Converts to Civil Society: Christianity and Political Culture in Contemporary Hong Kong

4. The Work of Civil Society

97 — 4 — The Work of Civil Society NGO worker engaging the media and passersby following rally at Star Ferry Pier, Tsim Sha Tsui (photograph by Lida V. Nedilsky, 1998) 98 — Converts to Civil Society As individuals, Hong Kong Christians move physically and socially from school to fellowship to church and beyond; looking for the right way to show their personal faithfulness to Christianity, they establish a general experience of religious life in Hong Kong. Taken in aggregate , these individuals demonstrate that religious membership is fluid, shifting, and developmental. Yes, there are those countless among Hong Kong’s Christians for whom total disengagement is part of their fluidity. They join a fellowship or church only to drop out entirely, losing interest in or finding no time for collective, religious life. For others inspired by commitment to a chosen rather than an inherited religion, those who are the focus of this book, fluidity might mean breaking with one collective only to seek a new mode of expression to satisfy the need for deeper religious understanding and personal alignment. Where do they turn for help? Finding guidance in one’s quest for spiritual development requires, as Wade Clark Roof states simply, “some degree of scouting around, and very much depends on how a person goes about trying to find it.”1 In Hong Kong, individual Christians receive direction from friends by word of mouth, use institutional resources like pastors or professors, and thus make their way through a diverse array of small groups, seminaries, university courses, lecture series, bookstores , and gospel camps as well as revival meetings and crusades. They also make their way through jobs, working for Christian publishers, parishes, and social services, among others. In so doing, they encounter and affirm contemporary innovations in spiritual cultivation supplied by religious entrepreneurs themselves demanding alternative forms of religious engagement. One innovation in particular stands out among those on offer today: the nongovernmental organization. For those individuals who choose to work for and/or participate in programs organized by the NGO, the NGO extends and alters that religious commitment. Through the NGO experience, Christians develop their religious selves by joining, discerning, growing, and even leaving to start their own organizations. In other words, through the group they find themselves. Unlike entering upon the square, as described in chapter 1, whether a person accesses the NGO is not open to chance. Whereas the square lies at the crossroads of heavily used urban systems of infrastructure, carefully located to facilitate such movement, the NGO sits on the city’s 1 Wade Clark Roof, The Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 119. The Work of Civil Society — 99 margins; its design and location do not so much discourage as limit chance encounters. When not positioned on church property, with yard and gate at street level, the Christian NGO in Hong Kong tends to be located in an office building, off the main streets, in low-rent and highdensity areas such as Mong Kok and nearby Yau Ma Tei. It exists side by side with other purveyors typically found in these cheaper and older neighborhoods, whether suppliers of products like bathroom fixtures, rice porridge, or plastic combs, or of services like auto repair, prostitution , or recycling. Anyone seeking out the NGO location must navigate a maze of stairways and elevator shafts to find its headquarters. One often has to ring to get into the NGO office. Security concerns arise in buildings where strangers come and go, and thefts of petty cash are common. Once in, one finds the office typically combines individual work spaces and a modest conference area. Employees occupy desks with computers, Internet, fax machines, and phones that readily connect them to partners in Hong Kong, throughout Asia, and beyond to Europe and North America. Conference space doubles up as reading and display room, with book racks marketing the product lines that are the specialty of the NGO, titles like Uncertain Times, Liberating the Church from Fear, and Ushering in Tomorrow. Tables bear the day’s newspapers (Ming Pao, Sing Tao Daily, and the English-language South China Morning Post) as well as NGO brochures announcing workshops on self-defense or lectures on gender studies, planned collective action like the June 4 candlelight vigil, and annual reports in both Chinese and English. Cupboards and even bathtubs stow the surplus of paper, excess of the information...