Transnational Religious Spaces: Religious Organizations and Interactions in Africa, East Asia, and Beyond 9783110690101, 9783110689952

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Transnational Religious Spaces

Dialectics of the Global

Edited by Matthias Middell

Volume 8

Transnational Religious Spaces Religious Organizations and Interactions in Africa, East Asia, and Beyond Edited by Philip Clart and Adam Jones

Funded with help of the DFG, a product of the SFB 1199.

ISBN 978-3-11-068995-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-069010-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-069019-4 ISSN 2570-2289 Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954463 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck Cover image: Contemporary Buddhist mural, Nan Hua Temple, South Africa. Photograph by Jens Reinke, 27 October 2017. www.degruyter.com

On the Series Ever since the 1990s, “globalization” has been a dominant idea and, indeed, ideology. The metanarratives of Cold War victory by the West, the expansion of the market economy, and the boost in productivity through internationalization, digitization and the increasing dominance of the finance industry became associated with the promise of a global trickle-down effect that would lead to greater prosperity for ever more people worldwide. Any criticism of this viewpoint was countered with the argument that there was no alternative; globalization was too powerful and thus irreversible. Today, the ideology of “globalization” meets with growing scepticism. An era of exaggerated optimism for global integration has been replaced by an era of doubt and a quest for a return to particularistic sovereignty. However, processes of global integration have not dissipated and the rejection of “globalization” as ideology has not diminished the need to make sense both of the actually existing high level of interdependence and the ideology that gave meaning and justification to it. The following three dialectics of the global are in the focus of this series: Multiplicity and Co-Presence: “Globalization” is neither a natural occurrence nor a singular process; on the contrary, there are competing projects of globalization, which must be explained in their own right and compared in order to examine their layering and their interactive composition. Integration and Fragmentation: Global processes result in de- as well as reterritorialization. They go hand in hand with the dissolution of boundaries, while also producing a respatialization of the world. Universalism and Particularism: Globalization projects are justified and legitimized through universal claims of validity; however, at the same time they reflect the worldview and/or interests of particular actors.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-202

Contents On the Series Philip Clart 1 Introduction

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Thomas A. Tweed 2 Flows and Dams: Rethinking Categories for the Study of Transnationalism 10

Part I: Transnational Spaces in Colonial Settings Marian Burchardt 3 From Mission Station to Tent Revival: Material Forms and Spatial Formats in Africa’s Missionary Encounter 35 Adam Jones and Geert Castryck 4 Mission Spaces in German East Africa: Spatial Imaginations, Implementations, and Incongruities against the Backdrop of an Emerging Colonial Spatial Order 51 Magnus Echtler 5 Redeeming Zululand: Placing Cultural Resonances in the Nazareth Baptist Church, South Africa 84

Part II: Migration and Transnational Religious Spaces Afe Adogame 6 From Redemption City to Christian Disneyland: The Unfolding of Transnational Religious Spaces 109 Johara Berriane 7 Transnational Evangelical Spaces in Muslim Urban Settings: The Presence and Place-Making of African Christian Migrants in Morocco 133

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Klaus Hock 8 Transforming Spatial Formats: Imagined Commonalities, Imaginary Spaces, and Spaces of Imagination 150 Wei-Yi Cheng 9 Transitioning the Vietnamese Ullambana Festival to Taiwan

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Janet Alison Hoskins and Nguyen Thi Hien 10 Vietnamese Transnational Religions: The Cold War Polarities of Temples in “Little Hanois” and “Little Saigons” 183 Rongdao Lai 11 Tiantai Transnationalism: Mobility, Identity, and Lineage Networks in Modern Chinese Buddhism 210

Part III: Transnational Religious Spaces and Transcultural Interactions Peter Lambertz 12 Of Ancestors and Others: Cultural Resonance from Japan among Spiritualists in Kinshasa 227 Frédérique Louveau 13 Japanese Spiritualities in Africa: From a Transnational Space to the Creation of a Local Lifestyle 245 Nikolas Broy 14 American Dao and Global Interactions: Transnational Religious Networks in an English-Speaking Yiguandao Congregation in Urban California 263 Jens Reinke 15 Generating Global Pure Lands: Renjian Buddhist Civic Engagement within and beyond the Chinese Diaspora Communities Worldwide 283 List of Contributors Index

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1 Introduction This volume resulted from a workshop on “Transnational Religious Spaces”, jointly organized in December of 2018 by two research groups within the Leipzig University Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199 “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”. As one of the research groups, headed by Adam Jones, focused on Africa, and the other, headed by Philip Clart, on East Asia, in the joint workshop we sought to achieve two aims: first, to investigate transnational religious spaces in a comparative manner by juxtaposing East Asian and African case examples, and second, to examine specific cases where the transnational space in question encompassed both East Asia and Africa. The latter perspective takes centre stage in two contributions, the chapters by Lambertz and Louveau, which examine the development of Japanese new religions in Africa. The remaining ten chapters each focus on one of the two continents and examine transnational flows of religious ideas, actors, and organizations out of, into, or within the given continental space. The volume is opened by Thomas Tweed’s systematic reflections on categories for the study of transnationalism; his chapter on “Flows and Dams: Rethinking Categories for the Study of Transnationalism” critically weighs the metaphorical language we use to think, speak, and write about transnational religious spaces and thus functions as a second introduction. Therefore, I will limit myself here to sketching the individual chapters and their contributions to the larger picture, i.e. to our understanding of the ways transnational religious spaces are constructed and function. While the cases studied in this volume are all located in the present or very recent past, none going further back than the nineteenth century, religion has been part and parcel of long-distance movements of people, ideas, and goods long before the nation state arose as a key structuring element of the global order. In earlier ages, the borders to be crossed were those of cultures, languages, and ethnicities. Middle Eastern and Egyptian mystery cults spread beyond their cultural contexts of origin through the Roman Empire to form networks of groups with an ethnically diverse membership communicating through the linguae francae of Latin and Greek. A Jewish sect, persecuted in its homeland, broke with its parent tradition by recruiting Gentiles and eventually developed into the largest religious system on this planet, that of Christianity in its various permutations. Perhaps it is religion’s claim to transcendence of worldly limitations that makes it potentially a uniquely mobile and portable part of culture and hence more likely to move beyond its local contexts of origin. Even so, religious ideas do not travel without carriers, and so religions have always employed existing and emerging lines https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-001

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of communication, be they the land and sea trade routes followed by Buddhist monks from India and Central Asia to China, or the military infrastructures of Muslim conquerors in Spain, Spanish conquistadores in South and Central America, and British gunboat diplomacy in East Asia. The chapters in this volume demonstrate religious flows patterned by two overarching global frameworks for the long-distance movement of people, ideas, and goods: colonialism and migration. Both are, of course, interdependent, but stand in a chronological sequence. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with “Transnational Spaces in Colonial Settings” (Part I), “Migration and Transnational Religious Spaces” (Part II), and “Transnational Religious Spaces and Transcultural Interactions” (Part III). The following overview of the individual chapters discursively follows and ties up thematic threads among them, without necessarily adhering to their sequence and position in the book’s formal structure. The colonial age is treated here exclusively with a view towards Africa in the contributions by Burchardt, Jones & Castryck, and Echtler. The former two chapters examine the spatial impact of Christian missions under colonial conditions. Marian Burchardt, in his “From Mission Station to Tent Revival: Material Forms and Spatial Formats in Africa’s Missionary Encounter”, focuses on the mission station as a key material format employed by Protestant missionaries in organizing space. The mission station was intended to serve as a centre for the resettlement of converts, who were thereby removed from their “heathen” socio-cultural contexts. Thus, the stations became building stones of a parallel society that competed with and undermined traditional structures of social organization and authority and furthered the colonial enterprise by integrating the convert population into colonial infrastructures of trade, logistics, and oversight. At the same time, the stations never became fully immersed in the colonial state, seeing themselves primarily as nodes in networks stretching back to their home churches in Europe and North America rather than as parts of the colonial administration. As an unintended consequence, this perceived spiritual autonomy of Protestant congregations provided the organizational rationale for indigenous churches critical of white domination. Burchardt argues that the recently burgeoning Evangelical and Pentecostal churches in Africa “have adopted the historical Protestant emphasis on map-making not only in their efforts to plant churches, win converts, and save souls in Africa but also in the reverse mission campaigns in Europe”. The mission station format can be perceived as historical inspiration behind two examples discussed in the present volume. Magnus Echtler (“Redeeming Zululand: Placing Cultural Resonances in the Nazareth Baptist Church, South Africa”) shows how the communal compounds of the Nazareth Baptist Church (NBC), founded by

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Isaiah Shembe in 1910, have a structure that echoes Zulu royal kraals and points to the NBC’s ambivalent relationship with the traditional Zulu kingdom, whose sins it claims to redeem even while adopting its nomenclature and symbols of authority. Here a colonial-era spatial format has been localized and is actively involved in the reinvention, negotiation, and legitimation of political authority between colonial, apartheid, and post-apartheid state and Zulu royalty. The East African example of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), studied by Afe Adogame (“From Redemption City to Christian Disneyland: The Unfolding of Transnational Religious Spaces”), carries the mission station logic, through its evangelical permutation in the shape of the megachurch, to quite another scale with its 25-hectare Redemption City on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, “a transnational religious and social space, a network hub that hosts major religious events, transmits spirituality and religious ideologies, represents ‘a home away from home’ to global visitors, and a pilgrimage haven for members and non-members alike”. Redemption City is the centre of a network of up to 5,000 RCCG churches worldwide, a network that is developed following a masterplan of systematic church development, including smaller-scale Redemption Camps as hubs, and a pattern of spatial distribution defined by set driving or walking distances between individual parishes (five minutes’ walking distance in developing countries, five minutes’ driving distance in developed countries, and thirty minutes’ driving distance in the USA). Carried to its logical (though not necessarily practical) conclusion, this is a vision of mission as the creation of a densely meshed network of spaces of redemption that has an uncanny resemblance to the early missionary phantasies of Ludwig Krapf, who in 1844 dreamed of opening up Africa for the Gospel by stationing missionaries at set distances from each other from the East to the West Coast, thus creating a Christian corridor not so much as a territorial format, but as a logistical chain for further proselytizing work in all directions. As Adam Jones and Geert Castryck show in their chapter (“Mission Spaces in German East Africa: Spatial Imaginations, Implementations, and Incongruities against the Backdrop of an Emerging Colonial Spatial Order”), such a spatial imagination was not viable once Africa was divided up into colonial spheres of influence granted to European nation states in the Berlin Africa Conference of 1884/85. Henceforth, the missionary enterprise had to be adjusted to the needs, expectations, and limitations of the European “motherland”, which first of all tried to limit the apportioning of mission fields to missionary societies of a particular national background. In German East Africa, this led to an influx of German-based Protestant and Catholic missionaries, sometimes to the exclusion of their non-German fellow religionists, though this worked more smoothly in the case of generally nationally based Protestant societies than for the

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quintessentially transnational Roman Catholic Church. However, the missionary societies and orders were not just willing pawns on the colonial chessboard, but pursued their own spatial formatting, which included mutual exclusions from mission fields, buffer zones between fields, and, as was to expected with such regimes of border management, frequent conflicts about alleged encroachments. No such conflicts could be brought before the secular courts, as the spatial regimes underlying them were not decreed or even supported by the colonial state. The nation state and its border management loom large in Johara Berriane’s chapter on “Transnational Evangelical Spaces in Muslim Urban Settings: The Presence and Place-Making of African Christian Migrants in Morocco”. While Adogame prefaces his chapter with an account of an American delegate to the RCCG’s 2018 Holy Ghost Congress being refused entry into Nigeria because of lacking visa documents, demonstrating that even global enterprises such as the Redeemed Christian Church of God may find their transnational flows of people and money thwarted by a simple missing stamp in a passport (or its digital equivalent), the migrants studied by Berriane have to deal with a “global condition” in which the vast flows of migration encounter increasingly strict border controls. Morocco used to be a mere transit country, but now finds itself hosting a growing population of migrants, some of whom still wait to cross over into Europe, while others end up settling down, availing themselves of the new legal framework for obtaining Moroccan residency permits. Compared to the practices of the wealthy and strategically-oriented RCCG studied by Adogame, church-planting in Morocco is a less controlled process, with church communities emerging among the backlog of African migrants in front of the gates to Europe to provide both spiritual and social services – places to pray, places to sleep, as well as places to meet the smugglers who promise to put you on a boat to Spain. Earlier on, these churches were often as transient as their parishioners, and pastors themselves were migrants who eventually would move on and had to be replaced by new leadership personnel from sub-Saharan Africa. However, as more and more migrants settle down, churches move out of private living rooms into more permanent, dedicated quarters. This stabilization of church space goes along with institutional consolidation, as leadership of some groups is assumed by pastors who are no longer on their way to Europe but have migrated to Morocco as the intended endpoint of their journey, there to minister to the growing subSaharan Christian population. This development is accompanied by a stabilization of links back to the home churches (in Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, etc.), which dispatch pastors to Morocco and thus are beginning to build their own transnational networks. Berriane focuses on the place-making of African Evangelical churches in a country whose state religion is Islam, which presents a mirror image to Klaus

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Hock’s study of Muslim enclaves in Western Africa, called zongo, which served as settlements for itinerant traders (“Transforming Spatial Formats: Imagined Commonalities, Imaginary Spaces, and Spaces of Imagination”). Another type of transient space is represented by the “pilgrim camps” of Hausa in the Sudan, who have got stuck there on the hajj and for four or five generations have been living in supposedly temporary settlements, still claiming to be on their way to Mecca. Here Hock introduces an important distinction between imagined and imaginary spaces, with Mecca, the final goal of the journey, as the imagined space, while “the ‘permanent’ pilgrims’ destination is an imaginary space located ‘somewhere beyond’, virtually linked to the shaykh’s dwelling in settlements holding the status of ‘permanent transience’.” Migration as the primary social context for the formation of religious networks is also key to several of the studies on East Asia. A most instructive parallel to Berriane’s work is Wei-Yi Cheng’s chapter on Buddhist festivals among Vietnamese migrants in Taiwan (“Transitioning the Vietnamese Ullambana Festival to Taiwan”). Cheng conceptualizes Vietnamese Buddhism in Taiwan as a “translocative network”, as her case examples do not focus primarily on transnational links (e.g. back to “home temples” in Vietnam), but on the mobile practices, supported by social media, of Vietnamese clerics who are usually registered as students at colleges in Taiwan and who criss-cross the island, performing ritual services for groups of Vietnamese lay Buddhists. Institutional links back to Vietnam are weak, and the composition of the clergy fluctuates greatly, as most students are unable to obtain resident visas and need to return to Vietnam after graduation. Ritual events, such as the Ullambana used by Cheng as her case example, take place in rented or borrowed spaces, including public libraries, community centres, and Chinese Buddhist temples. These locations need to be turned into “sacroscapes”, a necessity even when the ritual is held on the premises of a Chinese Buddhist nunnery, which must be converted into a Vietnamese Buddhist space by means of Vietnamese Buddhist objects and ritual styles. An aspect missing from Taiwanese instantiations of Vietnamese Buddhism is the split between two Buddhist communities and two migrant communities, which is the focus of Janet Alison Hoskins and Nguyen Thi Hien’s exploration in their chapter on “Vietnamese Transnational Religions: The Cold War Polarities in ‘Little Hanois’ and “Little Saigons’”. The authors juxtapose Vietnamese communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe, which consist overwhelmingly of refugees from southern Vietnam, with overseas communities in Eastern Europe, which are made up mainly of students and former contract workers who came from northern Vietnam. This split is not merely geographical, as it involves political allegiance to two regimes: the current Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with its capital Hanoi, or the defunct Republic of Vietnam, with what

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used to be its capital, Saigon. This split is apparent in sacred spaces marked with the flags of the respective political entities (or in a few cases the attempt to build bridges between the communities by a conscious refusal to allow any national flags on temple premises). The differing political background also has an impact on the degree to which the respective religious networks maintain lines of communication back to Vietnam, with the Little Hanois naturally maintaining much closer links to the homeland, which do not just involve the importation of religious personnel (e.g. Vietnamese Buddhist monks and nuns staffing temples in Europe) but also serve to transport other forms of religious belief and practice, such as spirit-medium cults dedicated to mother goddesses and even to Hồ Chí Minh. Thus, we are dealing here with two quite distinct religious networks, differing significantly in their religious contents and styles and in the directions of their transnational coverage, with only very limited overlap in terms of personnel and participation. The chapters on culturally Chinese religious organizations also share an emphasis on migration as the key social context but stress that the specific structuring of the networks spun as lines among nodes of diaspora communities shows significant differences. Rongdao Lai’s chapter on “Tiantai Transnationalism: Mobility, Identity, and Lineage Networks in Modern Chinese Buddhism” traces the early twentieth-century origins of a new form of religious authorization that enabled a particular form of Chinese Buddhism, the Tiantai school, to spread globally: the decoupling of Dharma transmission from the succession to the abbacy of specific temples. This allowed Tiantai masters to authorize more than one disciple as their successor, and with this authorization the disciples could then go out into the world and found their own temples. The closing of mainland China to such religious entrepreneurship after 1949 and the relocation of masters to Hong Kong led to the formation of a transnational Tiantai network, with “Dharma heirs” establishing themselves in Chinese diasporas across the globe. The key difference to the competing Buddhist organization Fo Guang Shan, studied by Jens Reinke, is the lack of central oversight in the case of Tiantai. As Lai stresses, the Tiantai lineage does not have a headquarters. Autonomous temples and monasteries within the lineages are connected through a fluid, flexible, and diffused network of identity and affiliation. [. . .] Rather than being sectarian and exclusive, the modern Tiantai network can be thought of as a complex and extended “Dharma family” that offers its members authority and legitimacy.

The chapters discussed up to now all deal with transnational (and, more generally, translocative) flows – flows that cross national and continental borders, but not necessarily cultural and ethnic borders. Such transcultural crossings are

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implied in most of them (e.g. Echtler’s example of a reimagined Zulu nation or the multi-ethnic composition of the parishioners of African evangelical churches in Morocco, studied by Berriane), but this is not the core focus of these chapters’ analysis. It moves to the centre of attention, however, in the chapters by Louveau and Lambertz as well as those by Broy and Reinke. This pairing of chapters might appear at first sight to be geographically driven (two on Africa and two on East Asia), but the rationale is actually conceptual: the two pairs of studies represent different models of religious organization for outreach beyond their own ethnically or culturally defined primary constituencies. One model follows a “franchising” approach that grants substantial autonomy to the religious organization’s local chapters, even while maintaining control of the “brand” by means of periodic supervision or stable feedback channels between the headquarters and the local chapters; the other approach evinces a more hierarchically organized structure with firm control over overseas chapters, and members of the headquarters’ ethnic base community in leadership position overseas as well. The chapters by Louveau and Lambertz illustrate the former approach, using African chapters of Japanese new religions as case examples. Peter Lambertz, in his “Of Ancestors and Others: Cultural Resonance from Japan among Spiritualists in Kinshasa”, addresses groups derived from Sekai Kyūseikyō (SKK/Church of World Messianity) in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While these can be envisioned as overseas nodes in a network centred on a Japanese (or in this case, Brazilian) headquarters, what in fact travels long the strings of the network is primarily a cultural resonance in terms of perceived continuities and compatibilities between African and Japanese spiritualities. More concretely, the network strings are channels by which sacred objects are sent from Brazil to Congo, and lists of ancestors to be saved are sent from Congo to Brazil for further ritual processing. The ritual activities in the Congolese SKK chapters themselves are run and controlled by locals and are shown to address very local spiritual concerns about healing, power, magic, and the care for ancestors. In her study, “Japanese Spiritualities in Africa: From a Transnational Space to the Creation of a Local Lifestyle”, Frédérique Louveau directs our attention to the growth in Senegal of Sukyō Mahikari, a Japanese new religion that was brought there by a French expatriate from Paris in 1974. The Senegalese dōjōs are subordinate to their “regional delegation”, which in turn communicates with the headquarters in Japan. The regional delegation is responsible for providing fittings and training to local dōjōs, assuring a fairly high degree of uniformity in religious practice. The membership typically has a middle-class or even higher social background and tends to share similarly elite outlooks across a number of West African nations. As Louveau points out, the members “belong to a deterritorialized transnational spiritual community even though they strongly

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territorialize Mahikari’s practices”, as they define Sukyō Mahikari (among other meanings) as a healing practice providing protection from witchcraft. The dōjō also serves as a platform of civic engagement; the power cultivated in Sukyō Mahikari’s system of practice is directed towards the purification of society and the environment, for example through participation in reforestation campaigns. Louveau compares the vertically integrated West African network of Sukyō Mahikari with the very loose network of Reiki practice groups in the same region, “formed by individual ‘masters’ and their disciples in accordance with the migrations of these people”. Thus, authority in Reiki is transmitted in dyadic master/ disciple relationships, not unlike the Dharma transmission system described by Rongdao Lai for Tiantai Buddhism. Sukyō Mahikari, by contrast, exerts a higher degree of centralized authority, ensuring homogeneity of practice in all local dōjōs by fairly strict oversight; it differs in this regard not only from the loose networks of Reiki practitioners, but also from the SKK network in Kinshasa, whose vertical integration with a transnational headquarters is much weaker. If we take the degree of vertical integration as a criterion for creating a continuum of religious networks, we might begin with Reiki as the least vertically integrated network through SKK in Kinshasa to Sukyō Mahikari in Senegal, with its concern for enforcing standard practice. However, the continuum needs to be further extended towards the more highly integrated end if we add the case examples provided by Nikolas Broy (“American Dao and Global Interactions: Transnational Religious Networks in an English-Speaking Yiguandao Congregation in Urban California”) and Jens Reinke (“Generating Global Pure Lands: Renjian Buddhist Civic Engagement within and beyond the Chinese Diaspora Communities Worldwide”). Both chapters focus on transcultural practices in particular overseas nodes (in the USA and South Africa) of the two Taiwanese religious organizations in question, Fo Guang Shan and Yiguandao. Both are characterized by strong vertical integration, which extends down to the local chapters, creating a strict standardization not just of practice (as in the case of Sukyō Mahikari in Senegal) but also of personnel. Real leadership in all the local branches examined by Broy and Reinke remains in the hands of either firstgeneration Taiwanese migrants or religious specialist emissaries dispatched by the Taiwanese headquarters. Both organizations thus rely heavily on Taiwanese (and, secondarily, more loosely defined ethnic Chinese) diaspora populations for building and extending their overseas branches. Both chapters examine endeavours by local branches to reach beyond the diaspora communities in which they are embedded, be it by civic engagement in the case of Fo Guang Shan in the USA and South Africa, or by Yiguandao proselytizing in and beyond the Los Angeles ethnoburbs (by means of social media) to reach an English-speaking audience. While these activities can all point to successes, ultimately the case studies show that,

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while symbolically important, they remain marginal to the core operations of the overseas branches, whose bread-and-butter business is still the provision of religious and cultural services to diaspora migrant populations. These two examples indicate that in the context of global migratory movements, transnational religious flows are not necessarily also transcultural flows, or rather that the two aspects need to be separated analytically. Cultural distance per se does not explain this gap, as Japanese new religions such as Sukyō Mahikari and Sekai Kyūseikyō apparently encounter fewer problems in this regard and develop well in areas far removed from any Japanese diaspora communities, such as Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo. What makes Japanese religions more portable than Chinese ones (at least in the cases covered by the chapters in this volume)? This is one of the questions for further study that the chapters bring to our attention, and the production of such new questions arising out of the juxtaposition of research in fields that are not usually in close scholarly conversation should be seen as the primary rationale for cross-regional and interdisciplinary workshops such as the one that produced this volume.

Thomas A. Tweed

2 Flows and Dams: Rethinking Categories for the Study of Transnationalism The authors of this volume offer a number of rich case studies about religion, space, and transnationalism in Asia and Africa. For most contributors, network is a key category, though some also employ other terms that have been influential in the past few decades. My modest contribution is to reflect on those categories, surface the underlying metaphors, and ask how future researchers might modify their interpretive language to attend to the broken transnational connections, consider the links between time and space, and recognize the interplay between cultural and biological forces.

Turkish Muslims in Berlin To ground that abstract analysis, a case study might help. Let me start – and conclude – by thinking about Turkish Muslim migrants in Germany. I began doing so in fall 1984, when I toured a Turkish school in Kreuzberg, West Berlin. It’s a memory that I’ve returned to over the years as I have tried to understand transnational spaces.1 Those Turks had come as “guest workers” between 1961 and 1973, and when an undeclared civil war broke out in Turkey in 1984, asylum seekers followed, settling in that working-class neighbourhood adjacent to the Wall, which had its transnational sites – Turkish cafes, video stores, Koran schools, and courtyard mosques.2 I had visited with a delegation from a US university that was invited by a group in West Berlin. Our hosts fondly remembered the US

1 My description of Turkish migrants in West Berlin here and below relies on multiple sources, including the following: S.T. Vierra, Turkish Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany: Immigration, Space, and Belonging, 1961–1990, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018, especially pp. 163–192; W. Kil and H. Silver, “From Kreuzberg to Marzahn: New Migrant Communities in Berlin”, German Politics and Society 24 (2006) 4, pp. 96–100; P. Gupte, “Germany’s Guest Workers”, New York Times, 19 August 1984. I am grateful to my research assistant Danae Jacobson for help with the research for this chapter. 2 On the periods of Turkish migration and the changing conditions in Turkey and Germany, see T. Faist, The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000, pp. 60–95. Faist suggests that 21,900 Turkish asylum seekers arrived in Germany between 1983 and 1985, constituting two-thirds of all Turkish refugees to Western Europe in that period (see Table 3.1). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-002

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“raisin bombers” and John F. Kennedy’s 1963 speech but worried about being forgotten by American educators.3 We were given tours of West and East Berlin, from schools and government offices in the West to art museums, opera houses, and military outposts in the East, including a terrifying lecture by the jittery, Reagan-hating officer who supervised the soldiers stationed at the 300 watchtowers on the eastern side of the Wall. It was a time when lingering Cold War anxiety mixed with rising hostility towards Muslims. President Ronald Reagan had just been re-elected, and Germans ridiculed his “Star Wars” defence system designed to intercept Russian missiles: the cover of Der Spiegel that greeted me at a Ku’damm newsstand that November pictured Reagan as Darth Vader.4 It was also only five years after the Iranian Revolution, which had darkened European attitudes towards Muslims, including the 119,000 Turks in West Berlin, where one out of four schoolchildren was foreign-born in 1984. And a global recession had spiked local unemployment. In turn, West Berlin’s vice-mayor condemned Muslim “guest workers” who were failing to integrate, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl was offering foreigners money if they returned home. It was a tense moment. I boarded my return flight convinced that the jittery officer would soon start World War III, but what I remember most vividly was a conversation in a social science class filled with second-generation, teenage Turks. The Wall was visible just outside the second-story classroom window (Figure 1.1). We had questions for each other. The students wanted to know if I voted for Reagan and watched the TV show Bay Watch. Because their curricular unit was about the Civil Rights Movement, they also wanted to know about race relations. I’m not sure what they thought of my answers, but I was surprised by their answer to my question: “What about that Wall, the one right there outside your window? Does it trouble you?” They looked at me quizzically, as if I were asking about breathing, something not worth mentioning. They didn’t really notice it, they said. I asked again, using different phrasing, and the answer was the same. I was shocked. That response stayed with me as I returned to my formal study of transoceanic circulations in the Pacific World and later, as I traced movements up and down the Western hemisphere and back and forth across the Atlantic. It reminded me to attend to all features of the migrant experience, including those that are harder to see: video stores renting Turkish movies, prayer rugs imported from home,

3 The sponsoring group was called the Internationale Lehrerkonferenz. When I asked our hosts why they invited us and what I could do to reciprocate, they said, “Don’t forget us.” They then went on to recount their fond memories of American support after World War II and communicated their worry that they would be isolated. 4 Cover, “Waffen für den Krieg der Sterne?”, Der Spiegel, 12 November 1984.

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Figure 1.1: Turkish Berlin women and children on Leuschnerdamm in Berlin-Kreuzberg. In the background, the Berlin Wall spray-painted by graffiti artist Indiano, 1989/90 © Stadtmuseum Berlin | photo: Ergun Cağatay.

mosques hidden in residential courtyards, and, of course, walls of all kinds. Years later I came to see how institutions and technology, as well as the transported religious practices, mediated their experience and transformed the landscape. I learned that resettlement attempts could be slowed and migrant flows could be blocked – by harsh popular attitudes as much as by tall political barriers. First-generation Turkish migrants who arrived by train or walked across Checkpoint Charlie were aware of the barriers. After 1961, it was hard to miss the Wall, and by 1984 those Muslims had noticed how Germans’ attitudes had turned against them, even if some barriers became commonplace, almost invisible to the school-age children. After I returned, I couldn’t decide what theoretical language to use to describe what I saw and heard in that neighbourhood, and I put aside thinking about Berlin’s Muslims as I finished my degree and left for my first academic job. But I didn’t forget my questions about transnationalism. I went on to study Japanese missionaries from a transnational organization who created a transnational space, the first Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple in San Francisco. I studied Mexican migrants who transformed the streets of a small US town into a transnational space

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with a public procession for the Virgin of Guadalupe on her feast day, and Filipino migrants who built an oratory in Washington DC to recall their homeland and claim their place in the capital. I spent five years doing fieldwork at a Miami shrine with Cubans who had fled by plane or escaped by raft.

Categories for Translocative Analysis of Religion The guiding categories and root metaphors of my theory of religion emerged from my study of that Cuban Catholic shrine. The Miami exiles I met during five years of fieldwork at the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity, which honours Cuba’s national patroness, seemed preoccupied with where they were and where they used to be. They wept as they told me about their former lives on the island, and they grinned as they imagined their return from exile. As I argued in Our Lady of the Exile, their diasporic religion was translocative, terms I coined to make sense of what I found during fieldwork: religious rituals, narratives, institutions, and artefacts propelled them back and forth between the homeland and the new land.5 Standing at the Shrine – and at the feast day mass in a downtown stadium – I began to discover a vocabulary, formulate a theory, and craft a definition.6 As I understand them, religions are “confluences of organic-cultural flows that intensify joy and confront suffering by drawing on human and suprahuman forces to make homes and cross boundaries”.7 This definition draws on aquatic metaphors in order to emphasize movement, avoid essentialism, and acknowledge contact. Each religion, then, is a flowing together of currents – some institutionally enforced as “orthodox” – traversing channels, where other religions, other transverse confluences, also cross, thereby creating new spiritual streams. Religions cannot be reduced to economic forces, social relations, or political interests, but always emerge from the swirl of transfluvial currents, as both religious and non-religious streams propel religious flows. These flows are also “organic-cultural”, in my view, so I invoke the hyphen to suggest that both biological and cultural processes are at work. Religions are processes in which institutions (the state, the temple, and the family) bridge biological constraints and cultural mediations to produce 5 T.A. Tweed, Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. 6 T.A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. I applied my understanding of “translocative analysis” to the study of Buddhism in T.A. Tweed, “Theory and Method in the Study of Buddhism: Toward ‘Translocative’ Analysis”, Journal of Global Buddhism 12 (2011), pp. 17–32. 7 Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, p. 54 (emphasis added).

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reference frames that draw on superhuman agents (gods, spirits, or bodhisattvas) and imagine an ultimate horizon of human life (Amida Buddha’s Pure Land or the Kingdom of God). It is the appeal to suprahuman forces and an ultimate horizon that distinguishes religion from non-religion, in my view, though it can be useful to classify practices and artefacts on a continuum. Some cases – for example, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Programs – might fall between the poles of the fully secular and the fully religious. All this helps us understand what religion is and even how we might identify quasi-religious practices; but how does religion function? I suggest, first, that religion “intensifies joy and confronts suffering”. Religions involve emotion as well as cognition. They not only interpret and ease suffering – disease, disaster, and dislocation – but also provide ways for humans to imagine and enhance the joys derived from encounters with the natural world and transitions in the lifespan, from birth to death. Religions, in other words, are about enhancing wonder as much as wondering about evil.8 Second, shifting to spatial metaphors, I suggest that religions “make homes and cross boundaries”.9 Religions are about finding one’s place (dwelling) and moving across space (crossing). As dwelling, religions include spatial practices that orient devotees in time and space, situating them in four chronotopes, or time-spaces: the body, the home, the homeland, and the cosmos. Religions function as watch and compass. But they make sense of the nomadic as well as the sedentary in human life and involve another spatial practice: crossing. Religions enable and constrain corporeal, terrestrial, and cosmic crossings. They mark and traverse the boundaries of the natural terrain, as with pilgrimages and missions, and the limits of embodied life, like illness and death; but they also chart and cross the ultimate horizon, whether that final crossing is imagined as transport or transformation, as ascending to heaven or attaining enlightenment.

