcolonial religious schools, secularity
References
Bosco, J. (2015). Chinese popular religion and Hong Kong identity. Asian Anthropology, 14(1), 8–20.
Formichi, C. (2015). Religion as an overlooked category in Hong Kong legislation. Asian Anthropology, 14(1), 21–32.
Gearon, L. (2001). The imagined other: Postcolonial theory and religious education. British Journal of Religious Education, 23(2), 98–106.
Ho, K. K. (1996). The past, present and future of the religious schools in Hong Kong. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 26(1), 51–59.
Tse, T. K.-c. (2021). Hong Kong – Pluralistic but separate religious education in a multi-religious city. British Journal of Religious Education, 43(2), 190–195.
Wong, M.-Y. (2018). Religious education in a multi-religious context: An examination of four religious schools in Hong Kong. In M. Sivasubramaniam & R. Hayhoe (Eds.), Religion and education: Comparative and international perspectives (pp. 151–166). Symposium Books.
Religious institutions have been central to Hong Kong’s education system, yet its religiously diverse school sector arose inadvertently as a byproduct of colonial governance and persisted into the postcolonial era. This paper contends that religious plurality in Hong Kong’s schools emerged not from deliberate policy but as an unintended consequence of administrative practices under British rule—shaped by laissez-faire oversight in education, reliance on religious bodies, and demographic shifts, notably migration, within evolving sociopolitical conditions. Through historical and institutional analysis, it traces the evolution of religious education from early Christian schooling and the establishment of Hong Kong’s first non-Christian (Buddhist) school in the 1930s to the transformative mid-20th century. It further examines how the educational system solidified existing pluralistic structures despite post-handover ideological tensions and constraints on Western religious influence. The paper analyzes how governance approaches, regulatory frameworks, and religious networks have collectively shaped Hong Kong’s distinctive form of religious plurality.