The Pew conference in 2017, Survey Research and the Study of Religion in East Asia, highlighted many of the problems of studying religion in East Asia from Western methodological and religious perspectives. I remember Anna Sun's keynote where she nuanced some of the history and method of studying religion in China, where historical documents from Westerners, such as Christian missionaries, described the Chinese people as completely "irreligious." More recent surveys have produced seemingly contradictory data, where most people say they are not religious and do not belong to a religion but report relatively high rates regarding particular beliefs and practices. Anna described China as a "land of prayers" based on ethnographic data collected over the last ten years. People move freely from Buddhist, Daoist, and Confucian sacred sites, praying to the God you trust whether you have "officially" converted to that religion or not. She described people chanting Buddhist prayers in a Daoist temple – doesn't matter, no big deal, it's just about what temple you like best. She offered some concrete advice on how to improve survey research in East Asia:
- She described a need to reclaim the concept of "religion." We all know that scholars have been trying to define religion for generations, to varying levels of success. But in considering survey research in East Asia, she said we should move away from equating the entire concept of "religion" with monotheistic religions alone, instead adopting a wider concept.
- Related to a new broader understanding of religion, Anna said we also need a new concept of religious plurality. A lot of Western discourse is preoccupied with the concept of "syncretism," but this is a problematic term in East Asia (and sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, for that matter). Religious plurality is not about mixing separate religions, but about layering ideas from different religious traditions that coexist. This kind of layering is not a bad thing, as is often portrayed in Western settings, it's just natural. I recall the words of Vietnamese Catholic theologian Peter Phan, "to be Asian is to be interreligious."
- Lastly, Anna said we need new measurements of religion that focus less on membership and more on action, like prayer. We need a reconceptualization of "belief" that measures less about believing in the divine and more about engaging with the divine. We need measures that are less either/or and instead more or less – like a dimmer switch, not an on/off switch, she said. Ritual action is a spectrum, not a dichotomy. She talked about following sacred sites and sacred things, following life events, and following sacred times.
Perhaps much of what Anna described applies more to qualitative and ethnographic research than quantitative. Despite my love of quantitative methods and data, I'm willing to admit that perhaps our somewhat blunt tools miss some of the nuance and creativity that exists in religion around the world. Us Western researchers love to put people in separate boxes, but most of the world doesn't live that way. Nevertheless, in reading through the new Pew report on religion in China, I kept coming back to Anna's comments to see what progress has been made to broaden our understanding of just how different religion is in this context compared to the West. In light of that, I'd like to discuss what I think are the major strengths of this report, and one reality I think the report perhaps could have better acknowledged.
Strengths
Just a couple of weeks ago in my World Christianity class at Harvard Divinity School we used this report in our discussion of Chinese Christianity. We had already discussed the 17th and 18th-century Chinese Rites Controversy, where Catholic missionaries clashed over whether Chinese ritual practices such as honoring ancestors were religious and thus incompatible with Catholic belief. In case anyone's curious, Jesuits said no, that Chinese rites were secular, not religious; Dominicans and Franciscans said yes, that they were religious and therefore un-Catholic. Chinese rites were banned, then unbanned, then banned, then unbanned on and off for about a hundred years until the Pope made a final decision in 1939 (!) that Chinese Catholics could indeed participate in ancestral rites and ceremonies honoring Confucius. If it takes the Roman Catholic Church roughly two hundred years to figure out what's going on with religion in China, I certainly don't expect the Pew Research Center to have it all figured out right away.
Survey research in China is very hard and rather confusing. This report makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of religion in China by synthesizing existing studies into a single narrative – albeit a complicated narrative – that highlights the religious complexities of this country. Three major strengths are laid out right at the beginning of the report: "Highlighting the shortcomings of available data"; addressing the "awkward fit of categories used in other parts of the world"; and an emphasis on "the impact of culture and politics on religious activity in China" (p4). Recognizing the linguistic, political, and conceptual challenges of studying religion in China is by far this report's major strength, as is the attention paid to language and translation. I appreciate how the report consistently defines terms in both Chinese and English to help orient the reader as to how questions have been asked across surveys.
