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Toward a Psychology of Converting in the People’s Republic of China

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Abstract

The focus of this paper is the nature of converting processes in the People’s Republic of China. This paper seeks to provide an overview of the issues to be considered in the construction of a psychology of converting in China. China is engaged in dramatic transformations. Since the reforms initiated in 1979, religion has been revitalized and is flourishing. The most dramatic and unexpected growth has taken place in Christianity. This paper seeks to provide the contours of how and why many people are becoming Christians. A preliminary case study provides rich details of the experiences of five university students in Shanghai as they cultivate beliefs and practices that eventually lead them to convert to Christianity. The paper also includes a report on recent studies of the psychology of the converting process in the United States. The work of Ullman, Kirkpatrick, and Paloutzian are highlighted. The paper concludes with an outline of important issues that should be seriously considered as psychologists of religion develop an innovative psychology of converting in China: research methods, gender issues, motivations, network theory, cultural psychology, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

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Notes

  1. We prefer to shift the terminology that has been standard for more than 100 years away from the noun “conversion” to the verb “converting.” Converting is a more dynamic term and stresses the reality that is now recognized by most students of religious change—converting is a process over time that consists of many factors, events, contingencies, dynamics, patterns, and motivation. While there are debates about definitions of conversion, Merrill’s approach is appropriate for the Chinese context: “No single, universally applicable definition of conversion is possible or even desirable. Instead, conversion is better conceived more relativistically. A relativistic notion of conversion acknowledges that different religions define and evaluate conversion differently. It also recognizes at least two perspectives in any conversion situation—that of existing adherents of the new religion and that of the supposed converts—and that these perspectives can differ. By allowing for multiple perspectives this view accommodates the complexities and political dimensions of conversion. It recognizes, for example, that the status of ‘convert’ can be withheld, refused, or contested as well as bestowed and accepted and that people can appropriate the beliefs and practices of a religion at the same time that they reject formal affiliation with it” (Merrill 1993, p. 154).

  2. For more information on these issues see Bays 1995, 1996, 2012; Brockey 2007, especially Chapter 8, The Business of Conversion, 287–327, for a detailed description of Roman Catholic missionary methods of that period; Lee 2007; Provost-Smith 2009; and Najarian 1982 for an analysis of methods of conversion by Protestants in the early twentieth century. See Viswanathan (1998) for a post-colonial assessment of the impact of missions. For a counterexample, see Xi (1997) for his description of the conversion of missionaries as they sought to convert Chinese.

  3. The five students are Maria (a female undergraduate student studying journalism), Leona (a female master’s student studying management), Mike (a male master’s student studying Chinese literature), John (a male master’s student studying physics), and George (a male master’s student studying engineering).

  4. Adam Yuet Chau (2011a, p. 67), in his essay “Modalities of Doing Religion,” describes five ways of being engaged in religious/spiritual beliefs and practices. They are: 1) discursive/scriptural, involving mostly the composition and use of texts; 2) personal-cultivational, involving a long-term interest in cultivating and transforming oneself; 3) liturgical, involving elaborate ritual procedures conducted by ritual specialists; 4) immediate-practical, aimed at quick results using simple ritual or magical techniques; and 5) relational, emphasizing the relationship between humans and deities (or ancestors) as well as among humans in religious practices. As we will see, the university students may be understood as engaging in activities in Christian groups that are, to some degree, congruent with traditional modes of pursuing spiritual objectives, specifically the personal-cultivational and relational modes of beliefs and practices.

  5. In Chinese, zhaohuan means invocation. “God calling” means that God calls you to follow. Leona meant that if God had called her to follow God, she would have felt it. Later, she said she really felt that God had selected her, and she was moved and said that this was God’s calling (zhaohuan).

  6. The “Clark School” refers to the work of G. Stanley Hall (1844–1924) during his long history at Clark University in Wooster, MA, in the United States. Many of his students became major leaders in the field of psychology (see Ross 1972).

  7. For Freud, all behavior is motivated by unconscious forces that are inaccessible to the conscious mind and therefore mysterious to the convert. As Thouless observes, “Determinants of conversion will not be apparent to introspection” and consequently will not be disclosed in personal documents or questionnaires (Thouless 1923, p. 196).

  8. Some, however, notably Jung (1933) and later Salzman (1953), held a more positive view of religious belief and regarded conversion as, at least in some cases, an adaptive phenomenon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

    Lewis R. Rambo

  2. Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Steven Bauman

  3. Oxford University, Oxford, UK

    Jiazhi Fengjiang

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  1. Lewis R. Rambo
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  2. Steven Bauman
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  3. Jiazhi Fengjiang
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Correspondence to Lewis R. Rambo.

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Rambo, L.R., Bauman, S. & Fengjiang, J. Toward a Psychology of Converting in the People’s Republic of China. Pastoral Psychol 61, 895–921 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-012-0487-3

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