Assessing, Creating, and Modifying Categories I created new terms and adapted others to make sense of moving and settling. I added confluences to the scholarly conversation about flows to capture the inter-causality of religious and non-religious forces. I conjoined an emphasis on dwelling, or place-making, with the usual focus on itinerancy. I then repurposed a term Bakhtin used in literary interpretation, chronotope, and amplified

8 Ibid., pp. 69–73. 9 Ibid., pp. 73–77.

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its meanings to add a temporal dimension to spatial analysis.10 I suggested we talk about time-spaces, and proposed new categories, recommending that we attend to the translocative and transtemporal practices that propel devotees back and forth in time as well as space. Viewing the temporal as entangled with the spatial, I argued that translocative religious rituals, narratives, and artefacts were also retrospective and prospective, returning adherents to an imagined past or situating them in an imagined future. All these categories were employed to interpret the religious life of those Cuban exiles. Yet I hoped they might also make sense of movements in other times and places. But which categories would be most useful for interpreting those Turkish Muslims in Berlin and for future research about transnational religious spaces in Asia and Africa? As I argued in a 2002 article called “On Moving Across”, and as the sociologist Peggy Levitt has suggested more recently, despite all the crossdisciplinary attention to religion and transnationalism “scholarship on religion needs better tools to capture how people, ideas, and objects circulate”. Indeed, we also need better tools to capture how the displaced – including migrants and missionaries – create distinctive spaces in the new land.11 Scholars of transnationalism have employed different terms, with varied underlying metaphors.12 Those categories are not true or false, only more or less useful for a particular researcher’s purposes. Each term has advantages and disadvantages. James Clifford proposed travelling as his key metaphor, and Anna Tsing suggested we speak of movements, both in the sense of social movements and the circulation of products, ideas, and people.13 Some favour Deleuze’s analogy, the rhizome, a continuously growing underground stem that, unlike tree roots, puts out lateral shoots at varying intervals and, thereby, creates a series of

10 M.M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981, p. 84. 11 T.A. Tweed, “On Moving Across: Translocative Religion and the Interpreter’s Position”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 70 (June 2002) 2, pp. 253–277; P. Levitt, “Religion on the Move: Mapping Global Cultural Production and Consumption”, in: C. Bender, W. Cadge, P. Levitt, and D. Smilde (eds.), Religion on the Edge: De-Centering and Re-Centering the Sociology of Religion, New York: Oxford University Press, 2013, chap. 7, p. 172. 12 For criticism of the scholarship, see P Levitt, “What’s Wrong with Migration Scholarship? A Critique and a Way Forward”, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 9 (2012) 4, pp. 493–500. I agree with Levitt’s claim that the scholarship often “assumes that boundedness, rootedness and membership in a single national, ethnic or religious group are the natural order of things” and “does not take culture seriously enough.” 13 J. Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 7; A. Tsing, “The Global Situation”, in: X. Inda and R. Rosaldo (eds.), The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, Malden: Blackwell, 2002, p. 475.

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lines that connect any point to any other point.14 Other interpreters discuss religious assemblages that form across space or the creole or hybrid forms that emerge from cultural mixing, what I called traces and confluences. Some authors in this volume use the term assemblages, and others talk about travelling or employ my language about translocative devotion. The categories that appear most frequently are network and flow, so let’s assess those; but, while we’re at it, let us also consider two other terms that inform the broader scholarship – web and transnational social field.15 But first we need to propose standards for assessment. How would we decide which terms are most adequate? The most basic criterion is that the chosen category prompts generative questions and allows the interpreter new angles of vision. Let me also propose five more specific criteria, though the final judgment of a term’s utility will depend on the researcher’s specific aims.16 For me, an adequate category for the study of religion and transnationalism should, first, emphasize dynamism – negotiate “the mobility turn” – while also accounting for constraints on movement, symbolic, political, and environmental barriers.17 Second, a useful term should illumine religion’s role in both moving and place-making, mobility

14 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, p. 21; Levitt, “Religion on the Move”, pp. 161–162. 15 Scholars have analysed the metaphors of web, network, and transnational social field. See T. J. Steigenga, M.A. Vásquez, and P.J. Williams, “A Place to Be: New and Old Geographies of Latin American Migration in Florida and Beyond”, in: A Place to Be: Brazilian, Guatemalan, and Mexican Immigrants in Florida’s New Destinations, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2009, pp. 209–226. Some have argued for clearer distinctions among the terms transnational social fields, networks, and cultural flows: N. Glick Schiller, “Theorizing about and beyond Transnational Processes”, in: M. Cervantes-Rodriguez, R. Grosfoguel, and E. Mielants (eds.), Caribbean Migration to Western Europe and the United States: Essays on Incorporation, Identity, and Citizenship, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2009, p. 29. See also O. Sheringham, “A Transnational Space? Transnational Practices, Place-Based Identity and the Making of ‘Home’ among Brazilians in Gort, Ireland”, Portuguese Studies 26 (2010) 1, pp. 60–78. 16 I have not formulated these criteria before, but I have discussed the following five points in several books, chapters, and articles, including Crossing and Dwelling; and T.A. Tweed, “Following the Flows: Diversity, Santa Fe, and Method in Religious Studies”, in: P.C. Phan and J.S. Ray (eds.), Understanding Religious Pluralism: Perspectives from Religious Studies and Theology, Eugene: Pickwick, 2014, pp. 1–19. 17 I have argued this in “Following the Flows”, but I also take this to be one of Faist’s points: T. Faist, “The Mobility Turn: A New Paradigm for the Social Sciences”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 36 (2013) 11, pp. 1637–1646. Some suggest we should distinguish between symbolic and social boundary-making: M. Lamont and V. Molnar, “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences”, Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002), p. 168. Scholars have distinguished the linguistic turn, cultural turn, spatial turn, and others. I discussed the “quotidian turn”, the shift to considering ordinary people and everyday life. See T.A. Tweed, “After the Quotidian

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and locality. In other words, it should encourage us to also celebrate “the spatial turn”.18 Third, an adequate category should lead the scholar to attend to human agency, individual action and collective labour, as well as geographical setting and social structure. Fourth, researchers should not presume the nation state as the unit of analysis, and our terminology should encourage us to trace bidirectional and multiscalar circulations, following the flows where they go. Fifth, a category should discourage mono-causal explanations and inspire the scholar to consider the full range of intersecting forces – religious, political, legal, economic, technological, psycho-physiological, and ecological – including by focusing our attention on the biological as well as the cultural. Applying those criteria, each of the most widely employed interpretive terms has some insights and blind spots. Influential scholars in science studies and media studies have advocated network as most useful. Bruno Latour has argued, for example, that it is “more supple than the notion of a system” and “more historical than the notion of structure”.19 The lexical definition of network suggests it refers to a manufactured object in which the intersecting lines, the threads or wires, are interlaced like a net.20 A fishing net seems to be the root metaphor. Whether network is used to describe communications, corporations, computers, or transregional spiritual institutions, it usefully highlights interconnection. However, the term can signal stasis more than motion. Also, human agency can be minimized in the root metaphor’s emphasis on fixed impersonal structures, though “social network analysis” since Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust’s book of that title provides resources for attending more fully to human actors. Those authors defined a network as a finite set of actors connected by a set of ties, and in

Turn: Interpretive Categories and Scholarly Trajectories in the Study of Religion since the 1960s”, Journal of Religion 95 (July 2015) 3, pp. 361–385. 18 I made this point in Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling. James Clifford talked of “routes and roots”, and another scholar of migration used the phrase “mobility and locality” to make a similar point, though neither of them have sustained interest in religion: J. Dahinden, “The Dynamics of Migrant’s Transnational Formations: Between Mobility and Locality”, in: R. Bauböck and T. Faist (eds.), Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories, and Methods, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010, pp. 51–72; J. Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. I talked about space and place in T.A. Tweed, “The Interdisciplinary Study of Geography and Religion: A Pragmatic Approach”, Relegens Thréskeia: Revista de Pesquisas e Estudos em Religião 3 (2014) 2, pp. 1–27. 19 M. Castells, The Rise of Network Society, 2nd edn, vol. 1, Oxford: Blackwell, 2000; B. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 3. 20 “Network, n. and adj.”, Oxford English Dictionary, OED online, 3rd edn, September 2003.

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their account actors, and not institutions, serve as its nodes.21 In a recent formulation that might be adapted to the transnational study of religion, an interpreter of “advocacy networks” suggests we understand them as “a structure of relations in which actors are embedded”.22 That term “relation” helps focus on interaction, and the word “embedded” points to context. The problem, however, is that the use of structure unwittingly obscures motion. Network could be expanded to include neural networks, but, to mention another weakness, it still calls to mind non-biological referents, whether those are political, commercial, or technological. As the chapters in this volume show, network seems most helpful in describing the interpersonal bonds of affiliation within a religious organization and the interconnected worship spaces within a transregional movement.23 Yet it is still difficult to feature collective labour or highlight motion. The term web, which some scholars use, captures the fibrous connective strands involved in transnationalism. The dictionary definition suggests either a fabric woven on a loom, a tapestry, or, more often, an intricate pattern of silk filaments spun by a spider, a spider’s web.24 Clifford Geertz used the spider analogy in his 1973 definition of culture – “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun” – and many symbolic anthropologists and religion scholars later relied on that metaphor, though the analogy’s use increased precipitously after Tim Berners-Lee’s 1989 proposal for the “world wide web”, which he imagined as an interlinked space for information management.25 The spider web referent offers advantages: the labour of the web-maker is preserved and the natural world is included. Both uses of the term convey the complexity of connections. Yet this grounding metaphor refers to a finished product, a crafted artefact, and not the dynamism of an ongoing process of construction. There also seems to be no obvious way to identify how the connective threads can break.

21 S. Wasserman and K. Faust, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 20. For a lucid description of their model, and a helpful revision of it, see J. Hadden, Networks in Contention: The Divisive Politics of Climate Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 42–44. 22 Hadden, Networks in Contention, p. 40. See also A. Mische, “Relational Sociology, Culture and Agency”, in: J. Scott and P.J. Carrington (eds.), Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis, Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2010, pp. 80–97. 23 See M. Vásquez, “Studying Religion in Motion: A Networks Approach”, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20 (2008), pp. 151–184. 24 “Web, n.”, Oxford English Dictionary, OED online, 3rd edn., June 2017. 25 C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books, 1973, p. 5; T. BernersLee’s original proposal can be found at “History of the Web”, World Wide Web Foundation, https://webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/ (accessed 5 December 2018).

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Transnational social field, a category proposed by Nina Glick-Schiller in 1999, refers to “an unbounded terrain of interlocking [personal] networks” that is “more encompassing” than the chain of egalitarian or unequal relationships specific to an individual, because it includes the “social, economic, and political processes” that “embed” migrant populations in two or more nation states.26 The fields, she suggests, are “networks of networks that stretch across the borders of nation-states”.27 Scholars have visually and conceptually represented these fields in different ways, including as a Venn diagram, to illustrate the ways that migrants’ transnational activities create an overlapping social field between the sending country and receiving country. The term transnational social field can invite attention to both agency and structure, though the foregrounding of the “social” obscures the psycho-physiological processes of the embodied person and natural processes in the wider environment. If we emphasize flows that connect the nodes, the interpreter can try to highlight movement, but since field still implies a bounded space, usually understood as a sending and a receiving country, it also provides less help to those hoping to de-centre the nation state and attend to bidirectional and multiscalar circulations. Flow is another popular category, and one that I have used. The original meaning of the noun flow referred to the movement of water, as in a river, though it came to be applied to air and electricity. It was popularized in the eighteenth century to discuss the circulation of capital, as in money-flow, and talk of “global cultural flows” surged in the 1990s.28 This term has some advantages. Flow clearly

26 N. Glick-Schiller and G.E. Fouron, “Terrains of Blood and Nation: Haitian Transnational Social Fields, “Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (1999) 2, p. 344. I am indebted to the analysis of the term’s uses in J.L. Molina, S. Petermann, and A. Herz, “Defining and Measuring Transnational Fields”, Working Paper 12–16, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (2012), pp. 9–14, http://www.mmg.mpg.de/publications/working-papers/2012/wp-1216/ (accessed 4 December 2018). For the term’s use in interpreting religion, see P. Levitt and N. Glick-Schiller, “Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society”, International Migration Review 38 (2004) 3, pp. 1002–1039. See also P. Levitt, “Redefining the Boundaries of Belonging: The Transnationalization of Religious Life”, in: N. Ammerman (ed.), Everyday Religion: Observing Modern Religious Lives, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 103–120. For a geographical perspective, see L. Kong and O. Woods, “Mobile Bodies, (Im)mobile Beliefs? Religious Accord and Discord as Migratory Outcomes”, Social Compass 65 (2018) 2, pp. 153, 155, 158–160. 27 N. Glick-Schiller, “Transnational Social Fields and Imperialism: Bringing a Theory of Power to Transnational Studies”, Anthropological Theory 5 (2005), pp. 439–461. 28 A. Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, p. 33. For the early usage of “flows” and a persuasive critique that suggests we foreground “work”, see A. Sedgewick, “Against Flows”, History of the Present 4 (2014) 2, pp. 143–170. Many others have used flows as a central interpretive term. For sociologists

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suggests movement, and if the implied analogy is rivers, it opens up possible attention to human biology and environmental setting, as well as providing language for analysing how religious movements change over time and are modified by contact. It also offers another advantage for scholars of migration: aquatic analogies are used in hostile everyday speech in English and German, with references to the “wave of refugees” (Flüchtlingswelle) or the “flood of foreigners” (Ausländerflut).29 Yet the term flow also has shortcomings, at least in terms of our criteria: it implies that personal agents are swept along by forces beyond their control, thereby obscuring human labour, and it suggests that those flows are uninterrupted. The category does not encourage the researcher to notice how the flow of migrants can be blocked or redirected – for example, as the Turkish guest workers were constrained in West Berlin by policies, attitudes, and walls. Nor does it help us analyse how Mormon missionaries in Germany were alternately permitted and restricted, from their first arrival in 1852 to the end of Cold War limitations after 1989. I’m not suggesting we abandon any of those terms, of course. I suggest only that it would help to consider the implications of metaphors, anticipate objections, and modify categories. For example, the most popular terms do not easily account for how transnational transit stops or shifts, a process that several chapters in this volume explore. Yet there are ways around that conceptual difficulty for scholars who use movements, field, web, flow, or network as their guiding image.

of religion advocating it, see R. Wuthnow and S. Offutt, “Transnational Religious Connections”, Sociology of Religion 69 (2008) 2, p. 211. They also point to the complexity of flows, as I do, by noting their type, duration, and speed. 29 For example, this contribution to a “readers’ forum” talks about “der Ausländerflut nach Deutschland”: “Leserforum; Leserforum”, Frankenpost, 10 July 2018, https://advance-lexiscom.proxy.library.nd.edu/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:5SS5-4SF1JDHD-W045-00000-00&context=1516831 (accessed 5 December 2018). I am grateful to Oliver Freiberger for helping me think about the use of aquatic metaphors in describing migrants in German and English: e-mail to the author, 21 November 2018. For a helpful attempt to count the migrants and map the flows, see G.J. Abel and N. Sander, “Quantifying Global International Migration Flows”, Science 343 (28 March 2014), pp. 1520–1522. On the religion of migrants, see Pew Research Center, “Faith on the Move: The Religious Affiliations of International Migrants”, 8 March 2012, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/03/08/religious-migration-exec/ (accessed 5 December 2018).

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Movements and Friction Anna Tsing’s work might help. She has suggested we employ the term friction to describe “the imperfect connectivity” between the local and global and different cultures and actors.30 That friction, she suggests, both impedes and generates movement. In that sense, it can be “creative”. So, if movement is your chosen category, perhaps pair it with an accompanying term: talk about movement and friction.

Hard and Soft Structures If you prefer transnational social field, you might want to refine your usage by referring to “harder” and “softer” social structures within that field, as the geographer Lily Kong proposes, noting that some host cultures have “thicker, more impenetrable boundaries” that require more compromises by the newcomer.31 That won’t solve all conceptual problems, but it can help.

Webs and Broken Threads If you prefer to talk about a transnational web of connections, you could use analogies taken from the World Wide Web or creatively tease out the implications of the metaphor of the spider web. Two physicists have developed a “model for the mechanics of spider webs” and introduced a vocabulary we might borrow.32 They note that there are radial and spiral threads in an orb web. Those spider-crafted orbs have remarkable “elasticity” and high “damage tolerance”. At the moment of completion those dense webs are “free of stress concentrations”, areas where there is a danger of broken “threads”. But sometimes the stress concentration becomes too great and threads fray or break. If you favour this web metaphor, 30 In her earlier work, Tsing suggested we talk about “movements”, which apparently meant travel across land: Tsing, “The Global Situation”, in: X. Inda and R. Rosaldo (eds.), The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader, Malden: Blackwell, 2002, p. 475. She later suggested we also talk about “friction”: A. Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 31 Kong and Woods, “Mobile Bodies”, p. 160. Kong and Woods refer to both “webs of connection” (pp. 152, 159–160) and “social fields”, though the latter seems to be their more central term (pp. 153, 155, 158–159). 32 Y. Aoyanagi and K. Okumura, “Simple Model for the Mechanics of Spider Webs”, Physical Review Letters 104 (2010) 3, 038102, pp. 1–4.

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perhaps you might describe the “threads” in the transregional web, analyse levels of “damage tolerance”, and map the “stress concentrations”. Then tell the reader how some connective “threads” broke in that migrant community or mission outpost.

Flows and Dams If you think my notion of translocative flows is useful for your research, we can improve that category by pairing it with another term, dams. Correcting my early emphasis on flows, I now think we should talk about dams and flows. Let me explain. The kinetics of crossing is mediated not only by transportation and communication technology but also by institutional structures. All space is striated, marked by the traces of social power wielded by institutional actors and their legal and moral codes. There are no unimpeded flows. The flows – of people, things, and practices – are propelled, compelled, and blocked, directed this way and that, by institutions. Extending the aquatic metaphor to explain how institutional power – as well as individual agency – is at work, we might say that institutions channel and regulate flows, functioning like a dam.33 In those sorts of engineering

33 For this clarification and expansion of my theory, I am indebted to many readers and audiences in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe. Some suggested that I reconsider institutional power (especially Bruce Lawrence, Kim Knott, and Manuel Vásquez), so did those I met during lectures or conferences in London, Turku, and Tromsø. It was during another conference session dedicated to the theory’s implications for scholars of the history of Christianity that Marie Marquardt suggested that “the religious institutions that shape religious flows look more to me like retaining walls, levies, and dams that divert flows, and that create great pools of stagnant water.” Michael Ostling then added a related suggestion: that I consider “the analogy of valves or filters”. Michael Osling to the author, 15 November 2010, electronic mail. I learned more in a discussion about my theory with graduate students enrolled in a seminar taught by Michel Desjardins at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. My colleague Perin Gurel reminded me that dams sometimes spring a leak. With these helpful suggestions in hand, I have researched how dams and valves work, and I draw on that information in my analysis here. My understanding of dams was informed by a number of studies, including P. T. Milanovič, “Dam Engineering and Its Environmental Aspects”, in: R.A. Meyers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology, New York: Springer, 2012, pp. 2788–2804; and F. Constança et al., “Riverscapes Downstream of Hydropower Dams: Effects of Altered Flows and Historical Land-Use Change”, Landscape and Urban Planning 153 (2016), pp. 83–98. Some authors have used “dams and flows” metaphorically for a very different purpose: T. Milstein et al., “Dams and Flows: Immersing in Western Meaning Systems in Search of Ecocultural Reflexivity”, Environmental Communication, 2018, https://www.tandfonline.com/ doi/full/10.1080/17524032.2018.1423626 (accessed 15 June 2019).

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systems, walled structures divert the water’s direction and ‘control valves’ modulate its rate of flow. A large organization – the state or a corporation – usually constructs and maintains the dam, yet that collectivity also authorizes a particular person to turn the valve and control the flow, even if sometimes the unexpected happens when the wall springs a leak. Similar processes are at work, I suggest, as institutions, including nation states, the United Nations, or non-governmental agencies, modulate religions’ flows. It’s important for scholars of transnationalism to notice this – and, so, to attend to the ways that power is enacted and not only the ways that meaning is made. This talk of dams as well as flows helps to explain compelled and constrained crossings.34

Networks and Nodal Disruptions If network is the key term, as for many contributors to this volume, it can help to seek terminology that accounts for moments when nodes become disconnected. That scholar of advocacy networks talks about “network tensions”, “communications breakdowns”, and varying degrees of “connectivity”, where some nodes are harder to reach than others.35 Scholars who rely on the analogy with communication technologies might talk about fast, slow, and lost connections; those foregrounding linked organizations might talk about “nodal disruptions”.

Towards New Paired Categories It can help to pair categories, as with my use of crossing and dwelling. The theme of crossing highlights human agency, since it invites us too look for the embodied beings moving across; and dwelling, or emplacement, calls us to notice where the crossers lived before and where they live now. I still think those categories are useful, but let me propose two other possible paired terms that scholars of transnationalism might consider.

34 In terms of the suggestions I made in “Following the Flows”, which lists ten methodological principles, two of my proposed guidelines seem relevant: note how technologies “channel religion’s aquatic, terrestrial, and virtual flows” and how institutional structures “regulate religious flows, functioning like a dam.” Tweed, “Following the Flows”, p. 15. 35 Hadden, Networks in Contention, pp. 43–58.

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Mapping and Memory First, as we notice how culture, economy, and politics impact transit, let’s not forget that migrants and missionaries are embodied persons. In my theory of religion and my entry on “Space” in Critical Terms in Material Religion, I noted the brain’s role in spatial orientation.36 That seems important for keeping the focus on biological processes. There are six defining features of space for those who study religion, I had argued: space is differentiated, kinetic, interrelated, generated, and generative. All those features also characterize transnational space, and crucial for our purposes are the ways that transnational spaces are generated by embodied beings. Spatial orientation comes into being through embodied perception, figurative imagination, and ritual practice. It always begins with bodies, biologically constrained and culturally coded selves. Those transnational spaces are co-produced by embodied selves interacting with sensorial environments encountered through sound, touch, taste, smell, and sight. That interaction begins with the brain and an allocentric (or object-centred) reference frame. Drawing on the hippocampus as well as culturally transmitted symbols, the creation of transnational spaces involves neurons firing and cultures coding. The displaced imagine those spaces as near and far, and as connected with the homeland. This focus on how brains work reminds us that spatial navigation and memory processes are linked. The hippocampus, the seahorse-shaped area underneath the cortex, plays a role in both spatial sensing and episodic memory.37 Long-term memories are indexed by the spatial location of the original event, whether the devotee was walking in a street festival or kneeling at home to pray. Studies show that even if the landmarks are taken away, the mental and affective associations remain. The feel for the event’s space and time isn’t lost when the site is distant. Scholars of transnationalism need to attend to hippocampal neurons firing to understand the hold of the homeland and the persistence of the past. Even more than I realized when I proposed this in my 2006 theory, the piety of the displaced

36 T.A. Tweed, “Space”, in: S.B, Plate (ed.), Key Terms in Material Religion, London: Bloomsbury, 2015, pp. 223–229; Idem, Crossing and Dwelling, pp. 91–95. 37 There are many studies that support this point. For an accessible summary, see J.M. Groh, Making Space: How the Brain Knows Where Things Are, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014, pp. 189–201. See also J. Lisman et al., “Viewpoints: how the hippocampus contributes to memory, navigation, and cognition”, Nature Neuroscience 20. (2017) 11, pp. 1434–1447; B. Gauthier and V. van Wassenhove, “Cognitive mapping in mental time travel and mental space navigation”, Cognition 154 (2016), pp. 55–68; C.E. Connor and J.J. Knierim, “Integration of Objects and Space in Perception and Memory”, Nature Neuroscience 20 (2017)11, pp. 1493–1502.

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is irrevocably transtemporal as well as translocative. We might lose sight of that unless we focus on the psycho-physiological processes of the displaced devotee.

Habits and Habitats Second, we also need to attend to nature as well as culture as we refine our understanding of the new land, the locale where the displaced stay temporarily, like a refugee camp in Bangladesh, or permanently settle, like a migrant neighbourhood in Berlin. At this moment when refugees are on the move and climate change is having an impact, scholars of transnational religion urgently need to widen their gaze to include the environment. We need to green transnational studies.38 We need a conceptual frame that illumines the ecology of itinerancy and place-making and adds new guiding metaphors and interpretive categories. We can begin that shift, I suggest, by adapting niche construction theory.39 This shift might yield new paired categories, like habits and habitats, that encourage us to consider the biological and the cultural.40 With these as our guiding terms, perhaps we might be more inclined to acknowledge the habituated ways of feeling, thinking, and doing formed by religious practice, including religion’s role in place-making. Those categories seem to account for agency and structure, as they also prompt us to document religion’s positive and negative effects on the regional biosphere, as well as the local landscape that devotees inherit, modify, and bequeath.41 Communities use what I call figurative tools – analogical language like metaphors, symbolic actions like burials, and special buildings like temples – to

38 On “greening” fields and subfields, see S.D. Fassbinder, A.J. Nocella II, and R. Kahn (eds.), Greening the Academy: Ecopedagogy through the Liberal Arts, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2012. 39 I argued for the utility of niche construction theory in: T.A. Tweed, “On Narratives, Niches, and Religion: A Response to Jonathan Marks”, Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences 3 (2016), pp. 183–187. 40 Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of habitus also has some uses, and it includes some of what I mean here, but his understanding of habitus as a “system of dispositions” that “functions as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions” is more grounded in class structures than ecological niches, and, despite his protests, Bourdieu’s scheme seems more economically determined than how I imagine habits and habitats interrelating. P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, pp. 72–73, 82–83, 85–86. For an analysis of a “moral Muslim habitus”, see D. Winchester, “Embodying the Faith: Religious Faith and the Making of a Moral Muslim Habitus”, Social Forces 86 (2008) 4, pp. 1753–1780. 41 On the related terms “biosphere” and “bioregion”, see C. Glotfelty and E. Quesnet (eds.), The Biosphere and the Bioregion: Essential Writings of Peter Berg, London: Routledge, 2015.

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transform the local ecology and construct an imagined world. In this sense, religion is about making a dwelling place or, to borrow a new term from the evolutionary biologists, constructing a niche.42 Humans’ ecological-cultural niches are more complex than those of other animals – think of beaver dams – and religion’s figurative tools have done some of that work of clearing the ground and making a world. Humans’ niches or habitats also can be transported, a crucial point for those of us interested in transnationalism. Migrants have carried niches and created new ones by combining the cultural materials they brought from afar with those they found nearby. In fact, much of religious history has involved transoceanic and transcontinental migrants doing just that. Niches also have been stressed, even “cracked”, to again use the scientists’ language; and religion has both exacerbated and eased those crises of sustainability. Problems haven’t arisen only when climactic conditions changed or residents depleted food sources. The term sustainability, as I’m using it, has a broader meaning. Most simply, a habitat is sustainable when the dynamic interplay between the community, its way of life, and the environment allows residents to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”43 Those “needs” – or conditions for flourishing – are intellectual, emotional, and social as well as ecological. For a habitat to be fully sustainable, my recent research has led me to believe, it must provide renewable

42 I introduced the notion of “figurative tools” in Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, p. 68. I discussed dwelling, or homemaking, on pages 80–122. See especially pages 74–75, 82–84, 97, 112–113, 223 n.14. In that work, I talked about dwelling places and habitats, but I have also found the cross-disciplinary conversation about “niche construction” helpful. See F.J. OdlingSmee et al., Niche Construction: The Neglected Process in Evolution (Monographs in Population Biology, vol. 37), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003; K. Laland and M.J. O’Brien, “Niche Construction Theory and Archeology”, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17 (2010), p. 305. On the implications of niche construction theory for the study of religion, see J. Bulbulia, “Meme Infection or Religious Niche Construction? An Adaptationist Alternative to the Cultural Maladaptationist Hypothesis”, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20 (2008), pp. 67–107; B.G. Purzycki and R. Sosis, “The Extended Religious Phenotype and the Adaptive Coupling of Ritual and Belief”, Israel Journal of Ecology and Evolution 59 (2013) 2, pp. 99–108; W.E. Paden, “Tracks and Themes in a Shifting Landscape: Reflections on 50 Years of the Study of Religion”, Religion 43 (2013) 1, pp. 94–97. The anthropologist Agustín Fuentes offers a simple definition of niche construction: “the building and destroying of niches by organisms and the mutual dynamic interactions between organisms and environments”. A. Fuentes, Evolution of Human Behavior, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 260. 43 This definition of sustainability is taken from a report issued by a group created by a UN resolution in 1983: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, April 1987, p. 16 (paragraph 27), http://www.un-documents.net/our-commonfuture.pdf (accessed 25 November 2018).

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resources, meaning and purpose, safety and health, equity and productivity, and as much individual freedom and political participation as the common good permits.44 So, culture – and religion in particular – plays a crucial role. How a migrant group and the host society deals with resources – and imagines economic and political life – depends, in part, on how devotees use stories, artefacts, and rituals to understand themselves, their homeland, their new land, and their place in the wider universe. In turn, habitats can become stressed if some needs go unmet and can become increasingly unsustainable if multiple challenges converge.45 This broader notion of sustainability – and the talk of making and breaking niches – can help us analyse transnationalism by providing language for discussing how those who stayed and those who moved experienced transitions, especially crisis moments when habitats became less stable. The focus on sustainable habitats also reminds us that dwelling, or efforts at place-making, have sometimes been linked with crossing, or the movement of people. Ancient migrants resettled after climate change caused crops to fail, for example, and Africans and natives regrouped after colonists displaced communities and destroyed niches. Colonists of European ancestry “removed” indigenous peoples and restricted them to “reservations“, just as itinerant missionaries evangelized natives in stressed habitats like the mission and pious planters enslaved Africans on the

44 I rely on this notion of sustainability in my forthcoming history of religion in the lands that became America, a volume under contract from Yale University Press. As J.L. Caradonna, Sustainability: A History, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 1–20 notes, the most common model of sustainability, which was endorsed by the UN World Summit in 2005, is a Venn diagram of the “three Es” – environment, economy, and equity. A newer model emphasizes the centrality of the environment; it represents economy and equity as nested inside the wider circle of the environment. My model builds on this second one but adds more factors. My understanding of the conditions for flourishing aligns with lists generated by some development experts and UN documents, including the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN’s 2015 list of seventeen Sustainable Development Goals. See The United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by the United Nations, 25 September 2015, http://www.un.org/sus tainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ (accessed 25 November 2018). 45 Odling-Smee et al., Niche Construction, pp. 420. On “cracked” niches, see also K.N. Laland, J. Odling-Smee, and M.W. Feldman, “Niche Construction, Biological Evolution, and Cultural Change”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (2000), pp. 131–175; I. Kuijt and A.M. Prentiss, “Niche Construction, Macroevolution, and the Late Epipaleolithic of the New East”, in: A.M. Preintiss, Ian Kuijt, and J.C. Chatters (eds.), Macroevolution in Human Prehistory: Evolutionary Theory and Processual Archaeology, New York: Springer, 2009, pp. 263–265.

