Chow, Alexander

McLeister, Mark

Ma, Zhongchao

2025-07-23T08:44:38Z

2025-07-23T08:44:38Z

2025-07-23

The San Gabriel Valley (SGV) occupies much of the southeast part of Los Angeles County and is home to hundreds of thousands of immigrant Chinese and hundreds of immigrant Chinese Protestant churches. Amongst immigrant Chinese American Protestants in SGV, a minority group, often described as “Pentecostal” or “charismatic,” but in this thesis referred to as “ling’en,” engage in religious practices that emphasize the Holy Spirit and manifestations of the Holy Spirit within the lives of its adherents. Through a close interrogation of SGV ling’en religious practices and understandings, this study reveals a negotiation between Christianity, Chinese religiosity and culture, and their status as migrants in the United States. Drawing upon data generated through ethnographic methods, this study tests and expands on the five modalities of religious practices, a theoretical framework developed by anthropologist Adam Yuet Chau to analyze Chinese religiosity within Greater China. These five modalities are: the personal-cultivational, the immediate-practical, the relational, the discursive/scriptural, and the liturgical. Chau’s framework has been minimally applied to diasporic Chinese residing outside Greater China and overlooks Christianity. This study seeks to address these limitations by arguing that SGV ling’en Christianity is an expression of immigrant Chinese doing religion in the United States. Through categorization of ling’en religious practices into the modalities and follow up analyses, the study reveals and discusses the “Chineseness” of their religious practices and understandings. These include gandong (a group of emotional and physical responses to ling’en Christian interactions with the Holy Spirit), ling (magical efficacy of deities), guanxi (social connectedness), and the gendered nature of ritualistic practices. The study expands Chau’s modalities framework by proposing a sixth modality, World Management, highlighting religious practices that engage the public space (space between the state and family). The application of the modalities framework to SGV ling’en has produced several useful insights. First, it demonstrates the feasibility of the framework developed out of Chinese religiosity which did not include Christianity nor diasporic Chinese (outside of Greater China) in its original formulation by viewing individual ling’en religious practices as belonging to distinct modalities. Second, it expands the framework in several ways including a sixth modality as well as adding new dimensions and/or considerations to each modality through analysis of ling’en religious practices. Third, the study introduces layered thinking as a tool to interrogate the understandings behind ling’en religious practices (and beyond), often challenging and expanding Chau’s modalities to include SGV ling’en Chinese American Christians as Chinese doing religion.

https://hdl.handle.net/1842/43714

http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/6245

en

The University of Edinburgh

Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity

Ling'en Christianity

Chinese American Christianity

anthropology of Christianity

Chinese Christianity

Chinese religiosity

Ling'en Christianity in San Gabriel Valley: immigrant Chinese doing religion in the United States

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy