Abstract
Ye witnessed how her mother changed from a Buddhist to a powerful Pentecostal minister, whose entrepreneurial gifts in business contributed to the regional growth of Pentecostalism in China. Ye’s mother maintained extensive connections with Diaspora Chinese Christians. At a young people’s retreat, Ye found out that the Christian faith has spread beyond a critical mass among her own generation. The fact that so many young adults were taking ownership of their faith became a catalyst to Ye. Having a taciturn personality, which is quite different from her mother’s, Ye is content being married to a young preacher. Her decision in being a pastor’s wife and a stay-at-home mom to three children had full support from her mother.
(Narration by Ye, age thirty one, pastor’s wife)
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Notes
- 1.
Reformed theology is a major branch of Protestantism which follows the tradition of Protestant Reformers such as John Calvin. About Calvinism in China, see Li Ma and Jin Li, Surviving the State, Remaking the Church (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 116–135; Li Ma, Religious Entrepreneurism in China’s Urban House Churches: The Rise and Fall of Early Rain Presbyterian Reformed Church (London: Routledge, 2019).
- 2.
Even after the One-Child Policy was later relaxed to Two Children Policy in 2015, fertility rate has not increased much because families consider it unaffordable to raise two children given China’s rising level of living expenses. See Anna Fifield, “Beijing’s one-child policy is gone. But many Chinese are still reluctant to have more.” The Washington Post, May 4, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/beijings-one-child-policy-is-gone-but-many-chinese-are-still-reluctant-to-have-more/2019/05/02/c722e568-604f-11e9-bf24-db4b9fb62aa2_story.html?utm_term=.b440afdfdd2a
- 3.
Daniel H. Bays, a noted historian of Chinese Christianity, has highlighted the significance of these groups. See Bays, “The Growth of Independent Christianity in China, 1900–1937” in Daniel Bays, ed., Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 309–10. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 8. Also see Robert Menzies, “Pentecostals in China,” Vinson Synan and Amos Young, ed., Global Renewal Christianity: Twenty-first Century Trajectories, Vol. 1: Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements in Asia (Lake Mary, Fla.: Charisma House Publishers, 2015).
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Ma, L. (2019). Strong Woman. In: Christianity, Femininity and Social Change in Contemporary China. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31802-4_15
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