Models of Mobility: Urbanising Protestant Congregations in Contemporary China

While the growing literature on Protestantism in contemporary China is slowly beginning to expand our understanding of this religious tradition in an urban context, there is a dearth of analysis on the subject on the urbanising context. Few studies have sought to trace the ways in which urban Protestant churches change over time in terms of their structures, practices or activities or to explore what happens to rural or suburban churches as they are enveloped by the expanding city. This paper attempts to begin to address some of these issues by analysing a group of Three-Self-affiliated Protestant congregations in a mid-sized Chinese city. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted over a six-year period, this paper argues that with an urbanised context comes, amongst other things, a more formal religious regulatory context. It is this new context which helps to shape how church congregations are shaped and what long-term strategies they adopt for future expansion. The paper further argues that religious specialists and lay believers alike have to develop new strategies in order to negotiate this regulatory framework. One of the results of this negotiation process is a more minimalist and mobile approach to officially-recognised sites for religious activity (zongjiao huodong changsuo) and arguably an increase in emphasis on lay religious activity and community-building. This paper furthers our understanding of Protestantism by demonstrating that new models of urbanising Protestantism are developing.