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plantation.46 Despite those obstacles, the displaced often managed to recreate a meaningful habitat, though always within the dispiriting constraints of violence and inequity. Industrialization also spurred movement and transformed landscapes – and required resilience from the countryside farmers and transnational migrants who sought ways to flourish materially and spiritually in grimy factory towns and crowded urban neighbourhoods in the nineteenth-century. And that process has continued to the present, when we have begun to see “climate refugees”, and environmental degradation threatens to push more poor migrants to flee their natal place, as at the nine locales identified in one recent study – including the dust bowl of Lake Chad.47

Back to Berlin Even if you are not fully persuaded by my evaluation of categories or my suggestions for new language, I hope you agree that self-consciousness about scholarly language – and this trek through the terminological thicket – can help. It can prompt new questions and provide new angles of vision. In fact, this categorical fussiness has helped me see things I originally overlooked about those Turkish Muslims in Berlin, and about the nature and function of transnational spaces. Attending to embodied cognitive processes and natural environmental forces has broadened and refined my thinking. Our discussion of the neural processes involved in mapping, which is conjoined with memory, helps me explain the migrants’ geopiety, or attachment to the natal landscape.48 It reminds me why the pull of Turkey was so strong for those I met in Berlin, and why it’s still strong, if we believe opinion polls that suggest many feel more Turkish than German and have considered returning home, at least before the recent political changes there.49 Attending to how flows are redirected by dams has reminded me to

46 I refer here to the Americas. As Nugent points out, all four migrant receiving nations in the Western hemisphere – the US, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina – “carried out Indian removal policies of greater or less harshness” during the nineteenth century. W. Nugent, “Four New-World Migration Targets: Some Comparisons”, Amerikastudien/American Studies 42 (1997) 3, p. 393. 47 C. Argos, Climate Refugees, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2010. 48 The geographer John K. Wright coined the term “geopiety” to describe the religious dimension of the attachment to the homeland. J.K. Wright, “Notes on Early American Geopiety”, Human Nature in Geography: Fourteen Papers, 1962–65, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966, pp. 250–285. 49 D. Crossland, “German Turks No Longer Feel Welcome”, The National, 31 August 2012, https://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/german-turks-no-longer-feel-welcome-1.355979

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attend to power differentials. There were more walls than the one I was obsessed about, which the students hardly noticed. I’m reminded to observe other barriers, educational, political, and economic. Thinking about dams and friction, broken threads and nodal disruptions, and conditions for sustainable habitats can focus attention on social problems: too many Turkish students drop out, get diverted from the college track, and don’t earn a living wage. Back then, the housing conditions in that decaying neighbourhood were terrible. In the mid-1980s, 21 per cent of Turkish residences in West Germany didn’t have a bathroom and 42 per cent didn’t have central heating.50 And of course, as “guest workers”, they didn’t enjoy the political participation or economic equity that full sustainability requires. That 1984 neighbourhood, in my terms, was a stressed habitat. The talk about habitats also reminds me of something I’d forgotten – that the Green Party had just won government seats the year before I visited, and it was much discussed that fall.51 Thinking about the urban habitat can prod us to consider the history of environmentalism in Germany, where policies and practices have been better than in most nations, even if scholars suggest climate change is having its effects there, and Germans have been slow to give up the automobile or abandon their faith in fossil fuel.52 Thinking with and through the terminology about habitats can also prompt us to wonder if the surge in refugee resettlement and the concomitant rise of Islamophobia has made the Turks’ contemporary urban niches less sustainable, and if their homeland’s changing political climate with its reduction of democratic liberties alters the neural networks and weakens the cognitive bond with the homeland for some in Berlin, for example, those who protested the Turkish president’s 2018 visit.53

(accessed 1 December 2018); “German Turks Still Rooted in the East: Study”, DW Akademie, 24 July 2018, https://www.dw.com/en/german-turks-still-rooted-in-the-east-study/a-44799929 (accessed 2 December 2018). 50 P. Fernandez-Kelly, “The Unequal Structure of the German Education System: Structural Reasons for Educational Failures of Turkish Youth in Germany”, Spaces Flows 2 (2012) 2, pp. 93–112. See especially the table on page 109. 51 On “the most successful Green Party in Europe”, see W.T. Markham, Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany: Hardy Survivors in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, New York: Berghahn Books, 2008, p. 4. See also E.G. Frankland, “Parliamentary Politics and the Developments of the Green Party in West Germany”, Review of Politics 51 (1989) 3, pp. 386–411. 52 Markham, Environmental Organizations, pp. 4–5; T.M. Lekan and T. Zeller (eds.), Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History, New Brunswick: Rutgers, 2005. 53 The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a three-day visit to Germany in September 2018. As some have noted, “transnational ties and local attachment can be complimentary”, so it is not an either-or question of having or not having ties. It can be both, though in differing degrees. Sheringham, “A Transnational Space?”, p. 77. On more recent migration, see “The Growth

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Thinking about making and breaking transnational connections and raising and lowering barriers to integration can help us analyse how Turkish transnational spaces have changed since 1984. We might distinguish, I suggest, spaces of outreach and spaces of refuge, those about seclusion and those about spectacle.54 Turks made few collective ventures into public space beyond their neighbourhood in 1984. However, in the intervening years, streets have become sites of spectacle, public display, and not just ethno-religious seclusion, as in pre-unification Kreuzberg. Turkish Muslims now make ritual claims on civic space in street parades, as in Turkish Day celebrations, which one scholar suggests have become transnational festivals for a multicultural World City, rather than ethnonationalist celebrations in the German capital.55 Of course, Turks in Berlin also make claims on civic space through architecture. In 1984, many transnational religious spaces were hidden from view or blended in the cityscape, including those mosques cloistered in courtyards. Many mosques in contemporary Berlin are still found in repurposed buildings, warehouses or churches. Yet some buildings boldly assert Islamic presence. For example, consider the Şehitlik Mosque, built in 2001 on a historic Turkish cemetery I hadn’t noticed during my earlier visit.56 The organization that sponsored that Sunni mosque is directly linked with the Turkish state, and the Turkish architect who designed its white dome and twin minarets deployed seventeenth-century Ottoman architectural idiom. The exterior design and organizational ties allow second- and third-generation Turks to strengthen the threads of connection with the homeland. Yet, with the mosque’s twice-daily tours, that diasporic space of refuge also functions as a

of Germany’s Muslim Population”, Pew Research Center, 29 November 2017, http://www.pewfo rum.org/essay/the-growth-of-germanys-muslim-population/ (accessed 2 December 2018). 54 Although I focus on worship spaces below, we should acknowledge that the home and the threshold spaces surrounding it also function as diasporic spaces where place-making happens. On the home and Turkish migrants, see B. Bilecen, “Home-making Practices and Social Protection across Borders: An Example of Turkish Migrants Living in Germany”, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 32 (2017) 1, pp. 77–90. 55 L. Soysal, “World City Berlin and the Spectacles of Identity: Public Events, Immigrants, and the Politics of Performance”, Migration Research Program at the Koc University, Istanbul, Research Projects 2005–2006, www.mirekoc.com (accessed 1 December 2018). See also “Turkish Day in Berlin”, DW [Deutsche Welle], 26 May 2002, https://www.dw.com/en/turkishday-in-berlin/a-543933 (accessed 1 December 2018). 56 My interpretation of this building is indebted to E. Becker, “Tour-guiding as a Pious Placemaking Practice: The case of the Sehitlik Mosque, Berlin”, Annals of Tourism Research 73 (2018), pp. 81–90. Becker also persuasively argues that the tours function as place-making activity for the guides.

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space of outreach, a site where bilingual guides try to counter European misperceptions of Islam. Finally, the careful attention to categories can lead us to wonder if the new ritual and architectural claims on public space have altered Turkish Muslims’ attachment to the homeland and sense of belonging. Surveys say many residents of Turkish descent still feel estranged, and want to return, but I wonder if things could improve. Could changes in the built environment, like one planned structure, the House of One, make a difference?57 Could this tri-faith worship space, which will be erected on the foundations of the historic St. Peter’s Protestant church and near a government building, make some Turkish Muslims feel closer to the centre of German civic life? Supported by both government and private funds, that structure will be in central Berlin, where the medieval city was founded, where civic and spiritual life flourished, and where the bomb-damaged Protestant church stood until it was demolished in 1964. Citing Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Martin Luther King, the planners of the House of One express lofty aims for the reclaimed site – to create peaceful relations between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The winning plan calls for three distinct worship spaces – a church, mosque, and synagogue – which lead up a staircase to shared higher ground, thereby signalling that civic participation and interfaith cooperation won’t require giving up distinctiveness. At the same time, that domed central space, called the House of Learning, invites adherents of monotheistic faiths and Germans of no faith to seek shared values. Maybe the interactions will help: a survey found that Western Europeans who know a Muslim are more likely to have positive opinions.58 It’s not clear what Berlin’s non-Abrahamic communities, like the Vietnamese Buddhists, or those who attend the city’s migrant churches – Nigerian Pentecostals, Korean Presbyterians, and Polish Catholics – will think of that civic-religious structure.59 To complicate things, German Turks apparently are

57 I relied on multiple sources for my analysis of this building, including G. Hohberg and R. Stolte (eds.), Das Haus der drei Religionen, Berlin: DOM publishers, 2013. “House of One”, https://house-of-one.org/en (accessed 1 December 2018). A copy of the “Charter for a Partnership of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” [2011] as well as press releases, local newspaper stories, and other documents can also be found at Berliner Historische Mitte, http://www. berliner-historische-mitte.de/petriplatz.html (accessed 1 December 2018). 58 S. Gardner, “In Western Europe, Familiarity with Muslims Is Linked to Positive Views of Muslims and Islam”, Pew Research Center, 24 July 2018, http://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2018/07/24/in-western-europe-familiarity-with-muslims-is-linked-to-positive-views-ofmuslims-and-islam/ (accessed 2 December 2018). 59 On Vietnamese Buddhists in Berlin, see G. Hüwelmeier, “Bazaar Pagodas: Transnational Religion, Postsocialist Marketplace, and Vietnamese Migrant Women in Berlin”, Religion and Gender 3 (2013) 1, pp. 76–89. On the Vietnamese and belonging, see Su, Phi Hong. “‘There’s

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divided about one Muslim organization that donated to the project because it is linked with Fetullah Gülen, the US-based Turkish cleric accused of supporting Turkey’s failed coup, though most German Christian leaders and government officials have defended him.60 That controversy might lead many to stay away, but will some of Berlin’s Muslims – including the descendants of those guest workers – see the House of One as a place for them, a site where they might help build up a sustainable civic niche and tear down another wall, one that’s just as high and even more visible? Time will tell. But whatever happens with Turkish Muslims and the built environment in Berlin, we need to continue to refine the categories we use to understand transnational religious spaces.

No Solidarity’ Nationalism and Belonging among Vietnamese Refugees and Immigrants in Berlin”, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12 (2017) 1, pp. 73–100. Vietnamese religion in Berlin is very complex and includes even Pentecostal congregations. On that, see G. Hüwelmeier, “Female Believers on the Move: Vietnamese Pentecostal Networks in Germany”, in: G.T. Bonifacio and V.S. M. Angeles (eds.), Gender, Religion, and Migration: Pathways of Integration, Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2010, pp. 115–132. On Berlin’s migrant churches, see B. Dümling and H. Sommerfeld, “Neue Gemeinden hat die Stadt: Migranten, Migrationskirchen und interkulturelle Gemeinden“, in: H. Sommerfield (ed.), Mit Gott in der Stadt: Die Schönheit der urbanen Transformation, Marburg: Francke, 2016, pp. 407–424. See also “Migrationskirchen in Berlin”, http://www.migrationskirchen-in-berlin.de (accessed 2 December 2018). 60 M. Adam-Tkalec, “House of One in Berlin: Unterstützt der Bund mit der Gülen-Bewegung ein ‘geheimes Netzwerk’? Berliner Zeitung, 29 November 2018, https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/ berlin/house-of-one–unterstuetzt-der-bund-mit-der-guelen-bewegung-ein-geheimes-netzwerk31669072 (accessed 3 December 2018). On the press coverage of the Gülen movement, see also N. Conrad, “In Berlin, Inside a Gulen ‘Lighthouse’”, DW, 12 December 2016, https://www.dw.com/ en/in-berlin-inside-a-gulen-light-house/a-36806245 (accessed 3 December 2018); G. Köhne, “Turkey’s Gulen Movement on the Rise in Germany”, DW, 13 July 2018, https://www.dw.com/ en/turkeys-gulen-movement-on-the-rise-in-germany/a-44652895 (accessed 3 December 2018). For a positive scholarly assessment, see G. Barton, “The Gülen Movement, Muhammadiyah, and Nahdlatul Ulama: Progressive Islamic Thought, Religious Philanthropy and Civil Society in Turkey and Indonesia”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (2014), pp. 1–15. A more nuanced interpretation by someone with insider contacts suggests that Gulenists see their leader as the Mahdi, who will save the Islamic world, and they played a role in the coup attempt, though it is also true that they have been involved in interfaith activities, as in Berlin. See M. Akyol, “Who Was Behind the Coup Attempt in Turkey?”, New York Times, 22 July 2016, A27, https://www.ny times.com/2016/07/22/opinion/who-was-behind-the-coup-attempt-in-turkey.html (accessed 3 December 2018). The author of that opinion piece, hardly an extreme voice, also wrote Islam without Extremes: A Case for Muslim Liberty, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011.

Marian Burchardt

3 From Mission Station to Tent Revival: Material Forms and Spatial Formats in Africa’s Missionary Encounter Though long neglected in sociological accounts of globalization, Protestant missions in Africa are one of the best examples of successful transregional institutional transfer in the history of globalization. In this chapter I argue that the success of Protestant missions in Africa depended both on the deployment of historically dominant spatial configurations and on the creativity of missionaries – both Africans and Europeans – in the development of new spatial arrangements. More specifically, Protestant missionary practices developed alongside the spatial boundaries and political nodes of European imperialism but also transcended these, creating missionary spaces that eventually thwarted imperial political projects. Developing this argument, I draw on the notion of “spatial formats”,1 which refers to spatial orientations that are relatively stable, have high social relevance, and are to various degrees institutionalized. A variety of spatial formats make up what one could call a spatial order. To this conceptualization I add the notion of material forms, by which I mean ensembles of physical, in particular architectural, objects that bundle social practices and contribute towards the consolidation of social categories and subjectivities, i.e. “Christians”, “heathen”, etc. These material forms, I suggest, are the building blocks of spatial formats, and turned out to be instrumental in the creation of more or less autonomous missionary spaces. Over the last three decades, there has been a proliferation of studies concerned with issues of religion and space. Scholars from religious studies, sociology, anthropology, history, and geography have explored how religious practices 1 M. Middell, “Raumformate – Bausteine in Prozessen der Neuverräumlichung”, Working Paper, Collaborative Research Centre: Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition (2019) 14, pp. 1–24, at 3. Note: The work on this chapter has been supported by the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, which sponsored a trip to Berkeley and thereby allowed me to engage in joint research on Protestant missions with Ann Swidler at the University of California. I wish to acknowledge Ann Swidler’s crucial contributions to this chapter. In addition, I thank Adam Jones, Philip Clart, as well as the other participants of the workshop “Transnational Religious Spaces” in Leipzig for valuable comments on earlier versions of this chapter. All errors are of course mine. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-003

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shape spaces and are shaped by them.2 On the one hand, spatial processes shape religious identities, forms of belonging, religious aspirations and practices.3 Chiefly, space affects religion by casting religious communities and their forms of sociality within particular spatial regimes, thus contributing to the territorialization of religious categories.4 These regimes involve questions around places of worship as key sites for organizing religious communities, celebrating togetherness through shared religious rituals, and expressing and consuming religious aesthetics through forms of “architectural registration”5 or decoration, especially in the context of festivals and ceremonies.

2 See the edited volumes: J. Beaumont and P. Cloke (eds.), Faith-Based Organisations and Exclusion in European Cities, Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2012; I. Becci, M. Burchardt, and J. Casanova (eds.), Topographies of Faith: Religion in Urban Spaces, Leiden: Brill, 2013; H. Berking, S. Streets, and J. Schwenk (eds.), Religious Pluralism and the City: Inquiries into Postsecular Urbanism, London: Bloomsbury, 2018; J. Garnett and A. Harris (eds.), Rescripting Religion in the City: Migration and Religious Identity in the Modern Metropolis, London: Routledge, 2013; L. Gómez and W. Van Herck (eds.), The Sacred in the City, London: Continuum International, 2012; P. Hopkins, L. Kong, and E. Olson (eds.), Religion and Place: Landscape, Politics and Piety, Heidelberg: Springer, 2012; R. Pinxten and L. Dikomitis (eds.), When God Comes to Town: Religious Traditions in Urban Contexts, New York: Berghahn Books, 2009. See also the monographs: S. Bendixsen, The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin: An Ethnographic Study, Leiden: Brill, 2013; K. Knott, The Location of Religion: A Spatial Analysis, London: Equinox Publishing, 2005; R.A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1959, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985; M.D. Stringer, Discourses on Religious Diversity: Explorations in an Urban Ecology, Farnham: Ashgate, 2013; I. Weiner, Religion Out Loud: Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism, New York: New York University Press, 2013. Also see special issues in the journals: J.S. Bielo, “Urban Christianities: Place-Making in Late Modernity”, Religion 43 (2013) 3, pp. 301–311; F. Dodsworth and S. Watson, “Reflections on the Material and Spatial Cultures of Religious Sites and Buildings in London’s East End: Introduction”, Material Religion 9 (2014) 1, pp. 4–9; D. Garbin, “Introduction: Believing in the City”, Culture and Religion 13 (2012) 4, pp. 401–404; M. Oosterbaan, “Public Religion and Urban Space in Europe”, Social and Cultural Geography 14 (2014) 6, pp. 591–602; M.A. Vásquez and J.D. Dewind, “The Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities: A Multi-Sited and Transnational Perspective”, Religion Global Networks 14 (2014) 3, pp. 251–400. 3 P. Van der Veer, “Urban Aspirations in Mumbai and Singapore”, in: I. Becci, M. Burchardt, and J. Casanova (eds.), Topographies of Faith: Religion in Urban Spaces, Leiden: Brill, 2013, pp. 61–71. 4 D. Hervieu‐Léger, “Space and Religion: New Approaches to Religious Spatiality in Modernity”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26 (2002) 1, pp. 99–105. 5 C. Knowles, “Nigerian London: Re-Mapping Space and Ethnicity in Super Diverse Cities”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 36 (2013) 4, pp. 651–669, at 652.

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On the other hand, spatial processes are themselves shaped by religion.6 Religious traditions, including above all nationally dominant religions, have often left durable spatial and architectural imprints, which in turn have major impacts on societies’ definitions of their cultural identities and self-understandings in relation to the nation states in which they are embedded and to the different populations inhabiting them. Demographic changes, missionary incursions and other migratory movements challenge such definitions, as new religious traditions often vie for political and symbolic recognition in particular spatial contexts. Such public recognition inevitably requires changes of identity markers and spatial regimes, as it comes with new forms of the visibility of religions7 in public space. Thomas Tweed has famously suggested that religious life is chiefly about “crossing and dwelling”, in other words about movement and the creation of permanence in relation to the sacred and transcendence.8 With a few exceptions,9 however, spatial accounts of religion and anthropologies and sociologies of Protestant missions have developed relatively separated from one another, and mutual confrontations have been few and far between. In particular, anthropological and sociological studies of Evangelical Protestant missions have a rather contemporary focus, being concerned mainly with ongoing missionary efforts out of the US, or so-called reverse missions, initiated by Asian and African Christians in the West. This chapter seeks to fill this gap by providing a sociological analysis of the rise of Protestant spaces in Africa from the eighteenth century onwards. My account is based on a close reading of the historical record of Protestant missions, mainly in Eastern and Southern Africa, as it has been elaborated in the works of historians, and on its confrontation with theories of religious space. I scrutinize the main elements of these theories and identify and elaborate on the notions I see as central for examining Protestant mission spaces in Africa.

6 M. Burchardt and M. Westendorp, “The Im-Materiality of Urban Religion: Towards an Ethnography of Urban Religious Aspirations”, Culture and Religion 19 (2018) 2, pp. 160–176. 7 N. Göle, “The Public Visibility of Islam and European Politics of Resentment: The MinaretsMosques Debate”, Philosophy & Social Criticism 37 (2011) 4, pp. 383–392. 8 T. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling. A Theory of Religion, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 9 J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991; W. Keane, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

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Religion, Space, and Missions Broadly speaking, there are two modes of the spatial organization of social relations.10 First, there are social relations that are condensed in and bounded by a well-defined territory, which they span and in which their definition is often equivalent to cultural and political definitions of membership based, for instance, on descent or citizenship. Largely overlapping with political authority, this kind of spatial organization is historically expressed in the sovereign territorial nation state in which culture, society, polity, and authority are isomorphic and grafted on one another. This is the quintessential container space. Second, social relations can be organized through deterritorialized forms that do without territorial enclosures, inhabiting instead far-flung networks. These social relations pivot on an ontology of “flow spaces”, and diasporas and capital are viewed as their most significant manifestations.11 This dual conceptualization is also useful to illuminate basic features of the macro-spatial organization of religion. In the international political system that emerged following the end of the European wars in 1648 through the Peace of Westphalia and was characterized by newly founded notions of territorial and political sovereignty and evolving ideologies of national cultural homogeneity, religion became a central feature of nationally demarcated container spaces.12 Through the principle of cuius regio eius religio, national sovereigns acquired the power to define the religion of the state and religion was henceforth chiefly perceived, organized, and managed along territorial lines. Religious minorities were mostly forced into illegality or exile, persecuted or evicted. Territorially bounded religious relations of this type are fundamental to Durkheim’s notion of religion as a community cult.13 However, alongside the Westphalian system of managing religion we see the rise of transnational religious networks, which – usually on the basis of older, preWestphalian forms of translocal connectivity – consolidate religious life through flow-spaces. Two types of religious community are central for flow-space religion. On the one hand, there are transnational religious networks in which religious

10 H. Berking, “Contested Places and the Politics of Space”, in: H. Berking et al. (eds.), Negotiating Urban Conflicts: Interaction, Space and Control, Bielefeld: transcript, 2006, pp. 29–39. 11 M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd edn, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 12 P. Beyer, “Questioning the Secular/Religious Divide in a Post-Westphalian World”, International Sociology 28 (2013) 6, pp. 663–679. 13 J. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011; E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, J.W. Swain (trans.), New York: Dover, 2008.

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commitment and ethnic membership are entangled, or virtually identical as in the case of Jewish or Armenian diasporas. On the other hand, transnational religious communities can be characterized by a near-complete differentiation of ethnicity and religion, as in the case of Roman Catholicism (although locally, alignments of ethnicity and religion often re-emerge over time). In both cases, however, feelings of belonging and cultural proximity among persons are severed from physical proximity and territorial enclosure. Furthermore, in order to elucidate forms of religious agency in the spatial structuration of religion it is important to distinguish between, on the one hand, the ways in which spatial regimes impinge on religious forms of belonging and practices and, on the other, the spatial strategies of religious actors themselves; a binary that is slightly different from that of spatial order and spatial format. By spatial regime I mean territorial and non-territorialized forms of spatial governmentality in which spaces are assigned particular usages and which operate through regulations of ownership and property, differentiated access as well as codifications of tolerated forms of identity, behaviour, and appearance. Spatial regimes traverse multiple social and political scales ranging from urban governmentalities to global forms of spatial structuration. If various spatial regimes are entangled in a mutually reinforcing fashion, their totality constitutes what Middell calls a spatial order.14 Urban governance around planning and zoning, for instance, involves numerous regulations on places of worship or on where, when, and how to conduct public religious ceremonies, processions, and rituals. These must, in turn, in many societies comply with national regulatory regimes around religion and supranational normativities such as the global human rights regime. Spatial strategies, by contrast, refer to the ways in which religious communities conquer and preserve space, defining it in religious terms or challenging existing definitions. Thus far, most scholars have construed such strategies in terms of “place-making”. Drawing on Tweed’s theory of religion, Vásquez and Knott, for instance, conceptualize the “place-making” strategies of migrant religious groups in global cities as something that encompasses both dwelling, which includes mapping, building, and inhabiting, as well as crossing “in so far as it is inextricably connected with mobility”.15 Similarly, Garbin has defined place-making as “the appropriation and experience of place through various religious activities”.16 However, the one-sided focus on diaspora or migrant religious communities has

14 Middell, “Raumformate”, p. 3. 15 M.A. Vásquez and K. Knott, “Three Dimensions of Religious Place Making in Diaspora”, Global Networks 14 (2014) 3, pp. 326–347, at 327. 16 D. Garbin, “Introduction: Believing in the City”, Culture and Religion 13 (2012) 4, pp. 401–404, at 401.

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tended to leave out of sight other religious traditions, in particular those that are already deeply embedded because of their long historical presence and routinized relationships with traditional (chieftaincy) or modern (state) authorities, and those groups that may not aim for or engender permanent spatial presences. Expanding on notions of place-making, it seems useful to add two other distinct spatial strategies: place-keeping and place-seeking.17 By place-keeping I mean religious investments designed to preserve urban presences across changing political and cultural conditions and to reproduce symbolic power. Place-seeking, by contrast, refers to spatial strategies that produce ephemeral and evanescent presences as a result of spiritual notions that champion embodiment and mobility over emplacement. Significantly, spatial strategies not only seek and result in the siting of social forms such as religious ceremonies or of institutional forms such as churches or mosques. As emphasized above, they also produce material forms – bundles of material objects that enable particular institutionalizations of religion. These material forms evolve alongside and are to some extent tied to dominant spatial formats. Conversely, changes of spatial formats often require the invention of new material forms. Thus, as a material form the mission station was a quintessential building block of Protestant missions in the age of European colonial rule, while its demise and the rise of African-initiated Christian traditions came along with the mission station’s dissolution and subsequent replacement by other material forms such as tent revivals and storefront churches.

African Protestant Missions in Spatial Formats The dominant pattern of Protestantism’s spread in Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was that it evolved alongside the transformation of European empires into modern colonizing nation states or, as Middell puts it, “nation-states with colonial annex spaces”.18 Missionary Protestantism thus drew on and deployed two dominant spatial formats that emerged at the conjuncture of modern globalization. Protestant missionaries typically became active in areas in which colonial officials had already established outposts. Such spatial strategies had the benefit of providing a minimum of physical safety for missionaries. During the colonial period, missionaries often operated under the direct protection of, or even as allies of, the colonial regime, and so their ability to establish outposts was

17 I. Becci, M. Burchardt, and M. Giorda, “Religious Super-Diversity and Spatial Strategies in Two European Cities”, Current Sociology 65 (2017) 1, pp. 73–91. 18 Middell, “Raumformate”, p. 19.

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ultimately protected by force.19 Indeed, frequently the missionaries, like the colonial settlers, were armed or accompanied by armed contingents. In other cases, missionaries actually acted as brokers in the establishment of colonial relationships between locals and Europeans and of colonial authority. Because of the major emphasis they put on translations of the bible into African vernaculars as a precondition of bible reading and Africans’ salvation, they were often comparatively quick in learning African languages. This enabled to them to communicate and interact with African power holders such as chiefs and notables to a much greater extent than colonial officials. Through these interactions missionaries sometimes paved the way for (often unequal) agreements between both parties on the basis of which colonial authority was erected. Furthermore, Protestant missionaries bought into and promoted the vision of conversion to Christianity as fundamental to achieving Western civilization as a presumably particularly high level of the realization of humanity.20 In fact, the notions of Europeans’ “civilizing mission” in Africa and “Christian mission” became so closely entangled that they were, in the eyes of many Europeans, only thinkable as mutually reinforcing: Protestant meant civilized and vice versa. The ideas of the successive expansion of Western civilization and of Protestant Christianity were thus parts of the same spatial imagination whereby Africa was mapped and divided into those zones which already had Christianity and those zones still to be conquered. As Petzke argues in his work on mappings and statistics in nineteenthcentury Evangelical missions in British colonies, maps and statistics became not only mutually supporting technologies that rendered populations legible in religious and demographic terms.21 They also provided tools that allowed missionaries and others to imagine religious conversions as constitutive of competitive religious markets in which actors competed over souls to be counted, whose location formed particular religious geographies. Significantly though, Protestant missions among Africans and the establishment of the mission station crucially depended upon a transformation of the links between political membership and religious belonging that occurred during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Well into the eighteenth

19 In the early missionary period, as L. White shows, missionaries such as David Livingstone could be abandoned, driven out, or killed when their trade goods and their arms ran out. See L. White, Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 20 Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution. 21 M. Petzke, “Visualisierung und Differenzierung Zur wahlverwandtschaftlichen Beziehung bildlichen Eigensinns und der Konstitution eigenlogischer Sinnsysteme am Beispiel der Religion”, Soziale Systeme 18 (2012) 1/2, pp. 119–152.

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century, being Christian was conceived of in Britain as being inseparably tied to the civil status of being a free citizen. Thus, conversion to Christianity – also in the colonies – was seen as involving the acquisition of a bundle of political rights. This conception at first severely constrained the scope of Protestant missionary activities.22 In the British case, it was usually limited to the colonial compound and those who lived in it, e.g. Portuguese traders or other non-African nationals. In particular, it seemed impossible to engage in proselytizing activities among slave populations, since conversion required freedom, or – in the eyes of colonialists, in particular agricultural entrepreneurs – worse: it was seen as producing it. A Christian convert could no longer be a slave. It was only through the gradual disembedding of religion from the imaginary and political apparatus of civic rights that missionary efforts could target broader African populations. In the wake of these changes, the material form of the colonial compound lost its role for the Protestant missionary enterprise and paved the way for the rise of the mission station and its establishment along the frontiers of European colonialism. Another spatial format that Protestant missionaries deployed but also helped to construct was the colonial trade network made up of interlinked series of trading posts. Trading networks were one of the main elements that linked dispersed local populations of Africans to imperial economic circuits. Protestant missions were often established along these trade networks, since trading posts made accessible a number of amenities, in particular the necessary infrastructural and logistical conditions (roads, farm animals) that supported missionary projects. Conversely, missionaries were themselves instrumental in creating locations that could later become trading posts. Through their promotion of a rationalized work ethic, Protestant missionaries encouraged African converts to engage in the production of goods which they would then be able to sell on local but transregionally integrated markets. Thereby they contributed to the introduction of monetary economies and commerce, on the basis of which permanent trading posts were then established.

22 S. Nelson, “Empire and the Global Millennium: Inventing Modern Evangelicalism on the Frontiers of the Confessional State, 1688–1745”, unpublished manuscript. The term compound refers to a walled territory which concentrated functions and people.

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Material Forms: The Rise and Fall of the Mission Station Recent anthropological and sociological scholarship23 has fostered our understanding of the role of material objects in religious interaction, in particular in mission fields. In her work on religious aesthetics, Birgit Meyer discusses “sensational forms”, modalities of mediation between human beings and transcendence. “Sensational forms”, Meyer argues, are “authorized modes for invoking and organizing access to the transcendental that shape both religious content (beliefs, doctrines, sets of symbols) and norms. Involving religious practitioners, practices of worship and patterns of feeling, these forms play a central role in modulating practitioners as religious subjects.”24 The notion of material form should be seen as complementary to Meyer’s concept and is meant to capture the social impact of the spatial extensions of particular socio-material arrangements, especially the casting of converts as Protestant Christian subjects. The basic material form that sustained Protestant missions locally and out which they eventually developed their own spatial format was the mission station. Typically, it was made up of a church building, a school, workshops as well as dwellings, and later on also a hospital or medical dispensary. Early converts were often women seeking to escape from abusive marriages; they also included subordinate chiefs and their subjects, or generally less affluent people in search of alternative ways of achieving status.25 Converts were generally expected to live at the mission station. They were thereby spatially separated from their surrounding societies in an effort to construct exemplary communities in which all aspects of life were distinctly Christian. Through the introduction of new calendars (weekdays) and mechanical clocks26 converts would also orient themselves towards and enact different temporalities. Through their

23 B. Meyer, “Aesthetics of Persuasion: Global Christianity and Pentecostalism’s Sensational Forms”, South Atlantic Quarterly 109 (2010) 4, pp. 741–763; W. Keane, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007; G. Zubrzycki, Beheading the Saint: Nationalism, Religion, and Secularism in Quebec, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. 24 Meyer, “Aesthetics of Persuasion”, p. 751. 25 R.W. Strayer, The Making of Mission Communities in East Africa: Anglicans and Africans in Colonial Kenya, 1875–1935, Albany: SUNY Press, 1978, p. 3. 26 See J. Comaroff, “Missionaries and Mechanical Clocks: An Essay on Religion and History in South Africa”, The Journal of Religion 71 (1991) 1, pp. 1–17; K. Atkins, “‘Kafir Time’: Preindustrial Temporal Concepts and Labour Discipline in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Natal”, Journal of African History 29 (1988), pp. 229–244.

