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Making Christ
Present in China
Actor-Network Theory and
the Anthropology of Christianity

Michel Chambon
Making Christ Present in China
 Michel Chambon

Making Christ Present

in China
Actor-Network Theory and the Anthropology
of Christianity
Michel Chambon
Anthropology
Hanover College
Hanover, IN, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-55604-4    ISBN 978-3-030-55605-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55605-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
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En hommage à Soeur Marie-Régis Arnaud
et au Père Bernard Ladet,
 Acknowledgments

This book came to life through the infinite encouragement and collabora-
tion of countless actors that I would like to thank. The mountains and
rivers of the Yanping District have given priceless support by allowing
healthy hikes during my entire ethnographic fieldwork. Also, the interac-
tion of the river’s humidity with the soil of the mountains sustains the
growth of exceptional tea plants that produce a delicious beverage. This
tea facilitates the gathering of Nanping people around friendly discussions
that have been crucial in this study. Unfortunately, naming all local infor-
mants, Christian and Non-Christian, who participated in these conversa-
tions is an impossible task. Yet, I want to specifically thank Pastor Thomas
Sun Renfu, the head pastor of the Gospel Church, for his trust and active
support. With him, other faces such as Huang Hailan and Lin Qing, Pastor
Chen Yanyu, Elder Luke, Nun Shi Lizhen and Father Wu Yishun have
been a source of endless inspiration. Friendly meals and open-minded
conversations with local officials have also helped me to better understand
the Middle Kingdom. Beyond Nanping, I greatly benefited from the
friendship and the apartments of Lin Weifeng and Mao Rongkun in
Guangzhou, and of the Leung Family in Hong Kong. Pastor Dennis
Balcombe and many members of the Missions Étrangères de Paris have
also greatly contributed to my journey.
However, the echoes of the field would have remained rather misshapen
without the tremendous patience and critical wisdom of Robert P. Weller.
Being one of his students has been a true blessing. My intellectual pilgrim-
age from European theology to American anthropology has also been pre-
ciously stimulated by professors Nancy T. Ammerman, Kimberly Arkin,

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Robert W. Hefner, John Lagerwey, Eugenio Menegon, and Adam

Seligman. The camaraderie and intellectual stimulation of my fellow col-
leagues at Boston University and Hanover College can neither be forgot-
ten. Sheldon Sawatzky and Pastor Vicki Gaber deserve a special thanks for
their patient editing. In this concert of voices who acted upon my work of
translation, I also want to acknowledge Elizabeth Alles and Joel Thoraval,
Alexander Chow, Guillaume Dutournier, Vincent Goossaert, Karine
Martin, Pan Junliang, Veronique Poisson, Patrick Royannais, Pascale Sidi
Brette, Ji Zhe, and the Jesuits Jacques Duraud, Thierry Meynard, Nicolas
Standaert, and Yves Vendé. Yet, nothing could have occurred without the
structural support of diverse institutions. My research has been financially
supported by the Boston University Graduate Research Abroad Fellowship,
the Confucius China Studies Program Research Fellowship, the China and
Inner Asia Council Small Grant from the Association for Asian Studies,
and the Global Religion Research Initiative writing grant from the
University of Notre Dame. I also received institutional support from Sun
Yat-Sen University and access to archival data from Yale Divinity Library.
Also, the production of this book greatly benefited from the feedback of
anonymous reviewers who helped me to clarify and deepen my analysis.
Last, and by no means least, I could not have survived through this eth-
nographic and intellectual journey without the love of my colleague and
now wife, Erica M. Larson, and our daughter, Cécilia Rose.
 Contents

1 Studying Chinese Christianity  1

1.1 Dialoguing with the Anthropology of Religion and
Anthropology of Christianity  3
1.2 Theoretical Issues and Methodological Approach  6
1.3 Being an Ethnographer Among Chinese Christians 11
Christianity in the Continent of the Gods  12
Doing Fieldwork at the Gospel Church in Nanping  15
What Counts as “Christian” in Nanping?  18
1.4 Nanping’s Six Christianizing Assemblages 20
1.5 Chapters and Arguments Summary 23
References 26

Part I The Epiphany of the Three  33

2 Building Churches on Chinese Soil 35

2.1 Nanping Territories 39
2.2 The Zhanghu Township 41
2.3 The Christianizing Presence Across the Zhanghu Area 47
2.4 Crossing Yanping District 51
2.5 The Wen and the Wu of Yanping District 60
2.6 The Typical Church 67
2.7 Conclusion: The Immanent Critique 72
References 74

ix
x Contents

3 Responding Together in the Face of the Lord 79

3.1 Worshipping in Nanping 82
3.2 Visiting the Gospel Church 89
3.3 Hearing a Sunday Service 96
3.4 Theoretical Echoes of the Sunday Service102
Disciplining the Body 103
The Realm of Sound 112
The Epiphany of the Face 117
3.5 Concluding Remarks124
References129

4 Revealing the Pastoral Church Through Elderly Care131

4.1 The Socio-political Background of an Aging Nation135
1949–1979 136
1979–Today 137
The Situation of Yanping District 139
4.2 A First Step: The Ren’ai Home141
4.3 The Ren’ai Home Tutelary Entity: The Church149
4.4 The Rebirth of the Elderly Home153
Opening a Second Elderly Home: The Ren’ai Nursing Home  153
Religious Life in the Two Homes 160
Fusion and Transition to the Sheng’ai Nursing Home 164
4.5 The Multiple Facets of a Collective Christian Project167
Serving the Elderly, But Also Those in Need 167
Generating a Sustainable Institution 169
Building Up Multilateral Political Merits 171
Sharing the Gospel 175
4.6 The Key Actors in the Life of the Nursing Home: The
Pastoral Clergy178
The Apparition of the Pastoral Clergy 178
Nanping Religious Experts and Specialists 180
Negotiating the Pastoral Functions 183
4.7 The Twin Collaboration Between “Church” and “Pastor”185
Within One Body, Under One Head: The Framing of a
Christianizing Assemblage 186
Beyond Groups and Competition 187
The Ambivalent Shadow of the Modern Chinese State 189
4.8 Conclusion: Toward a Christian Relatedness?190
References192
 Contents  xi

Part II The Networking of the Three 197

5 The Overflow of Gifts199

5.1 Variations and Continuities Among Nanping Christian
Offering Boxes202
Boxes of Merit in the Nanping Religious Landscape 202
Recycling Offering Boxes in Christianizing Assemblages 205
Renaming Offering Boxes in Christianizing Assemblages 209
5.2 Thanksgiving at the Gospel Church216
5.3 Echoes from the Celebration of Thanksgiving223
Who Designs This Thanksgiving Service? 223
What Do the Offerings Say About Those Actors and Their
Relations? 225
Worshiping the Present Lord and Suggesting Cosmological
Implications 228
Worshiping the Present Lord and Suggesting
Anthropological Implications 230
Worshiping the Present Lord and Suggesting a New Social
Order 231
5.4 Conclusion: Empowering Gifts234
References236

6 The Bloody Business of Christian Conversion239

6.1 The Gospel Church Dealing with Blood241
6.2 The Blood of Christ Within the Gospel Church245
6.3 The Other Christianizing Assemblages Dealing with Blood
and Holy Wine252
6.4 Blood and Wine in the Nanping Context of Chinese
Religiosities255
6.5 Toward a Christian Teaching on Blood in the Chinese
Context?259
Toward a Superior Reference: The Engaging Christian Face  261
Unity and Diversity: The Power of the Christian Center 265
6.6 Conclusion: Blood and Christian Conversion271
References275
xii Contents

7 Conclusion: The Tree of Life277

7.1 The Banyan Tree280
References285

Index287
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Nanping 15

Fig. 1.2 Nanping in its region 25
Fig. 2.1 The Yanping District 41
Fig. 2.2 Mapping of religious buildings across the Zhanghu area 45
Fig. 2.3 The Nanping Gospel Church 55
Fig. 2.4 The Baozhu Gospel Church 59
Fig. 2.5 Two local gods with the wen and the wu beside them 62
Fig. 2.6 A small temple near Nanping 69
Fig. 2.7 Archetypal church, temple, and housing 71
Fig. 3.1 The informal altar under the bridge 85
Fig. 3.2 Pastoral meeting with Pastor Sun in the center under the cross 93
Fig. 3.3 An 8 a.m. service at the Nanping Gospel Church 99
Fig. 3.4 Walking through a temple 105
Fig. 3.5 Walking through a church 106
Fig. 3.6 Service at the Christian Assembly. No central cross but an
“Emmanuel” in Chinese 110
Fig. 3.7 Christianity versus Chinese popular religion 111
Fig. 3.8 Stairs leading to the Christian Assembly’s sanctuary with a large
“Quiet”113
Fig. 3.9 Service at the True Jesus Church 128
Fig. 3.10 Worship within a temple 128
Fig. 4.1 Afternoon chitchat at the Ren’ai Home 144
Fig. 4.2 Mrs. Chan with one resident 147
Fig. 4.3 The Ren’ai Nursing Home, a former factory 157
Fig. 4.4 The room to pass away 163
Fig. 4.5 Nursing Home’s bedroom with Christmas decorations
in October 172

xiii
xiv List of Figures

Fig. 4.6 A wedding at the Nanping Gospel Church 191

Fig. 5.1 Two offering boxes 205
Fig. 5.2 Counting donations made through the offering box 211
Fig. 5.3 Altar during the Thanksgiving service 219
Fig. 5.4 Harvest dance by the Christian calisthenics group 221
Fig. 5.5 Buddhist temple with benefactors’ names on its pillars 235
Fig. 6.1 Eucharistic service at the Gospel Church 246
Fig. 6.2 Washing communion’s cups 249
Fig. 6.3 Protestant wine from Mudanjang 251
Fig. 6.4 Grids and centers in the construction of art 268
Fig. 6.5 Protestant university students kneeling to receive communion
in a large Chinese city 274
Fig. 7.1 A banyan tree 282
 CHAPTER 1

Studying Chinese Christianity

In early July 2004, a group of young altar servants held their summer
camp in a house in Mui Wo, a remote bay of the Hong Kong territory.
The Catholic priest in charge of their parish, a young French missionary,
invited me to join this three-day camp. I had already been in Hong Kong
for about a year as a volunteer for the local Catholic Church, organizing
pastoral activities for French expatriates while living in a local parish and
learning Cantonese at Hong Kong University. Joining this summer camp
was an opportunity to further immerse myself among young local
Catholics.
When all the activities were over, and everyone prepared for bed, a
group assigned to sleep in the upper room of the building came to me
begging for my sahpjihga. Thanks to their gestures and efforts to repeat
the term many times, I finally understood that they were looking for my
cross. Unfortunately, the French seminarian that I was, I did not wear any
cross. Once they understood my lack of piety, they turned to the priest and
begged for his cross. Since they were supposed to spend the night alone
upstairs, he agreed to give them the cross he wears since his ordination to
get peace and reassure everyone. The problem was solved.
Yet, I did not understand what was going on and which problem was
behind this “cross hunting.” Why were these teenagers so concerned
about getting one cross? The priest explained that they were simply afraid
of ghosts and wanted protection. Since our building was in the middle of
some abandoned fields and in a quite poor condition, these Hong Kong

