Ancestors, virgins, and friars: The localization of Christianity in Late Imperial Mindong (Fujian, China), 1632--1863

Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Chinese Catholic converts localized Christianity in their communities. This process involved the appropriation of Catholic ritual and devotional elements. Owing to their rich archival records, as well as to their uninterrupted history of almost four centuries, Catholic communities in Mindong (north-eastern Fujian province) offer an outstanding example of this localization.; In localizing their new, religion, Mindong converts negotiated Catholic practices and beliefs with native socio-religious customs and state policies of ideological control. By employing sources of cultural legitimization existing in the local religious arena, and by relying on kinship networks, Mindong Christians successfully carved out a niche for their activities in their communities. Furthermore, in accepting the reform of ancestral rituals and novel ideas such as the virginity of consecrated women, they expanded the boundaries of local religious tolerance.; These findings indicate that Christianity in Mindong became part of an existing pluralistic religious field shared by other officially proscribed religious movements such as lay Buddhist groups. Thus, by privileging the local perspective instead of accepting the usual viewpoint of the central officialdom and high elites, this dissertation shows that the extent of late imperial society's tolerance for “heterodoxy” was wider than previous scholarship has allowed.