My main research interest is to understand Protestant religious change in modern and contemporary China. The explosion of Protestant Christianity in China in the last two decades of the twentieth century was not the fruitful outcome of institutional Christianity built up painstakingly by missionaries in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. It was a rural, female, and Pentecostal phenomenon. I explore the dynamism of this post-missionary transformation and situate it in two contexts: the changing religious field in modern China and the demographic, sociological, and theological transitions of world Christianity.
More specifically, I have been studying the impact of China’ Cultural Revolution on Protestantism. The banning of religious authorities during the Cultural Revolution brought about a decentralized and experiential Protestant religious form, which proved successful at communicating across cultural frontiers and contributed to Protestant breakthroughs in rural areas. I indicate that this religious form has had long-lasting effects on Chinese Protestantism today, including the advent of Pentecostal practices, anti-institutional inclinations, and women-dominated religious communities at the local level.
My current research concerns the deep interaction between, and the mechanism for distinguishing, Chinese popular religion and Protestant religiosity. I also want to investigate the recent return of denominationalism among both official and unofficial Protestant groups.
My work explores post-missionary transformations of Christianity in China, especially under the period of the Cultural Revolution. I am particularly interested in subjects related to trajectories of house church movements in both rural and urban settings, Pentecostalism, Chinese indigenous churches, religion and gender, and the interplay between Chinese popular religion and Protestantism in local contexts. Up to now, most of my fieldwork has been conducted in Fujian and Sichuan.