Sacred Webs: The Social Lives and Networks of Minnan Protestants, 1840s–1920s by Chris White (review)

The study of the history of Chinese Christianity over the recent decades, in line with the study of Chinese history in general, has increasingly shifted its attention to a "Sino-centric" approach. Concurrently, scholars in the emerging field of world Christianity have come to approach Christian history beyond the West by emphasizing the native agency while not necessarily neglecting the mission agency. Chris White's Sacred Webs: The Social Lives and Networks of Minnan Protestants, 1840s–1920s, which developed from the author's dissertation, joins these two bodies of scholarship, making a significant contribution to the development of reconceptualizing Chinese Christianity as a Chinese religion. Following scholars who have delved into Christian history in some specific region of China—such as Christianity in Fuzhou (福州), Fujian province, studied by Ryan Dunch, or in Chaoshan (潮汕), Guangdong province, by Joseph Tse-Hei Lee—the author selects Minnan (閩南, southern Fujian) as his region of focus, narrating a richly textured, sympathetic social history of Minnan Protestantism from the Late Qing through the early Republican era.

The book comprises nine chapters in addition to an introduction and conclusion. In the introduction, the author locates his study within the broader framework of existing scholarship on world Christianity and Chinese Christian history, highlighting Chinese agency—that is, Chinese Protestants as the major actors in the narrative—and Chinese Christianity's continuation with traditional religious beliefs while still paying attention to the aspects of cleavage with the Chinese past on the part of those locals who converted to Protestantism. In other words, the author makes a strong case for the nature of Minnan Protestantism as both "Chinese" and "Christian."

Chapter 1, "Setting the Minnan Stage," contextualizes the story by stressing two distinctive features characterizing Minnan: (1) "the outward-oriented nature and transnational connections of the peoples of Minnan" (p. 25) and (2) "the development of pervasive lineage networks" (p. 27). These two features influence the shaping of Minnan Protestantism to be examined in the following chapters. This chapter also covers the early history since 1842 of the three main missionary societies working in this region—the (Dutch) Reformed Church in America, the London Missionary Society, and the Presbyterian Church of England—before noting such characteristics that distinguished Minnan Protestantism from that of other regions of China as the emergence of the first indigenous church in China and of "the first pastors ordained by Chinese congregations in the whole of China" (p. 37). As the author claims, "hroughout the second half of the nineteenth century, Minnan was considered the most successful field for evangelistic endeavors" (p. 44).

Chapters 2 to 8 are chronologically organized into three sections. Section 1, "Displaced Gods and Riceless Christians: The Processes of Conversion among Minnan Protestants," which is composed of two chapters, focuses its attention on Minnan Chinese's conversion and its social ramification over the first two decades of the story (1846–1866). Chapter 2, "Processing Conversion," analyzes local Christians' conversion accounts—"conversion" being defined as the "official entrance into the church" (p. 55)—by illustrating some "rites of passages" for locals to become Christians, the most obvious rites being the abandonment of traditional Chinese deities and the expulsion of ancestral tablets (so, as the first half of the main title of this section announces, the gods [and the ancestors] were displaced). Chapter 3, "Converting Costs," seeks to argue against the cliché that many Chinese converted to Christianity for the sake of financial or political benefits and were thus dubbed "rice Christians" or "litigation Christians." The author challenges this type of reductionistic and deprivation explanations by laying out the tangible costs and sacrifices—loss of jobs, for example—paid by a number of Minnan Chinese in order for them to join the church (so, as the second half of the main title of this section announces, they were turned into riceless Christians rather than rice ones).

While the stories in the previous two chapters took place in...