Attached to Paper Session
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Since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, religion in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been “growing by leaps and bounds” (Yang, 2012, p. 3). Ian Johnson (2017) refers to the boom as “one of the great religious revivals of our time” (p. 16). Yet, surprisingly little is known about how the country’s various faiths have managed to attract so many new practitioners. Certainly, much of the expansion can be attributed to individuals proselytizing family members and friends, that is, to religion’s spread via social networks. That, however, is not the whole story. While Mormons knocking on doors in America might convert only one person in a thousand (Stark and Finke, 2000), Massimo Introvigne’s (2020) recent survey of Eastern Lightning (Dongfang shandian) congregants indicates that, among those who joined the faith in China, almost 20% were converted by missionaries, more than twice the number converted by friends. Carsten T. Vala and Kevin J. O’Brien’s (2007) work on Protestants in the PRC similarly attests to the significance of evangelism beyond existing social networks.
The proposed paper aims to enhance our understanding of how outreach to strangers occurs by examining the strategies used by Hare Krishnas in China since 1977, the year they first entered the country’s mainland. I consider their book and food distribution, their public singing, their infiltration of universities’ “English corners,” and their efforts online as well as in Buddhist restaurants and temples. I also look at devotees’ establishment of yoga studios, Chinese medical centers, and academies (*shuyuan*), sites which work to clandestinely introduce religion to outsiders and correspond to the “bridge programs” Nicole Karapanagiotis (2021) observes are on the rise among Hare Krishnas in the West. Finally, I argue that the proselytization strategies used by members of unofficial religions, like the Hare Krishnas, often differ significantly from those utilized by practitioners of official ones (i.e., Daoism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam) and suggest that comparisons between these two categories (official and unofficial), fruitful here, may be so in other areas, as well. Throughout, I make use of neglected English- and Chinese-language sources, including hundreds of hours of archived recordings, and interviews conducted over nine months of ethnographic fieldwork (July 2022–May 2023), among them an in-depth conversation with a Chinese man who was jailed for years as a result of spreading the Hare Krishna movement in his country.
Academic discussion concerning religious outreach in China, when it does occur, tends to focus on what might be termed “strategies of attraction”—methods designed to lure individuals to sacred sites where they can be engaged legally. As Gareth Fisher (2014) notes, evangelists in the PRC are sequestered to “islands of religiosity” (p. 203). Preaching in public is forbidden, and most practitioners are content, or at least willing, to operate within allotted spaces. Rarely do they risk wading into the “sea of secularism” (Fisher, p. 204) which surrounds them but, instead, entice others to their “islands” with “grandiose architecture” (Tarocco, 2014, p. 250), “red-hot sociality” (Chau, 2006, p. 155), or cheap funerals (Colijn, 2016). The scholarly emphasis on “strategies of attraction” no doubt exists because most studies on religion in China deal only with so-called popular religion and the five officially recognized by the state. Thomas Borchert (2012) was among the first to draw attention to this propensity when he criticized anthologies on religion in the post-Mao era for employing a “five religions +” (p. 127) model. Since then, not much has changed.
The few works that do discuss outreach among unofficial religions, such as Sébastien Billioud (2020), Emily Dunn (2015), and Vala and O’Brien’s (2007) studies of Yiguandao, Eastern Lightning, and unregistered Protestantism respectively, reveal interesting parallels to the evangelical work being performed by Chinese Hare Krishnas and confirm the proposed paper’s thesis that official and unofficial religions in the PRC tend to proselytize differently. Since they possess no legal religious sites from and to which they might entice potential recruits, adherents of unofficial religions are less likely and less able than members of official religions to employ “strategies of attraction.” By paying attention to the former, we discover that faiths in China are often being disseminated in unexpected ways and places, that evangelists not only lure but actively seek out potential converts, meeting them where they are—on their “islands” and out at “sea.”
Works Cited
Billioud, Sébastien. 2020. *Reclaiming the Wilderness: Contemporary Dynamics of the Yiguandao*. New York: Oxford University Press.
Borchert, Thomas. 2012. “Scratching the Surface of Religion and ‘Religion’ in Contemporary China: Recent Anthologies about Chinese Religious Life in Reform Era People’s Republic of China.” *Religious Studies Review* 38, no. 3: 125–135.
Chau, Adam Yuet. 2006. *Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China*. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Colijn, Bram. 2016. “Protestant Funerals in Contemporary Xiamen: Change, Resistance, and Proselytizing in Urban China.” *Review of Religion and Chinese Society* 3, no. 1: 25–52.
Dunn, Emily. 2015. *Lightning from the East: Heterodoxy and Christianity in Contemporary China*. Boston: Brill.
Fisher, Gareth. 2014. *From Comrades to Bodhisattvas: Moral Dimensions of Lay Buddhist Practice in Contemporary China*. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.
Introvigne, Massimo. 2020. *Inside the Church of Almighty God: The Most Persecuted Religious Movement in China*. New York: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, Ian. 2017. *The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao*. New York: Vintage Books.
Karapanagiotis, Nicole. 2021. *Branding Bhakti: Krishna Consciousness and the Makeover of a Movement*. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Stark, Rodney, and Roger Finke. 2000. *Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion*. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tarocco, Francesca. 2014. “Pluralism and its Discontents: Buddhism and Proselytizing in Modern China.” In *Proselytizing and the Limits of Religious Pluralism in Contemporary Asia*, edited by Juliana Finucane and R. Feener, 237–254. Singapore: Springer.
Vala, Carsten T., and Kevin J. O’Brien. 2007. “Attraction Without Networks: Recruiting Strangers to Unregistered Protestantism in China.” *Mobilization: An International Quarterly* 12, no. 1: 79–94.
Yang Fenggang. 2012. *Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule*. New York: Oxford University Press.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
Recent studies suggest that evangelism beyond social networks is more important for spreading religion in China than previously thought. Drawing upon neglected English- and Chinese-language sources and the author’s own interviews, this paper aims to enhance our understanding of how outreach to strangers in China occurs by examining the methods used by Hare Krishnas since 1977. It argues that the proselytization strategies employed by members of unofficial religions, like the Hare Krishnas, often differ significantly from those utilized by practitioners of state-sanctioned ones. While the latter rely on “strategies of attraction”—techniques designed to lure individuals to sacred sites where they can be engaged legally, the former actively seek out potential converts in secular spaces and at sites belonging to other religious institutions. It is difficult to generalize about religion in China as a whole, but comparing official and unofficial religions shows promise for making discussions more manageable and productive.