Christianity-Related Movements

The global trajectory of Christianity has been propelled not only by the missionary outreach of the main branches of the tradition but also by the many smaller movements related to it. Although from the beginning, the small Jewish sect of Christians in Palestine reached outward to include uncircumcised gentiles in the Mediterranean world, to absorb Greek terminology, and to embrace Roman culture, the historical emphasis on the northward movement of Christianity to Europe has obscured the importance of global Christian movements in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Recent historical research has allowed us to recognize global movements that have carried the vital center of Christianity beyond Europe.

The Christian-related movements that have emerged in response to the cultural conflicts of religious globalization have appeared in every part of the world, including Europe and the Americas. The millenarian peasant movements in Europe in the 19th century that historian Eric Hobsbawm described as “primitive rebels” comprised one recent example, the utopian Protestant communities in the United States another. Communes created by marginal Christian movements such as Christian Identity in 21st-century United States have been formed explicitly in protest against “the new world order” that they believe is being promoted by the globalization supported by mainstream Christianity.

Some of the most active movements, however, have been in non-Western parts of the world where responses to globalized Christianity have emerged both within and outside the communities of Christian converts. In South Pacific islands, cargo cults were formed, based on the notion that the fabulous cargo of European explorers’ ships were the result of heavenly rewards that would return again to bestow wealth and blessings on faithful believers. In Africa and Asia, cultural contact created synthetic movements—new Afro-Christian movements that fused traditional African gods with Christian saints in forms of religiosity that came with enslaved Africans to the Western Hemisphere as Vodou, Santería, and Candomblé. In South Asia, expressions of Hindu Christianity merged traditional Indian religious practices with the religious culture brought by missionaries.

China also experienced the emergence of new movements for social reform, religious syncreticism, and state protest as a result of Christian cultural contact. In the remainder of this entry, the focus will be on several of these Chinese examples to provide a specific sampling of the Christian-related movements that have responded around the world to religious globalization.