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Chambon, Making Christ Present in China,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55605-1_1
2 M. CHAMBON

teenagers not used to sleep in such a remote environment were simply

scared by the potential wandering spirits filling the surroundings. These
explanations were far from satisfying, and all kinds of questions raised in
me. How could such modern and well-educated young Christians still be
afraid of ghosts? If ghosts exist by any means, how can a piece of wood,
even shaped as a Christian cross, be enough to stop their dangerous influ-
ence? Should we not challenge their “childish” and “superstitious”
behavior?
Coming from a French and rural background where the idea of
Halloween was entirely foreign, and where ghosts were perceived as a
vanished superstition from the Middle Ages, I still knew how objects are
crucial in the deployment of a Christian faith. At my parents’ and grand-
parents’ farms, we put pieces of blessed palms at the front of the doors. At
church, we sign ourselves with holy water. And once a year, we join a local
pilgrimage during which priests bless our cars. So, indeed, material objects
were everywhere in my own experience of Christianity, and as a seminar-
ian, I was used to introducing younger generations to sacraments through
a pedagogy centered on objects. But, apart from the Holy Eucharist,
objects were always used as symbols to indirectly refer to and recall the
presence of the Christian God. They were not the presence itself, or any
part of it. They were about meaning.
These Hong Kong teenagers puzzled me. In some sense, their belief in
the presence of ghosts and in the power of the cross appeared silly, naïve,
and somehow from another age. Since we were all Catholics, I was sur-
prised by the operant connection they made between a material object and
invisible beings as if a protective mechanism exists there. How could these
young, educated, and committed Christians have such strong feelings
toward ghosts, and at the same time such an approach to material objects?
Can we really believe that religious objects hold protective power? How
far can a Christian be still afraid of ghosts and rely “magically” on objects
to keep them at bay? Should their relation to Christ not free them from
these concerns?
Fourteen years later, it is a similar set of questions that this book aims
to investigate. When Chinese people turn to the religion of the cross, what
difference does it make? How are the ways in which they perceive and con-
nect things together maintained or transformed? What are the cultural
continuities and discontinuities implied by a turn to Christianity? These
questions not solely aim to enquire who is acting and how, but to also shift
our attention beyond specific social actors in order to wonder “what is
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 3

acting?” What is it about Christianity that pushes Christians to act and

inter-act this way?

1.1   Dialoguing with the Anthropology

of Religion and Anthropology of Christianity

These questions are not new for anthropologists. Indeed, they have gener-
ated a rich anthropological literature that explores the turn to Christianity
and its cultural implications (Hefner 1993; Cannell 2006; Keane 2007;
Robbins 2007). In this section, I briefly introduce some of this literature
and the ways in which it approaches the cultural continuities and disconti-
nuities induced by the religion of the cross in order not to provide an
exhaustive review but to better situate how this book intends to contrib-
ute to this conversation.
A major part of the research on the relationship between Christianity
and cultural change takes roots in studies on African churches. Seminal
investigations explored the relationship between Christianity and “tradi-
tional religions” in regard to the question of Africanization (Comaroff
1985; Meyer 2004). In an intellectual context interested in the question
of modernity, some early anthropologists insisted on the modernizing
rupture brought by the religion of the cross and foreign missionaries to
African societies because Christianity was characterized, for example, as a
religion of transcendence (Evens and Peacock 1990; Gluckman 1964;
Fortes 1970). Soon enough, other studies highlighted the continuities
between traditional African religions and Christianity, downplaying the
transformative and disruptive power of the new religion and pointing to
the importance of other broader socio-political changes (Horton 1971;
Vail 1989; Peel 2000). For instance, Jean Comaroff has studied how the
Barolong Boo Ratshidi, an ethnic group of the South Africa-Botswana,
have struggled over 150 years to construct an order of Christian symbols
and practices through which they can act upon the forces that surround
them. Comparing pre-colonial body rituals and contemporary ones found
in the local churches of Zion, Comaroff theorizes “the role of the Tshidi
as determined, yet determining, in their own history; as human beings
who, in their everyday production of goods and meanings, acquiesce yet
protest, reproduce yet seek to transform their predicament” (Comaroff
1985: 1). In her approach, Christianity is conceived as a lingua franca
4 M. CHAMBON

between colonizers and colonized, a malleable tool to reconstruct a sense

of history and identity which encapsulates both dominance and resistance.
Subsequently, new forms of Pentecostal churches and of transnational
born-again movements in Africa and elsewhere across the world led the
research to further question previous assumptions that opposed moder-
nity and tradition, and local and global religions (Corten and Marshall
2001; Englund and Leach 2000). An influential contribution to these
conversations on continuities and discontinuities has been made by Joel
Robbins through his ethnographic description of the moral dilemma
encountered by a tiny ethnic group in Papua New Guinea, the Urapmin
(Robbins 2004). Since the 1970s, they have embraced a form of
Pentecostalism and constantly deployed efforts in confessions and sin-­
removal rituals. And yet, they remain deeply and painfully convinced that
they are sinners. For Robbins, this manifests how the Urapmin juxtapose
two contradictory cultural logics, a traditional moral system and a Christian
one. In the tensions between a Urapmin social life, where one has to assert
himself in acts of will, and a particular “Christian moral system” condemn-
ing desires, jealousies, and envy, Urapmin are doomed to perceive them-
selves as sinful (Robbins 2004: 248). In this model, Robbins portrays
Christianity as a cultural system of moral values in discontinuity with the
traditional Urapmin culture. In later works, though, Robbins embraced a
more pluralistic view, but still insists on its disruptive power because “many
kinds of Christianity stress radical change” (Robbins 2007: 5).
At the same moment, but moving in the opposite direction, Fenella
Cannell et al. explored multiples forms of Christianity in various places to
present how this religion is first and foremost in continuity with the cul-
tural milieu in which it grows. “Christianity is not an arbitrary construct,
but that it is a historically complex one” (Cannell 2006: 7). For Cannell,
since the core of Christianity lies in paradoxical teaching about incarnation
and redemption, it provides room for each society and time period to
develop its own interpretations and social forms of it. By exploring types
of personhood, ideas of religious power, kinship, or ritual practices across
various churches, those scholars illustrate how the religion of the cross is
marked by all types of continuities with non-Christian cultures. For those
researchers, Christianity is first and foremost “a changeable phenomenon”
(Cannell 2006: 25), and eventually “a tool to assert and maintain cultural
stability”(Marshall 2016: 4).
Clearly, social scientists have developed several ways of approaching,
evaluating, and theorizing the continuities and discontinuities that
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 5

Christianity may bring into a cultural system. Still, the field remains deeply
influenced by the Western and Protestant world in which it has emerged
(Robbins 2007). Most conversations have evolved around a few concepts
central to a certain Protestant imaginary. Notions of rupture, sincerity, and
interiority have been repeatedly discussed, and little attention has been
paid to non-Protestant communities and their distinctive imaginaries
(Hann 2014; Brown and Feener 2017).
Consequently, it is in relation with these particular debates but within
the specific historic-cultural context of China that scholars studying
Chinese Christians have forged their own conversations. Several historians
argue that the initial moral, social, and political disruption brought by
Christianity into China has been, in the long run, accustomed to the
Chinese religious landscape (Menegon 2009; Xi 2010). By contrast,
Henrietta Harrison claims that Chinese Catholicism has followed the
opposite path (2013). She argues that forms of Italian piety initially intro-
duced to northern China were extremely similar to Chinese popular reli-
gion. But then, Chinese Catholics have worked over the centuries to make
their religion increasingly distinct. In a similar way, social scientists suggest
that the current appeal of Protestantism in China is fueled by popular
opposition to the authoritarian and communist regime and by a disillusion
toward the communist ideology (Yang 2012; Vala 2018; Madsen 2000;
Kang 2016). However, Cao Nanlai shows how the influential Wenzhou
boss Christians are actively supporting the neo-liberal values inscribed
within the economic model promoted by the post-reform Chinese state
(2011). Indeed, Wenzhou Christians develop an “indigenized Chinese
Christianity” which provides “a form of non-market morality that serves
to effectively legitimate Wenzhou’s pre-modern household economy in
the context of market modernity” (Cao 2013: 85). Therefore, they should
not be regarded as dissidents or antagonistic toward the state, or even with
their broader religious milieu, but in continuity with the new socio-eco-
nomic order of the country.
In these quests to evaluate change and discontinuity, one may notice
that there is a fundamental problem with the references used to theorize
it. What is the paramount criterion that one utilizes—more or less explic-
itly—to approach the messiness of Christianity within a cultural milieu?
Some prioritize the relation to the construction of the individual self as a
moral subject, while others focus on power relations and political econ-
omy. Some insist on transcendence, while others favor social relationships
such as gender and kinship issues. Some rely on the supposedly distinctive
6 M. CHAMBON

features linked to a rural or an urban environment, while others prefer to

focus on theological traditions. But which kind of criteria do we prioritize
in our scholarly informed understanding of Christianity? And which kinds
of assumptions about “religion” and “social science” do we apply to elab-
orate our evaluations?
This book joins conversions on the continuities and discontinuities
brought by Christianity in order to question the models we deploy in
theorizing its unity and diversity. More specifically, I propose to look at
Chinese Christians who live their religious commitment in a society rela-
tively foreign to Christianity, not only to discuss whether their religious
turn is a cultural and social rupture, but first and foremost to critically
rethink the ways anthropology conceptualizes the Christian phenomenon.
I am interested in considering how Chinese Christians and their various
churches produce categories and standards that enable them to position
themselves as Christ’s disciples. What is Christianity about for them? And
in light of the variety of their beliefs, rituals, and institutions, how can we
revisit and reformulate an anthropological understanding of Christianity
that does not fall into narrow essentialism, nor a contextual relativism,
both of which failing to honor the tremendous variations and yet stable
resilience of the Christian phenomenon?

1.2   Theoretical Issues

and Methodological Approach

To address these questions, this book returns to what my puzzling Hong

Kong ghost experience invites; that is, investigating how Chinese Christians
relate to the power of material objects. I draw on a tradition in anthropol-
ogy where the roles of objects in relation to people are carefully scruti-
nized to unfold the ways in which a cultural system operates (Mauss 1954;
Malinowski 1922). Yet, material objects are not just raw matter free from
cultural construction. The relations people establish with them are also
dynamically informed and oriented by their cultural milieu (Houtman and
Meyer 2012). To investigate how Christians relate to their material
belongings, and unfold from there what Christianity implies for them, one
needs to pay attention to the tensions surrounding the relation to and the
understanding of material entities (Keane 2007; Engelke 2007).
To explore these dynamic relations and the ways in which there are
constructed, reinforced, challenged and eventually redefined, I apply
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 7

