Elite Christianity and Spiritual Nationalism

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of spiritual renewal and grassroots nationalism within contemporary Chinese Christianity through the case of an emerging group of Christian businessmen who have spearheaded the growth of independent churches in the coastal Wenzhou area, called "boss Christians." Prompted by their success in the new entrepreneurial world, these elite male Christians strive to gain spiritual prestige and moral superiority in the Chinese church by employing a spiritual narrative of their post-Mao economic success and by articulating and spreading a new vision that they call "God's China vision." In active response to the Chinese state's nationalist discourse of modernity, they are convinced that China will rise not only in the economic sphere but also in the spiritual realm and will transform itself from a missionary-receiving country to a missionary-sending one. The paper links this grass-roots project of spiritual nationalism to a redemptive process in which elite Chinese Christians seek to address and overcome victimization and suffering inflicted by secular state modernity. It concludes that post-Mao Christian development has come to be closely connected to national memories and nationalist imagination, countering the party-state's insistence on secular nationalism.