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submission to Christian rituals (baptism etc.) they were inserted into new cosmologies and lineages. And through their engagement with Christian aesthetic practices around clothing, hygiene, architecture, and design they were also visually distinguished from other Africans. John Comaroff, analysing the missionary encounter with Griqua and Tswana peoples in early nineteenth-century South Africa, has succinctly described how missionaries sought to create an exemplary model of a coherent way of life, a “total reconstruction”: [F]ar from limiting themselves to religious conversion, the evangelists set out, at once, to (1) create a theater of the everyday, demonstrating by their own exemplary actions the benefits of methodical routine, of good personal habits, and of enlightened European ways; (2) banish “superstition” in favor of rational technique and Christian belief; (3) reduce the landscape from a chaotic mass of crude, dirty huts to an ordered array of square, neatly bounded residences (with rooms and doors, windows and furniture, fields and fences), enclosure being both a condition of private property and civilized individualism, and an aesthetic expression of the sheer beauty of refinement; (4) recast the division of labor by making men into hardworking farmers and bringing women “indoors” to the domestic domain, much along the lines of the English middle-class family; (5) encourage these families to produce for the market by teaching them advanced methods, the worth of time and money, and the ethos of private enterprise – the explicit model being the late British yeomanry (see above); all of which (6) demanded that Africans be taught to read and reason, to become self-reflective and self-disciplined. It followed, as axiomatic, that “heathen” society would be forever destroyed.27

Making a similar observation concerning nineteenth-century German pietist missions among the Ewe on the Gold Coast, Birgit Meyer argues that the objects of Christian material culture – clothes, furniture, building materials, money etc. – were fundamental in shaping Africans’ perceptions of Christianity and the meanings of conversion: “Western education, new clothes and money clearly implied each other and constituted a newly evolving nexus of ‘civilization’.”28 Importantly, because of their nature as condensed material forms, mission stations gave missionaries relatively far-reaching power and control over converts. This enabled them to turn mission stations into laboratories for the creation of an integrated yet spatially circumscribed Protestant world, in which spatial and symbolic boundaries were collapsed and the community of converted Christians set apart from the wider society.

27 J.L. Comaroff, “Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa”, American Ethnologist 16 (1989) 4, pp. 661–685, at 673–674. 28 B. Meyer, “Christian Mind and Worldly Matters Religion and Materiality in NineteenthCentury Gold Coast”, Journal of Material Culture 2 (1997) 3, pp. 311–337, at 158.

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However, mission stations became socially significant and historically influential only after African converts had managed, through sustained struggles against racial prejudice among some European missionaries, to achieve higher status and become evangelists and pastors, able to institute “daughter stations” in other villages and areas. Through this opening up of new sites, the mission station was transformed into a modular spatial form that was horizontally replicable across vast territories and time spans. This meant that converts’ orientations towards Protestant socio-material forms became more routinized as they acquired higher degrees of social relevance and institutionalization over time. At the same time, the territorial spread of Protestant Christianity resulted in sharper distinctions between “Christian spaces” and “traditional spaces”. Christian ritual and worship, involving Sunday services but also dynamically evolving religious fellowships, bible-reading groups, and other types of religious sociality, not only had their distinct spaces and localities but were also systematically, albeit negatively, related to non-Christian rituals and practices that had their own sets of localities. In southern Africa, Christians were admonished to stay away from sorghum beer-drinking rituals and from ancestor worship in general. They were also discouraged from using the services of traditional healers and medicine men. In addition, certain sites were known to be prone to the malign activities of witches from which – in the eyes of many African converts – one had to stay away in order to be safe. Thus, a whole spatially configured world was erected in which distinct sites were afforded differential moral values according to the kind and degree of spiritual danger accruing from them. In some cases, pre-existing ritual sites were resignified within newly evolving Christian maps. Thus, for instance, when I visited the mountain village of Mbaga in Northeast Tanzania, villagers brought me to a high rock from which, according their reports, in pre-Christian times twin babies had been thrown (and thus killed) as their birth was assumed to bring misfortune to the village community. As the villagers told me, this practice had been abandoned with the arrival of the Lutheran missionary Jakob Dannholz who declared it to be a superstition. Dannholz, who had been a member of the Leipzig Missionary Society, had founded the mission station in Mbaga in 1908. Further conversations with villagers showed that accounts of his arrival and life in the village were an important element in Mbaga’s oral memory and that his efforts to cease the practice of twin sacrifice had turned the rock into an emblematic site of Mbaga’s Christian modernity.29 29 In the mission’s record it was babies whose teeth emerged in the wrong order that were thrown from the rock. The Mission re-enacted the (former) practice in photos and a silent film in 1927. See A. Jones (ed.), Through a Glass Darkly: Photographs of the Leipzig Mission from East Africa, 1896–1939, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2013, pp. 14–16.

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If Protestant spaces were progressively differentiated from the spaces of African ritual life (centred around ancestor worship), African traditional authority (around chieftaincy), and African medicine (around traditional healers), to a large degree they converged with the spatial format of European colonialism and its in-built binary of centre and periphery. Mission stations were European enclaves. They regularly reported to the European head offices of mission organizations, of which they saw themselves as outposts. This was a situation in which social interactions in the mission field were broadly embedded in a given spatial format, which they therefore reproduced. Over time, however, Protestant missions spread in more variegated ways that clearly transcended the mission station as the dominant material form. These new ways also transcended notions of Protestant mission and of Protestantism itself. Chiefly, this was the result of waves of African appropriation and reworking of Protestant practices, beliefs and theologies. Initially, African appropriations constituted a response to racial prejudice against Africans’ pursuit of leadership positions, as mentioned above. The result was the emergence in the late nineteenth century of what in Nigeria was called the African Church Movement. As Horton writes, “Yoruba congregations resented the European monopoly of church authority; and their resentment was exacerbated by strongly authoritarian patterns of church organization.”30 In southern Africa there were similar collective efforts to extend Africans’ control over the organization of religious life, beginning in 1892 with what were called “Ethiopian Churches”.31 These were inspired by American forerunners such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church and became part of African liberation movements.32 These churches, later termed “African Initiated Churches” in religious studies scholarship, emerged as forms of resistance against their subordination, the segregation of white and black congregations and the incipient modes of proto-apartheid that they represented.33 New forms of Christian prophecy arose that questioned European prerogatives to define ritual and doctrine and the mission churches’ denial of the existence of African spirit worlds. In the eyes of Marxist anthropologists, these churches paved the way for trans- or post-tribal African solidarities and affiliations and therefore became one of the ideological

30 R. Horton, “African Conversion”, Africa 41 (1971) 2, pp. 85–108, at 86. 31 B.G.M. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa, 2nd edn, Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 2004, pp. 56ff. 32 G. Oosthuizen, “Indigenous Christianity and the Future of the Church in South Africa”, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 21 (1997), pp. 8–12, at 8. 33 N. Etherington, “The Historical Sociology of Independent Churches in South East Africa”, Journal of Religion in Africa 10 (1979) 2, pp. 108–126, at 120–121.

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carriers of African nationalism.34 Thereby they signalled a crucial moment in the emancipation of Christianity from European colonialism.35 Towards the middle of the twentieth century, the rise of Zionist churches – another and more lasting secessionist movement – gave further impetus to the Africanization of Protestantism. Also viewed as “healing churches”, they insisted on their prophets’ abilities to identify the roots of this-worldly misfortunes and to remedy them through divine healing, drawing on syncretic combinations of worship of the (Christian) Holy Spirit and ancestral spirits.36 The most pronounced, and since the 1990s most influential, form of African Christianity of Protestant origin has been Pentecostalism. Each of these appropriations of Protestant Christianity both depended upon and reinforced the invention and promotion of new material forms. As African pastors became more numerous, they multiplied their ministries in African towns and villages, “planting” ever more churches. While schools and hospitals remained important elements of missionary Protestantism’s material form (until nationalized in some African countries after independence), they lost their significance in African-led churches. Instead, for these churches, bible colleges became more central places. At the same time, urbanization processes decidedly changed Protestantism’s spatial configuration. In Southern Africa, it came along with new binaries whereby Protestantism came to be seen as an urban religion and cities, more generally, as Christian spaces.37 In these cities, since at least the 1970s the “tent revival” has been a major element in the repertoire of evangelical Christianity and has embodied a spatial form that emphasizes “placelessness”, in other words, the notion that people who heard and responded to the call of the Holy Spirit come together in an improvised, non-permanent place to worship God. Simultaneously, spatial strategies were geared towards other non-permanent, or less permanent, material forms. As new churches began to mushroom, pastors in inner cities began to rent space for worship rather than building from scratch. The outcome was the storefront church. In suburban or peri-urban areas and informal settlements, by contrast, building has remained the norm, but the imaginaries and practices of building have changed.

34 J. Comaroff, Body of Power Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. 35 T.O. Beidelman, Colonial Evangelism: A Socio-Historical Study of an East African Mission at the Grassroots, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. 36 J.P. Kiernan, “The African Independent Churches”, in: M. Prozesky and J.W. de Gruchy (eds.), Living Faiths in South Africa, Cape Town: David Philip, 1995, pp. 116–128, at 126. 37 P. Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen: Conservatism and the Process of Urbanization in a South African City, Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1971.

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Most of the Pentecostal churches in the informal settlements that continue to sprawl in Southern and Eastern Africa were constructed out of used leftover materials: pieces of wood, fibre boards, corrugated iron, pieces of plastic and canvas covers of all kinds. These were objects, that residents or members of congregations found in the open veld as leftovers from abandoned construction sites or buildings. But they were also sold by petty rubbish entrepreneurs, who tried to make a living out of collecting and trading these parts, knowing that demand clearly exceeded supply. Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, these were the same kinds of materials that newly arriving residents of informal settlements used to build their first small houses. In other words, church constructions strongly resembled residential homes and other buildings in these areas. From the outside it was usually nearly impossible to tell whether a building was a home or a church. This resemblance, however, was a reflection not only of material scarcity and necessity but also of the multifunctional nature of these places. Through such spatial and material transformations, the mission station was gradually unbundled. This unbundling made possible the rise of the flamboyant variety of spatial repertoires and sacred geographies that has become one of the hallmarks of contemporary African Pentecostalism on the continent and beyond. In an ironic turning of the tables, some African Pentecostal churches have adopted the historical Protestant emphasis on map-making not only in their efforts to plant churches, win converts, and save souls in Africa but also in the reverse mission campaigns in Europe. As the work of Afe Adogame38 and Kim Knibbe39 shows, mapping Christian and heathen territories is a practice with profound theological implications for churches such as Nigeria’s Redeemed Christian Church of Christ. One of its official goals is to “plant churches within five [sic] minutes’ walking distance in every city and town of developing countries and within five [sic] minutes’ driving distance in every city and town of developed countries”.40 As Knibbe argues, “‘producing locality’ is not the unintentional by-product of everyday routines and spatial practices but the outcome of a process that I want to characterize as mapping, creating persuasive images of the space in which people find themselves, their location and role in it. These maps are not ‘just’

38 A. Adogame, “Raising Champions, Taking Territories: African Churches and the Mapping of New Religious Landscapes in Diaspora”, in: T.L. Trost (ed.), The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 17–34. 39 K. Knibbe, “‘We Did Not Come Here as Tenants, but as Landlords’: Nigerian Pentecostals and the Power of Maps”, African Diaspora 2 (2009) 2, pp. 133–158. 40 Ibid., p. 148.

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rhetorical devices, but can mobilize people’s imaginations, resources, and time to create ‘facts on the ground’”.41 In addition, similar to traditional healers, Pentecostal pastors engage in practices that map urban spaces according to their spiritual value and in relation to the kind of danger that might occur at specific sites. Through prayer walks and other ritual practices, they seek to transform urban spaces into safe spaces.42 Such place-protective practices constitute one of the most immediate and powerful ways in which Pentecostalism plays out in urban space. Engaging as they do with the very concrete materiality of the city, Pentecostal practices of prayer and blessing reflect forms of making religion publicly visible at specific urban sites that Pentecostals view as morally dangerous or spiritually uncanny. Identifying these sites as having these negative qualities, Pentecostals mobilize a complex set of theological ideas and moral norms, which leads them to understand material manifestations of misfortune as being the result of witchcraft, in other words: of malign spiritual forces.

Conclusions Although in the long run missionary Protestantism did succeed in establishing itself in African society, it is important to recall that this was by no means a straightforward development. Instead, early missionary efforts were mostly frustrated, and in many cases, missionaries failed to win converts. Moreover, one could justifiably question whether the current transformations of Christian landscapes in Africa support the idea of the successful spread of Protestantism, or whether it was rather the case that the more Protestant Christianity was embedded in African institutional life and subjectivities, the less Protestant it became. Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learnt about how its spread in Africa, regardless of the theological transformations that occurred in its wake, hinged upon entwinements with spatial formats and material forms. First, as the analysis has shown, material forms function as building blocks of spatial formats – but can support and be inserted into more than one spatial format at the same time. Mission stations were part of colonizing nation states and their imperial annex-spaces. But they were also critical elements in commercial

41 Ibid., p. 147. 42 M. Burchardt, “Pentecostal Productions of Locality: Urban Risks and Spiritual Protection in Cape Town”, in: D. Garbin and A. Strhan (eds.), Religion and the Global City, London: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 78–94.

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and trade networks. This suggests that different spatial actors – industrialists and trading companies as well as European national governments – enlisted mission stations in their own spatial projects. At the same time, missionaries used the opportunities that these spatial projects offered in terms of saving souls and successively transforming their religious maps. Second, it was the flexibility and creativity in the imagination and elaboration of material forms and the enactment of religious ideas that afforded them collective meaning, thereby contributing to the success of Protestant Christianity. While the mission station was instrumental in anchoring Protestant Christianity at some point, its later demise opened up spaces for the rise of a host of other material forms (tents, storefront churches, megachurches, prayer camps, and prayer cities), which, together with other factors, eventually facilitated the spectacular rise of charismatic Christianity at the global level. The burgeoning anthropological literature on Pentecostalism, space, and materiality reflects this. However, in order to make far-reaching theoretical claims about the entwinement of material forms, spatial formats, and the ability of transnational religious movements to embed themselves in new societies, it would be necessary to explore cases in which failed religious efforts were linked to the lack of creativity or adaptability in producing material forms.

Adam Jones and Geert Castryck

4 Mission Spaces in German East Africa: Spatial Imaginations, Implementations, and Incongruities against the Backdrop of an Emerging Colonial Spatial Order In the first decade of the twentieth century, Protestant and Catholic missions throughout German East Africa were in conflict over their spaces of missionary activity. Solving the conflict involved reaching agreement on dividing lines, but the spatial conflict was not only territorial. Differing and evolving conceptions of missionary space were at least as important. Catholic missionary societies had agreed with one another on spheres of influence, and so had Protestant ones. Between Catholics and Protestants, however, the contention was less about demarcating territory than about the spatial implications of freedom of religion, claims of precedence, the establishment of mission stations, modes of occupying places, the role and authority of local leaders, or the national affiliation of the missionaries. The conflicts were waged locally, in different parts of German East Africa, but also involved larger scales of operation. For instance, while on the local level in the area around Neu-Langenburg (present-day Tukuyu) the colonial administrator mediated between Catholic White Fathers and Protestant Moravian missionaries, the mission headquarters in Europe addressed the imperial government in Berlin in an attempt to ensure that a favourable outcome be imposed from the metropole. Meanwhile, the government of German East Africa as well as colonial advisors in Germany tried to keep an overview of the different disputes across the protectorate. And although the role of African leadership and communities is largely absent in the sources, it is clear if one reads between the lines that both camps were in fact attempting to interact with, attract, convert, “win” African people. It is significant that a struggle to convince people was played out as a struggle over space: concerning conceptions of space, spatial demarcations as well as different spatial scales. In this chapter we identify spatial formats that were at play in the encounter of missionary societies and orders with Africa, with colonialism, and with other missions in German East Africa. By focusing on the spatial strategies – or perhaps, less consciously, spatial practices – of missionaries in the early colonial African context, we attempt to break up the binary of the colonizers and the colonized, with their, at times, incongruent spatial conceptions and projects. At the same time, we address the diversity of spatial concepts, interactions, frames of reference, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-004

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and scales of operation amongst missionaries, both within German East Africa and, in comparison, with other African-European colonial contexts. We use the term “spatial formats” to signify specific understandings of space that are shared by historical agents and underpin their spatial actions, as a consequence implementing these spatial formats and thereby strengthening the shared understanding that informs subsequent spatial action. In other words, once a specific conceptualization of space is sufficiently shared to underpin spatial actions and gain self-fulfilling and reproducing capacity, we can speak of a spatial format. Moreover, different spatial formats coexist, and if they happen to strengthen one another and exist in relation to one another, the ensuing constellation of spatial formats forms a spatial order. It is important to acknowledge both that a constellation of shared conceptualizations provokes a certain stability and that spatial formats and orders are nevertheless contingent and under constant pressure. It is likewise important to realize that different spatial orders, as constellations of different spatial formats, can exist side-by-side and in conflict with one another. In the setting under scrutiny, a globally active colonial spatial order gradually prevailed, but encountered alternative conceptualizations and constellations throughout the period concerned and continued to be contested as well. Against the background of this gradually established, temporarily stable, yet always contingent colonial spatial order, we focus on missionary space, which was part and parcel of the colonial spatial order, yet also at odds with it in certain regards. Like colonial spaces in general, missionary spaces were particularly intertwined with the agency of African leaders and converts, and sometimes stood in a tense relationship with other missionary, colonial, or indigenous spatial formats. We dedicate a first section to spatial analyses that have already been made for surrounding missionary contexts in colonial Africa in general, in the Congo Free State / Belgian Congo, and in Southern Africa, asking whether the conceived, perceived or lived missionary spatialities in other parts of Africa can also be observed in German East Africa. The next section evokes the wide-ranging missionary spaces in German East Africa in interaction with other relevant spatial orders in the area and era, all of them increasingly challenged to relate to a gradually encroaching colonial spatial order. In this section, we also deal with the evolution over time, including the dissolution of the German colony and the return of Germans to Tanganyika Territory after World War I. The final section examines the Catholic-Protestant disputes with which we opened this chapter, positioning the spatial formats discussed in the previous sections within a broader constellation of inter-missionary, colonial, and African-European encounter. In our conclusion, we assess how mission spaces in German East Africa relate to existing analyses of missionary spaces in other parts of the African-European colonial world.

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Conceptions of Missionary Space Spatial approaches to missionary history in Africa are rare, but not new. Whether addressing the specificity of missionary space, spatial imaginations, disputes or models, or the different spatial scales at play in the missionary enterprise, we can relate to existing research as well as to emic spatial visions or practices of missionary agents in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Christine Egger and Martina Gugglberger have coined the idea of missionary spaces (Missionsräume),1 implying that missionary spaces should not be lumped together with colonial or religious spaces, but merit attention as a distinct category. They highlight the spatial entanglements on local, regional, and global scales that characterize missionary spaces. Linda Ratschiller and Karolin Wetjen take this idea further in their 2018 book on entangled mission (verflochtene Mission), in which the inherent transregional – in casu African-European – character of mission history is put forward.2 Situating missionary history in one interconnected African-European space is far removed from nineteenth-century visions that projected European spatial imaginations on Africa. Yet we must not forget that our present-day African-European transregional analyses in fact reinterpret the actions of people who saw their environment, their challenges, their missions in relation to spatial visions of their own, which may have been quite different from ours. It is worthwhile not only to reinterpret how entangled missionary spaces were, but also to uncover which spatial imaginations were employed by contemporary missionaries themselves. A telling example from 1844 concerns the German missionary Ludwig Krapf, who worked in East Africa on behalf of the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society and had a remarkable vision of how missionary space might be extended across Central Africa: A look at the map of Africa shows that there is a distance of about 900 hours between the Eastern and Western coast of this continent. [Would it not be] possible that the hearts of the Christians at home might be induced to feel the responsibility which lies on them for the conversion of Africa [?] [. . .] Let us place 6 missionaries at every hundred hours’ distance, and we shall be able to occupy the whole continent from East to West with the small number of 54 messengers of peace. Let us send out annually 6 of them and the whole space may be filled up in 9 years; or if there be means, let us send out annually 6 from the East and the same number from the West, when the whole central Africa will

1 C. Egger and M. Gugglberger, “Editorial: Missionsräume / Missionary Spaces”, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 24 (2013) 2, pp. 5–20. 2 L. Ratschiller and K. Wetjen (eds.), Verflochtene Mission. Perspektiven auf eine neue Missionsgeschichte, Cologne: Böhlau, 2018.

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hear the message of salvation proclaimed in a much shorter period. Six missionaries if once being on the spot, would cost about 3 or 4000 German crowns per year [. . .]. We would have three stations at a 100 hours’ distance, each station occupied by two and two. [We] would under the blessing of God disseminate the seed of everlasting life far around, [. . .] supported by a native African agency. Liberated slaves who are on the coast from the Interior would be [. . .] a material help. [. . .] [A] friendly understanding between several missionary institutions may be formed for realising the great object, without sacrificing either their independent principles or funds. [. . .] [T]he way from Mombas[sa] [. . .] is open as far as Djagga [= Chaga country, Kilimanjaro]; and the first year’s demand of 6 missionaries has a field ready for them. We can place two on the immediate coast, two others at Taita, a town situated on a high mount, 3 or 4 days’ journey from here, and the rest at Djagga, where they will be able to make inquiries of the countries beyond.3

Krapf’s optimistic vision is symptomatic of an early way of imagining missionary space in terms not of territory but of logistical lines or chains. What mattered to him at this pioneering stage was what concerned all book religions interested in expansion: the need to keep lines of communication open. Although he referred repeatedly to “missionaries”, he knew that his vision could only be realized if, as in the recent CMS project in what is now southern Nigeria, by which he was clearly excited, African Christians played a pivotal role. However, almost half a century was to pass before steps were taken to evangelize the region about which Krapf had written. In other parts of Africa, evangelization was already well underway by this time. Missionary spatial strategies to position themselves in relation to existing African spatial orders were decisive for the imposition of a missionary dominance in certain places. This argument is developed by the Comaroffs, describing the impact of the London Missionary Society upon the Tswana of what is now South Africa. In their view the “spatial anatomy” of the Tswana in the early nineteenth century had consisted of a “nucleus” or “town” surrounded by concentric circles in which the circles furthest from the centre constituted “the wild”. Through the “long conversation” with the missionaries, however, the centre was seized by the latter and Christianity “insinuate[d] itself into the moral landscape” of the Tswana. The missionaries then tried to “reconstruct Tswana settlements after the model of the idealized English village, a rectangular grid of square cottages and enclosed gardens”.4 Although the Comaroffs say that they failed in this, they point out that by the late nineteenth century the “Tswana house” had doors, windows and fences 3 Church Missionary Society Archive (Birmingham University Library), B/OMS/C A5 M1, Krapf (Mombasa) 13 August 1844 to CMS secretary. We are indebted to Delphine Froment for drawing our attention to this source. 4 J. Comaroff and J.L. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1, Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991, pp. 201–204.

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and, in order to accommodate bulky furniture, no longer had internal walls. This example shows a combination of scales from the Tswana spatial order to the architecture of the house, which in turn relates to idealized spatial formats taken from England. Moving closer to the time and space we are concerned with in this chapter, David Maxwell shifts the focus to African missionaries and the spatial meaning of their missionary work in the Congolese Katanga and Kasai regions at the beginning of the twentieth century.5 Maxwell traces the itineraries of former slaves who had been liberated and converted in Angola, and thereupon returned to their regions of origin as evangelical missionaries. He thus adds another dimension to the importance of the line of communication mentioned above. On one level, African missionaries kept the line of transmission open, passing on modern, cosmopolitan, and above all universal and redemptive messages into Luba and Lunda areas. On another level, the communication line was temporally and spatially bidirectional as these African missionaries “returned” to their homeland, which had been politically and spiritually disrupted by colonization during their absence. The experience of exile, liberation and salvation, the embodied connection of different places, and their acquired skills of communication (both literacy and language) made them the perfect interpreters to spread the missionary message. In so doing, they significantly contributed to a new spatial order in the region, on the one hand plugging into modernizing and urbanizing centres of industrial and transport workers, on the other hand building a chain of mission stations reaching into hitherto relatively isolated areas. The integration into and the spread of a colonial or modern (spatial) order were in this case the work of missionaries beyond the control of the colony and to some extent beyond the direct control of the Church. The undermining and destruction of previous orders was obviously something Christian missionaries not only resolved, but also actively carried out. In the period just before the demarcation of German East Africa, the Catholic White Fathers (Missionnaires d’Afrique) deployed a strategy in the Lake Tanganyika region that was military as much as it was missionary. When the White Fathers arrived in the area in 1879, the African-Arab caravan traders’ control over the area was at its height, and involved a process of incipient territorialization.6 From the beginning, the White Fathers on the one hand depended on African-Arab authorization and

5 D. Maxwell, “Remaking Boundaries of Belonging: Protestant Missionaries and African Christians in Katanga, Belgian Congo”, International Journal of African Historical Studies 52 (2019) 1, pp. 59–80. 6 G. Castryck, “Bordering the Lake: Transcending Spatial Orders in Kigoma-Ujiji”, International Journal of African Historical Studies 52 (2019) 1, pp. 109–132.

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protection, and on the other considered them to be their slave trading opponents. In this context of ambivalence and animosity, the White Fathers sent out lay and ordained missionaries, who had gained military experience as Papal Zouaves during the Italian wars of the 1860s. This military background was reflected in the spatial organization of mission stations on the western shore of the lake, where the missionaries erected moats and palisades as defensive structures.7 Lavigerieville (today Kibanga, South Kivu), the mission station named after the founder of the White Fathers, was nothing more or less than a militarily organized location for liberated and converted slaves. Whereas liberated slaves were the protagonists of spatial reorganization in Maxwell’s study, in the case of the early White Fathers at Lake Tanganyika liberated slaves were encapsulated in the spatial strategies of military missionaries. To be sure, the creation of military or defensive structures was not the only spatial strategy of Catholic missionaries in the wider region. In their analysis of “changing spatial strategies” in the Kasai region (Congo), Bram Cleys and Bruno De Meulder have argued that in the two decades before 1914 the Scheut Fathers adhered to a strategy involving sedentarization of African converts, “settling and fixing a place” and the imposition upon the landscape of a “geometrical order” based upon a hierarchical model centred on the autarkic mission settlement with a “majestic road pattern” radiating from its centre (Figure 4.1). This utopian Catholic strategy, they write, was “to a large extent unconscious” but “mentally [. . .] connected to the medieval image-guide of the Christian abbey”.8 In its stead there emerged in the 1920s a strategy in which the roads themselves began to serve as the “natural place” of mission, turning the missionary into “a nomad who travels around among the people he wants to convert”. Cleys and De Meulder show how both strategies related to Belgian colonial rule: “duplicating” the administrative posts established by the colonial authorities, the missionaries created “an archipelago of enclaves, a group of autonomous and isolated settlements distributed over a heathen environment”. However, with the introduction of the motorcar and motorcycle the roads gained new significance 7 See, for instance, A. Shorter, “Joubert, Leopold Louis”, in: Dictionary of African Christian Biography, 2003, https://dacb.org/stories/democratic-republic-of-congo/joubert-leopold (accessed 22 March 2019). For a military understanding of the mission station, see K. Stornig, Sisters Crossing Boundaries: German Missionary Nuns in Colonial Togo and New Guinea, 1897–1960, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013, pp. 166–167. Thanks to Karolin Wetjen for drawing our attention to this argument. 8 B. Cleys and B. De Meulder, “Imagining a Christian Territory: Changing Spatial Strategies in the Missionary Outposts of Scheut (Kasai, Congo, 1891–1940)”, in: F. Demissie (ed.), Colonial Architecture and Urbanism in Africa: Intertwined and Contesting Histories, Farnham: Ashgate, 2012, pp. 201–238, at 208, 212–213, 220.

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Figure 4.1: Plan of the Catholic mission station Hemptinne, Kasai (Congo): Repro KADOC-KU Leuven, Archives of Scheut, 1898.

regarding both the mode of evangelization and the economic activities of the mission. At the same time, rivalry with Protestant missions stimulated the Scheut Fathers to make their own network denser and even to “plug” it into the network of a mining company. The result was that by the 1930s the missionary who had initially “settled himself on a fixed place amidst a native milieu that was perceived as fluid, chaotic and constantly on the move” was superseded by “the missionary who moved around in this domain”. Moreover, Cleys and De Meulder conclude, by the 1930s the missionaries “no longer strove for an autonomous realm but conceived their missionary space as part and parcel of the deploying colonial space”. To what extent can these different spatial imaginations and their implementations, the different scales and connections at play, serve as a basis for understanding what took place in German East Africa? Did space matter to all Christian

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missionaries, either consciously or unconsciously? Were missionaries in Central Africa primarily interested in creating “enclaves” or in crossing boundaries?

Missionary Spaces in German East Africa Although most German missionary societies arrived in East Africa only in the 1890s, i.e. after German colonial rule had been proclaimed, the colonial spatial order was then still in the making. The societies premised their activities on existing spatial formats and developed new ones, as did the African societies among whom they worked. The result was a palimpsest of coexisting spatial imaginations and practices, which became part of and gradually constituted a colonial spatial order. Colonial processes of spatialization for instance led to the creation of colonial posts and centres, administrative districts, transport and communication infrastructure (Figure 4.2) the infrastructure and organization of tax collection, labour recruitment and mineral exploitation, and were premised on the generation of revenue and – especially until about 1908 – violence. This colonial spatial logic confronted – but also relied on – indigenous spatial formats which had been determined to some extent by the physical landscape (mountains, rivers), but also by kinship groupings (clans, lineages), linguistic differences and ethnicity (on a very local level, and only in some regions), and the power or charisma of Big Men, including warlords and chiefs. In some places, processes of territorialization were well underway. Here too, of course, physical violence could play a role in the shaping of space.9 By the outbreak of the First World War at the latest, ethnographers (some of whom were also missionaries or colonial officials) had become a third group of space-makers. They divided space primarily in terms of “tribes”, based on a clear-cut spatial imagination, which they enacted upon spatial and social reality (Figure 4.3). Missionaries formed a further context in which space was imagined, conceived, and made. This did not happen in isolation, but stood in interaction with colonial district making, indigenous spatial formats, practices and responses, the emerging dominant frame of tribalization to name but a few of the most obvious

9 I. Kopytoff (ed.), The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987; G. Maddox, J. Giblin, and I.N. Kimambo (eds.), Custodians of the Land: Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania, London: James Currey, 1996.

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Figure 4.2: Post- und Telegraphenwesen – Deutsch Ostafrika: H. Schnee (ed.), Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon, vol. 3, Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1920, p. 96.

imbrications.10 For missionaries, the prime distinction was between Christian, Muslim and “Heathen” space, but they might also distinguish between different Christian denominations and different degrees of “being Christian”. As mission stations and schools were created in the 1890s and 1900s, Christian denominations developed a sort of network, but also collided with the networks of other denominations, made territorial claims, were entangled with unfolding ethnic – then “tribal” – processes of spatialization and delineation. In theory, missionary space presupposed a binary division between Own and Other, combined with the

10 G. Castryck, “Introduction – The Bounds of Berlin’s Africa: Space-Making and Multiple Territorialities in East and Central Africa”, International Journal of African Historical Studies 52 (2019) 1, pp. 1–10.