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a methodological tool to investigate

how material objects participate in the collective emergence of Chinese
Christianity, and how their participation redefines them in return. At the
foundation of ANT, there is a push inspired by modern science and tech-
nology studies and encouraged by Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John
Law (Callon 1991; Latour 1988; Law and Hassard 1999) to carefully
describe the ways in which humans rely on material objects either in their
everyday life or in their way of building knowledge and social cohesion
(Sayes 2017). This pragmatic approach invites the social sciences to ques-
tion predefined ontological distinctions between humans and material
objects that place agency on the side of humans only (Latour 2005).
According to ANT advocates, such assumptions abusively separate the
social sciences from natural sciences and precondition our way of under-
standing social phenomena. By revisiting the model of natural sciences,
ANT argues that nothing exists outside of the constantly evolving rela-
tionships in which it is embedded (Latour 2000). Things work in relation
to each other, and through the possibilities brought by interrelations,
therefore “when we speak of actor we should always add the large network
of attachments making it act” (Latour 2005: 218). Since human and non-­
human entities are deeply intertwined and interdependent, they all act
upon one another, each crucial in the functioning of social networks
(Latour 1988).
At the core of ANT, also known as “sociology of translation” and “soci-
ology of association,” there is a fundamental debate about agency and
relation (Sayes 2014). How do things rely on each other? What does it
take to make links and changes? ANT does not aim to simply describe a
network but to explore how things get bound together, sharing “in-­
formation” to the point of putting things in form. It investigates the dis-
tributed agency of networks of humans and non-humans, which can
include things, animals and deities. Therefore, to explore social phenom-
ena, we need to increase (1) the number of actors we recognize and
acknowledge, and (2) the types of agency they deploy. Since objects have
hundreds of ways of exerting an influence on humans and causing them to
act, agency should not be essentialized outside of the material and rela-
tional conditions from which it emerges. In other words, an action does
not occur along a unilineal chain of causality rooted exclusively in the
human mind or in the needs of a social group but relies on countless inter-
mediaries that form and constrain this collective action. Recognizing the
tremendous variety of actors and “actants” (natural objects striking back
8 M. CHAMBON

on humans) allows us to avoid essentializing “social forces,” and to con-

stantly question the ways in which things make each other do something
(Latour 2000). This new empiricism pushes to trace the circulation of
“the social” among human actors and non-human actants in their ways of
creating a state of affairs, the collective work of a social web.
Nonetheless, ANT has generated various reinterpretations and theo-
retical hybridizations since its early theorization (Farías 2014; Krarup and
Blok 2011), as well as passionate critiques (Bloor 1999; Shapin 1988;
Turner 2015). Despite various research directions growing out of ANT
and its increasing diversification, it is regularly attacked for its tendency for
ontological deconstructivism where nothing exists prior social construc-
tion (Elder-Vass 2015; Whittle and Spicer 2008); or for creating a flat
ontology where all members of a network share a rather similar agency and
potentiality of being (Amsterdamska 1990); or for reducing material
objects to their acting potentialities only (Harman 2011).
Aware of these debates, this book applies ANT as a methodological
tool to approach Chinese Christians and reflect on their model of
Christianity. Despite the large influence of ANT across the social sciences,
its contribution to religious studies remains rather limited (Ingman and
Lassander 2012). Nonetheless, I suggest elaborating on ANT by paying
special attention to the ways in which Chinese Christians rely on a variety
of material objects and relationships in order to uncover how things work
together. The point is not to find out “why” Chinese people become
Christian, but “how” they constantly do so. For example, when inter-
viewed Christians mention that they go to church “because of” Jesus, I do
not translate this as something about belief or moral system only, but ask
them to explain further how so. How do they go to church? How did they
find out that Jesus asks that of them? What provides Jesus with this poten-
tiality? Which path has allowed Jesus to let them do that, and which medi-
ations are involved? The issue behind these questions is to trace back the
lines of causalities, and the various actors involved in them, that unfold
how their religious commitment is made possible.
ANT invites us to scrutinize the ways in which human actors—in our
case Chinese Christians—create their own network, and how they distin-
guish it from other forms of association. “It is always by comparison with
other competing ties that any tie is emphasized. So for every group to be
defined, a list of anti-groups is set up as well” (Latour 2005: 32).
Consequently, this book provides extensive observations and discussions
on alternative local religious traditions to compare and contrast the ways
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 9

Chinese Christians create relationships and operate through them. By

applying ANT, I aim to highlight which relations and actors are con-
structed and reinforced among Christian actors, but also which ones are
challenged and sidelined. Therefore, this study also works at providing a
methodology in comparing and contrasting religious traditions.
While ANT allows us to explore the multiple ties that Chinese Christians
favor, construct, reinforce, transform, and display, their materially informed
ties also reveal that a central entity is constantly recalled, produced, and
revealed at the core of their network. Indeed, Chinese Christians and their
objects constantly refer to Jesus Christ or yesu jidu (耶稣基督) in Chinese.
To describe further this central and unifying actor, and the ways in which
it participates in the continual creation of the network, I borrow the
notion of the “face” from the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. In
his philosophical work, highly concerned with ethics and subjectivity,
one’s existence and knowledge are first and foremost based on the relation
to the intriguing face of the other, and not on some kind of abstract uni-
versal being embedded in one’s self (Levinas 1969, 1985).
For Levinas, the encounter with the face of the other, a questioning
face characterized by ultimate alterity and proximity, is the key phenome-
non—epiphany—that reveals to one his own existence. One comes into
existence by encountering a face. Furthermore, the particularity and con-
creteness of the face exceed the idea of the otherness. This gentle revela-
tion of otherness in the vulnerable face of the other simultaneously brings
an ambiguous question—Are you going to kill me?—and a demand for
responsibility that awakens the subject to his moral potency. The otherness
of the face disturbs the self, opening a structural interval questioning the
existence of the “I.” For Levinas, while the face emerges naked, given,
defenseless, never reducible to an inert portrait or a discursive speech, it
exceeds all descriptions, open to infinity and totality while remaining first
and foremost a vulnerable entity supplicating in front of the nascent sub-
ject. Ultimately, Levinas argues that this face-to-face encounter gives
direction and orientation to one’s subjective being-in-the-world because
although the face does not formally speak, it still requires that one respond
to him and make ethical judgments. His emergence is an order, a calling,
ordering one’s own existence without determining in advance the choice
he is called to make.
In this philosophical approach, the face of the other, being the key to
the epiphany of the subject but still not directly acting upon him, displays
a paradoxical agency. While the face forbids to kill but calls for
10 M. CHAMBON

responsibility, it does not act through direct constraint or interference

(Levinas 1985: 86). The face is fundamentally in tension between its given
passivity and what it generates. The face, in its absolute anteriority to
action, projects a passive agency made of expression and potency without
being a mechanical correlation (Gibbs 1992).
Ultimately, Making Christ Present in China borrows from these two
theoretical developments, ANT and the notion of the questioning face, to
explore the dynamic interplay between Christian continuities and changes,
unity and diversity. ANT allows us to investigate how Chinese Christians
build and transform their relationships to all kinds of entities while relying
on material mediations. Yet, ANT uncovers that Christians and their
objects give specific importance to one peculiar entity, the Christian God,
which stands in continuity with their material and social world but through
different ways of being present. The notion of the engaging face, there-
fore, allows us to further describe how the central but intriguing presence
of their God orients, transforms and re-hierarchizes the ways in which
relationships are redefined and adjusted within the Christian network.
Levinas’ concept points to the radical change in agency introduced in the
network and enlightens the converging dynamic of the responding but
heterogeneous network. Thus, it helps to challenge the potential flat
ontology associated with ANT. I argue that only the tension between the
two theoretical inputs allows us to approach Christianity as a whole and
understand what it specifically entails for those who connect to it.
By looking at the kind of heterogeneous networks elaborated among
Chinese Christians, this book offers a model of the religion of the cross
that one may call interactionist. In contrast to intellectualist models which
ultimately locate the Christian faith in the mind of people (Luhrmann
2012; Keane 2007), and in contrast to social models which tends to
approach Christianity through social relationships only (Comaroff and
Comaroff 1991; Cao 2011; Inouye 2019), this study turns the focus on
interactions between people and things in order to carefully investigate the
type of network they collectively design. By looking at how Chinese
Christians rely on objects, and at how material artifacts allow certain kinds
of possibilities, I propose to map out the types of actors and agency that
inform their networks and characterize their religious enterprise. Thus,
the constant dialogue that human subjects and material objects nourish
provides the substrate through which this book offers an alternative model
theorizing the unity and diversity of Christianity.
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 11

1.3   Being an Ethnographer Among

Chinese Christians
To better situate this study, I must say a few words about myself. As I
mentioned in the opening, I was for several years a seminarian for a
Catholic diocese located in central France. This diocese offers eighteen
centuries of Christian heritage including major historical events, architec-
tural accomplishments, and intellectual figures (Blaise Pascal, Teilhard de
Chardin). Although I received the full training to become a priest of this
specific territory, I finally decided to remain a layperson and serve the
Church through an academic involvement. Since then, my research inter-
ests have crystallized around the interplay of “faith” and “culture.”
To further explored the encounter between the religion of the cross
and cultural systems, I decided to return to China, a territory that Taoist
traditions name “the continent of the gods” (shenzhou 神州) (Lagerwey
2019). Indeed, the Chinese world provides a unique opportunity to revisit
the religion of the cross through an interreligious lens and within a rather
non-Christian culture. Because of the Christian syntheses it increasingly
exports abroad, the Middle Kingdom is also gaining a growing influence
on World Christianity and calls for further investigation. Therefore, I did
a Master’s in Theology at the Catholic University of Paris exploring how
Taiwanese Catholics deal with the Chinese belief in ghosts (Chambon
2012). While I conducted fieldwork in Taiwan, I also engaged with
Presbyterian and Pentecostal churches to enlarge my experience of
“Chinese Christianity.” Since my initial seminary training, I have been
taught to reflect on Christianity from the perspective of its various forms
(Orthodox, Eastern, Protestant, etc.), the socio-political context within
which they evolve, and their relative demographic and historical impor-
tance. Therefore, studying the question of ghosts brought me to engage
further with other Christian denominations, but also with social sciences
and the scholarly informed study of Chinese religions—either in the field
or in France (Chambon 2017). This book is the extension of this journey.
Since the number of Christians is purportedly growing in mainland China,
mostly within Protestant circles, it appeared interesting to me to explore
further this specific portion of Chinese Christianity and see what it may say
about the encounter between the Christian faith and the Chinese world.
Finally, conducting research among Protestants in mainland China, besides
being politically less sensitive, appeared as an opportunity to renew
12 M. CHAMBON

approaches regarding the situation of Catholics in the People’s Republic

of China.
Inscribing myself in the anthropological tradition of “doing fieldwork,”
this book builds on an ethnographic approach and participant observation
in one place. Thanks to Dennis Balcombe, an American Pentecostal mis-
sionary, and to various contacts I had in Hong Kong and Taiwan, I was
able to visit numerous Protestant churches across different parts of main-
land China before selecting a site of research. During this selection pro-
cess, I looked for a suitable and safe place where I could spend at least a
full year of immersion as a participant-observer. To do so, I had to find a
Protestant Church capable of welcoming me despite a certain number of
obstacles. To understand some of those difficulties, we need to introduce
the broader situation of the religion of the cross in contemporary China.