In reading the report, I wondered if maybe the Chinese Rites Controversy is ongoing, just in a different form. Citing data from the Chinese General Social Survey and the World Values Survey, the report claims that "religious commitment in China remains low" because of measures of religious service attendance (3% in 2021), identification with a religion (7% in 2021), and importance of religion in their lives (13% in 2018). Yet, 75% of adults in China have visited gravesites of family members at least once in the last year, 47% believe in fengshui, and 24% care very much about choosing auspicious days for special events. Are these religious rites, or cultural rites? The report describes these as "cultural traditions with spiritual underpinnings." Reflecting on Anna Sun's 2017 keynote, I wonder if such a strong demarcation should be made between the "official religion" (zongjiao) measures and these "cultural traditions with spiritual underpinnings" measures. While a distinction is made in the report between official religion and cultural/spiritual practices, it also recognizes the overlap between the two and the ways in which Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and folk religion are all considered a part of traditional Chinese culture. Unfortunately, we don't have a Pope of the social scientific study of religion to make a decree as to what is "religion" in China and what is "culture." In that sense, the report perhaps gives readers the information and tools to decide for themselves – now we're sounding very Protestant, aren't we? Instead of a priesthood of all believers, maybe we have a priesthood of all researchers.
Christianity
Chapter 4 is on Christianity, the religion that I'm most familiar with and feel most confident to comment on. I really appreciate the table on page 60 that lays out the different terms used in survey questions in both English and Chinese. It very clearly shows that the way you ask the question has an impact on the results. While a range of 3% to 7% might not seem that large, remember that China has 1.4 billion people. Even one percentage point change in any of these questions results in a huge number of people and has significant impact for all of World Christianity, beyond China. In fact, my analysis has shown that if Christianity is to remain the world's largest religion in the future, it will be because of conversions in China and India, two of the most difficult places to study, and two places with very complicated cultural, historical, and political relationships to Christianity.
I really hesitate to be "that person," but I do think it's somewhat odd that the report makes no mention of estimates from the World Christian Database, which is the longest-running effort to count Christians in China, tracking religious and non-religious trends since 1965, with estimates back to 1900. Our figure is mentioned (100 million; 7%), but it is mis-credited to Daryl Ireland at Boston University, who is citing our data in that linked article. The report gives some information on registered vs. unregistered churches in China, but I think the emphasis on survey measures alone gives a misleading picture of the situation on the ground.
I think what I'm trying to get at is how the report treats different kinds of data about Christianity in China. For example, on page 77, the first headline reads "Historical estimates, who reliability and comparability varies, show an increasing number of Chinese Protestants," followed by examples. This is great. But then the next, related headline states, "but surveys find no clear evidence of a recent rise in self-identified Protestants." Likewise, on page 80, "Official estimates suggest China's Catholic population has been stable since 2010, and surveys find no growth among self-identified Catholics." I suppose my question is a bit like, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Are there adherents of a religion in a country if surveys don't report them?
Yes, it's true that surveys do not provide clear evidence that Christianity is growing in China, and I understand that this report is aggregating information from surveys. But, the report reads as if surveys are the most reliable source of data on religious affiliation. Given everything we know about the problems of survey research, the difficulty of using these methods, the seemingly conflicting data that arises from their use, why are surveys still considered the gold standard for measuring religious affiliation in China? The report states that "church membership is not a reliable indicator," but why is this indicator less reliable than surveys? Hearkening again to Anna Sun, who advocated for expanding definitions, concepts, and perspectives to study religion in China, I'd like to apply to that expansionist vision in terms of the data sources we use. One of the strengths of this report is how detailed it is about what surveys can and cannot tell us about religion in China. I very much appreciate this kind of methodological honesty. But, I think the report leaves something to be desired in its treatment of other kinds of sources. A different approach could be to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of sources equally: government estimates, surveys, and membership data. Each has its pros and cons, each result in a different set of estimates, and each tell us something different about the state of Christianity in China.
That being said, it's a great report and makes a major contribution of our understanding of religion in China. It lays out existing survey research clearly and rightly emphasizes the difficulties of studying religion in China, the problem of linguistics, and the role of culture and politics in religious beliefs, attitudes, and identification. I've already used it in the classroom and I'm sure I will again, with the addition of my caveats of data sources and a greater emphasis on the house church movement.
(This article was presented as a response to the "Measuring Religion in China" report published by Pew Research Center on August 30, 2023 at the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion + Religious Research Association annual meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 20–22, 2023.)
CCD reprinted with permission