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Figure 4.3: K. Weule, “Völkerkarte von Deutsch-Ostafrika”: H. Schnee (ed.), Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon, vol. 1, Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1920, p. 392.

perceived obligation to expand the Own at the expense of the Other. In practice, however, things were never quite that simple. Is it possible to generalize at all about mission space, when each person experiences and conceives of space differently? Other contexts or groups of spacemakers or spatial entrepreneurs existed, in many cases impossible to detect in the historical record. It is possible, for instance, that women tended to conceive of space differently from men – whether they were Europeans or Africans.11 Women involved in missionary work had left behind them the familiar space of “home” in

11 D.L. Hodgson, The Church of Women: Gendered Encounters between Maasai and Missionaries, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

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order to “open up”, “move around in” or “carve out” new female spaces in Africa. In some cases, these spaces were physical (chapels, hostels, and other architecture), in others they had more to do with “devout domesticity”.12 In the following, we highlight missionary spatial conceptions based on bounding or territorializing space, on spatial expansion, on building and architecture, on mobility and bridging distance, and on mapping. It will become clear how different dimensions of missionary spatialization became entangled in disputes between Catholic and Protestant missionaries.

Bounding Missionary Spaces Protestant missions had brought varying notions of space to Africa. Whilst some expanded their influence from a coastal enclave in all directions, converting individuals without necessarily encompassing the communities in which they lived, others sought to create “pure” communities, as isolated as possible from the potentially corrupting influences of European commerce or colonial administration, as well as from Islam. Their religious communities had done the same in Europe: the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine (Moravian Brethren), for instance, had since the eighteenth century spread within Germany by establishing new villages, where – at least until the First World War – the whole population belonged to the same denomination, simply inbreeding or incorporating newcomers. Often a relatively isolated valley was chosen deliberately for this purpose – a spatial strategy later adopted in Africa. As Oskar Gemuseus recollected towards the end of his life, in the early 1890s missionaries had yearned for “a little parish [of people] living somewhat isolated from the rest of the population, with the missionaries as their fathers on mission land”, not unlike the above-mentioned evangelical missionaries in Katanga.13 Some Catholic missions, too, initially tried to establish “closed Christian villages” on land owned by the mission, separate from the rest of the community, as

12 D. Gaitskell, “Home and Away: Creating Female Religious Space for 20th-Century Anglican Missions in Southern Africa”, in: A. Jones (ed.), Religious Space and the Shaping of Gender Encounters in African Christianity (= Comparativ 17 [2007] 5/6), pp. 36–54. 13 Unity Archives – Moravian Archives Herrnhut, Gemuseus Papers, Folder 5 Nr. 9, “Aufbau und Organisation einer heidenchristlichen Gemeinde und Frage ihres Lebens”, typewritten lecture, 1940. Also see Maxwell, “Remaking Boundaries”.

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in Madibira, Tosamaganga, and Kurasini (near Dar es Salaam).14 However, as one report noted in 1914: The method whereby the Christians are spatially separated from the Heathen und settled in villages of their own has been abandoned everywhere where Christianity has reached a large number of people and the Christians are no longer tempted to abandon their faith, since the Heathen no longer see any detriment when their relatives convert to Christianity. There are still Christian villages near Daressalam, where the ransomed slaves are accommodated. Besides, through the progressive adoption of Christianity Christian or predominantly Christian villages come into existence around every mission station automatically.15

Modern maps showing whole areas under the sway of one denomination, rather like small colonies, mask not only the plurality of religious beliefs within a given area, but also the historical manner in which such areas emerged. By contrast, a century ago missionary atlases, such as Grundemann’s Neuer Missions-Atlas aller evangelischen Missionsgebiete (1903), rightly placed the emphasis on a set of mission stations rather than a particular “field” (Figure 4.4 and 4.5). Missionary expansion never really adhered to a plan compiled in Europe, and the factors determining its course seldom lay exclusively in the hands of Europeans. In most cases the prerequisite for the establishment of a new outstation was the mobility of African Christians, whose interaction with nonChristians in areas they happened to visit prepared the soil (to use a Christian metaphor) for exploratory contacts. The “popular evangelism” of “the first African interpreters of the Gospel” led to situations where, as in western Kenya, the first missionaries “found local catechists and Christian homesteads already in place before they arrived”.16 Missionary space was unique in relying mainly upon Africans for its expansion. Although the representatives of European colonial power likewise employed African intermediaries, their influence was seldom so explicitly ideological.

Factors of Expansion What determined the directions in which this expansion took place? Clearly, questions of language and ethnicity were of importance;17 but it should not be

14 Archive of the Arch-Abbey of St. Ottilien, Z.1.08, Spreiter, Annual report for 1911. 15 Archive of the Arch-Abbey of St. Ottilien, Z.1.08, Severin 1 March 1914, Annual report for 1913. 16 T. Spear, “Toward the History of African Christianity”, in: T. Spear and I. Kimambo (eds.), East African Expressions of Christianity, Oxford: James Currey, 1999, pp. 3–24, at 7. 17 See, for instance, the border agreement between the O.S.B. (Benedictines) and the Berlin Mission, 4 July 1909 (German Federal Archives, Berlin-Lichterfelde [hereafter BArch], R 1001/862,

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Figures 4.4 and 4.5: R. Grundemann, Neuer Missions-Atlas aller evangelischen Missionsgebiete mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der deutschen Missionen, 2nd edn, Calw: Verein der Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1903.

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assumed that missions were able to decide simply to evangelize a particular linguistic / ethnic group. Rather, as Patrick Harries and others have shown, missions initially found themselves confronted with a “spectrum of dialects”, and it was not until they themselves had taken up translation and educational work that clear-cut languages began to emerge, to which ethnic labels (albeit still ambivalent) could eventually be attached.18 Moreover, in what is now southeastern Tanzania, ethnic discourse and ethnocentric history remained mainly limited to the few persons with a mission education. As Felicitas Becker has written with reference to the early twentieth century, In the discursive space elsewhere occupied by [themes like ethnicity, ethnocentric histories, or territorial claims] villagers in southeastern Tanzania reinvented themselves as coastal and Muslim people. The coast was closer than the colonial state, and uungwana, being of the coast, mattered more than ethnic affiliation.19

Dealing with another region of what is now Tanzania where Christianity made more headway in the early twentieth century, Justin Willis has shown how Bondei ethnicity, far from being inherited from the distant past, emerged out of a dialogue between a group of Africans whose political identity was under threat and a British missionary, who needed a nation to convert and allowed himself to be manipulated by his converts.20 An important decision that mission societies had to make in the German period was whether to collaborate with the colonial choice of Swahili, a language closely associated with Islam, as the language for government service and hence for education.21 Although some gave zealous priority to local languages as an essential step towards the creation of a Volkskirche, producing dictionaries even for dialects and translating parts of the Bible, by 1910 most had accepted the colonial policy in order to gain official support for their educational work. In addition to language and ethnicity, physical geography and vegetation influenced decisions concerning the location of mission stations. Today’s visitors – even those with the advantage of a four-wheel drive – are often surprised

“Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 2: 27 October 1908–17 July 1912). 18 P. Harries, “The Roots of Ethnicity: Discourse and the Politics of Language Construction in South-East Africa”, African Affairs 87 (1988), pp. 25–52. 19 F. Becker, Becoming Muslim in Mainland Tanzania, ca. 1800–2000: The Spread of Islam beyond the Indian Ocean Coast, Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2008, p. 97. 20 J. Willis, “The Makings of a Tribe: Bondei Identities and Histories”, Journal of African History 33 (1992), pp. 191–208. 21 Cf. M. Wright, German Missions in Tanganyika 1891–1941: Lutherans and Moravians in the Southern Highlands, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971, pp. 108ff.

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how inaccessible the locations chosen for early mission stations were. The Leipzig Mission began work in East Africa in the footsteps of the ousted Church Missionary Society. Quite the reverse of Leipzig’s own topography, the Leipzig missionaries were firmly committed to the mountain landscape of Kilimanjaro, Mount Meru and the Pare Hills: Am Fuße der Bergriesen Ostafrikas (“At the Feet of the Mountain Giants of East Africa”) was the title Johannes Schanz chose for his history of the mission (1912), and the cover of the book emphasised this mountain landscape (Figure 4.6).

Figure 4.6: Cover of J. Schanz, Am Fuße der Bergriesen Ostafrikas, Leipzig: Verlag der Ev.-Luth. Mission, 1912.

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Yet the mountains existed in symbiosis with the plains, and although some missionaries identified themselves proudly with “our Chaga” of the mountains, work in the vicinity of Mount Meru brought them into contact with the Maasai living near Arusha (Figure 4.7), and even before the German missionaries

Figure 4.7: Map of the Leipzig mission field: Schanz, Am Fuße der Bergriesen Ostafrikas, Leipzig: Verlag der Ev.-Luth. Mission, 1912.

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returned in 1925 it was decided to extend the “steppe mission” into Maasai country.22 The Moravians too eventually chose a mission field which encompassed highly contrasting landscapes. Oskar Gemuseus considered this variety of landscapes so important that he proposed what Marcia Wright has called “a kind of climatic determinism”, contrasting the vegetation and culture on either side of the watershed: An important cultural divide separat[es] our whole missionary field into two entirely different units. To the west is a dry steppe with decidedly marked dry and rainy seasons, to the east and south much damp fog [with] torrential tropical rains lasting for weeks [ . . . ] In the west the tribes [. . .], cautious of manner and speech, cling to the old and are not easily influenced. In the east and south the Nyakyusa and their relatives [. . .] are lively in manner and speech, open to innovation and admittedly subject to evil [as well as good] influences.23

This Moravian preference for interacting with the “lively”, “open” Nyakyusa of the damp mountains vis-à-vis their neighbours in the dry plains echoed the thinking of contemporary Leipzig Lutherans with regard to the “intelligent”, “innovative” Chagga of Kilimanjaro. Here too we find a binary division of space: not between Own and Other, but between those Africans open to change (including not only mission Christianity but also certain forms of capitalism) and those among whom the majority were more “reserved”. Yet this dichotomy was not quite as simple as it might seem. For one thing, the trouble with the Maasai – from the missionary point of view – was not just that they lived in the plains and were conservative in their attitudes, but also that they practised transhumance, in itself an obstacle to the swift spread of any book religion.24 (The struggle with transhumance and nomadism is, of course, a major topos in the Old Testament itself.) Moreover, different missionaries perceived indigenous “conservatism” differently: some wanted to eradicate all forms of “heathenism”, including dancing and initiation rites, whereas others, such as Bruno Gutmann of the Leipzig Mission or Traugott

22 K. Groop, With the Gospel to Maasailand: Lutheran Mission Work among the Arusha and Maasai in Northern Tanzania 1904–1973, Abo: Abo Akademi University Press, 2006. 23 O. Gemuseus, Sakalija Mwakasungula, Hamburg: Appel, 1953, p. 12: as translated in: Wright, German Missions, p. 26. Similar reflections, probably from the late 1930s, may be found in an unpublished document: Unity Archives – Moravian Archives Herrnhut, Gemuseus Papers, Folder 13 Nr. 9, “Völker u. Stämme”. 24 Cf. Hodgson, Church of Women.

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Bachmann of the Moravian Mission, stressed the need to retain elements of indigenous culture.25 As Sally Falk Moore has remarked with regard to Catholics and Lutherans on Kilimanjaro, “in the effort to sustain itself, the mission had to become an enlarged and transformed version of a Chagga household with gardens”. From the mid1890s onwards the missionaries planted bananas, vegetables and coffee, in some cases using school pupils as labourers.26 In one sense this represented an appropriation of a spatial model that had existed before the arrival of the missionaries. On the other hand, coffee cultivation was new, perhaps even introduced by the missionaries, so that we may regard the resulting space as the product of an entanglement which went far beyond agricultural production. One additional criterion for the direction in which a mission expanded might be the quest for a definable space where there could be no ambiguity. Inhabitants of the Moravian town of Rungwe, for instance, recall today that in the missionary period suspension from attending communion (Kirchenzucht) meant having to move one’s residence to the other side of the stream – an expensive undertaking, and one that embodied a degree of social exclusion.27

Building and Architecture Certainly, mission stations, including their characteristic buildings, were considered by all parties to constitute a special kind of space: [T]heir chapels, residences, dormitories, schools, dispensaries, gardens [. . .] stand in great contrast with their immediate surroundings. In the confrontation of Europeans with African ways of life these stations have been for the missionaries a refuge, a symbol of achievement and a home; for the Africans they have been strongholds of alien ways from religion to agriculture, an intrusion.28

The special place of the mission station involved paying special attention to erecting buildings, architectural design, and spatial planning. We have seen above

25 Cf. K. Fiedler, Christianity and African Culture: Conservative German Protestant Missionaries in Tanzania 1900–1940, Leiden: Brill, 1996. 26 S.F. Moore, Social Facts and Fabrications: “Customary” Law on Kilimanjaro, 1880–1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 103. See also R.B. Munson, The Nature of Christianity in Northern Tanzania: Environmental and Social Change, 1890–1916, Lanham: Lexington, 2013. 27 We are indebted to Michaela Unterholzner for this information. 28 C.C. Park, Sacred Worlds: An Introduction to Geography and Religion, London: Routledge, 1994, quoted in: Gaitskell, “Home and Away”, p. 41.

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how this affected the Scheut mission station, the military logic of the White Fathers’ mission station along Lake Tanganyika, and the evolution of Tswana architecture in South Africa. Can it be assumed that a similar process took place in German East Africa? While it is true that so-called traditional Chagga or Maasai houses were circular and that today almost all houses are rectangular (with rectangular doors and windows), it cannot be taken for granted that this is a result of the missionary encounter. We are not convinced that this was a direct result of what the Comaroffs call the “bourgeois schedule” of the missionaries. The first rectangular houses to be photographed in the Leipzig and Herrnhut mission fields were referred to as “Swahili houses”, and we have photographs of church elders’ houses which were still circular in the 1930s (Figure 4.8 and 4.9). Spatial evolutions in mission stations do not stand in isolation.

Figure 4.8: “Ndelelao’s hut, Moshi style”, http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/singleitem/ collection/p15799coll123/id/63658/rec/1.

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Figure 4.9: “Swahili house”, Mamba 1901–1910: http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ singleitem/collection/p15799coll123/id/30319/rec/4.

Another form of architecture which embodied spatial conceptions was the tombstone, a European innovation which had very few equivalents in African cultures. In his book on space in German Southwest Africa (today’s Namibia), J.K. Noyes argues that for European settlers tombstones might serve to organize subjective, social and geographical space: the white crosses defined “a position from which traces of death become meaningful”; they tied this position to a geographical space and – in some cases – marked the grave as a place where “order” had been created by German labour.29 It is striking that the missionary archives for Tanzania contain hardly any photographs of African burial places but do have photos of missionary graves. The Leipzig Mission, for example, has no less than ten photographs of the grave of the two missionary martyrs killed at Akeri on Mount Meru in 1896, taken between 1900 and 1940.30 Picturing these sites

29 J.K. Noyes, “Gazing on Native Spaces”, in: Idem, Colonial Space: Spatiality in the Discourse of German Southwest Africa 1884–1915, Chur: Harwood Academic, 1992, pp. 196–214. 30 There are also numerous verbal descriptions and photographs in books: see, for instance, J. Schanz, Am Fuße der Bergriesen Ostafrikas, Leipzig: Verlag der Ev.-Luth. Mission, 1912, pp.

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primarily addressed a European audience, more receptive to the heroization of martyrdom than present-day Europeans might be willing to acknowledge.

Covering and Bridging Distance While most missionaries were tied more or less to one place, from which they or their evangelists “radiated” into the neighbourhood,31 a few were more mobile, and in the course of time this mobility increased. The Moravians stationed a missionary along the railway line between Morogoro and Tabora from 1910 to 1912, in order that he might, using his knowledge of Kinyamwesi, evangelize the workers building the railway as it extended.32 The result, however limited in scope, must have been a “mobile congregation” similar to those witnessed by Gabriel Klaeger in present-day Ghana: What distinguishes this mobile congregation from a congregation in the ecclesiastical sense is that the former gathers merely on a temporary, unintentional and arbitrary basis, while the latter forms a principally religious body and – at least ideally – a community of choice, which appears to be more homogeneous. However, some travellers’ communities excel at being quite corporate, even spiritually and ritually.33

Jan-Bart Gewald has argued with reference to what is now Namibia that the introduction of the motor car in the 1920s and 1930s on the one hand greatly reduced physical distances, enabling missionaries to reach another mission station within hours rather than days, yet on the other greatly increased the social distance between missionaries and most of the African population by making it possible to drive past someone without even greeting him or her.34 Elsewhere the same author, writing with two colleagues, has suggested that motor cars had a different

50–52; M. Weishaupt, Ostafrikanische Wandertage. Durch das Gebiet der Leipzig Mission in Deutsch-Ostafrika, Leipzig: Verlag der Ev.-Luth. Mission, 1913, p. 100. For a historical archaeologist’s study of Moravian graveyards in the Caribbean, see M. Wood, “Mapping the Complexities of Race on the Landscape of the Colonial Caribbean, United States Virgin Islands, 1770–1917”, Historical Archaeology 46 (2012), pp. 112–134. 31 Wright, German Missions, p. 151. 32 Unity Archives – Moravian Archives Herrnhut, MD 1543: Bahnmission. 33 G. Klaeger, “Religion on the Road: The Spiritual Experience of Road Travel in Ghana”, in: J.-B. Gewald, S. Luning, and K. van Walraven (eds.), Speed of Change: Motor Vehicles and People in Africa 1890–2000, Leiden: Brill, 2009, pp. 212–231, at 221. 34 J.-B. Gewald, “Missionaries, Hereros, and Motorcars: Mobility and the Impact of Motor Vehicles in Namibia before 1940”, International Journal of African Historical Studies 35 (2002) 2/3, pp. 257–285.

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effect, making it easier for Africans and others to cross boundaries not just physically, but also in their thinking and behaviour: With the tendency to traverse language barriers as well as social and cultural boundaries, the motor vehicle gave birth to new ways of looking at the world and new relations that required different forms of cosmological understanding. The myriad of new images and views shaped ideologies that, of necessity, transcended local socio-cultural arrangements, something that accounted to a certain degree for the extensive spread of Christianity in the twentieth century. Interpersonal relationships and responsibilities were transformed by people’s increased mobility.35

Both ideas are highly plausible as hypotheses; but given the paucity of sources written by Africans in this period, they can only be verified from the perspective of the missionaries themselves (cf. Figure 4.10).

Missionary Mapping Let us return to the question of the extent to which space mattered to missionaries. One way of answering it is to look at the maps they produced.36 For the relatively small mission field Nyasa (north of Lake Malawi) the archive in Herrnhut includes no less than five maps produced between 1904 and 1908 by the superintendent Theodor Meyer. In addition to the physical landscape and roads or paths linking the mission stations they indicate “places for preaching” (Predigtplätze), language areas and exploratory journeys made. However, as maps primarily indicate territory, significant places and perhaps lines of communication, they tend to blend out essentially different conceptions of space. It is therefore interesting to look at those maps that deal with the

35 J.-B. Gewald, S. Luning, and K. van Walraven, “Motor Vehicles and People in Africa: An Introduction”, in: Idem (eds.), Speed of Change, p. 9. 36 Critical literature on colonial mapmaking takes apart the authorship of maps. Noyes argues that whereas European explorers initially relied upon African guides, they employed maps as a strategy to erase this dependence and incorporate the guides’ knowledge into universal knowledge (Colonial Space, pp. 196–214). See also K. Fritsch, “‘You Have Everything Confused and Mixed Up . . . !’ Georg Schweinfurth, Knowledge and Cartography of Africa in the 19th Century”, History in Africa 36 (2009), pp. 87–101; K. Jahn and U. Wardenga, “Wie Afrika auf die Karte kommt: Das Beispiel Georg Schweinfurth”, in: G. Castryck, S. Strickrodt, and K. Werthmann (eds.), Sources and Methods for African History and Culture: Essays in Honour of Adam Jones, Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2016, pp. 137–161; A. Jones and I. Voigt, “‘Just a First Sketchy Makeshift’: German Travellers and their Cartographic Encounters in Africa, 1850–1914”, History in Africa 39 (2012), pp. 9–39.

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Figure 4.10: Distances between the Leipzig Mission stations: Schanz, Am Fuße der Bergriesen, p. xi.

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“delimitation” (Abgrenzung) of “spheres of interest” between Protestant and Catholic missions, and to question what they show and what they hide.37

Missionary Contentions about Space The General Act of the Berlin Congo Conference of 1884–85 stipulated that there was to be freedom of religion and of missionary activity within the area defined as the “conventional Congo Basin”, to which German East Africa belonged. The German Protectorate Legislation (Schutzgebietsgesetz) reaffirmed this principle. Nevertheless, missionary claims and disputes were played out territorially, somehow transferring the colonial principle of effective occupation to missionary spheres of influence. The technology of mapping was used as a claimmaking device in these disputes. It should be noted that Superintendent Meyer of the Moravian Mission was embroiled in a fierce conflict with the Catholic White Fathers in the period in which he produced the abovementioned maps. Protestant missions avoided “poaching” in the spheres of influence of other Protestant missions. However, the Protestant archives contain at least as many complaints about the aggressive spread of Catholic orders as they do about the encroachments of Islam. This may be seen in what Marcia Wright calls a “strategy map” of 1902 by the Berlin missionary Martin Klamroth, indicating “Catholic advances” from all directions except those of Lake Malawi and the Moravian mission field (Figure 4.11).38 For an illustration of Roman Catholic understanding of missionary space, we may take the Benedictine Order, which assumed responsibility for the Apostolic Vicariate of South Zanzibar in 1887 and was able to re-establish itself in southeastern Tanzania after the Maji Maji rebellion destroyed a number of mission stations in 1905. In an undated set of instructions to curates and prefects, probably from the 1890s, it was stipulated: The boundaries of the mission field (Missionsgebiet) shall be described, and if there are differences of opinion about them, the reasons shall be stated. A map of the curacy shall be enclosed, if within easy reach, or at least be sent later.39

37 Unity Archives – Moravian Archives Herrnhut, “Abgrenzung der Interessensphäre der evangel. und kathol. Missionen im Bezirk Langenburg D.O.A., eingereicht von der MissionsDirektion der evangl. Brüder-Unität. August 1908. Vergl. Karte D.O.Afrika E3 u. F3”. 38 Wright, German Missions, p. 109. Wright transposed the map from Klamroth’s original kept at the Tanzania National Archives, Dar es Salaam. 39 Archive of the Arch-abbey of St. Ottilien, Z.1.08.

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Figure 4.11: Berlin Mission representation of territorial conflicts with Catholics in the southern part of German East Africa: Wright, German Missions, p. 109.

In 1899 the missionary Father Alfons Adams submitted a “precisely drawn” map of the western border of the prefecture, beginning at the north bank of Lake Malawi,40 in order that this information be forwarded to Rome (Figure 4.12). The aim was to support the claim that certain villages whose position was a matter of controversy belonged to the prefecture. Adams closed with the remark: “But an

40 Archive of the Arch-abbey of St. Ottilien, Z.1.03, Adams 5 January 1899 to Abbot.

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Figure 4.12: Map of the Catholic Prefecture of southern Zanzibar: St. Ottilien, Archive of the Arch-Abbey, 89: Apostol. Präfektur Süd-Sansibar. Drawn by Magnus Mielke (St. Ottilien), probably c. 1890.

expansion of the prefecture is of course always desirable, as the country further west gets better and better and is more densely populated!” Although they reached a written agreement with the (Protestant) Berlin Mission in 1906 regarding respective spheres of influence in the southern part of what is today Tanzania, ten years later the Benedictines decided not to renew it. The “struggle” (as the Benedictines called it), which reached a climax just before British troops invaded the area in 1916, dated back to the Berlin Mission’s annual report for 1913. In a long, emotionally worded handwritten and duplicated letter to the German authorities, Bishop Spreiter complained about the “deception” practised by the Berlin Mission: The Berlin superintendent Kallweit got people to cut down some bushes about 100 metres from the dwelling and school of Pater Pfaffel in his absence and planted 6 bananas in the middle of the un-hoed land. That is what he called a “garden”. Afterwards he taught lessons there, although his school

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house is 20 minutes’ walk from there, in order to be able to call it a “place for preaching”. [. . .] [In Kipingo-Malingi] is an unoccupied, so-called mission farm, not cultivated by anyone. No sooner had we founded a mission station in Lufu than the farm was transformed a few months later into a mission [. . .] and with an expression of total innocence they complain about the penetration of the Benedictines into an ancient area of labour.41

Here we find the Catholics applying almost the same criteria as laid down at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885: territorial claims by European powers must be based upon “effective occupation”, not just upon lines on a map or the flying of a flag (cf. Figure 4.13). The Berlin Mission’s claims in the disputed area were considered invalid because the agricultural land had not been properly hoed or because they had established a school but not a place of worship. Not very far away, in the area north of Lake Malawi (Nyasa), another conflict arose from 1906 onwards between the Protestant Moravians (Herrnhuter) and the Catholic White Fathers. The Moravian mission claimed to have been the first in the area and considered this sufficient entitlement to the land, using the erection of improvised crosses to stake this claim. In a similar tone to that of the Benedictines, the White Fathers asked how the Moravians could use such crosses without actually evangelizing or even being present. Remarkably, however, Catholic and Protestant teachers in one of the contested villages were living and working together peacefully: it was on a higher level that the coexistence of missions in one place led to conflict. Chiefs in the villages concerned are mentioned in the government report as relevant actors, yet it is not clear from the sources what their role was.42 The rivalry led to a spatial distribution, a missionary version of the Scramble for Africa, with characteristics more like those of a chessboard (schachbrettförmig43) than of clearly delineated territories. Nonetheless, and even though they did not agree on demarcation or criteria, both missions did seem to share the idea that two missions should not be active in the same place, even though the Berlin Congo Conference and the German Protectorate Legislation had stipulated the opposite. The government, likewise, mediated in order to avoid the co-presence of two missions. Moreover, the colonial administration, primarily worried that the authority of the “white race” might be undermined by a confrontation visible to the indigenous population, insisted on a buffer or neutral zone between the

41 Archive of the Arch-abbey of St. Ottilien, Z.1.07, Spreiter 28.9.1915, Kwiro, to Kaiserliche Militärstation Mahenge. 42 Report by Captain Albinus, 25 August 1906 (BArch, R 1001/861, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 1: 11 March 1886 – October 1908). 43 Report by Governor von Rechenberg, 4 November 1908 (BArch, R 1001/862: “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 2: 27 October 1908–17 July 1912).

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Figure 4.13: Arch-Abbey St. Ottilien, undated map showing stations of the Berlin and Benedictine missions, used in the dispute with the Berlin Mission, probably c. 1915.

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two missions (Figure 4.14, incidentally indicating a “neutral” square on the “chessboard).44 Mention was made of physical violence having been exerted against indigenous people in order to compel them to follow one or other of the missions, as well as by (European) missionaries of one denomination against (African) catechists of the opposing denomination.45 The government was also worried about the use of “coloured” people (Farbigen, elsewhere Neger) as arbitrators in the conflicts, or eventually, in case of government arbitration, the necessity of relying on the testimony of heathen or Muslims (Heiden oder Muhamedaner) because of their impartiality in the dispute.46 The colonial government insisted on demarcation, i.e. territorialization of the mission field, ideally coinciding with the language and ethnic boundaries which were being (re) defined in this period.47 The dispute was taken to the metropole, involving negotiations between the European mission headquarters and the imperial government. No less than four other simultaneous territorial conflicts were dealt with in the same year (1908): between the Berlin Mission and the Benedictines in Iringa-Mahenge, between the Universities’ Mission and the Benedictines in Lindi, between the Berlin Mission and the Black Fathers (Spiritans) in Wilhelmstal, between the Black Fathers, the Leipzig Mission and the Adventists in Pare.48 Tellingly, the Moravians complained that the White Fathers had not included a map in their proposal to resolve the conflict. Although the Moravians did respond willingly to the White Fathers’ proposal, the expectation of a map does underline the territorial thinking of the Moravians in their relation to the

44 Report by Captain Albinus, 25 August 1906; letter from Governor von Rechenberg to Superintendent Meyer, 18 February 1907 (BArch, R 1001/861, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 1: 11 March 1886 – October 1908). 45 BArch, R 1001/861–862, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 1–2: 11 March 1886–17 July 1912. 46 Report by Governor von Rechenberg, 4 November 1908 (BArch, R 1001/862, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 2: 27 October 1908–17 July 1912). 47 See, for instance, the border agreement between the O.S.B. (Benedictines) and the Berlin Mission, 4 July 1909 (BArch, R 1001/862, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 2: 27 October 1908–17 July 1912). 48 Report by Governor von Rechenberg, 4 November 1908 (BArch, R 1001/862, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 2: 27 October 1908–17. Juli 1912).

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Figure 4.14: Fragment of map, indicating the Moravian suggestion for the demarcation between Evangelical and Catholic spheres of influence in the District Langenburg, German East Africa (1908).49

White Fathers.50 At odds with this territorial spatial format, the Catholic advisor to the imperial government, Prof. Franz Karl Hespers, argued that for Catholics and Protestants alike, the obligation to save souls and the freedom of religion and missionary activity would always have precedence over any delineation on a map. Territorial agreements, of which several were drawn in the final years of the Twentieth Century’s first decade,51 could never be more than a temporary

49 Attachment to letter from the Moravian Missionary Direction to the Secret Council, 8 August 1908 (BArch, R 1001/861, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 1: 11 March 1886 – October 1908). 50 Letter from the Moravian Missionary Direction to the Secret Council, 8 August 1908 (BArch, R 1001/861, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 1: 11 March 1886 – October 1908). 51 Agreement on the boundaries between Protestant and Catholic Missions concerning the Hehe, Bena and Sango lands, 3 August 1906; Agreement between the evangelical and Catholic missions in West Usambara in order to delineate a separation between the two confessions, 16 March 1909; Border agreement between the O.S.B. (Benedictine) and the Berlin Mission, 4 July 1909 (BArch, R 1001/861–862, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 1–2: 11. March 1886–17 July 1912).

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gentlemen’s agreement, since neither theologically nor legally was there any limitation on missionary activity being conducted by Catholics and Protestants in the same places or areas.52 It is important to note that the dispute took place not only in German East Africa but also in Europe, between White Fathers in Rome, Moravians in Saxony, Benedictines in Bavaria (yet linked to Rome), the Berlin Mission in Prussia, the imperial government in Berlin and a Catholic advisor in Cologne. In 1887, the first case of missionary friction in the newly established German East Africa actually concerned intra-Catholic dealings: the French origin of the Holy Ghost missionaries and White Fathers raised doubts as to whether they would be sufficiently compatible with the German character of the new protectorate. In this context, the White Fathers agreed to consider themselves a German mission in German East Africa; on top of that, the newly founded Benedictine mission of St. Ottilien (Bavaria) became responsible for a mission area alongside the White Fathers.53 Since these orders had no field experience in the area, the concerns were primarily about intra-European rivalries, German imperial nationalism, and carving up the map. It seems that what prompted the Protestants and Catholics twenty-odd years later,54 in the decade before 1914, to discuss their respective spatial ambitions in East Africa was the intervention of the colonial government, anxious not to upset its own emerging and still fragile spatial order. By then, this was a two-way game: each mission did its best to mobilize the colonial administration in support of its own ambitions. At the same time, negotiations and contentions took place within German East Africa as well. The playing field of the spatial disputes was constituted by a missionary version of the Scramble for Africa (with attempts at effective occupation), negotiations between missionaries both in Africa and in Europe, mediation by colonial authorities in Africa and in Europe, as well as the active role of chiefs, inviting or authorizing one or the other missionary society to build schools or set up stations.