Christianity in the Continent of the Gods

The situation of Christianity in China is both complex and sensitive.
During the last five centuries, the Chinese state has shown recurrent
antagonism against its Christian subjects (Menegon 2009). Either through
imperial banishment after the rites controversy (17th and 18th centuries)
or during the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), Chinese Christians have
struggled to find their place in the Chinese society (Goossaert and Palmer
2011). Then, when the Chinese Communist Party took control of the
country, Christianity was portrayed as a “foreign religion” used by Western
imperialism to colonize China. Like other religious practices, it was entirely
banished from the public sphere during the Cultural Revolution
(1966–1976) (Lee 2009). Since the early 1980s, though, it publicly reap-
peared and demonstrated a real dynamism that has attracted the interest of
many observers (Bays 2012; Chan and Hunter 1993).
In the 1990s–2000s, most analysts emphasized the division between
legally registered Christian communities and those refusing any collabora-
tion with the Chinese Communist state (Lee 2007). Chinese Protestants
were depicted as being either part of “house churches” (unregistered
ones) or part of “Three-Self Patriotic Churches” (the registered ones tak-
ing their name from the three requirements for autonomy that the state
tries to implement upon religious groups) (Yang 2006; Cheng 2003;
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 13

Wright and Zimmerman-Liu 2013; Homer 2010).1 Catholics were

depicted as being either part of the “underground church” (the unregis-
tered one claiming full obedience to the Pope) or part of the “patriotic
church” (the registered one officially autonomous from papal supervision)
(Madsen 1998, 2003; Bays 2012).
This Christian panorama fueled endless debates. Chinese Christians
offered recurrent opportunities to various entities such as anti-­government
Chinese Christians, various American media outlets, missionary societies,
some Western powers, and so on, to denounce how the authoritarian
Chinese state does not meet the “modern” standards of what a state
should implement in terms of religious freedom and the rule of law (Yang
2012; Homer 2010; Dulk and Carpenter 2014). Unlike Christians in
Turkey or India, who attract far less attention, reports about the situation
of Chinese Christians regularly appear in the American public sphere
through books and articles that indicate a continuous—and somehow
ambiguous—Western interest in Chinese Christians (Bays 2009).
By the end of the 2010s, the situation has evolved and more and more
observers agree that Chinese Christians cannot be classified through a
simple binary opposition between registered and unregistered communi-
ties (Bays 2012). On the one hand, the theological and political diversifi-
cation of Chinese Christians precludes any typology from clearly emerging.
Simultaneously, the ongoing urbanization of China deeply impacts the
ways in which house churches reshape themselves (Kang 2016). Therefore,
Chinese Christian networks remain more complex and diverse than any
classification. On the other hand, the religious policy of the state greatly
varies from place to place and therefore diversifies, even more, the ways in
which local communities respond and structure themselves (Dulk and
Carpenter 2014; Goh et al. 2016; Chan 2015). Analysts are left without a
clear map to portray Chinese Christians and their complex relation to the
Communist state (Vala 2018).
Although there is no reliable data to evaluate the number of Chinese
Christians, broad assessments consider that there are about 15 million
Catholics and from 50–100 million Protestants in China (Bays 2012; Yang
2012). What is now certain is that the number of Chinese Christians has
increased since the 1970s. Indeed, all religious movements are thriving

1
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement was initially a Protestant ideology about mission and
was recycled by the Chinese Communist Party in 1951 to require self-governance, self-sup-
port, and self-propagation from all Protestant churches in China.
14 M. CHAMBON

and some researchers even refer to a “religious fever” as a way to describe

religiosity in China (Johnson 2017). Yet, Christian movements—like all
religious organizations—remain a question for the Communist state
(Goossaert and Palmer 2011). The level of control and regulation that
they are facing remains highly variable from place to place, depending on
local history, individual officials, and economic factors. In the rise of Xi
Jinping, however, the religious policy of the Chinese state has become
tighter. Christians are now more careful, enjoying less autonomy and dis-
playing more self-censorship than a few years ago (Yang 2017). In this
context, studying Chinese Christians is not without risks, either for the
researcher or for the Christians who support him.
This broader situation, therefore, weighs on the ways in which social
scientists approach Chinese Christians. In fact, the scholarly study of
Chinese Christianity remains under constant risk of becoming a political
means to criticize the Chinese state, a growing challenger to the American
hegemony (Yang 2012; Wielander 2013; Vala 2018; Ownby 2011; Ashiwa
and Wank 2009). It is meaningful that a large proportion of the research
focuses on political questions and on unregistered “house churches” only
(Cheng 2003; Yang 2005; Homer 2010; Koesel 2013; Wright and
Zimmerman-Liu 2013; Kang 2016; Ma 2019). It leaves aside many other
issues and neglects the Three-Self Patriotic Churches, perceived as some-
how “corrupted” by the state (Wang 2016; Byler 2014). Anthropologists
like Cao Nanlai and a few others have tried to move away from these pit-
falls by offering new insights on Protestantism in Wenzhou (Cao 2011;
Chen and Huang 2004). Also, the recent academic interest in the growth
of Pentecostalism has encouraged researchers to enlarge the scope of their
investigation (Yang et al. 2017). Thus, it is in this academically ambigu-
ous, religiously complex, and politically sensitive situation that my research
took place.
In order to select a field site, during the summers of 2013 and 2014, I
visited around fifty Protestant communities in various parts of China with
several criteria in mind. I was looking for somewhere not entirely rural nor
urban. I did not want my research becoming too specified by its environ-
ment and the farmer’s son that I remain was skeptical about any kind of
ontological division between urban and rural churches (Huang 2014; Cao
2011; Kang 2016). Also, it was necessary to select a place where Mandarin
was the practical language among local people (putonghua 普通话). After
learning Cantonese and Mandarin, I was not capable of learning a new
Chinese dialect. Then, it was important to me to find a large enough
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 15

Fig. 1.1 Nanping

church able to reflect a certain level of complexity and diversity. Finally, my

last criterion was to find a Protestant Church able to welcome me in a safe
way for them, and for me in the long run. Even though I met with many
large Protestant churches willing to share their experience, many were
anxious about the idea of having a foreign researcher among them, joining
almost all church events for more than an entire year. After two summers
of inquiry, only one place appeared suitable, and this was in Fujian
(Fig. 1.1).

Doing Fieldwork at the Gospel Church in Nanping

Pastor Thomas Sun from the Gospel Church of Nanping was the most
confident and welcoming Christian leader I met during my preliminary
research.2 Soon, I understood that my doctoral research would occur in
Nanping, a place that met all my research criteria. Located at the junction
of rural inner China and the urban coast, the city and its surrounding dis-
trict, Yanping District, comprise around 504,500 inhabitants according to
the 2016 official census.3 Almost 300,000 of them live in the city itself.
Unlike in most parts of Fujian, Nanping people speak Mandarin as their
primary language, and local dialects dominate only the rural parts of the

2
Throughout this book, I keep the real names of my informants whenever they are identi-
fiable public figures, such as Pastor Sun. The rest of the time, I use pseudonyms to respect
my informants’ privacy.
3
See 2016 official census: http://www.ypzf.gov.cn/cms/cms/html/npsypqrmzf/
2017-04-01/655911812.html visited on October 1, 2019.
16 M. CHAMBON

territory. This linguistic particularity—quite different from the rest of the

Fujian province and already mentioned by missionaries in the 1920s—
comes from the fact that Nanping was the crossroad of inner and coastal
China. This hub was a place of encounter and trade where people needed
a common language.
Local Christianity, like other forms of religious life, is lively, diverse, and
visible. Indeed, before my long-term fieldwork, Christians in Fujian
Province were enjoying a fairly peaceful and favorable socio-political situ-
ation. With the exception of painful conflicts involving underground
Catholics in the north of the province, which includes the Nanping
Prefecture (also named Minbei Prefecture), the provincial government
displayed a more nuanced and pragmatic approach toward Christian
churches than in some other parts of China (Chan 2012).
With the blessing of Pastor Sun and an official affiliation with the
Department of Anthropology at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou,
Guangdong Province, I moved to the People’s Republic of China from
January 2015 to May 2016, spending most of my time in Nanping. During
my stay there, I lived in one of the elderly homes of the Gospel Church, in
an apartment initially designed for the staff. This location, besides being
comfortable, allowed me to observe and participate in a wide range of
church activities that this book describes. During the first part of my field-
work, I also tried to immerse myself as much as I could within the extended
local network of the Gospel Church while adjusting to life in Nanping.
Since the Gospel Church reaches around 4000 people across the Yanping
District and interconnects various local churches, it generates countless
activities, programs, and sub-groups that kept me quite busy.
While I was getting more familiar with the Gospel Church, I also started
to engage with other Nanping churches and joined more and more of
their services and activities. I needed to connect with all local Christian
communities I could in order to develop a deeper and wider understand-
ing of the Christian phenomenon in Nanping. Besides Christians, I spent
a fair amount of time to explore other religious practices and networks
that enrich the religious life of most Nanping people. In view of the local
religious dynamism, this exploration was an endless journey. Although I
always remained focused on the Gospel Church and other Christian com-
munities, I constantly enlarged the scope of my observations, engaging in
more and more comparative approaches. This book comes as an echo to
these incessant dialogues between different religious practices of Nanping
people and their multiple traditions.
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 17

Throughout my stay in Nanping, I learned immensely about the

Chinese political and administrative equilibrium. After some warnings
from the local police, I also learned how to engage with various state offi-
cials and communicate more actively about what I was doing in China.
Building respect and trust matters! Having a research permit and being
affiliated with an outstanding Chinese university are never enough.
Therefore, like many other foreigners elsewhere in China, I got repeatedly
invited to drink tea with a few officials and enjoyed endless discussions
about numerous topics. If they were interested in hearing about social
issues in Hong Kong, the soft power of the Vatican, or the religious policy
of the USA, I was also able to question them on the Chinese religious
policy, environmental problems and other issues that preoccupied my
mind at that time.
Beyond the Yanping District itself, engaging with the Gospel Church
and other local churches required reassembling the wide and diffuse net-
work that characterizes the ways in which Nanping Christians operate and
belong to the broader Chinese Christianity. Several times, I had to follow
Pastor Sun on some of his numerous trips outside of the Nanping terri-
tory. Indeed, within the highly interconnected Fujian’s official
Protestantism, the Gospel Church is a beacon shining upon the entire
province. Besides the personal network of Pastor Sun that afforded me to
travel increasingly during the second half of my stay, I also had to engage
with various Protestant and Catholic entities that directly collaborate with
Nanping churches. This led me to explore Protestant churches—including
house churches—in Zhejiang province, Guangdong province, Nanjing,
Beijing, and Shanghai, as well as Catholic communities in Fuan, Fuzhou,
and Guangzhou. In one of my follow-up visits, I also visited related
churches in the north of China, Heilongjiang Province.
Finally, I must mention that during my fieldwork, I had to regularly
return to Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong, 480 miles
away from Nanping. Because of my academic affiliation to Sun Yat-Sen
University, I had to spend some time on campus. This became an oppor-
tunity to further explore Catholicism in larger Guangzhou. Already famil-
iar with the official diocese, my on-campus time gave me the possibility to
increasingly engage with the “non-official” Catholic networks of the
megacity. I found out that many of these Catholics came from northern
Fujian and were happy to connect me back with their native place. Their
help, therefore, was critical in enlarging my networking among Catholic
networks of northern Fujian.
18 M. CHAMBON

What Counts as “Christian” in Nanping?

