Saving Deities for the Community: Religion and the Transformation of Associational Life in Southern Zhejiang, 1949-2014

Abstract

My dissertation examines the post-1949 transformation of religious and organizational culture in rural Ruian County of the Wenzhou region, Zhejiang. It explores the diversified adaptation patterns adopted by rural religious organizations in order to preserve, reinvent and even expand themselves in the volatile sociopolitical environment of post-1949 China. Based on hitherto unexploited government documents collected from local state archives, memoirs, historical accounts of religious organizations, as well as extensive oral interviews with Ruian residents, I demonstrate that, rather than following a linear and uniform decline that conventional wisdom suggests, religious organizations took divergent paths in Ruian during the Maoist era. The level of religious activities in Ruian and many regions of Zhejiang exhibited fluctuations over time rather than a linear downward movement. The Maoist period, I argue, was both destructive and constructive for religion. By stripping religious organizations of their traditional leadership and economic foundation, Maoist campaigns inadvertently accelerated the organizational reinvention of Chinese religions. Even more far-reaching, the Cultural Revolution dramatically stimulated a quick rise of Protestantism vis-à-vis other religions and fundamentally reshaped the religious landscape in parts of China, making China no exception to the global trend of religious resurgence, despite its isolation at the time. Religion in today’s China and related phenomena, in particular the uneven distribution of religious revival, the development patterns of rural organizations, and state-religion relations, cannot be fully explained without reference to the Maoist legacy.