52 Letter from Prof. Hespers to the Secretary of State of the Colonial Administration, 2 January 1909 (BArch, R 1001/862, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 2: 27 October 1908–17 July 1912). 53 “Zur ostafrikanischen Missionsfrage”, 24 September 1887 (BArch, R 1001/861, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 1: 11. March 1886 – October 1908). 54 Karolin Wetjen has discovered further material in the German Federal Archives concerning friction between Catholics and Protestants in German East Africa in the period 1893–1898. Also see “Konfessionelle Zwistigkeiten in Deutsch-Ostafrika”, Tägliche Rundschau, 17 April 1901 (BArch, R 1001/861, “Streitigkeiten unter den Missionen in DOA wegen der Abgrenzung ihrer Gebiete”, vol. 1: 11 March 1886 – October 1908).

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The First World War brought closure to these disputes. The “territorial” conflicts between the Berlin and Benedictine missions did flare up again in 1915, but other spatial issues that had been the subject of conflict were now regarded as having been resolved. However, new potential for conflicting visions emerged. During the forced exile of the German missionaries (1920–1925) the African elders and teachers whom they had trained found themselves obliged to choose and then apply their own definitions of what constituted Christian space,55 particularly with regard to male and female circumcision. It was bodily space, not physical landscape or ethnicity, that structured Christian debates of the 1920s and 1930s concerning identity.

Conclusion Mission spaces in German East Africa were intertwined with colonialism, yet not identical. The spatializations of Christian missions followed their own logic within a colonial context; they changed over time and also differed from one another. The production of territory and of tribal areas being the dominant spatial approaches of the day, the bounding of space and the attempt to let missionary zones coincide with fixated and homogenous tribal areas certainly played an important role in the spatial thinking and acting of missionaries in a colonial context. On the other hand, territorial and tribal colonial ideologies were confronted with local realities and agency, with landscapes and cultivated lands, with theological obligations and technological evolutions. This led to more local, more interactive, more haphazard, more peregrinating, and more multiscalar spatial practices and principles. Missionaries’ actions were based on specific shared understandings of space, which underpinned their space-making activities, so that they materially enacted these spatial understandings. In the context of the Collaborative Research Centre “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition” at Leipzig University, we have conceptualized this mutually strengthening mechanism, in which a specific conceptualization of space is sufficiently shared for it to underpin spatial actions and gain self-fulfilling and reproducing capacity, as spatial formats. In terms of Henri Lefebvre’s conceptualization of space, it is in the congruence of conceived, perceived and lived space that the spatial format becomes stabilized and reproduced. Such spatial formats include not only the bounded missionary area or territory, but also the entire mission field, conceived of as something open to conversion 55 Cf. C. Pohl, Evangelische Mission in Tanga und im Digolan, Münster: LIT, 2016.

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and expansion; the perceived, conceived, and lived spaces of African leaders, elders and teachers, catechists and converts; local mission sites such as mission stations, schools or crosses, which are perceived as organizational forms and spatial claims at the same time; the mission building and its architecture; lines of communication and mobility; the interconnectedness between mission headquarters and station, between the Vatican and Catholic missions, between the colony and the metropole, between Africa and Europe. When we compare this to missionary spaces in other parts of colonial Africa, we detect commonalities as well as differences. The intertwinement with colonialism is paramount, yet the distinction between missionary and colonial spatialization cannot be denied. Hence, the specificity of the colonial context influences missionary space. The example of Hemptinne Saint Benoit in Kasai (Congo Free State/Belgian Congo), analysed by Cleys and De Meulder, for instance, displays a degree of geometrical planning and missionary building of road infrastructure, which we have not attested in German East Africa. The ecological differences, with the presence of a navigable river near the Kasai mission station, as well as the colonial differences, with a Leopoldian/Belgian system of government relying significantly on the Catholic Church as part and parcel of the colonial project, help to explain the differences in spatial implantation. In another vein, the dissolution of German East Africa during and after the First World War led to a particular colonial situation, in which African agency gained momentum and shifted the spatial focus from territory to body. However, it must be noted that in the Belgian Congo, too, as Maxwell points out, the role of African missionaries had been crucial for the weaving of the web of missionary space. All in all, missionary space found itself increasingly integrated in a colonial spatial order. This means that the Christian missions contributed to colonial spatializations, adapted to the specificity of respective colonial contexts, yet also provided spaces where the contingence and contestation of colonialism could develop. It also suggests that just like colonial space, missionary spaces were African-European entangled and multiscalar spaces, which cannot be properly understood without including local African dynamics, nor without including European imaginations and imperialism. As such, missionary spaces are first and foremost in-between spaces.

Magnus Echtler

5 Redeeming Zululand: Placing Cultural Resonances in the Nazareth Baptist Church, South Africa A praise poem of Isaiah Shembe, who founded the Nazareth Baptist Church (NBC) in 1910, calls him the “[b]reaker-away” who “broke away with the Gospel [. . .] because he thirsted for the happiness of the nation.”1 This nation (isizwe, pl. izizwe), the people Shembe gathered in his church, cut across African izizwe, the precolonial socio-political aggregates of descent groups, clans, or chiefdoms. Shembe built his church as a spiritual rival to the Zulu kingdom, whose “royal line of Senzangakhona” he pestered like a “[f]ly which pesters a sore”.2 The happiness of the new nation depended on the break with mission Christianity, whose representatives “denied that we had just preached the gospel”.3 Taking the view of the church members or Nazarites, the praise poem implored Isaiah Shembe to “let us leave and let us head to our own Zululand” with the gospel, “which we saw approaching with our own royal leaders adorned with the plumage of the red-winged lourie.”4 At the beginning and end, the praise poem refers to Isaiah Shembe as Guqabadele (Kneeler-and-they-be-satisfied), a praise name of Cetshwayo, the last independent Zulu king. In Cetshwayo’s case, it refers to his kneeling on the shield of his half-brother, which ritually ensured his succession as king.5 By calling Isaiah Shembe “our beautiful Kneeler-and-they-be-satisfied of Ekuphakameni”,6 the praise links him with the Zulu king, while at the same time establishing the decisive difference, because kneeling in submission to Jehovah is the signature practice that redeems the nation. Redemption in the NBC negated and surpassed but also retained African traditions. The church transcended African “nations” not least by mobilizing Zulu history, and established difference to mission Christianity

1 L. Gunner and M. Gwala (eds., trans.), Musho! Zulu Popular Praises, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1991, p. 69. 2 Ibid. Senzangakhona, Zulu chief (1787–1816), was father of Shaka, the first Zulu king (1816–1828). 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 T. Cope (ed.), Izibongo: Zulu Praise-Poems, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, p. 226. 6 Gunner and Gwala, Praises, pp. 67, 79. Note: My thanks to the Nazarites for welcoming me into their church, and to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for funding. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-005

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through material culture symbolizing Zulu royalty. As the church reverberated with traditions labelled as “Zulu”, it emplaced its own Zululand in the structure and atmosphere of their assemblies, and partook in the construction of Zulu ethnicity. “Indigeneity is out; modernity and globalization are very much in”7 in academic discourse on African Christianity, and recent literature on the NBC has emphasized transnational and Christian influences in its early history.8 Nazarites, however, cared little about academic fashion, and became more “deliberately and unapologetically Zulu” than ever.9 Drawing on data collected during fieldwork within the church’s eBuhleni faction from 2007 to 2017, my analysis of imaginary landscapes, spatial structures and atmospheric places in the NBC emphasizes how Nazarite discourse and practice continue to resonate with Zulu cultural traditions and thus relate to identity politics beyond the confines of the religious field.

A Spatial History Isaiah Shembe (c. 1870–1935) was a member of the Hlubi, a group of Zuluspeaking Nguni that fled from the violent conflicts surrounding the establishment of the Zulu kingdom in the early nineteenth century and was prosecuted for rebellion in the colony of Natal in 1873.10 After the dispersal of the Hlubi, Isaiah grew up as a tenant labourer on a white man’s farm in southern Orange Free State. Hailing from a rather high-ranking background – his mother was the niece of the Hlubi chief Langalibalele and his father had been his councillor (induna) – Isaiah became the head of a polygamous household after his father’s death.11

7 J. Cabrita, Text and Authority in the South African Nazaretha Baptist Church, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, p. 9. 8 Ibid.; A. Heuser, Shembe, Gandhi und die Soldaten Gottes: Wurzeln der Gewaltfreiheit in Südafrika, Münster: Waxmann, 2003; J. Tishken, “The Nazareth Baptist Church as Subordinationist Christianity”, African Studies 74 (2015) 3, pp. 449–469. 9 A. Vilakazi, B. Mthethwa, and M. Mpanza, Shembe: The Revitalization of African Society, Johannesburg: Skotaville, 1986, p. 155. 10 B. Guest, “Colonists, Confederation and Constitutional Change”, in: A. Duminy and B. Guest (eds.), Natal and Zululand from Earliest Times to 1910: A New History, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1989, pp. 146–169, at 151–155; J. Wright, “Beyond the ‘Zulu Aftermath’: Migrations, Identities, Histories”, Journal of Natal and Zulu History 24/25 (2006/2007), pp. 1–36, at 11–13. 11 Cabrita, Text, p. 90; E. Roberts, “Shembe: The Man and his Work”, MA thesis, University of South Africa, 1936, pp. 26–27; N. Sithole, Isaiah Shembe’s Hymns and the Sacred Dance in Ibandla LamaNazaretha, 2016, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 1–2.

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After the disruptions of the Anglo-Boer war (1899–1902), Isaiah Shembe became involved in revivalist Protestantism. Baptized first by a Wesleyan pastor and then, in 1906, by William Leshega, associated with American Baptist groups, Isaiah left his family, became a roaming preacher and healer, and founded his own Nazareth Baptist Church, or Church of the Nazarites (ibandla lamaNazaretha), in 1910.12 According to Johannes Shembe, Isaiah’s son and successor, his father founded his own church because other churches rejected his converts for wearing African clothes.13 Isaiah was “different from all the other pastors, white as well as black”,14 because his way to God and salvation was a hybrid one, combining biblical rules with African traditions, a way that “appropriated, translated, rehistoricized, and read anew” diverse cultural meanings with “reference to a present time and a specific space”.15 Sabbath worship and sacred dance, which had become the church’s signature religious observances by the 1920s, produced hybrid distinctions in practice, attracted different sections of the laity, and marked a break with mainline mission churches.16 When Isaiah healed the sick, intervened with the ancestors and ensured the fertility of the land and the people in the name of Jehovah, he replaced healers, diviners, homestead heads and chiefs, who had been responsible for these services before. Reflecting this double distinction, oral traditions emphasized that Isaiah’s spiritual power surpassed that of both Christian and traditional religious experts.17 The Church headquarters, called eKuphakameni, the “place of elevation”, became the centre of the specific space of the NBC in the middle of the 1910s.18 Its location just outside Durban corresponded with the church’s early adherents,

12 Cabrita, Text, pp. 93–97; Heuser, Shembe, pp. 149–155. 13 B. Sundkler, Zulu Zion and some Swazi Zionists, London: Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 169. 14 Ibid. 15 H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge Classics, 2004, p. 53. 16 M. Echtler, “Shembe is the Way: The Nazareth Baptist Church in the Religious Field and in Academic Discourse”, in: M. Echtler and A. Ukah (eds.), Bourdieu in Africa: Exploring the Dynamics of Religious Fields, Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 236–266, at 242–247; Heuser, Soldaten Gottes, pp. 115–117; R. Papini, “Dance Uniform History in the Church of Nazareth Baptists: the Move to Tradition”, African Arts 37 (2004) 3, pp. 48–61, 91–93, at 52. 17 I. Hexham and G.C. Oosthuizen (eds.), The Story of Isaiah Shembe, vol. 1: History and Traditions Centered on Ekuphakameni and Mount Nhlangakazi, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996, pp. 106–107, 185–186; I. Hexham and G.C. Oosthuizen (eds.), The Story of Isaiah Shembe, vol. 2: Early Regional Traditions of the Acts of the Nazarites, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999, pp. 15–17, 37, 80, 99–103, 172–173, 222–224. 18 Roberts, “Shembe”, pp. 30, 53.

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marginalized Africans dispossessed of their land and forced into the capitalist economy as migrant workers. From there, Isaiah Shembe’s proselytizing travels took him to the south-west beyond the borders of the province of Natal into Pondoland, and to the north-east into Zululand.19 Both missionaries and African chiefs complained about Shembe challenging their authority, and state agents monitored, questioned and occasionally arrested him.20 However, freedom of religion and private property curtailed state intervention, and the magistrate of Port Shepstone discovered that he could not stop the establishment of a local base “[i]f the land on which Shembe is said to be building is private property”.21 Consequently, Isaiah Shembe bought land and built outposts. Despite state restrictions, and thanks to divine interventions, Isaiah owned 14 larger “farms” and 13 “mission stations” at the time of his death in 1935.22 To a certain extent, he followed the model of mission Christianity in providing land for converts and advocating agricultural development.23 However, the acquisition of land marked a decisive step in the institutionalization of the church beyond economic factors. Isaiah, who had wandered “in the wilderness, without his own abode, sleeping in the forests”,24 became the leader of an independent religious movement, whose network of temples (amathempeli) and homesteads (imizi) localized his way to heaven and established a new, spiritual landscape. The sacred places of the NBC outlined a “cartography of social utopia in rural space”25 and functioned thus as heterotopias, deviant places that constituted “a sort of simultaneously mythic and real contestation”26 of the spatial order of the state moving towards the apartheid system.

19 E. Gunner, The Man of Heaven and the Beautiful Ones of God: Writings from Ibandla lamaNazaretha, a South African Church, Leiden: Brill, 2002, p. 23. 20 Echtler, “Shembe”, pp. 240–242; E. Gunner, “Power House, Prison House – An Oral Genre and its Use in Isaiah Shembe’s Nazareth Baptist Church”, Journal of Southern African Studies 14 (1988) 1, pp. 204–227, at 214–218. 21 Pietermaritzburg Archive Repository (NAB), Chief Native Commissioner, Correspondence, Box 96, C.N.C. 2155/12/30–32: 24 September 1915, Chief Native Commissioner, Natal, to Magistrate, Port Shepstone. 22 Roberts, “Shembe”, pp. 39–40, 71–74. See Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 1, pp. 51–57, 142–143; Story, vol. 2, pp. 93–95, 156–158; C.A. Muller, Rituals of Fertility and the Sacrifice of Desire: Nazarite Women’s Performance in South Africa, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999, pp. 192–194. 23 Roberts, “Shembe”, pp. 63, 76. 24 C. Muller (ed.) and B. Mthethwa (trans.), Shembe Hymns, Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2010, p. 51. 25 Heuser, Shembe, p. 138 (translation by the author). 26 M. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”, Diacritics 16 (1986) 1, pp. 22–27, at 24.

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Within this other real space of the NBC, two places were of utmost significance. EKuphakameni, the church’s headquarters, the place of “spiritual uplift” or “realized eschatology” emplaced the gateway to paradise27: At the break of day, I shall enter Ekuphakameni. The gates will open upon my entry. I shall sing with joy in the holy village [i.e. holy homesteads: emizini oyingcwele], My heavenly escorts will rejoice at my entrance. I shall dance for him who is praiseworthy, I shall not be shy. Lift up, oh gates, lift up that we may enter.28

The mountain iNhlangakazi, located about 30 miles north of eKuphakameni in the rural Ndwedwe district, acquired central importance for the NBC in 1913, when Jehovah made a “covenant with my brown people” and invested Shembe with “the authority to go all over the earth and to preach the message of the Nazaretha Church to all the nations under the sun”.29 Together, iNhlangakazi and eKuphakameni located the beginning and the end of the way to redemption established through Isaiah Shembe. As goal of the January pilgrimage and the site of the July assembly, the holy mountain and the holy homestead hosted the most important events in the church’s yearly cycle from the mid-1910s onward. In sociological terms, Isaiah Shembe was a charismatic leader who proved his extraordinary, personal quality by working wonders, with Nazarites telling stories of his miraculous deeds – a major genre within the oral traditions of the church – continuously reproducing his symbolic capital.30 In addition, he built alliances with African chiefs, who furthered the expansion of the church by providing backing and land in the “native areas”, especially in the territory of the former Zulu kingdom, and whom he in turn provided with religious legitimization.31 With growing success and respectability, Isaiah transformed himself from a threat into a guardian of the system of Zulu patriarchal respect, ukuhlonipa, and the NBC into a “storehouse of tradition”.32 After Isaiah’s death in 1935, Johannes Shembe, his son and successor, successfully introduced the concept of hereditary charisma in the form of the singular, spiritual Shembe. However, leadership became contested after Johannes’ death in 1977, and Amos, his half-brother, led the majority of Nazarites to a 27 Roberts, “Shembe”, p. 53; Sundkler, Zion, p. 197. 28 Muller, Hymns, p. 131. 29 Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 1, pp. 81, 86. 30 Echtler, “Shembe”, 246–247. 31 Cabrita, Text, pp. 270–277: B. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961, pp. 98–99. 32 Ibid., p. 111; Papini, “Move”, p. 49; Roberts, “Shembe”, pp. 38, 94.

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new headquarters, eBuhleni (the “beautiful place”, established in 1980), while Londa, his son, stayed in eKuphakameni. The two factions continued to share iNhlangakazi in temporal succession, but after another succession conflict in 2011, the eBuhleni branch moved to a new mountain, iKhenana (Canaan), in 2014. The new places emphasised the status of the current leader as the embodiment of the spiritual Shembe, rather than the foundational acts of Isaiah. At the same time, the routinization of charisma in the NBC increasingly rested on “a reified, patriarchal version of Zulu tradition”.33 Looking back at eKuphakameni from eBuhleni, an anonymous Nazarite insisted on the continuity of the symbol of “the heavenly Jerusalem [. . .] constructed of round Zulu huts”, while the July assembly that strengthened church unity over the “tribal boundaries of Zululand” was organized “in analogy with the patterns of the [Zulu] royal residence”.34 Before turning to the practical construction of the church’s gatherings, I analyse how the NBC transcended the boundaries of tribes, clans or nations (izizwe) via the master narrative of Zulu redemption and the mobilization of deep Zulu resonances in its oral traditions.

Zulu Redemption For its relation to Zulu nation and kings, the NBCs master narrative is one of sin and redemption, as spelled out by the Sabbath liturgy, performed weekly in all the church’s temples since the 1920s. The teachings address the congregation as Nazarites (amaNazaretha), but also as children (bantwana) of the house (ndlu) of Senzangakhona, father of the first Zulu king.35 They urge the congregation to keep God’s laws: Do not behave like your fathers, the Dinganas [Dingan(a) was the second Zulu king, [1828–1840] and Senzangakhomas, our fathers who hardened their hearts. Jehovah eventually punished them in this manner, now today we bear their sins. So then observe Jehovah’s Sabbath.36

God is asked to “remember the house [indlu] of Senzangakhona and Dingana, which is dispersed, let him gather it from its dispersion. [. . .] Even if you come from all of the countries [emazweni onke] under the heavens [. . .] to Jehovah at the house [emizini] of Ekuphakameni”, he will accept your gifts only if you 33 34 35 36

Cabrita, Text, p. 275. Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story One, p. 53. Muller, Hymns, pp. 24–25, 28–29, 34–35. Ibid., p. 31.

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keep the Sabbath.37 The hymn sung by all oscillates between past and future glory. Jehovah is praiseworthy because “[h]e made us reign over the homesteads [kwemizi] of our enemies [. . .], scattered them with the arm that is omnipotent [. . .] led us in the face of our enemies. [. . .] We ruled over the hills and the surrounding mountains”.38 He is praised because “[h]e protected them by powerful kings [ngamakhosi anamandla] [. . .], liberated us [. . .], led them to the hill of Nhlangakazi [. . .], turned their slavery into a kingdom [ubukhosi]”.39 The theological interpretation is straightforward. The sins of the fathers, namely the Zulu kings, caused the dispersion of their children. Jehovah, whose “mercy endures forever”, offers a new kingdom to those who follow “the ways of the liberator” as transmitted by Isaiah Shembe.40 Following intervention by the Zulu royal family, the 2005 edition of the hymnal omitted the names in the section on the hardened hearts, but all the other references in the Sabbath liturgy or elsewhere remained, as in Hymn 67, which names all Zulu kings from Shaka (1816–1828) to Dinizulu (1884–1913) as the sinful fathers.41 The spiritual kingdom of the NBC rejects “the monarch as a unifying symbol for the Zulu nation”, and Shembe as Jehovah’s mediator gathers the people anew at eKuphakameni and iNhlangakazi.42 However, in singling out the Zulu kings for his theological reinterpretation of history, Isaiah Shembe privileges Zulu over Hlubi or any other identity in the construction of the new “nation” of Nazarites. The narrative of redemption draws upon biblical traditions, but places them in KwaZulu-Natal, and mobilizes Zulu cultural traditions in order to place Shembe, the lord (inkosi) of the NBC, in the position of the Zulu king (inkosi). The conquered homesteads of the scattered enemies allude to Zulu military history, and Jehovah mediated by Shembe liberates the Nazarites at the homesteads of eKuphakameni. He protects the people of the house of Senzangakhona through powerful kings (amakhosi), the royal ancestors, whose protection of the kingdom the Zulu king ensured through yearly first-fruit rituals (umkhosi).43 With house (indlu), homestead (umuzi), and kingdom (ubukhosi), the landscape of redemption builds

37 Ibid., p. 35. 38 Ibid., pp. 24–25. 39 Ibid., pp. 32–33, 36–37. 40 Ibid., p. 33. 41 Ibid., pp. 93–95; J. Cabrita, “Isaiah Shembe’s Theological Nationalism, 1920s–1935”, Journal of Southern African Studies 35 (2009) 3, pp. 609–625, at 620 n.75. 42 Ibid., p. 624. 43 E.J. Krige, The Social System of the Zulus, Pietermaritzburg: Shuter & Shooter, 1950, pp. 218, 249, 252.

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upon pre-colonial Zulu social structure, the NBC takes place in Zululand, albeit redeemed.44 Despite his critique of Zulu history, Isaiah Shembe nevertheless provided “the cultural symbols that could be organized into a cultural identity”.45 No matter what “nation” converts come from, the Sabbath liturgy addresses them, in the Zulu language, as the descendants of Zulu kings. To a certain extent, the unity of the NBC rests on its ability to turn Zulu-speaking Nguni and others, such as Swazi, Thonga, or Shangaan,46 into Zulu. In the following, I explicate the extent to which the NBC resounds with Zulu cultural traditions. In imagination and practice, Nazarites create their own Zululand, thereby contributing to the ongoing construction of Zulu ethnicity.

Zulu Resonances The oral traditions of the NBC play upon the master narrative inscribed in the hymnal. In church services, during monthly meetings, and in everyday conversations Nazarites tell stories of the deeds of Isaiah Shembe and his successors. While preaching is largely restricted to male officials, the “theatre of memory” of the oral traditions nevertheless forms “a dynamic, dialogic site for church members, who absorbed sermons and testimonies given during services, reproduced them and made them their own”.47 While Nazarites also wrote down and collected these stories, practices that Cabrita considers central for the production of authority, in my view the continuing oral performance of the stories not only reproduces the leaders’ charisma, but also connects church doctrine with the members’ life histories.48 Taking place in the third space of cultural enunciation, the performed stories mobilize select traditions through the positionality of the speaker49; in (re)telling them, Nazarites (re-)create the church’s landscape of memory and place themselves within it.

44 Ibid., pp. 39–41, 177–180, 217–218. 45 L. Vail, “Introduction: Ethnicity in Southern Africa”, in: L. Vail (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, London: James Currey, 1989, pp. 1–19, at 11. 46 Vilakazi, Shembe, p. 126. 47 Gunner, Man, pp. 25–26. 48 Cabrita, Text and Authority, pp. 30–31; M. Echtler, “A Real Mass Worship They Will Never Forget: Rituals and Cognition in the Nazareth Baptist Church, South Africa”, in: A. Chaniotis et al. (eds.), Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, vol. 2, Body, Performance, Agency, and Experience, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010, pp. 371–397, at 381–384. 49 Bhabha, Location, pp. 50–56.

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In January 2012, Sibongile, a women’s leader (umkhokheli), told me the story of the conversion of her father, Sithole.50 The story hinges on Isaiah Shembe raising Sithole’s son from the dead, an intervention that fills Sithole’s deserted homestead with his descendants, with Sibongile herself the living proof of Jehovah’s mercy for those who follow the ways of the liberator. Her story uses the common motive of childlessness to emphasize the heterotopic character of Nazarite homesteads, flourishing amidst the colonial destruction of Nguni society. It also reflects the expansion of the church in the 1920s, with the miracle taking place at the homestead of the first Nazarite in the territory of the Chunu chiefdom (emaChunwini) and Sithole’s homestead becoming the second outpost.51 However, Isaiah Shembe does not only restore the house of Sithole: he heals the whole Chunu “nation”. Explaining that the fighting of the people caused the drought afflicting the region, Shembe took Sithole to the mountain iNtshoza and instructed him to mark the space of a Nazarite temple with white stones. Whenever there was a drought, Sithole should gather people there and ask for rain by singing a church hymn and a hymn of the amabutho, the agegrade regiments of the Zulu army. Established before Sibongile was born, this ritual continued during her lifetime. In cases of drought, her father led them up the mountain to ask for rain, they sang, and they would always be late to return home, because the ensuing rain made the rivers flood so quickly.52 Sibongile’s story relates to the specific historical context of succession conflicts in the Chunu chieftaincy, located in the Msinga district at the former border between the colony of Natal and the Zulu kingdom. It reflects other church traditions that portray Shembe as the bringer of peace and rain to the region.53 Shembe also climbed mountains to make rain in the Empangeni and Nongoma districts, and the quickly flooding rivers as signs of successful rainmakers are not restricted to the oral traditions of the NBC.54 Zulu would plead for rain on

50 Interview with Sibongile (alias), Homies, 19 January 2012, transcript and translation Sicelo Mpungose. In response to my opening question how she became a member, Sibongile told the story in one go, talking for 27 minutes. The way she told the story suggested that she had performed it before. 51 According to Sibongile, her oldest sister was born in 1926; the raised-from-the-dead brother was the second child. 52 Interview with Sibongile. 53 Cabrita, Text, pp. 285–292; Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 2, p. 171. 54 Ibid., pp. 215–217, 239–241. According to one story about a drought of the 1860s, Langalibalele, chief of the Hlubi and rainmaker, made rain for the Zulu king Mpande. The rain came so quickly that it doused the fires on which the sacrificial oxen were being cooked, and flooded all the rivers of Zululand overnight: C.de B. Webb and J.B. Wright (eds.), The James Stuart Archive, vol. 4, Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1986, pp. 111–112.

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“characteristic hills and mountains on which nobody builds” when other means, the chiefs’ intercession with the ancestors, the virgins’ mediation with the sky princess Nomkhubulwane, and the rainmakers’ rituals had failed.55 In NBC stories, chiefs ask Shembe for rain; he makes rain by having the men and virgins sing “Oh, it is dawn, Zulu nation!”, and he succeeds where Norwegian and Anglican pastors have failed.56 By making it rain, Shembe replaces the precolonial functionaries and bests Christian competitors; he heals the “nations”, brings peace to the people and ensures the fertility of the land – his is a thisworldly redemption. What is striking about the Sibongile story is the way in which Shembe makes it rain, which resonates deeply with Zulu cultural traditions. At the centre of the ritual prescribed by Isaiah lay the songs, an arbitrary Zulu regimental hymn and the church hymn Qubula Nkosi: We say dance O King The son of Mpande we left him at Hlobane It is the battle of the elephant’s calf We left him at Hlobane.57

This hymn was not included in the NBC’s printed hymnal, possibly because of the politically explosive reference to king Cetshwayo, son of Mpande, and “his fight against white domination in the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879”,58 a reference implying “that the Nazarites were ‘digging too deeply in their tradition’”.59 Not only does the hymn feature in Sibongile’s story; men sang it when circling Isaiah Shembe’s house at eKuphakameni, and the virgins of the church perform it as part of their iNtanda ritual when returning to eBuhleni during the July congregation.60 Elizabeth Gunner suggests that the hymn, referring to “Zulu experience of royalty, of defeat, defiance, and the war”, might be a royal or regimental hymn “put to a new use”.61 A church tradition relating to the invention of the virgins’ ritual specifies the new use as the acquisition of land in defiance of the laws of the whites. Isaiah Shembe tells the virgins to sing “Drive them away, Lord of the

55 A.-I. Berglund, Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism, London: Hurst, 1976, p. 44. See ibid., pp. 53–56; Krige, System, pp. 199, 247–248, 319–320. 56 Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 1, pp. 95–96; Story, vol. 2, pp. 215–217, 239–241; Muller, Hymns, p. 171. 57 Sibongile mentioned only the line “Qubula Nkosi okaMpande samshiya eHlobane”. This is Gunner’s translation of “Sithi Qubula Nkosi – OkaMpande samshiy’ eHlobane – Uyimpi yezinyane lendlovu – Samshiy’ eHlobane” (Gunner, “House”, p. 209). 58 Sithole, Hymns, p. 99. 59 Muller, Rituals, p. 196. 60 Gunner, “House”, p. 209; Muller, Rituals, pp. 195–196; Sithole, Hymns, pp. 97–100. 61 Gunner, “House”, p. 209.

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nation of Mpande. We overcame them at Hlobane”, with the result that “the Whites were overcome, and the farm of Ntanda was obtained”.62 Carol Muller links the virgins’ practices with Zulu ideas concerning Nomkhubulwane and suggests that the hymn appropriates “an old praise to the Zulu king Cetshwayo [. . .] believed to cause thunder, lightning, and rain immediately after it was sung”, mobilizing “the truly sacred – that which is deeply rooted in the past and contains the heart of traditional power”.63 Nkosinathi Sithole considers the hymn a lament rather than a praise, in which Shembe asks God to lift “Cetshwayo’s spirit from the valley of sorrow to the place of rest and tranquillity”, a request relating to Zulu rituals raising the spirit of a deceased person (ukubuyisa).64 With multiple uses and shifting meaning, it might be useful to ask who is speaking. For the genealogy of the hymn, it is important that the Nazarites claim for themselves the voice of the age-grade regiments (amabutho) of the Zulu army. Hlobane, a mountain in northern Zululand, was the site of a Zulu victory in March 1879, immediately followed by the decisive defeat by the British at Khambula that “really broke the neck of Zulu power”.65 While neither Cetshwayo nor any other son of Mpande actually died at Hlobane/Khambula,66 as suggested by Gunner, Muller and Sithole, Zulu warriors fought there. Returning “from the battle of Hlobane”, warriors boasted in front of Cetshwayo: “By us! [. . .] What did we leave them? [. . .] It is war!” before giving the royal salute “Bayede! You of the elephant!”67 More important than the intertextual resonances are the ritual functions of the Zulu regiments. They sang their hymns and danced to bring the spirits of deceased kings to their former homesteads, and they performed similar rituals there in case of drought.68 When Sibongile told the story of her father in 2012, she positioned herself in the NBC as hailing from the family that ensured the well-being of the Chunu “nation” as a whole. She appropriated the church’s master narrative of Zulu sin and Nazarite redemption and turned it into a story of empowerment through Zulu royal and military traditions. Her father/Shembe/Jehovah made rain by reenacting on a mountain what Zulu regiments had done at the graves of the Zulu kings, with the addition of a church hymn that recalls the last of the

62 Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 2, p. 171. 63 Muller, Rituals, pp. 163–164, 195–196. 64 Sithole, Hymns, p. 99. 65 J. Laband, Rope of Sand: The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Kingdom in the Nineteenth Century, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1995, p. 263. 66 Ibid., p. 277. 67 Webb and Wright, Archive, p. 147 (“Ngati! [. . .] Si ba tshiye ini? [. . .] Impi!”, ibid., p. 156). 68 Ibid., p. 146.