Before presenting the layout of this book, I must acknowledge one theo-
retical and methodological difficulty of my research. The way I address it
sheds light on the entire project and on the ways in which I approach the
Christian phenomenon in Nanping. In fact, a social scientist aiming to
study Christianity in China will have to select and define an object of
study, and eventually, a set of people recognized and identified as
“Christian.” In this search for an object of study, the researcher inevitably
faces questions such as: “What counts as a Christian church?” or “What is
a Christian?” (Robbins 2003). Indeed, selecting an appropriate starting
point obliges one to revisit the intellectual trajectories and choices he
relies on.
For example, the Nanping True Jesus Church refers to Jesus and pres-
ents itself as Christian but does not believe in the Trinity. Other Chinese
religious movements may revere the Trinity, but worship individuals as the
incarnation of the Holy Spirit or the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ,
or rewrite their own “Christian” holy scriptures. How does a researcher
distinguish among those groups who are all claiming to be Christian?
What are our criteria to select one instead of another one? This problem
may appear trivial, and the question of the Trinity, for example, may sound
too “theological.” Still, ignoring that the Trinity is approached by most
Christian traditions as the core essence of Christianity is problematic. In
the search for a Christian object of study, one cannot ignore and dismiss
what the vast majority of Christian traditions and churches tell us about
the religion of the cross without a thorough justification.
To make my search for an object of study even more complex, the
Nanping True Jesus Church is recognized by the Chinese state as a
Christian church, and this indicates a significant external recognition that
cannot be downplayed by the social scientist. Yet, the theological expertise
of the Chinese Communist government may not be enough to define
what a “Christian” object of study could be (Autry 2013). Nonetheless, in
the eyes of most non-Christian Chinese citizens, people joining the True
Jesus Church are Christian. If most mainline churches do not recognize
them as “Christians” because of issues about the Trinity, other social actors
do. Therefore, acknowledging what stands as a Christian entity within the
Chinese landscape requires considering multiple levels at once, including
political, social, theological and historical ones.
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 19

To address these concerns without downplaying their importance, I

propose first to not limit the scope of my research to one church but to
consider the various Christian entities that operate in Nanping. I propose
to listen to what the six local networks may have to say about the Christian
phenomenon without narrowing my inquiry to any single church or tradi-
tion that supposedly suffices to understand Christianity. Besides enriching
my understanding of the locally informed Christian phenomenon, this
approach also fits the view of my informants, who are all aware of the dif-
ferent churches active in Nanping and constantly compare and con-
trast them.
Second, elaborating on insights from ANT, I propose to approach
these religious networks as “Christianizing assemblages.” “Christianizing”
puts the emphasis on the development process inscribed in these commu-
nities without stating whether or not they are Christian. By using the term
Christianizing, I refrain from implicit assumptions and contested identifi-
cation, but highlight a collective effort to refer to Jesus Christ. Then, the
term “assemblage” puts the emphasis on the composite nature of these
Christianizing networks without assuming internal homogeneity.
Assemblage is a term widely used in the ANT literature to refer to precari-
ous wholes formed by humans and non-humans (Müller 2015; De Landa
2006; Farías 2014; Latour 2005). Instead of implying a stable and fixed
ontology within a network, or essentializing and reifying Christianity, the
term “Christianizing assemblage” invites to investigate the variety of het-
erogeneous actors and actions that constantly produce the Christian com-
munity as an operating whole, or as a continuous “agencement” as one
may say in French (Guattari and Deleuze 1975). In our case, a Christianizing
assemblage includes collaborating people, material objects, and virtual
entities that we will gradually introduce and discuss throughout this book.
As a matter of fact, one may recall that terms like ecclesiology, ecclesi-
astic and ecclesiastical take root in the Latin term, ekklēsia, assembly. And
so does the French term for church, église. Therefore, there are both theo-
retical and historical affinities for labeling Nanping Christian networks as
“Christianizing assemblages.” The use of this technical term intends to
invite us to constantly reevaluate what those composite communities iden-
tifying with Jesus Christ manifest and what we, therefore, mean by “a
church.” Thus, this unusual term allows me to set apart and revisit the
notion of the church itself. While each Christianizing assemblage stands
for what is usually recognized as “a church,” and the term “church” refers
to particular buildings, I reserve the term “Church” for the peculiar agent
20 M. CHAMBON

which stands among and beyond those networks. As we will gradually

uncover, the Church is a semi-transcendent being that is only an inter-­
active part of those networks, even when people call them a church. These
nuances are essential to the argument of this book. This being said, I want
to briefly present the six Christianizing assemblages evolving in
Nanping today.

1.4   Nanping’s Six Christianizing Assemblages

The Christianizing assemblage which attracts the most numerous follow-
ers is the Gospel Church (fuyintang 福音堂). Founded by American
Methodist missionaries in the late nineteenth century to the early twenti-
eth century, it connects around 4000 people across the Yanping district.
Organized in various local churches, those Christians gather in more than
twenty places of worship and several other properties. Socially, this net-
work is extremely diverse in terms of age, education, employment, and
income. Although a rather large majority of its members are women in
their 50s–60s, all other social profiles are represented as well. Pastor Sun
is the head pastor of this network. He collaborates with ten other pastors
and ministers, fifteen elected deacons, and dozens of remunerated co-
workers (tonggong 同工) to serve the many facets of this network. In 2015,
the Gospel Church did directly run two renowned kindergartens, which
was quite unusual in contemporary China, and has generated an elderly
home that Chap. 4 analyzes in detail.
Another relatively large Protestant Christianizing assemblage is the
Christian Assembly, also known as the Little Flock (juhuichu 聚会处) (Xi
2010). This network connects around 1000 people across the Yanping
District, most of them being women in their 50s–60s. For worship, they
officially gather in a unique place located downtown Nanping, and yet,
they also own a few informal meeting points, as all other local assemblages
do. The Christian Assembly is extremely close to the Gospel Church in
terms of doctrine, but diverges in terms of church ministry and structures.
The network, more egalitarian in its functioning, is served by one ordained
elder (zhanglao 长老), Elder Wei, in cooperation with height volunteered
evangelists (chuandaoren 传道人), also named Board of Deacons. Also,
the binary opposition of men/women is more visible during services
because women cover their heads with a small black bonnet (for historical
background see Xi 2010).
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 21

The third Protestant Christianizing assemblage in Nanping is the

Adventist Church (anxirihui 安息日会). This network counts around one
hundred people in Nanping who gather at the top of an old tower down-
town. Also, a few dozen worshippers gather in Zhanghu Township. In
both cases, most members are women of different ages. The community is
under the leadership of a Tibetan evangelist (also call shenxuesheng 神学生,
theologian) in his early 40s, Luke, who collaborates with six local co-­
workers (tonggong 同工) and one Adventist pastor of a nearby prefecture.
The Adventists are famous in Nanping for their strict dietary rules and the
fact that they worship on Saturday morning, unlike other Christianizing
groups. They have a few distinctive rituals and doctrines that I will present
in this book.
Besides these three mainline Protestant entities, the Yanping District
hosts a fair number of Catholics. The Catholic Church (tianzhujiaohui 天
主教会) has been present in Nanping since the seventeenth century, before
the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1644) (Brockey 2007; Menegon 2003).
Today, local Catholics are sharply divided into two different networks: one
official and registered parish that connects around 150 people in Nanping
and a few dozens in Zhanghu Township, and one unofficial (underground)
Catholic community that connects around 400 people in Nanping. Being
a more family-­based religious tradition, the two networks gather people of
all ages with a rather balanced sex ratio. Yet, both operate side by side
under the supervision of their own priest (shenfu 神父) and nun (xiunu 修
女). Besides this internal division, they both apply the same universal orga-
nization and practice of the Catholic Church, with the exception of (in
both cases) having a bishop due to the endless conflicts in Fuzhou and
Mindong, and between the Holy See and the Chinese government (Chan
2012). To take these inter-Catholic tensions seriously, this book will refer
to them as two distinct Christianizing assemblages belonging to the same
Catholic Church.
The last Christianizing assemblage in Nanping is the True Jesus Church
(zhenyesu jiaohui 真耶稣教会). This network attracts around 700 people
and owns a large building in a suburb of Nanping where worshippers
gather for worship on Saturday. Again, the sex ratio there is rather bal-
anced and churchgoers are of all ages. Besides specific key rituals, such as
washing feet, and strong Pentecostal spirituality, the True Jesus Church
does not believe in the Trinity but refers to Jesus as the visible appearance
of the only person of God (Inouye 2011). This network is supervised by
three ordained deacons (zhishi 执事) in collaboration with fifty unpaid
22 M. CHAMBON

co-workers. Like the Adventist and the Little Flock Churches, the True
Jesus Church has been present in Nanping since the late 1930s when
many Fuzhou people fled to Nanping, an inland city that was safer at
that time.
Besides these six Christianizing assemblages, local Christians talk about
the proselyte presence of Christian sectarian movements such as the
Shouters (huhanpai 呼喊派) and the Disciples’ Society (mentuhui 門徒會)
(Xi 2010: 216–227). Most of these groups, besides promoting a hetero-
dox theology and alternative versions of the Bible, are classified by the
state as evil cults (xiejiao 邪教) and therefore, actively eradicated. Thus,
being a foreign researcher, I never tried to search for them or to have any
kind of contact. Nonetheless, based on my own understanding of the
Nanping socio-religious equilibrium, I doubt that in 2015–2016 they had
much influence upon the local society unlike other Christian sectarian
movements like the Church of Almighty God (quannengshen jiaohui 全能
神教会) had in other parts of China (Dunn 2015).
Finally, during my fieldwork, I barely heard about local unregistered
Protestant house churches. In the fairly relaxed socio-political atmosphere
of Nanping, local people introduced me to many religious networks and
activities. I also gained access to one of the most sensitive “illegal” reli-
gious groups of the district, the “underground” Catholics. However, find-
ing unregistered Protestant congregations was less evident. Late in my
research, I finally encountered two groups of ten members each who do
not affiliate with the four Protestant assemblages already listed. Each gath-
ers in private homes and organizes their own services and activities.
Although some of their members come from local official churches or
work for them (at the elderly home, for instance), they now prefer to prac-
tice Christianity in the small, equalitarian, and independent setting of their
apartments. Yet, the two groups refuse to call themselves “house church”
(jiating jiaohui 家庭教会) but prefer the term “house gathering” (jiating
juhui 家庭聚会) arguing that they are not large enough to be a church.
Indeed, compared to many places in China where houses churches form a
large proportion of local Christianity, the Nanping situation is rather
exceptional. After eight years of recurrent visits, I tend to believe that this
district has only a few unregistered Protestant circles with very limited
influence.
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 23

1.5   Chapters and Arguments Summary

With the presentation of the local Christian landscape covered, I can now
move to the layout of this book and summarize my main arguments. The
study is structured in two parts. The following three chapters explore the
ways in which local people and objects participate in the making of
Nanping Christianity in order to unveil and identify characteristic actors of
those networks. Each chapter focuses on one specific kind of actor to reas-
semble the ways it is produced and manifested through a Christianizing
network and the ways it respectively participates in this network. This
identification of characteristic actors being completed, the next two chap-
ters look at how they organically collaborate and produce a diversified
local Christianity.
With Chap. 2, the ethnography begins with an exploration of all the
physical churches and sites of worship that local denominations have
erected in the Yanping District. We travel across the entire territory and its
various Christian communities to discover how the shape, size, material
components, and location of Christian buildings speak to surrounding
people and entities such as natural elements, village communities, legal
constraints, and non-Christian religious sites. Embedded in a vast network
of relationships, I show that buildings participate in the creation of local
Christianity and, therefore, should be understood as “agent” of
Christianizing assemblages. Ultimately, buildings provide a case study to
ponder how material objects are a particular kind of co-actors involved in
the making of religious traditions.
After discovering Christian buildings in relation to their Nanping envi-
ronment, Chap. 3 explores the inside of these places, as well as their main
activities. To do so, I focus on one case study—the Gospel Church in the
city of Nanping—while comparing it with other local churches. Unveiling
key contrasts between Christian churches and non-Christian temples, I
argue that Christian places of worship and services are heavily monocen-
tric and dialogic. They engage congregants in a particular way with a cen-
tral and distinct entity, the Christian God. To further discuss the type of
interactions that these Christian sites and activities foster, the chapter
introduces the notion of the questioning face in order to label the particu-
lar agency that the presence of this Christian center diffuses within the
network of relationships displayed throughout Christian worship events,
and beyond.
24 M. CHAMBON

