“Marxism With Chinese Characteristics”: Communism, Religion, and the Myth of Chinese Atheism. (My Mao paper for History 2)

Hey all, I remember some of you asking to read my paper on Chairman Mao’s reinterpretation of Marxist religious policy. So, many months later, here it is. BTW, I think there are a couple of typos, but I don’t feel like going back through it to check:

When Mao Zedong sought to apply Marxist thought to the new People’s Republic of China, he was faced with a significant obstacle: a traditionally conservative agrarian society. While Marxism was birthed within an industrializing, European context, Chinese communism emerged, primarily, in opposition to imperialism, and to the feudal structure that colluded and cooperated with imperialist forces. Thus, the attitude of Marxist orthodoxy toward traditional religion took on a new meaning in China, and especially in what came to be known as “Mao Zedong Thought”. Whereas Karl Marx opposed Christianity as the institutionalized religion of the masses, standing in between the reality of oppression and the goal of a socialist revolution, Mao confronted an educated elite that espoused agnostic Confucianism and elevated the agrarian peasant class that adhered to an intensely supernatural form of popular religion. In this way, the Chairman of the People’s Republic opted for an innovation that would appropriate aspects of both Confucian and popular religious philosophy in order to rally the masses around a set of spiritually connotative symbols associated with his charismatic leadership. In the Chinese context, then, the Marxist philosophy of religion was turned on its head, discouraging the humanist agnosticism of the educated urbanites in favor of the popular faith of the uneducated agriculturally-based peasantry, whose objects of devotion he would then aim to replace.

Christianity held a unique position in the Chinese socio-cultural and religious milieu at the time of Mao’s assumption of leadership, in that it held no indigenous positions of institutional power. As a result, it could neither be utilized to maintain the social hierarchy, or to provide supernatural explanations for natural phenomena, both of which Karl Marx identified as the consciousness-dulling functions of pre-socialist primitive religion. To Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the greatest sin of Christianity was its association with Western imperialism. As we will see, then, Christianity, while officially addressed in the anti-religion policies of the CCP, may be more accurately understood in the context of a vigorously nationalistic movement, which opposed the faith because of its political associations, rather than on Marxist orthodox principle. Because Chinese nationalism and anti-Western feeling were far more developed than early Chinese Marxism, the young nation actively opposed Christianity on nationalistic grounds, with a focus and energy not present in their opposition to traditionally Chinese faiths long-associated with feudal structures. In this way, it may be concluded that Mao Zedong was only loosely committed to a policy of eradication of religion for its own sake; rather, he hoped to place himself at the center of Chinese religion and philosophy, while rejecting Christianity in order to consolidate nationalistic sentiment and nationalist movements.

Anger: My Inspiration, Or: Why the Tim Keller article in CT finally made me start my blog.

I have long meant to revive the habit of blogging that I began in China. However, I have long been too lazy busy to do so. However, three things have finally provided the necessary momentum: 1. I just read a number of articles which upset me deeply. This caused me to post one on facebook, and proceed to write one paragraph describing it, followed by 2 paragraphs commenting on my own article. It occured to me that this is not the appropriate use of the “status update” box (similarly, Twitter only allows one 140 characters–try figuring out how to condense 3 paragraphs into 140 characters).  2. This week I have been bored out of my mind. Mostly, I have used my break from school to sleep til noon, and then lie around all day. Thus, at night I have trouble falling asleep, and I stay up thinking about all the thoughts I want to share with the world. I figure this combination (boredom + racing thoughts) could produce a blog! 3. I have been working on setting up a website for George–my husband, who is an artist–and this has gotten me back into the swing of updating something regularly.

So, now, here is what I was so worked up about on facebook: I woke up early this morning (9:45 AM!!), and glanced through bleary eyes at my Twitter feed, wherein I saw that Christianity Today had done a cover story on Tim Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church, with this tantalizing sub-title: The pastor of Redeemer Church is becoming an international figure because he’s a local one. It seemed like local-movement-meets-my-favorite-preacher, or grass-roots-community-organizing-meets-fabulous-church, which are all things dear to my heart. For those of you not familiar with Keller, check out the Newsweek article, or the CT article above for a more thorough/evangelical angle. Anyway, I love to listen to TK’s sermons, have grown immensely from them, and he–along with Jurgen Liias at Christ Church, Hamilton and Paul Smith of my first church, WSPC–has been one of the preachers with the greatest impact on my life. What I love about the Redeemer model is that it is deeply invested in cities. As someone who has always felt a strong draw toward the vibrant, multi-cultural, intellectually-diverse, socio-economically-diverse, artistically-rich life of the city (any city), I am excited by churches, pastors, and leaders that believe that Christians and their churches have a central role in urban life: to influence, to minister, to learn, to share, to offer hope, to engage in works of compassion, to challenge, etc. In addition, since being at Regent, and especially since sitting under professor Rikk Watts (cf Rodney Stark’s work on the early church and cities), it has become clear to me that cities were integral to the growth of the early church, and the same should be true of the Church today, if we want to have anything to offer the world.

Also, in terms of content, Tim Keller and those like him have insisted that churches do not have to be “relevant” or “cool” to attract young people. In fact, it is quite the opposite: many in their 20s and 30s have had enough of being treated as consumers in every area of life. We want substance, truth, beauty, wisdom, and depth. For me, this means I want intellectually challenging, in depth preaching; I want to sing hymns, and I want a connection with the traditions of the church. So far, I have seen 2 great models of this: 1. Christ Church, Hamilton (now self-destructing in a tragic split, and located in the suburbs, so not a fit with my call to the city) and 2. Redeemer Presbyterian (although there are a couple big problems here, which I am coming to, shortly). While I also have deep affection for West Side Presbyterian Church, Seattle, I am specifically getting at churches that draw large amounts of young people, as well as those with an emphasis on influencing and cultivating arts and culture.