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independent Zulu kings and a battle of the Anglo-Zulu war. In Sibongile’s story, Nazarite redemption for the Chunu people, who, like the Hlubi, had tried to avoid incorporation into the Zulu kingdom, includes submission to Zulu cultural traditions.69 In another story located on iNtshoza mountain, Isaiah Shembe sent two Nazarites to heal the Chunu people. When the Nazarites reported back, Shembe told them to sit down facing east and dictated Hymn 214: Our Liberator has come. We, the offspring of Dingane, we have heard him. The liberator of the Zulu has come.70

Shembe explained that he did not only help the living, but also the dead. “Now these people, who died in war, have been liberated. God had dug for them a hole and buried them there on the mountain, and they praised him with this hymn.”71 God’s liberation of the dead Zulu warriors brought them home into the church, just as the ukubuyisa ritual brought back spirits of the dead into the homestead, whose entrance typically faces east.72 Dealing with the ancestors was of central concern in the NBC from early on73; today, a pamphlet entitled “Help for the life of the nation” details the ritual proceedings, including sacrifices at the entrance of the homestead and the cattle enclosure (isibaya), as in the ukubuyisa rituals.74 With the spatial order of this practical instruction, I turn to spatial practices in the NBC.

69 J. Wright, “Making Identities in the Thukela-Mzimvubu Region c.1770–c.1940”, in: C. Hamilton and N. Leibhammer (eds.), Tribing and Untribing the Archive, Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2016, pp. 183–215, at 196, 201. 70 Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 2, p. 180. 71 Ibid. 72 At least according to the structuralist rendition of the Zulu/Nguni homesteads, which opposes up/west/living with down/east/dead (A. Kuper, “Symbolic Dimensions of the Southern Bantu Homestead”, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 50 [1980] 1, pp. 8–23, at 13, 20). 73 Roberts, “Shembe”, p. 98. 74 B.M. Ntombela, “Usizo Lesizwe Nempilo Yaso”, eBuhleni, 2008, 14-page printed booklet, transl. Zakhona Maduna, pp. 2–6; Krige, System, pp. 53, 169–170.

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Spatial Structure Next to the daily prayers and weekly Sabbath services that take place at the members’ homes and local temples, Nazarites gather around their leader, the lord (inkosi) Shembe, who travels throughout his realm. About 12 assemblies (imihlangano) take place throughout the year, producing the recurring rhythm of church life. Lasting from one to four weeks, ten take place at various locations in KwaZulu-Natal, one in Eastern Cape and one in Gauteng.75 With the exception of Gauteng, the core territory of the NBC emplaced through the assemblies correlates closely with the area of influence established by Isaiah, who started the gatherings at the holy mountain in January and at church headquarters in July and who also held assemblies at various places in Zululand.76 Johannes Shembe established the circuit of assemblies when he “started traveling to the whole area preaching the gospel and he married many wives, building the homesteads of Shembe [imizi kaShembe]”.77 The assemblies of the NBC all follow the spatial order of eBuhleni (see Map 5.1). It is located on a hillside rising towards west. Looking up from the east, where the main entrance is located, the right side is the living area of the men, the left side that of the women. In the middle is the open-air temple, encircled by white stones and shaded by trees. On top of it lies the walled-in area of the leader, including his well-built mansions with green roof-tiles, the tabernacle housing the vessels of covenant, and the graves of former leaders of the eBuhleni section, Amos and Vimbeni Shembe. To the left of the leader’s area is the fenced-in section of the virgins. Ebuhleni is an informal settlement, with housing ranging from stone structures with corrugated iron roofs to wooden frames covered with plastic sheeting. In times of assembly, the settlement grows by about one-third in size, with temporary huts and tents added to the west, while keeping to the gender division. During the weekends of July 2008 up to 100,000 people gathered at eBuhleni, and the Sabbath services took place at a new temple located to the west, as the temple at the centre had become far too small to accommodate the congregation.78

75 January: iNhlangakazi/iKhenana (KZN), March: Ntabankulu (Eastern Cape), April: eBuhleni (KZN), Zimbankomo (Gauteng), May: Gibisiwa (KZN), June: Linda (KZN), July: eBuhleni, August: Dannhauser, eMzimoya (both KZN), September: eBuhleni, October: Judea (KZN), November: Nelisiwe, eNyokeni (both KZN). Interview with Bhekinkosi (alias), iNhlangakazi, 22 January 2009, transcript Sicelo Mpungose, transl. Sinenhlanhla Mkhize; field notes, 12 January 2017. 76 Gunner, Man, pp. xv, 23, 121. 77 Interview with Bhekinkosi. 78 3–27 July 2008, 19–26 January 2009. The number of Nazarites is my estimate.

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Map 5.1: eBuhleni, 31 May 2010.

Other assemblies put the same basic layout in place with little variation. At iNhlangakazi in January 2009, there were no permanent buildings, so the camp consisted entirely of temporary huts and tents. It was located on the eastern flank of the mountain, with a winding road leading up west separating the men’s area on the right from the women’s on the left. The virgins camped to the left of the central temple, and the leader stayed at the highest, westernmost part of the camp, just below the top of the mountain, where the Sabbath service and the dancing took place.79 At iKhenana in 2017, the camp was located on the huge top of the mountain, rising slightly to the north (see Map 5.2). On top of the central temple lay the walled-in compound of the leader, featuring seven houses built in the eBuhleni style. To its left was the area of the virgins, enclosed on all other sides by the women’s section. The right-hand men’s section included the only other permanent building, a large rondavel for the chiefs in the church. The “top” of the mountain, where the Sabbath services and the dancing took place, was located beyond a small creek to the east of the camp.80 The spatial structure of a gender-divided camp surrounding or facing up to the temple and the leader’s compound was also in place at the other assemblies I

79 7–19 January 2009. 80 12–17 January 2017.

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Map 5.2: iKhenana, 24 January 2017.

attended.81 Likewise, it informed the seating arrangement of all Sabbath services I took part in, not only at the assemblies but also at the local temples.82 According to Gugulethu, who met Isaiah as a young girl, the spatial separation of men, women, and virgins has always been a feature of church gatherings, although much stricter enforced in the past.83 At eKuphakameni in the 1930s, virgins and single women stayed in the upper half and men in the lower, with married couples residing outside the holy village proper, and there was a central grove used for services during the assemblies.84 Thus, the left-right gender division may have been Amos’ invention, peculiar to the eBuhleni branch of the NBC. Looking back from eBuhleni, an anonymous Nazarite emphasized the continuity with eKuphakameni as “the future city of God”, as well as with “the Zulu royal kraal” with regard to construction and “religious meaning”.85 This brings us to the genealogy of the spatial structure of the Nazarites’ assemblies.

81 23/24 August 2008 at Dannhauser, 21/22 March 2009 at Ntabankulu, 17–22 January 2012 at Homies, substituting iNhlangakazi. 82 Numerous Saturdays in 2008 and 2009 at temples in central Durban and Kwa Mashu. 83 Interview with Gugulethu (alias), eBuhleni, 23 July 2008, transcript and transl. Sicelo Mpungose. 84 Roberts, “Shembe”, pp. 53, 58. 85 Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 1, p. 53.

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According to academic reconstructions of pre-colonial Zulu domestic space, the homestead “is built on ground sloping towards the main entrance, which usually faces east, so that the chief hut, besides being at the top end, is also on the highest ground, overlooking the rest of the kraal”.86 The cattle enclosure at the centre of the homestead “is the Zulu temple, where the spirits of the ancestors are thought to linger, the place where sacrifices take place when the spirits are asked to protect the inmates or thanked for blessings received”.87 “[A]n imaginary line [. . .] drawn from the gate [. . .] to the great house [. . .] at the apex” divides the wives of the polygamous homestead head, and their houses within the homestead, into two opposing groups.88 The gender division structures the inside of the houses, with the left being the women’s, the right the men’s side, while the back of the house is the place of the ancestors (umsamo).89 In the eBuhleni branch of the NBC, Shembe, mediator of Jehovah and the ancestors, embodiment of power, who gathers the collective, takes the place of the great house, which “represents the unity of the homestead, and is the repository of ritual objects and the site of appeal to the ancestors”.90 The temple, where Nazarites praise and appeal to Jehovah in daily prayers and Sabbath services, takes the place of the cattle enclosure. There was no special place for virgins in the Zulu homesteads, but there was in the residences of Zulu kings, the isigodlo, located at the top of the residence, where young women lived, sent by the king’s subjects to serve him.91 In the NBC, “the only one who is considered clean is the virgin [inkosazana]. That is why it is their duty to work for and around the Lord [inkosi – king, chief; the title of Shembe]. There are those whom he usually sends around. All these virgins are given to him by their parents in the church.”92 As “a kind of effectively enacted utopia”, the assemblies of the NBC represent, contest and invert “all the other real sites” of (post-)apartheid South Africa.93 Their spatial structure is the “principal locus for the objectification of

86 Krige, System, p. 42. For contemporary homesteads, see J. Hickel, Democracy as Death: The Moral Order of Anti-Liberal Politics in South Africa, Oakland: University of California Press, 2015, pp. 63–72. 87 Krige, System, p. 42. 88 A. Kuper, “The ‘House’ and Zulu Political Structure in the Nineteenth Century”, Journal of African History 34 (1993), pp. 469–487, at 477. 89 Krige, System, p. 46; Kuper, “Dimensions”, pp. 13–14. 90 Kuper, “House”, p. 477. 91 Krige, System, p. 234; Laband, Rope, 65–66. 92 Interview with Nomhlanhla (alias), eBuhleni, 18 July 2008, transcript and transl. Sicelo Mpungose. 93 Foucault, “Spaces”, p. 24.

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the generative schemes [. . .] underlying all the arbitrary provisions” of Nazarite culture, and living at them “leads to the em-bodying of the structures of the world”.94 The spatial structure of the NBC bears a Zulu stamp that informs its social practices. As places ordering people and things, the assemblies have agency, like “any thing that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference”.95 In the embodied experience of the participants, the lived-in places of the assemblies affect them through the force of their atmosphere of respect, hardship, and celebration.

Atmospheric Places Atmosphere refers to “the affective mood which spatial arrangements stir in the sensual bodies of their users”.96 At the assemblies, Nazarites produce and experience an atmosphere of respect, hardship, and celebration through kneeling, walking, and dancing. Sacralization of place depends on establishing difference with surrounding space. At the assemblies of the NBC, you take off your shoes when entering the camp, and in the case of the holy mountain you have to wear the church gown (umnazaretha), just like inside the temples. Living in camp means adhering to rules. Nazarite rules, drawn primarily from the Old Testament, prohibit pork, alcohol, and tobacco, the cutting of hair and wearing of shoes in places of worship, but also demand sitting on “African mats” during services and wearing “African traditional regalia [. . .] during the holy dances”.97 While Nazarites should follow the rules all the time, social control intensifies at the assemblies. In addition, no one should run or shout, or transgress gender segregation. During the time of my research, men and women interacted rather freely in the common ground of the camps, but in the past, they met only at the times of worship.98 Living in the camps, Nazarites not only follow the church rules: they also show proper respect (ukuhlonipha). In Zulu patriarchy, the male homestead

94 P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 89. 95 B. Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 71. 96 A. Reckwitz, “Affective Spaces: A Praxeological Outlook”, Rethinking History 16 (2012), 2, pp. 241–258, at 254. 97 J.M. Vilakazi, speech, Tshwane University of Technology, 8 June 2008, 10-page typescript, pp. 9–10. Vilakazi refers to Numbers 6, 1–2, Judges 13, 4–5. 98 Interviews with Gugulethu and Sibongile.

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head occupied the highest position, and primarily young women marrying into the homestead had to follow “proscriptions of action, space and language”99 that were “indexical of an inferior position of the women in society”.100 In the NBC, Shembe occupies the position of highest respect. When Nazarites encounter their leader, they drop to their knees and shout “You are holy (uyingcwele), Amen!” When Vimbeni and Mduduzi Shembe blessed the afflicted, they received them seated on a chair, flanked by kneeling virgins and church officials, and supplicants approaching on their knees.101 These expressions of respect go back to the time of Isaiah.102 While centred on the leader, respect in the NBC extends to the church hierarchy and to all elders within a patriarchal system. Moving through camp involves gestures of respect whenever encountering people worthy of respect, but also at certain times and locations. At eBuhleni, a ringing bell recalls the death of Isaiah, and everyone kneels and prays. When moving up through eBuhleni, everyone genuflects when passing the statue of the founder and the graves of Amos and Vimbeni. Nazarites kneel before entering any temple, and they kneel during three-quarters of the Sabbath liturgy.103 As embodied signals, “gestures may communicate something more [. . .] than do the corresponding words. For instance, to kneel subordination [. . .] is not simply to state subordination, but to display [. . .] that state itself.”104 At the assemblies, Nazarites continuously display their subordination to Jehovah, Shembe, church rules and hlonipha customs. Through their (inter-)action, they create and experience a respectful atmosphere, which turns the assemblies into heterotopic “space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as” society outside “is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled”.105 The perfect order emplaced at the assemblies creates difference, yet at the same time connects the church to its socio-cultural environment. Nazarite respect reverberates with Zulu patriarchy. This cultural resonance has been regarded as the church’s hallmark since the 1940s,106 and continues to be a factor of attraction, just as it reproduces 99 R.K. Herbert, “Hlonipha and the Ambiguous Woman”, Anthropos 85 (1990) 4/6, pp. 455–473, at 457. 100 S. Rudwick and M. Shange, “Hlonipha and the rural Zulu woman”, Agenda 82 (2009), pp. 66–75, at 69–70. 101 Field notes, 22 July 2008, 15 January 2017. 102 Roberts, “Shembe”, pp. 47, 94. 103 Muller, Hymns, p. 29. 104 R. Rappaport, Ecology, Meaning, and Religion, Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1979, p. 199. 105 Foucault, “Spaces”, p. 27. 106 Cabrita, Text, pp. 270–277; Sundkler, Prophets, pp. 98–99, 111.

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the church’s reactionary image as part of “the power dynamics of hlonipha in contemporary rural and traditionalist homes” that counteract “the constitutional commitment to gender equality” in post-apartheid South Africa.107 Emblematic of the atmosphere of hardship is the three-day barefoot walk to the holy mountain, the church’s “true test of one’s spiritual and physical strength – the pinnacle of ritual purity and the positive assurance of entrance into heaven”.108 With Isaiah, Nazarites walked cross-country in one day, using roads, which extended the distance to 30 miles; they walked for two days in the time of Johannes; and the pilgrimage did not extend to three days until the reign of Amos.109 The moving congregation invited state intervention, and oral traditions mention divine intervention.110 In 2009, about 5,000 Nazarites walked to iNhlangakazi, while many more travelled by car, with peak attendance of approximately 50,000 at the weekends. Today, the tarmac roads are hardest on the feet, especially if it is sunny, and the Nazarites pray for clouds, called umbrella, during the journey.111 Accidents are a problem, and a car smashed a woman’s leg in 2009.112 The path itself forms part of the sacred topography, as it shows the way to paradise and its imprint on the soles of the feet ensures entry into heaven.113 Nazarites take pride in the tough soles of their feet, acquired in rural life, “herding the cattle of my grandfather as a boy”.114 When Mduduzi conducted the congregation to the new holy mountain iKhenana in 2014, he led on foot, just like Isaiah, which supported the legitimacy of his innovation as well as his claim to be the true lord of the NBC, and it underscored his toughness as a leader in the eyes of his followers.115 Hardship at the assemblies extends beyond the walk to the mountain. Life in camp involves the setting up of temporary shelters or tents and the everyday fetching of water, cooking of food, and washing of clothes. While life is not as hard as it used to be, when building materials and food were carried and water was fetched from the river,116 it still requires a set of “rural” skills that are characteristic of the socio-economic background of many church members and a hardy disposition that forms a valued part of Nazarite identity. 107 Rudwick and Shange, “Hlonipha”, p. 72. 108 Muller, Rituals, p. 12. 109 Interview with Sibongile. 110 Cabrita, Text, pp. 265, 310, 321; Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 1, pp. 93–94. 111 Field notes, 23 February 2009. 112 Field notes, 7 January 2009. 113 Field notes, 9 January 2009; Muller, Rituals, p. 79. 114 Field notes, 8–11 January 2009, 12 January 2017. 115 Field notes, 15 January 2017. 116 Interviews with Gugulethu and Sibongile.

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Likewise, exposure to the elements has not changed, and living in the camps entails enduring heat, cold, and wetness. Being “subject to awesome displays of thunder, lightning, wind, and storm” influenced the emergence of Zulu sacred places, and contributes to the atmosphere of NBC assemblies, where storms occasionally lift up tents or tear down habitations.117 This exposure pertains not only to camp life, but also and especially to the religious practices of the NBC, at least of the eBuhleni branch, where all Sabbath worship and dancing take place in the open air. To endure hours in scorching sun or freezing rain, if not happily then at least without complaining, belongs to the core of Nazarite habitus. This hardiness is a source of pride and marker of difference to cathedral Catholics or plastic chair Pentecostals. The assemblies’ atmosphere of respect and hardship shapes Nazarite identity. At the same time, church members celebrate their community. As Nazarites from all “nations”, regions, and temples gather around their leader, the assemblies emplace the unity of the church. They offer the opportunity to socialize with other Nazarites, meet old friends, and make new acquaintances. As marriage rules advocate endogamy within the NBC and exogamy on the level of the local temples, the church gatherings are the main sites for the reproduction of the community in a literal sense. While Isaiah did not allow courting at eKuphakameni,118 Nazarites of the eBuhleni branch look for potential spouses at the camps. On the last Sunday of the bigger assemblies, especially at eBuhleni in July, proposals are made and marriage ceremonies take place. Both courtship and ceremonies contribute to the festive or celebratory atmosphere. The signature practice of celebrating community in the NBC is the sacred dance. In dancing, Nazarites connect heaven with earth, and the ancestors join the living in praising Jehovah on the “journey to heaven”.119 Dancing in full attire takes place only at the assemblies, but then rather frequently on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. Nazarite dancing bears considerable similarity with “precolonial ‘Zulu’ dance”.120 The attire of the virgins, married women, and older men is neo-traditional Nguni/Zulu; only some of the younger men dance in “Scottish” attire.

117 J. Fernandez, “Emergence and Convergence in some African Sacred Places”, in: S.M. Low and D. Lawrence-Zúñiga (eds.), The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture, Malden: Blackwell, 2003, pp. 187–203, at 189; field notes, 23 August 2008; 16 January 2017. 118 Roberts, “Shembe”, p. 122. 119 Sithole, Hymns, pp. 69, 187. 120 Ibid., p. 179.

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Established by the 1930s, dancing attire, music, and style made the performance “immediately recognizable as Zulu holy dance (ukusina)”, a “Nazarite bricolage [. . .] spelling out a biblical creed with African identity [. . .] that had boldly broken with mission and derived (Ethiopian) norms”.121 Even the Nazarites’ “sacralized (con-)version of a war dance”, signalled by the use of small shields,122 drew upon pre-colonial precedents, as Zulu regiments, having replaced spears and war shields with sticks and dancing shields, “danced as girls do [sina]” when dancing for rain.123 When Nazarites dance to heaven, they dance in an atmosphere resounding with Zulu “cultural sensitivity and attentiveness”.124 Emplacing things and moving bodies, the assemblies of the NBC mobilize and reproduce their own version of Zulu habitus; they affect people beyond the Nazarite community and partake in the ongoing re-creation of Zulu identity in the wider society. When Amos introduced the use of leopard skins for a man’s collar and headdress (umqhele) in the 1980s, Zulu king Zwelithini, who had reinvented both as royal attributes in the 1970s, criticized him for using attire restricted to royalty, to which Amos replied that his attire was not from this world, according to church tradition.125 Today, not only the king, but also politicians like Jacob Zuma or protesters wear leopard skins, just like the Nazarites, and Sjava, a Zulu artist, explained that he named his best-selling album Umqhele because you “don’t have to really be a king or be born from a royal family, you can see yourself as a king or queen. Just carry that.”126

Conclusion Isaiah Shembe commemorated the battle of Ncome/Blood River, celebrated in apartheid South Africa as Day of the Covenant, in his Prayer for Dingana’s Day:

121 Papini, “Move”, p. 52. 122 Heuser, Shembe, pp. 224, 250 (translation by the author). 123 Webb and Wright, Archive, p. 117. 124 Reckwitz, “Spaces”, p. 255. 125 Field notes, 14 July 2008; S. Klopper, “Mobilising Cultural Symbols in Twentieth Century Zululand”, in: R. Hill, M. Muller, and M. Trump (eds.), African Studies Forum I, Pretoria: HSRC, 1991, pp. 193–226, at 194, 212–214; Papini, “Move”, p. 60. 126 Citizen, 23 March 2015, http://citizen.co.za/news/news-national/349347/foreigners-mustgo-home-king-zwelithini/; Mail & Guardian, 18 January 2018, https://mg.co.za/article/2018-0119-00-land-reform-bid-enrages-amakhosi; Fader, 23 January 2019, https://www.thefader.com/ 2019/01/23/sjava-has-a-contagiously-spiritual-take-on-trap (all accessed 9 April 2019).

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So! There it is! Our blood is upon us as retribution for our sins. Because we have sinned in Jehovah’s eyes the beautiful dancing of the young girls of Zululand has been cut short. The beating of the drums has ceased, it is an evil omen from that day to this. The river was full to the brim with old men and the young men were hyenas’ food.127

It was the destruction of pre-colonial African society, brought about by the sins of the fathers. From this misery, Shembe led the people to Jehovah and to redemption. This narrative of redemption fitted with the religious interest of the African laity of the time, as it justified their status as colonized people.128 By telling a story of specifically Zulu sin and redemption, Isaiah appropriated the most prestigious African “nation” and established Nazarite unity “over the tribal boundaries of Zululand”.129 No matter what “nation” Nazarites come from, be it Hlubi, Chunu, any other Zulu-speaking Nguni, Mpondo, Swazi, or Shangaan from Mozambique, every Sabbath all Nazarites are addressed in Zulu as “children of Senzangakhona”.130 Speaking “Zulu with a strange accent” when arriving at iNhlangakazi,131 the Hlubi Isaiah established an institution teaching “deep Zulu” to alienated urbanites.132 Redemption and paradise to come are not the only things the NBC has to offer. Nazarites have recreated their own Zululand here on earth. At their sacred homesteads, hardy people show proper respect, beat drums, and dance again. In structure and atmosphere, the assemblies reverberate with Zulu culture. They form affective loci for the creation of Zulu identity that radiate beyond the religious sphere. The “beautiful dancing of the young girls of Zululand” takes place again at the NBC, and the virgins dance to heaven. Yet they also perform a reed dance for their Lord (inkosi), just as the Zulu virgins perform one for their king (inkosi), with the difference that Isaiah (re)invented the tradition in the 1930s, while the Zulu king Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu did not do so until the 1980s.133 Isaiah Shembe’s poetic language and reinterpreted history provided “cultural symbols” that fed into the construction of Zulu identity, and the NBC emplaced “those ‘rediscovered traditions’ which emphasized control in the name of ‘custom’”.134 Drawing upon and reproducing the “habitus of the homestead”,

127 Gunner, Man, p. 69. 128 Echtler, “Shembe”, p. 239. 129 Hexham and Oosthuizen, Story, vol. 1, p. 53. 130 Muller, Hymns, p. 29; Vilakazi, Shembe, p. 126. 131 L. Gunner, “Testimonies of Dispossession and Repossession: Writing about the South African Prophet Isaiah Shembe”, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 73 (1991) 3, pp. 93–103, at 98. 132 See Muller, Rituals, p. 196; Sithole, Hymns, p. 97 n. 11. 133 Klopper, “Symbols”, p. 195; Muller, Rituals, p. 189. 134 Vail, “Introduction”, pp. 11, 15.

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the church’s assemblies established counter-sites to the topography of migrant labour, and remained heterotopic with regard to “the principles of liberal democracy” in post-apartheid South Africa.135 While indigeneity moved out of fashion in academic discourse on African Christianity, the Nazarites continued to partake in the construction of Zulu ethnicity. In the wake of the succession conflict of 2011, Mduduzi, majority leader of eBuhleni, has intensified collaboration with the Zulu king. Since 2013, he has included the royal residence in the cycle of church assemblies, and in September 2016, he opened Zwelithini’s “Zulu Kingdom 200 Years Celebration” with a Sabbath service. In January 2017, Zwelithini visited iKhenana, where he endorsed Mduduzi as rightful leader of eBuhleni, three months after the High Court in Durban had ruled otherwise. To the listening Nazarites, the king explained the importance of mountains for the Zulu, who “ask for rain when on the mountain, from Nomkhubulwana”, and offered an interpretation of the relationship between Zulus and Nazarites: “[Mduduzi] is your father in spirit; I, as the king of the Zulu nation, am your father in flesh.”136 When Zwelithini entered the Sabbath service, about two-thirds of the Nazarites greeted him with the royal salute: “Bayede! You of the elephant!”137 Mduduzi is not merely a Zulu traditionalist. He is the spiritual Shembe, mediator of Jehovah’s way to heaven. Yet he redeems Zululand on the way. A true descendant of Isaiah, he is a major player in Zulu identity politics today.

135 Hickel, Democracy, p. 88. 136 Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, speech, iKhenana, 14 January 2017, transcript and translation Brilliant Mdedu. 137 Field notes, 14 January 2017.

Afe Adogame

6 From Redemption City to Christian Disneyland: The Unfolding of Transnational Religious Spaces Journeying through Transnational Religious Spaces On 1 December 2018, with three colleagues I began a one-week tour of Nigeria, Ghana, and Liberia. We began by paying a courtesy call on the General Overseer (GO) of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), visiting the Redeemed Christian Bible College (RCBC), and attending the 2018 RCCG Holy Ghost Congress event (lasting from 3–8 December) at the Redemption Camp, Mowe.1 This was to reciprocate an earlier visit by a high-powered RCBC delegation to Princeton, in their quest for institutional collaboration. Through strategic timing we had a rare opportunity to secure a meeting with the GO,2 who is reported to travel outside the country all-year round except in December during the annual Holy Ghost Congress. On the same flight were a few other passengers in the First and Business Class, apparently delegates (mostly white Americans) to the Congress. I only recognized them on arrival, when the GO’s protocol officials, at the MMA International Airport in Lagos, met our team and others. They whisked us away in a motorcade accompanied by tight security to the luxurious Redemption Resort operated by the Hospitality Department of the Redemption Camp (Redemption City). One incident during our arrival at Lagos airport deserves mention because of what it says about territoriality. Our team included a religious luminary of 1 For a YouTube recorded version of the RCCG Holy Ghost Service – Glory Ahead, December 2018, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MJFqrF5l2A (accessed 28 December 2018). 2 As I have demonstrated elsewhere, the complex peregrination of the church’s leader makes him a global traveler, but also suggest an instance of religious transnationalism from below. See A. Adogame, The African Christian Diaspora: New Currents and Emerging Trends in World Christianity, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, p. 160. In fact, during my over two decades of research on the RCCG in Nigeria and the diaspora, I was only successful in having an audience with him for the very first time at an RCCG UK event to mark the General Overseer’s 70th birthday in London. See A. Adogame, “60 Years of the Redeemed Christian Church of God and its Global Missionary Agenda: An Evaluation”, Public Lecture in Honour of Pastor E.A. Adeboye (RCCG General Overseer) on the occasion of the 15th Graduation Ceremony of the Christ the Redeemer College, London and the 2012 RCCG/CRBC Annual Academic Lecture at Jesus House for All Nations, 112 Brent Terrace, Brent Cross, London NW2 1LT, 13 October 2012. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-006

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local and international repute, who heads a large church congregation on the east coast of the United States. Immigration officials, claiming that his name did not appear on the immigration clearance list, denied him entry into Nigeria. He had visited the Nigeria Consulate Office in New York several days earlier to secure a visitor entry visa. Presumably, the Consulate officials had been negligent in logging the visa approval information into the Nigerian Immigration Service online repository. All attempts to get high-placed people, including the office of the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Immigration Service, distinguished church officials, the Nigeria Consulate in New York, and even top Nigerian politicians3 to intervene proved abortive, and immigration officials escorted him to a flight back to New York. This unsettling experience shed light on the dynamics of power and the politics around national borders and territoriality. National borders remain much contested at points of entry and exit, notwithstanding shallow ruminations of a borderless world in talks about globalization and transnationalism. Contrary to the oft-assumed free flow of humans, goods, services, technology, information, and capital, the politicization of border surveillance and enforcement has reached unprecedented proportions. Power dynamics, national border and boundary politics have a proclivity in shaping the ebb and flow of transnational mobility, albeit a religious one. Our three-day visit to Nigeria helped to illuminate the discourse on religious transnationalism and transnational religious spaces. Let us examine the territorially defined sacred geography, social compass, and moral landscape of the Redemption Camp. I locate the Redemption City – the international headquarters of the RCCG, as a transnational religious and social space, a network hub that hosts major religious events, transmits spirituality and religious ideologies, represents “a home away from home” to global visitors, and a pilgrimage haven for members and non-members alike. A guided tour of the Redemption Camp, which lasted several hours, revealed its fluid, contested physical borders and imagined boundaries, spiritual ecologies, socioeconomic loci, and its complex geo-cultural topography.4 Then, our team attended a pre-Congress evening

3 The GO’s Protocol Office later informed us that they had immediately contacted the office of the Vice President of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, who had been a parish pastor of the RCCG prior to his political appointment. One informant suggested that some African countries are, through such stringent measures, retaliating against the US President’s racial bigotry and incivility towards what he called “shit-hole” countries: “What shall it profit Trump’s America if she gains a strong economy, builds walls to fence herself in, and in turn loses her soul and moral compass?” 4 See my phenomenological description of the Redemption Camp as a transnational religious space in a separate subsection below.

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worship service at the RCBC Chapel, where we were warmly welcomed and introduced. Half an hour into the service, an announcement was made of the highlight of the evening; a live-telecast of a pre-Congress thanksgiving service at the Congress Arena led by the RCCG National Overseer,5 beamed through a projector for the duration of the service. With eyes glued to the live screening of the event, the congregants at the Chapel participated in singing, dancing and praying, albeit remotely. The National Overseer welcomed both those who were physically present at the Congress Arena and those who were participating in the worship service via National Television channels, Cable TV channels, the RCCG Dove Television, and live-streaming through RCCG YouTube Channel, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media6 all over the world. The Congress proper commenced on 3 December with a service at the Congress Arena, lasting from 6:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. The GO’s Protocol Office had informed the special delegates that we would have to drive in a special convoy to the Congress Arena an hour earlier to facilitate VIP seating arrangement. Over 150 guests lodged at the Redemption Resort were chauffeur-driven in luxurious buses with security escorts and blaring sirens. The international guests, dressed in glowing colours and smart suits, were a scene to behold. At a prior cocktail reception held for the special guests at the Resort, I met visitors from the US, the UK, Singapore, Malaysia, Israel, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Germany: religious leaders, captains of industry, seasoned politicians, diplomats, legal luminaries from diverse contexts. One attendee from a well-known Christian ministry in the US indicated that he had regularly attended the Holy Ghost Congress for fourteen years. A Malaysian businessperson and lay minister, who claims to be involved in global missions and church planting in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Pakistan, told me that he and his wife had been part of the Congress for eight years. Thus, the Congress becomes an annual hub within a transnational religious space of the Redemption City that brings together people networking along the contours of religion, business, and politics. Transnational religious spaces are not simply geo-spaces with huge infrastructures, landmarks, and activities but also places made alive by people who meet at the crossroads of religious, social, economic, and political networking. Within and through transnational religious spaces such as the Redemption City, new networks come to the fore while existing networks are sustained, re-enacted, and renegotiated. 5 The National Overseer is in charge of the RCCG Nigeria, while the General Overseer is the international head of the church. The restructuring of the hierarchical and organizational structure was recent, in response to a national discourse around church leadership and succession. 6 See below, subsection on “Mediating Transnational Religious Spaces”.

