Schism: Seventh-day Adventism in Post-Denominational China, the first volume in the Liu Institute Series in Chinese Christianities, is the first monograph that documents the life of the Chinese Adventist denomination from the mid-1970s to the 2010s. Christie Chui-Shan Chow explores how Chinese Seventh-day Adventists have used schism as a tool to retain, revive, and recast their unique ecclesial identity in a religious habitat that resists diversity. In the following guest post, she further explains the unique nature and significance of her work.
A dominant narrative about Chinese Protestantism is summed up in the official notion of a “postdenominational” church, a political category that the Chinese government employs to organize a unified ecclesiastical identity. In this “post-denominational” body, according to this narrative, Chinese Protestants are members of a united ecclesial structure guided by an ideal principle of “seeking the common ground while reserving differences.” Denominational characteristics have their origin in Western cultural hegemony, the narrative argues, as foreign missionaries failed to follow the Apostle Paul’s call for church unity. Instead, they fragmentized the Christ Body with conflicting theologies, liturgies, and modes of church governance. This narrative strives to homogenize the Chinese Christian life, but it fails to explain the denominational characteristics of both the officially registered and unregistered churches that become increasingly prominent in today’s Chinese religious landscape.
I offer an alternative lens to reinterpret the evolvement of Chinese Protestantism. In Schism: Seventh-day Adventism in Post-Denominational China, I approach Chinese Christianity from a denominational perspective, using the case studies of Seventh-Day Adventism, claiming 19 million followers around the globe, including over 400,000 Chinese, to illuminate how Chinese Protestants retain, revive, and recast their denomination in the changing religious habitat. Starting in the mid-1970s, Chinese Seventh-day Adventists from Wenzhou of East China’s Zhejiang Province experienced several schisms, dividing their denomination into four factions. Today, the Reformists, the Conservatives, the Wilderness, and the Wheatfield Ministry represent the broad spectrum of Seventh-day Adventism and demonstrate a strong denominational revival impulse in contemporary Chinese Christianity. Schism is the first monograph that documents the life of Chinese denominational Christians from the mid-1970s to the 2010s. Through a closer look at the evolving theological, cultural, social, and political dimensions of Adventist church divisions, I place the fragmentations among Chinese Adventists in three dynamics: the turbulent Maoist (1949-1972) and Reform periods (beginning in 1976), the reconnection with global Adventist personnel, and the ongoing negotiation with the state-sponsored religious organizations.
Schism examines the stories of proactive male and female Adventists who worked through the local officials in charge of religious affairs to gain much autonomy over the financial, liturgical, and evangelistic matters. Building on strong family and kinship ties, they organized ecclesial networks and formed local and cross-regional church government. The Chinese translation and widespread publication of the Adventist literature, mainly Ellen G. White’s spiritual writings, localized and sustained the group’s doctrines and unique practices. The common Adventist theological roots linked them nationally, and with China’s continual opening, Chinese Adventists reconnected with the global Adventist communities. Thus, even though the Chinese Communist authorities have forbidden local Adventist congregations from forming a national denominational organization, Chinese Adventists continue to perceive themselves as a unique ecclesial entity and operate accordingly. In the process of rebuilding Seventh-day Adventism as a distinct denomination and as a public expression of collective faith, the group not only enriches the diversity of Christianity in China but also transforms Adventism into a religion relevant to the Chinese. Schism thus challenges a simplistic characterization of Chinese Protestantism and contributes to the field of global Christianity and Chinese religions.