The third step of the study follows Nanping Christians outside of their
churches in order to examine how they interact with the surrounding soci-
ety. To do so, Chap. 4 focuses on one collective, costly, and growing social
involvement of Chinese Christians: the opening of church-run homes for
the elderly. In contemporary China, many Christian denominations have
opened some. But in Nanping, only the Gospel Church has been able to
maintain its own over time. Thus, the chapter investigates the history and
business reality of this Christian elderly home and explores how Christians
financially create, legally justify and concretely manage this place year after
year. Thus, the study unveils how Christians operate under the umbrella of
two specific entities, distinct but paired, that channel their collective
action, the Church and the pastoral clergy. By examining the creation of
those specific actors that I name twin sponsors, I argue that Nanping
Christians do not simply create a moral community of churchgoers but
also a semi-transcendent being standing beyond their own community,
the Church, operating under the specific governance of its clergy, the pas-
toral clergy.
Those distinctive actors being identified, the second part of the book
turns to two significant material entities circulating across Nanping
Christianizing assemblages in order to investigate their organic relation-
ships. In each case, I select one material object which stands as a quasi-­
substance of these networks and explore two examples of its circulations.
More specifically, Chap. 5 discusses how Nanping Christians make and
share offerings. First, I look at offering boxes, the only common object
found in all local churches and temples, to examine how they manifest
Christianizing efforts to channel monetary offerings. Then, I explore one
large gift-giving ritual that the Gospel Church has recently created,
Thanksgiving. In Nanping, it is the only annual Christian liturgy during
which a large amount of natural goods is offered to the Christian God. By
following the overflow of gifts that these two sites of gift-giving allow and
reframe, this chapter argues that the distinctive actors who co-make
Christianizing assemblages cannot be reduced to their related congrega-
tion itself. Indeed, the enigmatic face and the twin sponsors exceed the
churchgoers who identify with them.
Chapter 6 investigates one material paradox of Nanping Christians, and
it refers to blood. While all local churches set diverse dietary rules, the
Gospel Church, the Christian Assembly, the Adventist Church, and the
True Jesus Church banish the consumption of any kind of blood. At the
same time, all local Christianizing assemblages design specific rituals to
 1 STUDYING CHINESE CHRISTIANITY 25

Fig. 1.2 Nanping in its region

drink the blood of Jesus Christ. The chapter explores this Christian para-
dox by, first, investigating the history and practical scope of the Christian
blood taboo in Nanping. Then, I examine how each assemblage materially
produces and collectively consumes the blood of Christ. Ultimately, the
chapter argues that Christian actors are not setting these rules up to sepa-
rate their communities from their broader society, but to point out in an
engaging way the peculiar and material presence of their God. Borrowing
from theories on visual art, I discuss how this material paradox does not
aim to create impervious social boundaries between different religious
groups but to reveal the questioning Christian face in a language that is
audible for all Nanping inhabitants.
26 M. CHAMBON

A short concluding chapter (Chap. 7) summarizes the findings of this

study through a metaphoric comparison. I offer the specific biological
features of a banyan tree as an image to recall and illustrate the particulari-
ties of Christian networks. Since this tree has the capacity to grow multiple
trunks while maintaining connections to its original and central one, it
offers an alternative model to understand unity and diversity within the
Christian phenomenon (Fig. 1.2).

