Seeking the Christian tutelage: agency and culture in Chinese immigrants' conversion to Christianity

Sociology of Religion, Summer, 2002 by Kwai Hang Ng

Yet a key puzzle I faced from the beginning of my fieldwork was to make sense of the way the congregants understood conversion, which was drastically different from the way Tang understood it. At first, I looked for traces of the two models of conversion narrative I mentioned above, but I soon detected that a different brand of religiosity was practiced among them. The self-label of sinner is not at all prominent in the VPCC; indeed, the congregants seldom call themselves "sinners," and they do not employ the label "born-again Christian." Nor have I found the congregants using the dedication rhetoric that is central to Tang's testimony. They cherish love and mercy, but dedication as a discursive theme is foreign to them. Instead, when they talk about conversion, their testimonies are replete with references to the practical blessings they see as coming from God. The congregants appear to have a different conception of the Christian God and they view their relationship with God in a manner that resembles little either the classic or the contemporary model of conversion. God is perceived less as a savior that cleanses one's sins than as a tutelary god who provides guidance and help. Indeed, when I asked why the congregants came to the church, many of them attributed it to the good feelings they gained in converting to the new religion. For example, in her conversion testimony shared with other members in the church newsletter, Pei Chen, a young mother who came from China a few years ago, said that she believed in God because she was helpless in the face of uncertainties of her new life in the United States. When she decided to enroll in university again to begin a new full-time program, she made the difficult decision of sending her young son to China to live with her parents. The most emotional part of the testimony starts with her description of the day she accompanied her son to the airport:

My husband and I felt very bad after we had made the decision [to send the child to China].... When I saw him go through the airport gate, I realized clearly how weak and helpless I was. I was so tiny! I couldn't control the things that happened to me.... What if my child felt sick on the plane? Or even something worse happened?... I was concerned about the safety of my father and my kid on the road. I told my husband: "If God protects our kid, I'll believe in God." ... Later, I knew my father and my kid had safely arrived in China.... Ever since my kid went back to China, he has been healthy; we are both very relieved.

... My kid and my parents are thousands of miles away from me, I'm really not able to protect them; I can only entrust them to God; God will protect; God is a merciful God; he protects us so that we suffer no harm. (Original in Chinese)

Chen's testimony reveals what to her is the very source of the serenity and the peace of mind the congregants perceive -- the conviction that God will protect them in every difficulty they encounter. The Christian God is, first and foremost, seen as a tutelary god. But the notion of a tutelary god intimately involved in the affairs of the world is not something the congregants received from the teachings of Tang (as we have seen from Tang's testimony) and visiting pastors. Yet it is an understanding that has been common in their ethnic culture since long before they converted to Christianity. Lei Ye, a graduate student from China, tells me that he believes in God because "I was anxious about my life in the United States all the time in the past, I sweated the big stuff and the small stuff, but my heart has felt much better since I began to believe in God; I know he is looking after me. That's important. I now feel secure and at ease."