The Contests for Communal Temples in the Early 1950s to the Mid-1970s

From collectivization to the Cultural Revolution, communal temples deprived of land routinely came under attack, from political campaigns and encroachments on their property and religious sites. By the early 1970s, the vast majority of communal temples in Rui’an were either shut down, occupied, or destroyed—a massive deterritorialization on a truly unprecedented scale in local history. Followers quickly learned to deal with the expropriation of traditional communal religious space through various tactics to carry on worship. The restoration of temples did not lack the support of Communist Party cadres, the new village leadership. However, since the political climate affected the stability of religious spaces, as well as the material foundations and leadership of communal religious activities, attempts to restore temples and temple practices could only persist at a minimal level. But this persistence had a crucial role in laying the groundwork for the post-Mao revival of communal temples.

Revolution and Religion

Under nation-building efforts in the first half of the twentieth century, communal temples became targets of political and military appropriation, which shook the foundations of traditional communal religion in Rui’an and Wenzhou. Yet local religion continued to thrive. Protestant churches, the Catholic Church, traditional salvationist groups, and redemptive societies all grew rapidly, perhaps due in large part to the greater social uncertainty brought about by political turbulence and wars. Since its foundation in the region in the late 1920s, communist forces stayed close to local peasant society, including their religious communities. Before 1949, they both clashed and collaborated with religious groups, depending on the circumstances.

Déjà Vu?

The 1980s saw a grassroots movement that capitalized on the disintegration of collective institutions and the weakening of the planned economy to reclaim religious sites in Rui’an and Wenzhou, a highly symbolic moment that reversed the trend of destruction and expropriation of traditional ritual space since 1898. Yet the movement was not just about religion. It occurred as a social response to a larger issue—the instability of property rights during decollectivization—and has dramatically revitalized traditional rural organizations. The co-option and repackaging of Elderly People Associations (EPAs) as a proxy for temple reclamation allowed local residents to reinvent communal religion, circumventing the problem of legality and securing a stable existence for territorial temples. However, local EPAs have grown beyond their early role as a cover for religious activities. As they grow socially and economically, drawing retired cadres and other village elites, they are moving toward the center of village politics.

Diversification and Unification

During the early Cultural Revolution, Christian churches ran into a second wave of repression, more violent than the Great Leap, yet with less severe consequences for the church. Indeed, the political chaos of the time, particularly the factional conflicts crippling the state’s management and oversight capabilities, dramatically opened up space for religious activities. Faced with the state’s intense hostility toward religion, Christian preachers adopted tactics to evade the attention of the state. These tactics ensured not just the survival of the church, but its rapid and dramatic territorial expansion, leading to a fundamental transformation in the institutions of Protestant Christianity in Wenzhou, with the establishment of regional networks and the extensive paidan system for sharing pastoral resources. The Cultural Revolution saw both diversification and unification in the church. There was competition between different churches, even as new collaborative networks started to reduce the importance of denominational lines.

The Land Revolution and Religious Communities in the Early 1950s

The Communist government after 1949 did not have a systematic program to crack down on religion. Yet the sweeping land reform—Mao’s core revolutionary agenda—dealt a huge blow to religious communities. Land reform, however, did not impact all religious traditions in the same manner or to the same extent. Land seizures removed one of the main sources of livelihood for Buddhist and territorial temples, but salvationist groups and Christian churches, whose “ways of organizing actions” were less bound by locality, were hit less hard economically. The most significant consequence of land reform’s uneven effects on religious life may have been the dramatic expansion of indigenous salvationist groups during land reform, followed shortly thereafter by the swift downfall of the same groups. This marked a critical shift in the local religious landscape since the turn of the twentieth century.

Introduction

On April 28, 2014, before dawn, hundreds of armed police descended on the vicinity of Sanjiang Protestant Church in Yongjia, which sits across Ou River from downtown Wenzhou. The police cut off cell phone signals and dispersed a small number of Protestants who had stayed to defend the church, which the government had declared an “unlawful building.” By evening, heavy bulldozers had completely leveled the church, which had taken ten years to build. As global media watched the standoff unfold on site, the demolition put an end to a month-long vigil at Sanjiang Church, which at its height allegedly included as many as several thousand Protestant protesters from the Wenzhou region and beyond. The demolition was followed by a province-wide “Three Rectifications and One Demolition” (...

Conclusion

When travelers today go from downtown Wenzhou to Rui’an, the first things they see along the newly built Yong-Tai-Wen highway are stretches of paddy fields; small, winding rivers, and lush, low hills in the distance. Next to appear are traditional Chinese buildings dotting hillsides and fields, too bright to miss. Some of them have yellow-painted walls and grey tile roofs. Others are adorned with colorful motifs, statuettes of various kinds displayed in cornices, and occasionally flags of various colors on the rooftops. The yellow buildings are easily recognizable as Buddhist temples, while the colorful buildings are temples for territorial religion. Most of them look fairly new. Careful observers will also notice many newly built Christian churches in a variety of styles, some recognizable, others harder to identify, dispersed in the plains along the highway. These are views the northern soldiers would not have seen on their way to Rui’an in the summer of 1949, when the Communist Party’s Eastern China Field Army came south to Wenzhou to take over the region from local Communist guerrillas....

Mixed Blessings

The transition from underground family gathering to meetings in formal church buildings after the Cultural Revolution was a dramatic passage in the history of Christianity in Rui’an and Wenzhou. It generated both prosperity and chaos. Many Protestant leaders adopted a pragmatic stance toward the re-established Three-Self Church, allowing Protestant communities to take full advantage of their status as a “regulatory priority.” By contrast, Catholic communities could not do so because of their persistent refusal to collaborate with the government. Yet the loosening political and institutional environment was a mixed blessing for the Protestant Church. The government’s accommodating attitude toward formal church meetings considerably accelerated the construction, restitution, and legalization of churches, old and new. But the reappearance of the Three-Self Church tested the fragile unity that the churches had achieved during the Cultural Revolution. Protestant communities were torn apart by schisms at every level, from pan-denominational organizations to small village churches.

Destruction and Renewal

Before 1958, most Protestant churches were less heavily stigmatized, unlike the Catholic Church, which had been overshadowed by the politically charged “counterrevolutionary” stigma since 1949. Many village Protestant churches welcomed new converts and new church groups were founded. This ongoing growth had other consequences as well, creating friction with state programs, local cadres, and even non-Christian villagers. In Wenzhou, the local government used the occasion of the Great Leap Forward beginning in 1958 to launch a “great leap in religious work,” shutting down all churches and forcing Christians to renounce their faith. The campaign left Protestant communities deeply divided, mixing fresh wounds with old feuds. The hostile political climate led to clandestine house gatherings and new modus operandi for Christian communities. This shift would bring about a much more dramatic transformation during the Cultural Revolution.