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 PART I

The Epiphany of the Three

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 CHAPTER XIV
UNGENTLEMANLIKE BEHAVIOR OF JIM
LASCELLES

JIM LASCELLES continued his labors. He arrived at Hill Street each

morning at ten, and worked with diligence until two p.m. Urged by
the forces within him, and sustained by the injudicious counsel of his
mother, he devoted his powers to the yellow hair, in spite of the fact
that by the terms of his commission it was his duty to copy the
auburn.
About three days after the dance he was interrupted one morning by
Lord Cheriton. Jim was feeling rather depressed. For one thing his
conscience smote him. He had deliberately risked the loss of a sum
of money which he could not afford to lose; and further, it was most
likely that he was about to offer an affront to his only patron. The
more work he put into the picture, the more marked became the
difference between it and the original. Again, and this perhaps was
an equally solid reason for his depression, this morning the Goose
Girl had forsaken him. She had gone for a ride in the park with her
duke.
Doubtless Cheriton was sharing Jim’s depression. At least, when he
entered the drawing-room to inspect the labors of his protégé, a
countenance which, as a general rule, made a point of exhibiting a
scrupulous amiability, was clouded over.
Cheriton’s scrutiny of Jim’s labors was long and particular.
“I invite you to be frank with me, Lascelles,” said he. “Is this a copy of
the Dorset, or is it a portrait of a living person?”
By nature Jim was a simple and ingenuous fellow. But really his
present predicament was so awkward that he did not know what
reply to make.
“Some of it is Gainsborough,” said Jim, lamely, “and some of it, I am
afraid, is nature.”
“I am sorry to say, my dear Lascelles,” said Cheriton, judicially, “that I
cannot accept that as an adequate answer to a straightforward
question.”
“No, it is not a very good answer,” Jim agreed.
Suddenly his jaw dropped and he burst into a queer laugh.
“The fact is, Lord Cheriton,” said Jim, “I am in a hole.”
Cheriton regarded Jim in a highly critical manner.
“Yes, Lascelles,” said he, slowly. “I think you are.”
“A hole,” Jim repeated with additional emphasis, as if he desired to
gain confidence from a frank statement of his trouble.
Jim’s odd face seemed to appeal for a little sympathy, but not a
suggestion of it was forthcoming.
“What can a fellow do?” said Jim, desperately. “She will come and sit
here on that sofa in a better light than the duchess. The sun of the
morning will shine upon her; and when Nature comes to handle pink
and white and blue and yellow she has a greater magic than ever
Gainsborough had.”
Cheriton shook his head with magisterial solemnity.
“Lascelles,” said he, “you have a very weak case. And I feel bound to
say that the manner in which you present it does not, in my opinion,
make it stronger.”
“I expect not,” said Jim, ruefully. “But dash it all, what is a fellow to do
if she will come and sit on that sofa and pose like Romney’s Emma?”
“His duty is absolutely clear to my mind, and I think it is simple. He
should order the intruder out of the room.”
“Oh yes, I know,” said Jim, “that is what a really strong chap would
do.” Jim gave a groan. “I know that is what a Velasquez or a
Rembrandt would have done. And he would have cursed her like
fury for sitting there at all.”
“Yes, I think so,” said the mellifluous Cheriton. “Rembrandt
especially. In my opinion, Rembrandt would have shaken his fist at
her.”
“That is the worst of being a mediocrity,” said Jim, gloomily. “It takes
a chap with enormous character to do these things.”
“I am afraid, Lascelles, the plea of mediocrity will do nothing for you.
If anything, it weakens your case. Personally, if I were advising you I
should say either put in a plea of consummate genius or do not put
in a plea at all.”
“I am not such a fool as to believe that I’m a genius,” said Jim, with
excellent frankness.
“I am not such a fool as to believe you are either,” said Cheriton, with
a frankness that was equally excellent. “And therefore, examining
your conduct with all the leniency the circumstances will permit, I am
unable to find any palliation for it. I fear my old friend Lady
Crewkerne is much annoyed—forgive my plainness, Lascelles, but I
feel it to be necessary—by your intrepidity in copying her niece
instead of her Gainsborough; and I, as an old friend of the house,
feel bound to share her disapproval.”
“Rub it in, Lord Cheriton,” said Jim.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and began to whistle softly with an
air of supreme discomfiture.
“Yes, Lascelles, I intend to do so. In fact, I find it difficult to say all
that I should like to do upon the subject, without actually saying more
than one who was at school with your father would feel it desirable to
say to a young man who has his own way to make in the world.”
“Say just as much as you like,” said Jim. “I know I have made an ass
of myself. And of course I haven’t a leg to stand on, really. And I
expect the old cat will have me on the carpet too.”
Cheriton dropped his eyeglass with an air of dignified agitation.
“I beg your pardon, Lascelles,” said he. “To whom do you refer?”
“To that damned old woman!” said Jim Lascelles, with an unabashed
air.
“Can it be possible that you refer to Caroline Crewkerne, my oldest
friend?”
“I mean the aunt of Nature’s immortal work,” said Jim, coolly. “I really
can’t help it; I feel that I must curse somebody this morning. And as
she is bound to curse me, I don’t see why I shouldn’t curse her.”
“Your habit of explanation, Lascelles, is decidedly unfortunate.”
“Well, tell me the worst, Lord Cheriton. I suppose you withdraw your
offer; and I am to be bundled out neck and crop with my canvas and
forbidden to come here again?”
“I certainly withdraw my offer. In regard to prohibition of the house
that, of course, rests entirely with my old friend, of whom you have
spoken in a singularly disrespectful—and shall I say
ungentlemanlike?—manner.”
“I couldn’t help it,” said Jim, humbly. “It has done me good to say it.
But, of course, I’m in the wrong altogether.”
“You are, undoubtedly. To my mind, you are more in the wrong than
one could have judged possible for a young man of your character,
upbringing, and attainments to be.”
“If a confounded girl,” said Jim, “will make a practice of coming into
this room continually to ask you what your opinion is of her hat and
her frock, and whether you have ever tasted cream buns and pink
ices, and whether you think Muffin’s mauve was as nice as her lilac
is——”
“My dear Lascelles,” interrupted Cheriton, “your habit of explanation
is really most unfortunate.”
“Well, kick me out and my canvas too,” said Jim, desperately, “and
have done with it.”
Jim Lascelles, like the rash and hasty fellow that he was, feeling
himself to be irretrievably disgraced and that he had forfeited forever
the respect and good-will of his only patron, proceeded to pack up
his brushes and his pigments.
“The former part of your suggestion, Lascelles, is much the simpler
matter of the two. But in the matter of the half-finished canvas I
foresee difficulty.”
“You have repudiated it, haven’t you?” said Jim, rather fiercely.
“Unquestionably as a copy of the Dorset. But all the same, I do not
think it can be permitted to leave this house.”
“Why not, Lord Cheriton?”
“It is an unauthorized portrait of my ward, Miss Perry, who at present
is in statu pupillari.”
“Ye-es,” said Jim, dubiously, “I suppose it is. All the same, it is rather
rough on a chap. I have put a lot of work into that picture.”
“I can see you have, Lascelles.”
“And of course,” said Jim, injudiciously, “I should like to put a lot
more work into it. It is such a fine subject.”
“The subject is much too fine, Lascelles, if I may venture an opinion.
My advice to you is, burn the canvas and forget that it ever existed.”
No pity was taken on Jim’s blank consternation.
“Burn it!” cried Jim, aghast.
“I am afraid if you don’t, my dear Lascelles, Lady Crewkerne will.”
“But she has no right——” said Jim, fiercely.
“I am afraid, my dear fellow, her right is not to be contested. In my
view, this half-finished canvas is much more her property than it is
yours.”
“Well,” said Jim, apprehensively, “I shall remove it at once to my
studio.”
Cheriton had dropped his little bombshell. The gyrations of his victim,
whom he had fully alarmed, seemed to afford him a great deal of
pleasure.
“Let us take it a little easier, my dear fellow,” said he. “I agree with
you that it would be a great pity to destroy such an extremely
promising work of art. Let us seek for an alternative.”
“The only alternative I can see,” said Jim, “is that I should remove it
at once.”
“In its half-finished state? That would be a pity.”
“Well, I don’t mean it to be burnt if I can help it,” said Jim.
During the pause which followed Jim looked highly perplexed, not a
little disconcerted, and also somewhat belligerent.
“I have a suggestion to make to you, Lascelles,” said his patron. “In
the circumstances I think it is quite the most you can hope for.”
“I shall be happy to consider it, Lord Cheriton,” said Jim, with a rueful
smile.
“In the first place, it seems to me that the best thing I can do is to get
the permission of Lady Crewkerne for you to finish the portrait of her
niece. Now, I warn you it may not be easy. As I think you have
conjectured, she is a difficult member of a most difficult sex. But I am
only prepared to do this upon one definite condition.”
“What is it?” asked Jim, in a tone that was not very hopeful.
“The condition must be this, Lascelles,” said Cheriton, with a very
businesslike air. “As you have treated me so abominably—I regret
exceedingly that candor compels me to use the term—if I obtain
permission for you to complete your portrait of Miss Perry, I shall
insist upon being allowed to purchase it upon my own terms.”
“Yes,” said Jim, “that is only fair.”
It seemed to him that things were taking a much more favorable
course than he could have hoped for.
“If I can obtain permission for you, Lascelles, to complete that
picture, and you finish it in the manner you have begun it, it will be a
pleasure to hang it at Cheriton House.”
Jim Lascelles was touched by the kindness of his patron.
“I didn’t quite see my way, Lord Cheriton,” said he, with admirable
simplicity, “to offer you an apology for my rotten behavior, because
you know you did rub it in, but I am going to now. And I hope you’ll
accept it, because you’ve been so kind to me—much kinder to me
than you ought to have been, really.”
“Yes, Lascelles,” said Cheriton, impartially, “I am inclined to take that
view myself. But your father was good to me at school; and you are
young, and you have talent, and you have a great subject to work
upon, and I can’t help feeling that it would be a pity if you lost the
opportunity which, in a sense, you have already had the wit to
create. Mind, Lascelles, I don’t excuse you in the least. I palliate
nothing; take your conduct all round it has been abominable; but in
my humble judgment, had it been more correct than it has been I
personally should not take such a hopeful view of your future. For
you have conformed to my fundamental belief that all the men who
are worth anything must begin by breaking the rules. Although have
the goodness to remember, my dear Lascelles, when you come to
breaking the rules be careful how you do it, for it is very easy to get
expelled the school. And should that happen—well, of course, you
are done for unless you are able to found a school of your own.”
Jim Lascelles forbore to smile at this piece of didacticism. He was
very full of gratitude. The old blighter had behaved so much more
nicely than he need have done.
“If only I had genius,” said Jim, “I would give up my days to the
fashioning of the most absolute masterpiece that ever adorned the
walls of Cheriton House.”
“You remember Carlyle’s definition?” said the owner thereof.
“Carlyle was an old fool.”
“That was always my opinion. And I once had the privilege of telling
him so, and, what is more, the noisy fellow admitted it. Doubtless
what he meant to express by his definition was the fact that Genius
is perfect submission to the Idea.”
“Well, here goes for perfect submission to the Idea,” said Jim
Lascelles.
He took up his brush and his palette, and gave a very deft touch to
the vestments of Miss Perry.
“Do you like my new riding-habit?” said a perfectly ludicrous drawl
coming in through the door.
Jim Lascelles made a gesture of despair. He kept his back turned
upon the new riding-habit resolutely.
“Dear me!” said Cheriton, “Artemis.”
“Isn’t it silly?” said Miss Perry. “They don’t like you to jump the
railings in Rotten Row.”
“What is the source of your information?” inquired my lord.
“Gobo says so,” said Miss Perry.
“Put not your faith in that man, my dear Miss Goose,” said Cheriton,
mellifluously. “It is only because he is afraid of taking a toss.”
“But they have got po-lice-men,” said Miss Perry, impressively.
There can be no reasonable doubt that in her new riding-habit Miss
Perry looked perfectly distracting. Lord Cheriton was certainly of that
opinion. As for Jim Lascelles, he waved her away from him with
great energy.
“That is the sort of thing,” said he, with an appeal for sympathy and
protection.
“Miss Goose,” said Lord Cheriton, “Mr. Lascelles has made a serious
indictment against you.”
“Has he?” said Miss Perry, opening very large, very round, and very
blue eyes upon Jim.
“Mr. Lascelles complains,” said Cheriton, with paternal severity, “that
while he is assiduously engaged in copying that famous portrait of
your great-grandmamma, you persist in coming into this room in your
smartest gowns; in sitting in the middle of that sofa; in absorbing the
best light; in posing in a manner that no really sensitive painter can
possibly resist; with the melancholy result that you literally force him
to paint you instead of your great-grandmamma, quite, as he
assures me, against his rational judgment and his natural
inclination.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” said Miss Perry, with charming friendliness.
“It made me rather tired at first holding my chin like this, but at the
end of an hour I always get a cream bun.”
“At the end of an hour you always get a cream bun! Do you indeed?”
“Yes,” said Miss Perry, “small ones, but they are almost as nice as
the large ones.”
“I hope, Lascelles,” said Cheriton, “you have something to offer by
way of extenuation?”
“Well, what can a fellow do?” said Jim, desperately. “What with the
sun stuck up there, and this pink and white and blue and yellow
arrangement. As for the chin—well, if a chin will curve like that it
must take the consequences.”
Cheriton was shocked.
“Say as little as possible, Lascelles, I entreat you,” said he. “Your
case is hopeless. But I feel bound to say this. Since we have had
this astounding allegation of the cream buns, without probing the
matter to the depths, which I am really afraid to do, I must say your
future as a painter seems more roseate than ever.”
“Thank you, Lord Cheriton,” said Jim, modestly.
“But in regard to your future as a human being, as a unit of society, I
prefer to exercise a wise discretion which will take the form of saying
nothing whatever upon the subject.”
“Thank you, Lord Cheriton,” said Jim again.
Jim Lascelles then turned his gaze upon Miss Perry. It was of such
singular resolution that it seemed as if it sought to hypnotize that
irresponsible person to maintain the semblance of discretion.
“If you will go and put on that new frock,” said he, in a manner that
Cheriton was forced to regard as effrontery, “we can get just an hour
before luncheon, and then to-morrow you will start a cream bun in
hand.”
The prospect offered seemed sufficiently enticing to Miss Perry.
“That will be awfully nice.”
She left the room with great cheerfulness.
Cheriton regarded Jim Lascelles with that paternal air which he was
wont to assume rather frequently towards the world in general.
“Lascelles,” said he, “I shall have to revise my estimate of your
attainments. It is becoming increasingly clear to my mind that you
may go far.”
“Gillet said if I applied myself,” said Jim, without immodesty, “I might
be able one day to paint a portrait.”
“Gillet’s opinion is valuable,” said Cheriton, with the air of one who
set a higher value upon his own opinion than he did upon that of
Gillet. He examined Jim’s work very critically. “Yes,” he said, “I
recognize your possibilities. You have had the wit to find a subject,
and I am hopeful that the artist will prove entirely worthy of it.”
Jim’s face expressed his pleasure. After all, he had the talent and
ambition of every honest craftsman.
“Lascelles,” said his patron, “may I give you a word of advice?”
Jim expressed himself gratified at the prospect of receiving it.
“It is this,” said Cheriton, slowly. “You must get into the habit of
charging more for your pictures.”
“I hope I shall be able to,” said Jim. “But times are hard, and it is
uphill work for a man without a reputation.”
“I appreciate that. But I heard you spoken of as the coming man the
other night, and I see no reason why you shouldn’t confirm the
prediction.”
“If only I had a little more talent,” said Jim.
“If only you had a little more faith in it, Lascelles. It is the faith that is
so necessary, as every artist tells us.”
“I suppose so. Yet all the same, I wish the fairies had been a little
kinder.”
“I am of opinion that they have been sufficiently kind to the man who
could pose that head and put that hair upon canvas. But what I
wanted particularly to say to you is this. My friend Kendal intends to
ask you to paint a portrait of his daughter Priscilla.”
Jim Lascelles was thrilled by this announcement.
“That is awfully good of him,” said he, “and awfully good of you, Lord
Cheriton.”
“Perhaps I have the more genuine title to your gratitude,” said
Cheriton, amiably, “because, as far as Kendal is concerned, he is
one of those undiscerning and sluggish fellows who always prefer to
take some one else’s opinion rather than form one of their own. I told
him you were the man to paint his daughter Priscilla, and he was
only too glad to have my word for it. And I am by no means sure you
are not.”
Jim Lascelles was at a loss to know how to express his sense of
obligation, particularly as he could not help feeling that he did not
merit such kindness.
“I wish now,” said he, “I hadn’t behaved so badly.”
“The worst of any sort of bad behavior,” said Cheriton, sententiously,
“is that it carries such a heavy premium. But no matter. The chief
thing is to behave well to my friend Kendal. Paint his daughter
Priscilla to the best of your ability, and be careful to charge him five
hundred guineas.”
Jim was staggered.
“Five hundred guineas!” said he. “Why, he will never pay it. He could
get an absolute first rater for that sum.”
Cheriton smiled sagaciously.
“Doubtless he could,” said he, “and if my friend Kendal pays five
hundred guineas he will consider he’s got one. When I come to
examine your masterpiece on the wall of his gloomy and draughty
dining-room in Yorkshire, I shall say, ‘Kendal, that picture of Priscilla
appears to be an uncommonly sound piece of work.’ And he will say
as proud as you please, ‘I should think it was, my dear fellow. That
young chap Lascelles turned out absolutely first rate. He charged
five hundred guineas for that picture. I am telling everybody.’”
Jim Lascelles found his good fortune a little difficult to accept.
Further, he seemed to be rather troubled by it.
“I hope it is quite fair to Lord Kendal,” he said, “to charge him five
hundred guineas for a picture I should be only too glad to paint for
fifty?”
Cheriton was amused.
“My dear Lascelles,” said he, “simplicity is greatly to be desired in
art, but it is well not to take it into the market-place. There is the man
with whom you are doing business to be considered. If my friend
Kendal paid fifty guineas for the picture of his daughter Priscilla, he
would think exactly ten times less of it than if he paid five hundred;
and instead of hanging it in his dining-room in the worst possible
light, he would hang it in one of the smaller bedrooms in a very much
better one.”
Cheriton’s homily was interrupted at this point by the return of Miss
Perry. In her Gainsborough gown which she had worn at the fancy
ball, and in her “incredible” hat, which by some miracle had been
clapped on at just the right angle, she looked more distracting than
any human creature ought really to do. She seated herself in the
middle of the sofa with great composure, tilted her chin to the light of
the morning, and folded her hands in her lap with almost the air of a
professional.
“Out for blood,” said Jim, approvingly.
“Lascelles,” said Cheriton, “I am almost afraid this means a large
one.”
“Yes,” said Jim, “I am a poor and obscure painter, but this zeal to
serve the arts really merits encouragement.”
“Perhaps, Lascelles,” said Cheriton, “if Buszard is sincerely
interested in art, as one feels sure he must be, he might be induced
to make a reduction upon the large ones if you contracted for a
quantity.”
Jim Lascelles was frankly delighted with the pose, and worked very
happily. He was in high spirits. Thanks to his patron’s generosity, he
had got out of his difficulty far more easily than he could have hoped
to have done. His future prospects had also taken a sudden and
remarkable turn for the better. Yet, apart from these considerations,
his subject fired him. As he worked during this precious hour he felt
that his execution had never had such boldness, freedom, and
authenticity.
Cheriton watched his protégé with approval. As a critic he was
sufficiently accomplished to detect great possibilities in Jim’s
method. Here might be a genuine trouvaille, if the young fellow only
had thoroughness as well as courage.
Miss Perry had not moved her chin once for nearly an hour, so that
she felt her guerdon was as good as earned; Jim Lascelles had
yielded for the same period to a genuine inspiration; and Cheriton
sat at his ease, watching with every outward sign of satisfaction the
fair fruits which were springing from his liberal treatment of the
artistic temper, when this harmony of sitter, painter, and patron was
gravely imperiled by the entrance of a little fat dog. As usual, he
heralded the approach of an old woman leaning upon an ebony
stick.
No sooner had the old woman entered the blue drawing-room than
she stood dumfounded with amazement. And yet there is reason to
believe that this attitude was in some measure assumed. Jim
Lascelles continued to ply his brush in blissful ignorance of her
presence; Miss Perry, for political reasons, continued strictly to
maintain her pose. Cheriton, however, put up a solemn forefinger.
Nevertheless, signs were not wanting that the mistress of the house
was about to disregard his warning.
“Ssssh, Caroline!” said he.
“What, pray, is the meaning of this?” demanded the old lady.
“This is a most critical stage,” said Cheriton. “Three minutes more
and I shall invite you to speak with freedom.”
“Tell me,” snorted the old lady. “Why is that girl sitting there in that
manner in the gewgaws of a play-actress?”
“Sssh, Caroline! Don’t you see?”
The perfect composure of the fair sitter, and the fact that she chose
to remain deaf, dumb, and blind to the intruder, seemed to
exasperate that autocrat.
“Tell me, girl, what is the meaning of it?” she stormed.
She beat the carpet with the ebony walking-stick.
“Move not the Chin Piece, the Young Man said,” Jim whispered.
The filmy, far-away look continued in the eyes of Miss Perry. She
paid heed to none.
Cheriton continued to elevate his forefinger very gravely.
“Sssh, Caroline!” said he. “One short and brief minute more. The
whole situation is most critical.”
“Is the creature hypnotized?”
“Yes, she is undoubtedly.”
“Who gave permission for her to sit for her portrait? In those fal-lals,
too.”
“Nature gave her permission, amiable old Dame Nature. She
couldn’t refuse it.”
“I forbid it,” said Caroline, with all the energy of which she was
capable. “It is disgraceful. It shall not go on.”
Then it was that Miss Perry ventured to say something.
“Large cream bun to-morrow morning, please,” said she.
“Is it an hour?” said Jim Lascelles. “Dear me! how time flies! One can
hardly believe it.”
“Girl,” said the old lady, “I demand an explanation.”
As Miss Perry seemed to have no explanation to offer, Cheriton
came to her aid.
“The truth is,” said he, in honeyed tones, “my distinguished young
friend Lascelles is the victim of a very natural error. My idea was, of
course, Caroline, as you are aware, that he should come here to
copy your Gainsborough, but it would appear that he has put another
interpretation upon his mandate. And I feel bound to confess that I
for one cannot blame him.”
Caroline Crewkerne, however, was not appeased so easily.
“In my opinion,” said she, “it is unpardonable that any man should
take it upon himself to paint clandestinely the portrait of my niece.
And in my house, too.”
Jim held himself very proudly and perhaps a little disdainfully also.
The old woman’s tone was certainly offensive.
“Lady Crewkerne,” said he, not so humbly as he might have done, “I
will admit that I have done wrong, but I hope my offense is not a very
grave one.”
The old lady looked Jim over in a decidedly scornful manner. She
appeared to be not quite sure whether a person such as Jim was
entitled to receive a reply from her.
“It depends upon the light in which one chooses to view the subject,”
said she, in a voice which trembled with anger. “I have formed my
own opinion about such behavior. I must ask you to leave this house
immediately, and in future it will be closed to you.”
Jim was stung. The mildest-tempered fellow in the world would have
been by such an unbridled display of despotism. Cheriton, who by
long association with the Whigs understood their arbitrary nature,
was really less shocked by such an uncivil exhibition than he
pretended to be. He took Jim Lascelles by the sleeve, drew him
aside, and gave him the benefit of a whimsical smile.
“Say nothing, my dear fellow,” said he, in a sagacious and paternal
manner. “Give her her head, and then leave her to me.”
Jim Lascelles, however, was furious. He was young and hot-headed;
and adversity had rendered him more sensitive upon the score of his
dignity than it is wise for a young fellow to be. Therefore he was by
no means disposed to leave the adjustment of the matter to his
friend. Not by his demeanor only did he express resentment, but by
word and also by deed.
“I am sorry, Lady Crewkerne, you have taken this view,” said he, not
very pacifically. “I shall be quite happy to obey your instructions. A
couple of men will come from Peabody’s this afternoon to fetch the
canvas.”
And then, with an incredible absence of judgment, Jim Lascelles
packed up his tools, and distributing curt bows to everybody, stalked
out of the room and out of the house.
Cheriton showed genuine consternation. Miss Perry looked ready to
shed tears. Cream buns apart, she was very fond of Jim.
“An incomprehensibly foolish thing to have done,” said Cheriton.
“A deplorable exhibition of impudence,” said Caroline Crewkerne. “I
have the greatest mind not to give up that canvas. I should be within
my rights if I destroyed it.”
“I have grave doubts whether you could do it legally,” said Cheriton.
For a man of his vaunted wisdom and experience it was a sadly
injudicious thing to have said.
“You think so?” said the redoubtable Caroline. “That decides me.
That man must be taught a lesson. Cheriton, have the goodness to
ring the bell.”
Cheriton showed genuine concern.
“Surely, Caroline,” said he, “you cannot mean that you are going to
destroy it?”
“That is my intention.”
“Oh, but surely,” said Cheriton, “it would be nothing short of a crime.
There is no other word to use.”
“It is going to be done,” said Caroline Crewkerne.
“But the young fellow has put many hours of fine work into that
picture,” said Cheriton, with great seriousness, “and fine thought in it
too. It would be a crime.”
“If a man has no manners he must be taught them,” said the
implacable Caroline.
“The kettle is invariably the severest judge of the pot,” said Cheriton,
in a whimsical aside. “Really, Caroline, you began it,” said he.
“The man began it by painting my niece’s portrait without obtaining
my permission. Not content with abusing my hospitality, he must
show insolence when remonstrated with.”
“Well, you know, my dear Caroline, that hand of yours is
uncommonly heavy. And although no one deplores the young
fellow’s conduct for his own sake more deeply than I do, he acted
precisely as his profoundly rash and hot-headed father would have
done in the circumstances.”
“I am not in the least interested in such a person, or in his father
either,” said Caroline Crewkerne. “But I have made up my mind that
that canvas shall be destroyed.”
 CHAPTER XV
DIPLOMACY IS CALLED FOR

