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The Rise of a Chinese House Church: The Organizational Weapon*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2013

Karrie J. Koesel
Karrie J. Koesel*
Affiliation:
University of Oregon. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article investigates the similarities between the organizational innovation of one underground Protestant house church in China and the rise of early communist parties. Much like the spread of communism, the organizational tactics of the church are designed to protect it in a hostile political environment. The different levels are insulated from each other, with limited knowledge of the members above and below. In this way, if anyone is raided by the authorities, the others can continue to function with little interruption. Thus, the highly touted “organizational weapon” developed by the Bolsheviks and recycled, for example, by the Chinese Communist Party in their struggle for power, has resurfaced many years later. However, this time it has been adopted by a religious “vanguard.”

Keywords

Organizational weaponhouse churchesearly communist partiesChinaProtestantismreligion
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 215 , September 2013 , pp. 572 - 589
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2013 

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Footnotes

*

The author thanks Elizabeth Perry, Valerie Bunce, Gerry Berk, Denise Ho, Kate Merkel-Hess and Patrick Deegan for providing valuable feeback; J. Anthony Martin for research assistance; and the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture and the John Templeton Foundation for research support.

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