CHERITON’S gravity was of a kind he seldom displayed.

“Caroline,” said he, firmly, “if you behaved in that way no right-
minded person could possibly forgive you. The lad is very poor, and
his history is a sad one. He is the son of Lascelles, V.C., as rash yet
generous-hearted a fellow as ever lived. Had it not been for a
dishonest broker the young chap would be a man of wealth and
position.”
“I am prepared to hear nothing further upon the subject,” said
Caroline Crewkerne. “I have made up my mind. Cheriton, have the
goodness to ring the bell.”
The affair must have had a tragic termination there and then had not
the God who watches over poor painters—whatever their own
private and personal doubts in regard to that Deity, it is only right for
laymen like ourselves to assume that there is one—seen fit to enact
a little providence of His own. At that crucial moment there came to
Cheriton’s aid no less a person than George Betterton. And as if that
opportune arrival was not in itself sufficient, Providence took the
trouble to play a double coup. Mr. Marchbanks made the
announcement immediately afterwards that luncheon was ready.
While Caroline enlarged upon her grievances to George Betterton
and outlined the extreme course she proposed to take as soon as
luncheon was over, Cheriton scribbled hastily in pencil on the back of
a card, “Remove picture from No. — Hill Street immediately, to the
Acacias, Hawthorn Road, Balham.”
This accomplished, he proceeded to take John into his confidence.
He placed the card, together with a sovereign, in the palm of that
functionary.
“Go down at once,” said he, “to the people at the Bond Street
Galleries and give them this card. They are to remove that half-
finished picture in the blue drawing-room to that address. By the time
luncheon is over it must be out of the house. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly clear, my lord,” said John, who among his many virtues
had a proper tenderness for the peerage.
“See that this is done, and when questions are asked all you need
know upon the subject is that a couple of men came and took it
away. You understand?”
“Perfectly, my lord,” said John.
During luncheon Cheriton was seen to particular advantage. At any
time it called for very little effort on his part for him to be one of the
most agreeable men in London. To-day he excelled. He retailed
some of the newest stories and a quantity of the freshest gossip; he
was really genial to George Betterton, and encouraged him to
enlarge at length upon the subject of the Militia; and to his hostess
he gave a tip for the Oaks, for which species of information she had
a decided weakness.
It was but seldom among his intimates that George was permitted to
mount his hobby-horse. As for Cheriton, he was the last man in the
world, as a rule, to consent to hold the head of that extraordinary
quadruped while George established himself firmly in the saddle. But
on this occasion he performed that operation in the most graceful
manner.
“Excellent speech of yours in the House the other evening, my dear
fellow,” said he. “I wasn’t there myself—Philosophical Society’s
annual meeting—but you were very carefully reported in the Times.
Quite your best vein, if I may say so. Very shrewd, very searching,
sound common sense. You thought so, Caroline, did you not?”
It seems incredible, but Caroline Crewkerne walked straight into the
trap. With all her ruthlessness, and all her knowledge of mundane
affairs, she had one besetting weakness. She attached an absurd
importance to any form of politics. It was her Whiggism, doubtless.
She would encourage the most consummate bore, for upon the
slightest pretext her vanity would lead her to believe that her fingers
were really in the pie, and that she had a very considerable hand in
the destinies of the country.
In the heyday of her glory it used to be asserted freely by idle
persons that if the country was not actually ruled from Hill Street,
ministers at least were made and marred there, and of that quarter
Governments went in fear and trembling. And it is by no means
improbable that Caroline Crewkerne came to believe it. It is
surprising what vanity will do for us.
To-day the smoldering embers of a lifelong illusion, if the figure is
permitted, allowed Caroline Crewkerne to establish George Betterton
quite firmly astride his hobby-horse. Cheriton counted the minutes of
his exquisite boredom. George was always heavy. He spoke so
slowly and impressively that he could deliver a platitude in a longer
space of time than any man living, and he could use fewer words in
the operation. Indeed, upon the strength of that gift he had gained a
reputation for incisive brevity.
To see Caroline Crewkerne nodding her vain old head, and wagging
her vain old ears in an exaggerated attitude of statesmanlike
attention, was a positive joy to Cheriton, particularly as time was so
valuable. The minutes grew tedious in their passing, all the same.
The clock chimed half-past two, and Miss Perry mentioned the
circus.
“Let us postpone it until to-morrow, my dear Miss Goose, if you really
don’t mind,” said Cheriton. “The conversation is so absorbing. The
preserved ginger is highly delectable too.”
Miss Perry shared the latter opinion.
“Green Chartreuse or Grand Marnier, my lord?” said Mr.
Marchbanks.
“Both,” said my lord.
Mr. Marchbanks dissembled his surprise in an extremely well-bred
manner. In his eyes, however, a peer of the realm was in the happy
position of Cæsar’s wife.