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The motorcade arrived at the northern apex of the Congress Arena and we were ushered into a humongous space adjoining the GO’s administrative offices, a section within the Congress Arena, though separated from the main auditorium. A church official explained to me later that this encased area was “a sacred space within a sacred space”, a prayer ground where the GO, the church hierarchy and special dignitaries undertake preliminary prayer rituals to usher in the main event. Here, more than one thousand guests gathered and joined the GO in a one-hour long pre-Congress prayer and worship service. Following this intensive session, the church hierarchy, invitees, and delegates were ushered, in an orderly procession, to their seats on the colourful, imposing podium overlooking the rest of the gigantic auditorium and an already exhilarated audience. Pastoral ministrations, announcements, the introduction of special guests,7 and goodwill messages were interspersed with choir ministration, musical renditions from gospel musicians, and various choir groups drawn from Nigeria and abroad. A mélange of hymns, songs, praise, and worship, thanksgiving ritual offerings, rendition of testimonies, prolonged prayer and intercession sessions set a spiritually charged atmosphere and a serene, grand, and ceremonious occasion contemporaneously. The pomp and splendour, the array of joy, excitement, and anxiety that accompanied the event seem to have compressed the six-hour evening programme into a brief moment.8 At midnight, when the GO was delivering the last segment of his sermon, dignitaries and special guests were beginning to be ushered towards a mouth-watering buffet in his dining room, a palatial space. Our team was on the schedule to meet with the GO in his office, and we found a queue of more than 50 church leaders and special guests waiting to do the same. Our turn came at 1:30 a.m., and we were ushered into the office accompanied by several members of the church’s top hierarchy. The programme of events on other days of the Congress involved both spiritual and pragmatic dimensions, being organized in morning, afternoon, and evening sessions. There were talks, seminars, and training sessions dealing, for instance, with skills for starting a business; earning multiple incomes; self-employment

7 The entire Congress event was a live broadcast and screening by several national and cable TV channel networks. My team from Princeton was one of the few international attendees introduced to the huge audience of worshippers. It is common practice within Pentecostal church gatherings to give formal recognition to guest participants. The live screening of the Congress was consequential. I felt inundated few hours later by emails and text messages received from friends and colleagues all over the world indicated that they saw me been introduced during the Congress event, while others asked of my whereabouts. What is pertinent here is the fact that such local events attract both a global participation but also a transnational viewing audience. 8 It is difficult to capture the vivid experiences of this prolonged event in a few sentences.

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strategies, and training in agricultural production and farming. Other topics included a basic security checklist for oneself, one’s family, and one’s business environments; foundation for lasting marriages; health management; digital marketing; corporate sector management; opportunities for home ownership.9 The diversity of what was covered in the six-day event exemplified how the Congress is seeking to attend to people’s spiritual needs and the mundane dimensions of life. People throng the premises for healing and spiritual succour, but also in order to acquire knowledge, skill-sets for economic sustainability, investment opportunities and help in tackling the contingencies of everyday life. Let me now provide a brief history and account of the geo-demographic spread and mobility of the RCCG and demonstrate to what extent the embodied space of the Redemption Camp and its reproduction in the Nigerian diaspora exemplify transnational religious and social spaces of contestation, innovation, and change. Religions, societies, and cultures are dynamic and constantly in flux. Religion is not a museum piece or monument, but a vibrant force in the shared experiences of African peoples. African religions are usually not thought out in the agora of desk theology but lived out in the spiritual marketplace. Africans generally celebrate life, their spirituality, their religion; they dance it, sing it, and act it. As Jacob Olupona puts it, “African spirituality simply acknowledges that beliefs and practices touch on and inform every facet of human life, and therefore African religion cannot be separated from the everyday or mundane.”10 He goes on: For starters, the word “religion” is problematic for many Africans, because it suggests that religion is separate from the other aspects of one’s culture, society and environment. But for many Africans, religion can never be separated from all these. It is a way of life, and it can never be separated from the public sphere. Religion informs everything in traditional African society, including political art, marriage, health, diet, dress, economics, and death.11

Olupona cautions that “this is not to say that indigenous African spirituality represents a form of theocracy or religious totalitarianism, but simply that African spirituality is truly holistic.” This definition of spirituality is instructive in understanding transnational religious spaces, because such places are not inherently religious but spaces where religious, cultural, social, economic, and political considerations intersect.

9 See the 50-page programme booklet, The Redeemed Christian Church of God 2018 Holy Ghost Congress – Glory Ahead, December 3rd–8th, 2018, Redemption Camp: The Holy Ghost Congress of the RCCG, 2018, pp. 22–35. 10 J. Olupona, “The Spirituality of Africa”, Harvard Gazette, 6 October 2015. Online version available at http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/10/the-spirituality-of-africa/. 11 Olupona, “Spirituality”, p. 4.

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The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG): A Brief History The RCCG is a typical indigenous Pentecostal church, which has spread from Nigeria to about 195 countries with over five million members in Africa, North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. Its vertical and horizontal growth is not simply the result of demographic spread: it has carved out a niche for itself in terms of its public role, social relevance, and local/global impact in Africa and beyond.12 Pa Josiah Akindayomi, following what he claimed was a divine call to a special mission, founded the RCCG in Lagos in 1952. Enoch Adejare Adeboye, a former University of Lagos Professor of Applied Mathematics and Hydrodynamics, succeeded as the General Overseer in 1980, and with his charisma, transformed the stature of the RCCG into a global religious and social institution.13 The church has experienced considerable growth within Nigeria and beyond its borders with a conservative estimate in 2003 of 5,000 parishes (branches) worldwide.14 The RCCG is perhaps the fastest growing and one of the most popular Pentecostal churches in Africa, if not the world.15 Its official website states: Since 1981, an open explosion began with the number of parishes growing in leaps and bounds. At the last count, there are at least about 2000 parishes of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Nigeria. On the International scene, the church is present in other African nations including Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi, Zaire [= today’s Democratic Republic of Congo], Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Gambia, Cameroon, and South Africa. In Europe, the church is fully established in the following countries: United Kingdom, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece, France, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. In North America there are over 600 parishes spread in

12 A. Adogame, “Contesting the Ambivalences of Modernity in a Global Context: The Redeemed Christian Church of God, North America”, Studies in World Christianity 10 (2004) 1, pp. 25–48. 13 A. Adogame, “The Redeemed Christian Church of God: African Pentecostalism”, in: S.M. Cherry and H.R. Ebaugh (eds.), Global Religious Movements Across Borders: Sacred Service, Farnham: Ashgate, 2014, pp. 35–60. 14 See “A Brief History of the Redeemed Christian Church of God”, in: Sunday School Manual, The Redeemed Christian Church of God, 2002/03, p. 127. A conservative list of parishes worldwide is available at the RCCG Internet Outreach: http://main.rccg.org/parish_directory/par ish_directory_main.htm. This list is far from complete. New parishes are added frequently at http://www.rccgnet.org/dir/RCCG_World_Wide/ (accessed 10 April 2012). A parish may comprise between several scores and a few thousand members. 15 See Adogame, “Contesting the Ambivalences”, pp. 25–48; Idem, African Christian Diaspora, 2013.

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various cities and states of USA and Canada. The first RCCG parish in the USA was founded in 1992 in Detroit, Michigan. From 1994 onwards, new parishes sprang up in Florida, Texas, Massachusetts and other US states. There are also parishes in the Caribbean states of Haiti and Jamaica. There are parishes in South America, the Middle East, Australia, etc.16

The desire to establish parishes throughout the world is reflected in the RCCG’s mission statement: It is our goal to make heaven. It is our goal to take as many people as possible with us. In order to accomplish our goals, holiness will be our lifestyle. In order to take as many people with us as possible, we will plant churches within five minutes’ walking distance in every city and town of developing countries; and within five minutes’ driving distance in every city and town of developed countries. We will pursue these objectives until every nation in the world is reached for Jesus Christ our Lord.17

In the case of North America, the goal of proximity between churches had to be qualified in view of the demographic peculiarities of the region, necessitating a qualifying addendum: “We believe in positioning our worship centres close to the people; hence in North America we are challenged to establish parishes in every State, County, City and in fact within 30 minutes’ driving distance.”18 Shorimade declares, “The United States was often described in some circles as God’s own country, but this country has become very slack morally and spiritually. So, God is making us (RCCG) bring worship and praise to them (the US) as well as in rediscovering God.”19

16 The RCCG North America area comprises the US, Canada, and the Caribbean Islands. For more details on RCCGNA administrative structure, see RCCGNA network, available at http:// www.rccgna.org/zones.asp and http://www.rccgna.org/TheChurch/Origin.aspx (accessed 10 January 2019). 17 RCCG official website: http://www.rccg.org created and maintained by the RCCG Internet Project (accessed 25 January 2019). 18 See “Addendum – Our Poise”, The Redeemed Christian Church of God, North America and Caribbean Statement of Fundamental Truths, a publication of RCCGNA, n.d., pp. 39–40. 19 Interview with Pastor Dr. Samuel Shorimade at the RCCG Cornerstone Worship Centre for All Nations parish, Cambridge, MA on 23 November 2003.

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Redemption City: An Anatomy of a Transnational Religious Space In recent decades, the Nigerian religious ecology has assumed a more complex posture with the pentecostalization of the Christian religious landscape. Religious innovation, exemplified in the proliferation of religious campgrounds or prayer cities, is a growing feature. The (re)production and negotiation of ritual spaces is evident in the (re)sacralizing of much of the 127.6 kilometres (79.3 miles) land mass on the Lagos-Ibadan motorway. The RCCG represents one of the largest megachurches within this religious landscape, with its Redemption Camp or Redemption City (Figure 6.1 and 6.2), which doubles as the international headquarters and the most important sacred space. Adedibu argues, “the Redemption Camp is fast becoming the holy land for Christians in Nigeria, Africa and diaspora [. . .] and one of Nigeria’s most visited religious sites in the history of contemporary Christianity.”20 Physical facilities in the 2,500 hectares of land include a new auditorium measuring 3 km by 3 km21 with a seating capacity of over three million people to host major events, including the Holy Ghost Service, Congress monthly, and the weeklong Annual Convention (Figure 6.3).22 The new facility replaces the old Congress Arena, with a capacity of half a million worshippers. The Holy Ghost Service is now held in different parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, India, USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Dubai, Ghana, and the Philippines.23 The RCCG recently inaugurated the Holy Ghost Service Specially for Children.24 Redemption City has more than 30,000 residents and an infrastructure, residential estates and business facilities characteristic of a modern African city. The first 4.25 acres acquired for the camp in 1982 on the Lagos-Ibadan expressway have grown to an estimated 25 hectares. The religious geography of the camp encompasses other physical structures25 including a conference centre,

20 B. Adedibu, “The Story of the Redemption Camp”, in: M. Omolewa et al. (eds.), Pastor E.A. Adeboye: His Life and Calling, Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2017, p. 122. 21 For an aerial view of the old and new auditoriums, see https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=dM9sOeYUlsk; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51NMXXGLvn0, and https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=GN-iKLghQDQ. 22 See O. Olubiyi and J. Bolarinwa, “The Holy Ghost Service: Origin and Impact”, in: Omolewa et al. (eds.), Pastor E.A. Adeboye, pp. 135–142; and O. Olubiyi, “The Holy Ghost Congress: The Coming of the Global Summit”, in: ibid., pp. 143–151. 23 For details, see http://rccg.org/who-we-are/history/. 24 For details, see https://eaadeboye.com/. 25 For an aerial view of the infrastructure at the Redemption Camp, see Figures 1 and 3.

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Figure 6.1: An Aerial Image of RCCG Redemption Camp, Lagos, Nigeria.

guesthouses and chalets, and a presidential villa reserved for political dignitaries. The Christ Redeemer’s Ministry (CRM), an organ of the RCCG, operates hospitality at the Redemption Camp: the Resort Centre, the White House, and the International Guest House26 with executive chalets, open to tourists, visitors, and members alike. Also situated within this transnational socio-religious space are the Redeemer’s Clinic, a maternity centre, an orphanage, a post office, security posts, gas stations, bookstores, supermarkets, public markets, bakeries, restaurants and canteens. Other facilities include nine banks,27 the Redeemed Christian Bible College, Redeemer’s Junior and High Schools, and a campus of the Redeemer’s University.28 Several housing estates with private residential buildings have come to characterize the topography. The Haggai Community

26 See CRM available at http://city.rccgnet.org/crm.html (accessed 20 March 2019). 27 There are seven commercial banks – Ecobank, United Bank for Africa, Zenith, Unity, GTB, FCMB, Access Bank – and two mortgage banks, Haggai Homes or Haggai Community Bank, and Jubilee Bank. 28 For details, see http://city.rccgnet.org/facilities.html. RCCG established its own university, Redeemer’s University. It was first situated at the camp but now has its permanent site in Ede,

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Figure 6.2: Street map of RCCG Redemption Camp, Lagos, Nigeria.

Osun State. A new Institute of Technology opened recently in the Camp. See RCCG official church website: http://rccg.org/.

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OBJECTID 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

F-Name Youth Centre Congress Arena Children Auditorium Toilet Hospital (Perm site) Tree of Life Estate Lotto Estate Estate Car Park C Haggai Estate Redemption Water Police Quarters Power Turbine Goshen Estate GO House 2 Baptism Point MPS Youth Church Project Mechanic Senior Pastors Lodge Transport Dept Estate III CRNPS Games Arena Youth Place Security Post Estate House of Favour Amazing grace Security Post Cheirth Restaurant CRM Main Supermarket Kitchen Haleluyah House Chalet Children Lodge Coca-Cola Depo School of Disciple Sunday School CRM Press New life Market Coca-Cola Depo Health Centre Prayer foyer Project Office Haggai Estate II

F-Type Event Worship Centre Worship Centre Toilet Medic Accommodation Accommodation Accommodation Parking Space Accommodation Office Accommodation Electricity Accommodation Accommodation Worship Centre Worship Centre Office Accommodation Office Accommodation Education Sport Accommodation Security Accommodation Worship Centre Worship Centre Security Food Market Food Prayer Centre Accommodation Accommodation Office Education Office Office Market Food Medic Prayer Centre Office Accommodation

F-location X 551489 550034 550304 549529 549267 549173 548507 549403 549738 550158 550063 549292 550439 551461 551769 551901 551806 551690 551480 551230 551198 551096 551124 551665 551369 551320 550414 550417 550447 550455 550607 550619 550569 550399 550285 550305 550232 550188 549982 550050 550073 550110 549547 550255 549661

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F-location Y 754590.990473 752156.441509 753072.10047 751409.443931 751314.504278 750698.887994 750843.580942 752468.70679 752751.660406 752619.477586 752485.234004 752701.794164 753418.660839 752249.810497 752837.283805 753046.061939 753273.243211 753499.374954 753711.746452 753941.372107 754146.868956 753810.618814 753741.178411 754692.618355 754640.054361 754283.659898 753726.975451 753837.306922 753866.675731 753625.50754 753750.523415 753699.723314 753687.81704 753559.141326 753645.924833 753448.390931 753414.524197 753417.699203 753325.624019 753358.432418 753404.999178 753447.332596 751730.821144 752691.630983 752332.046203

Figure 6.3: Facility Attribute Table. This attribute table was extracted and adapted by Amidu Elabo from the Esri ArcGIS online map and layers Archive,https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html? id=f9edbfe7b09a43aeadd21ecc9e34fd90 of Duncan Oluwaseun at https://www.slideshare.net/ DuncanOluwaseun1/location-based-service-for-profitable-decision-in-rccg.

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46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

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Shopping Complex Partners Car Park Lotto Estate I Arena Gate Lotto Gate Toilet Mega Office White House Chalets Car Park Car Park Overflow Apartments RUN Moses Hall Estate Joy to the Wise Canaan land Canaan Land Market Hostels Kitchen I Bible College (RCBC) Fire Department Estate Church II Feast of Esther Sec. KIC Dove Television Comfort Palace Resort Centre RHS Sport RHS Hall Executive Chalet RUN Love garden Electronic Dept Electrical dept Sanitation Dept Toilet Tantalizers RUN Creche RUN Queen Esther RUN Library Shopping Complex G. O’s House I Open Heavens Maternity Water Pump

Figure 6.3 (continued )

Market Parking Space Accommodation Security Security Toilet Office Accommodation Accommodation Parking Space Parking Space Accommodation Accommodation Accommodation Accommodation Accommodation Market Accommodation Food Education Office Accommodation Worship Centre Office Worship Centre Office Accommodation Accommodation Sport Event Accommodation Event Office Office Office Toilet Food Office Accommodation Education Market Accommodation Office Medic Water

549936 549364 548926 549308 548975 549734 550135 550463 550384 550045 550749 550712 550982 551199 550563 551093 551008 550722 550993 551142 551266 551326 551406 551777 551715 551578 551491 551324 550964 550981 550883 550854 550515 550499 550459 550591 550831 550726 550777 550861 550792 550868 550791 550721 550712

752374.379621 751582.744705 750693.742927 751875.903624 750643.906721 751325.521281 751777.430518 752089.639476 751327.637952 751110.679184 751846.222322 751978.514253 751915.014126 751698.055359 752319.827436 752385.973402 752490.725296 752666.408981 752664.29231 752772.242526 752293.874903 752499.19198 752465.325246 753074.926465 753041.05973 752983.909616 753098.209845 753149.009946 753263.310175 753132.076579 753140.543263 753297.176909 753415.015947 753490.422348 753370.03669 753298.599048 753474.547316 753505.139825 753471.802259 753339.609546 753511.589057 753602.870489 753544.66204 753642.558069 753766.912484

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91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116.

Access Bank PLC CRM Book store Code of Conduct RCM Booking Office Camp Manager International House Banquet Hall RUN Pharmacy RUN Clinic Water Plant Dove Television II Bethel Place Conoil Security Police Station Gas Automobile Repairs Sunshine Automobile RHS Main Gate RUN complex UBA Bank PLC Zenith Bank PLC Oceanic Bank PLC Haggai Bank Saw Mill GT Bank PLC

Bank Market Security Office Office Accommodation Event Medic Medic Office Office Accommodation Filing Station Security Security Filing Station Office Office Education Education Bank Bank Bank Bank Office Bank

550553 550548 550526 550521 550513 550874 550929 551120 551126 551904 551487 550769 550475 550225 550210 550110 550021 551419 551027 550816 550636 550514 550483 550505 551620 0

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753573.766265 753637.266392 753594.932974 753629.328876 753651.818504 753522.172411 753518.203653 753511.589057 753552.599556 753608.823626 754474.012857 753883.990843 753922.355503 753682.907108 753559.875612 753538.973487 753112.4643 752504.186 753316.617209 753261.583765 753017.108276 752774.749458 752799.620341 752749.613991 753664.386238 0

Figure 6.3 (continued )

Bank, owned by RCCG, developed a sprawling estate (now called Haggai Estates) adjacent to the Congress Arena, comprising semi-detached duplexes, three- to four-bedroom apartments and bungalows.29 The significance of the Redemption City (also described by members as RCCG’s “New Jerusalem – Peaceful and beautiful place on earth”) lies in the religious/spiritual and social functions it performs for members and non-members alike. It also has come to represent an avenue where social, economic, cultural, ecological, and political functions interact and intersect.30 In fact, the nexus between this singular sacred space and its complex functionality make the Redemption City a microcosm of a global social movement and a transnational religious space.

29 For details, see http://city.rccgnet.org/Haggai_estates.html. 30 Adogame, “Contesting the Ambivalences”, pp. 25–48.

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RCCG’s “Christian Disneyland”: Reconfiguring a Transnational Religious Space in Dallas One way in which the RCCG is gradually emblazoning itself on transnational, geocultural and religious landscapes is through the replication of the “Redemption Camp” in Dallas, Texas, USA.31 By 2003, the RCCG North America (RCCGNA) had acquired a multimillion-dollar property of over 400 hectares of land in Floyd (Hunt County), near Dallas. The development of this property is to recreate the Redemption Camp of the international headquarters in Nigeria.32 This miniature Redemption Camp serves as RCCGNA headquarters and includes the Holy Ghost Ground, chapels, a Bible College, a baptismal pool, a recreational centre, an administrative building, a library, banquet and seminar halls, a shopping mall, restaurants, a community centre, guesthouses, residential accommodation, and an impressive driveway (Figure 6.4). The duplication of the original camp is important for a number of reasons. It represents the decentralization across transnational spaces of church programmes such as the Holy Ghost Festival, annual conventions, and ministers’ conference that were previously concentrated at the international headquarters. The re-enactment of such events at the Dallas Redemption Camp reduces logistical and financial problems, as US-based RCCG members formerly had to travel long distances to the international headquarters in Nigeria. As one member remarked, the harsh immigration policies of Donald Trump prevent members with undocumented status from attending the Holy Ghost Congress outside the US. The RCCG invests huge financial and material resources in establishing, maintaining and sustaining the facilities, infrastructures and work force that these projects and institutions engender. Beyond a consideration of the religious impact on the educational and health sectors, the RCCG is increasingly becoming a visible stakeholder in the banking, insurance and other sectors of the Nigerian and global economy. The religious-owned business outfits provide employment and are profit-oriented. In vital ways, they contribute to local-global economies as economic players and stakeholders. The (re)production and negotiation of ritual spaces evident in the sacralizing of the Lagos-Ibadan motorway and Floyd (Hunt County) in Dallas are emplacements that evince an ecological, spatial, demographic, aesthetic, social, cultural and economic impact on transnational religious landscapes. The value of property, infrastructure, and other

31 Ibid., pp. 25–48. 32 Interview with Pastor (Dr.) Ajibike Akinyoye at the RCCGNA Headquarters, Dallas, TX, 9 March 2004. Cf. Laolu Akande, “Multi-million Dollar Redemption Camp underway in US”, The Guardian, 8 April 2003. Also accessible at http://odili.net/news/source/2003/apr/3/100.html.

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Figure 6.4: RCCG Redemption Camp, Dallas, Floyd, Hunt County, Texas (initial map of the Redemption Camp, dated 3 March 2003). Source: Redeemed Christian Church of God North America Library, Dallas, Texas, USA.

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endowments in these spaces is enormous. Such wide-ranging facilities are important for leisure and tourism on the one hand, but they also have a religious, spiritual, ecological, and social import. Beneath the façade of aesthetics lie crucial negotiations via layers of economics, culture, religion, identity, and belonging. This concentration of facilities within a religiously encased local-global space led Scott Farwell of the Dallas Morning News to use the news headline “African Church Plans Christian Disneyland”33 and write that “the Redeemed Christian Church of God – Africa’s largest and most ambitious evangelical church – plan to build a 10,000-seat sanctuary, two elementary school-size lecture centres, a dormitory, several cottages, a lake, and a Christianthemed water park in Floyd, Texas.” The ambivalence of the term “Christian Disneyland” is noteworthy.34 Thus, RCCG is steadily inserting itself within transnational religious spaces through the construction and reproduction of religious geographies. Beyond consideration of the aesthetics of space lie issues concerning power dynamics, identity, and public receptivity, government and legal regulations on properties and real estate and their uses, the economics of immigrant-led churches, and the transnational links, networks and ideas they generate to assert and insert themselves in and through the newly constructed spaces of worship.

Reimagining Transnational Religious Spaces Faist delineates three generations of transnational scholarship, with the earliest trajectory flourishing in the late 1960s and 1970s, and focusing on the emergence, role and impact of large-scale, cross-border organizations.35 This body of literature “took the container as a point of departure, and was concerned with perforations at borders and interdependencies of non-state actors across the containers”. The second generation in the 1980s and 1990s imagined new concepts of the container. They evolved originally from the specific field of international or cross-border migration, with a focus on the agency of migrants.

33 S. Farwell, “African Church Plans Christian Disneyland”, The Dallas Morning News, 17 July 2005. 34 See “Christian Disneyland”, http://www.christianebooks.com/christiandisneyland.htm (accessed 6 December 2007). The idea of a Christian Disneyland may have been coined by Billy Sunday, who started the trend with allusion to the theme park in Anaheim, California, built and marketed as “the happiest place on Earth”, http://www.disneyland.com/. 35 T. Faist, “Making and Remaking the Transnational: Of Boundaries, Social Spaces and Social Mechanisms”, Spectrum: Journal of Global Studies 1 (2009) 2, pp. 66–88.

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They dealt with dense and continuous ties across the borders of nation states, which concatenate into social formations called transnational social spaces or transnational social fields.36 Thus, terms such as transnational social spaces, transnational social fields, or transnational social formations usually refer to sustained ties of geographically mobile persons, networks, and organizations across borders and across multiple nation states. Transnational webs include relatively immobile persons and collectives.37 Portes et al. turned the concept of transnationalism into a clearly defined and measurable object of research.38 They acknowledge that transnationalism involves individuals, their networks of social relations, their communities, and broader institutionalised structures such as local and national governments. Adogame and Spickard identified seven patterns of religious transnationalism – the Ellis Island model, religious bilocalism, religious cacophony, reverse missions, south-south religious trade, transnational organization theory, and deterritorialized religious identity – as patterns which describe a complex transnational religious scene.39 Networks, activities, and life-patterns that entangle both their “old home” and “new home” host societies characterize contemporary migrant populations. This “simultaneous embeddedness” and multiplicity of involvements in more than one society or context produces a heterogeneous set of sustained transnational activities.40 Smith and Guarnizo suggest a distinction between “transnationalism from above”, that is, cross-border activities initiated and conducted by powerful institutional actors, such as states and multinational corporations; and “transnationalism from below”, the result of grass-roots initiatives by migrants and their home country counterparts.41

36 L. Basch, N. Glick-Schiller, and C. Blanc-Szanton (eds.), Nations Unbound. Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States, New York: Gordon and Breach, 1994. 37 T. Faist, “The Transnational Social Spaces of Migration”, Universität Bielefeld, COMCAD Working Papers 10 (2006), p. 3. 38 A. Portes et al., “The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field”, Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (1999) 2, pp. 463–477. 39 A. Adogame and J.V. Spickard (eds.), Religion Crossing Boundaries: Transnational Religious and Social Dynamics in Africa and the New African Diaspora, Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp. 1–25. 40 N. Glick-Schiller, L. Basch, and C. Blanc-Szanton, “Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration”, in: N. Glick-Schiller et al. (eds.), Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered, New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Science, vol. 645, 1992, pp. 1–24. 41 P. Smith and L. Guarnizo (eds.), Transnationalism from Below, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1998.

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The third generation of scholarship is concerned less with accounting for cross-border ties and flows of fixed categories of persons or groups, instead focusing more on changing boundaries. This is so because social spaces denote dynamic processes, not static notions of ties and positions.42 The main point, as Faist notes, is that “the new approach is not only concerned with sustained and continuous across-border phenomena but with boundaries demarcating social spaces in a wider sense – in particular, on how the boundaries themselves come into existence and change”. This third generation of scholarship now questions fundamental methodological assumptions and thus emphasizes the transnational (and translocal, transregional) character of social boundaries and social spaces.43 In my view transnational religious spaces are not empty vessels but embodied “lived spaces” rooted within a range of human experiences, practices and processes. The Redemption Camps in Nigeria and the US double as both transnational religious and social spaces against the backdrop of a fluid intermix of secular and mundane domains. Levitt proposes transnational religious spaces as alternative landscapes.44 She points to how research on migrants’ transnational religious practices is not only about organizational manifestations of faith but about the alternative places of belonging that religious ideas and symbols make possible and the ways in which these sacred landscapes interact with the boundaries of political and civic life. As she notes, pilgrims and transnational migrants alike employ religion “to create imaginary religious topographies” and “delineate an alternative cartography of belonging”. Thus, “the imagined moral and physical geographies that result may fall within national boundaries, transcend but coexist with them, or create new, alternative spaces that, for some individuals’ have greater salience and inspire stronger loyalties than politically-defined terrain.”45 Cherry explores the contours of transnational religious spaces and networks at the intersection of religion and migration.46 Religion, he states, has shaped globalization and transnationalism as much as these forces have shaped religion. This is particularly true of international migration and the flow of

42 Faist, “Making and Remaking the Transnational”, p. 71. 43 Ibid., p. 72. He notes that boundaries may refer to distinctions along categories such as groups, organizations and cultural differences. 44 P. Levitt, “‘You Know, Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant’: Religion and Transnational Migration”, The International Migration Review 37 (2003) 3, pp. 847–873. 45 Levitt, “You Know, Abraham”, p. 861. 46 S.M. Cherry, “Exploring the Contours of Transnational Religious Spaces and Networks”, in: J. Saunders, E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, and S. Snyder (eds.), Intersections of Religion and Migration: Religion and Global Migrations, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 195–224.

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religious ideas, practices, organizations, and movements that people in a diaspora have established through their faith traditions. Socio-spatial theories suggest that space construction is through social interactions and interrelations. They probe how, why, and where space constructs everyday activities, representations, and social life as a whole. A place is formed out of a particular set of social relations that are “stretched out”, that is dynamic, and imbued with power, meaning, and symbolism. Space and place form individual identities in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and age, and such identities are bound together by multiple social relations, constructed both locally and globally.47 These interactions are hardly neutral, but suffused with contested power relations negotiated in relational space. Massey suggests that “space is always in a process of being made”. It is always “under construction”. It is never a fully connected and finalized thing. There are always “relations which are still to be made, or unmade, or remade.”48 Therefore, these contestations are provisional in such a way that by moving through space, space is moved and somewhat altered. There is growing interest in space and spatial theories within the fields of migration and transnational studies, as constructed within national borders and transnational spaces. In fact, the appropriation of spatial theories in conceptualizing space and place has taken a transdisciplinary turn. As Knott notes, the focus is now on “spaces themselves, irrespective of whether or not they appear to be religious or sacred, and to examine the location of religion within them”.49 Jackson et al. underscore the significance of a spatial perspective on transnationalism, suggesting that as well as encompassing transnational connections, transnational spaces “incorporate the symbolic and imaginary geographies through which we attempt to make sense of our world”.50 What Sheringham calls transnational religious spaces involve the overlapping agencies of multiple individuals and institutions, characterized by shifting yet unequal power relations.51 She demonstrates how the notion of transnational religious spaces is helpful to conceptualize the ways in which, within the spaces of transnationalism, religion affects the lives not only of those

47 D. Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Oxford: Polity Press, 1994; D. Massey, For Space, London: Sage, 2005. 48 D. Massey, Concepts of Space and Power in Theory and in Political Practice, Milton Keynes: The Open University, 2009. 49 K. Knott, The Location of Religion. A Spatial Analysis, London: Routledge, 2005. 50 P. Jackson et al. (eds.), Transnational Spaces, London: Routledge, 2004. 51 O. Sheringham, Transnational Religious Spaces: Faith and the Brazilian Migration Experience, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

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who migrate but also of those who go “back home”, and of the families who experience the absence of their loved ones. Her book focuses on “what religious leaders, migrants, and migrants’ families do with religion” – the creativity and hybridizations that occur through the practice and embodiment of religion in transnational spaces. But equally, she seeks to place the lives of these migrants in a wider context, as deeply embedded in dynamic social fields that involve the interplay of multiple actors with asymmetrical relations of power.52 Faist, on the other hand, draws our attention to a more nuanced discussion of borders and boundaries within social spaces going beyond and intersecting nation states. As he argues, “it is important to unpack the notion of power and identify the social mechanisms, which are at work in the making and unmaking of boundaries in social spaces.”53 I recall the treatment my co-traveller experienced in the hands of the Nigerian immigration officials, refusing him entry into the country. Faist remarks that “we do not live in a borderless world but in a world in which borders are constantly being redrawn.”54 He introduces a physical but also metaphorical meaning to boundaries when he suggests that “boundaries concatenate into social spaces”.55 Thus, the ways in which “borders” and “boundaries” function as central elements of space-making, in this case within the transnational religious spaces of the Redemption Camp can be illuminating. A transnational approach with a spatial turn captures the interconnectedness of elements (persons, networks, groups, organizations), and the emergent properties of new assemblages. Thus, it is a dynamic approach, which looks at transnational spaces, in which social boundaries shift, blur, become permeable, are reinforced or new ones are created.56 The Redemption City is an example of a transnational religious space where geographic and social boundaries are drawn and redrawn. The physical space of the Redemption Camp has expanded from its initial 4.25 hectares in 1982 to over 2500 hectares. The GIS attribute table of the aerial map shows 116 facilities within the Redemption Camp.57 The land use analysis indicates that 229.7 hectares (13 per cent) are residential; 10.8 hectares commercial (0.6 per cent), 143.9 hectares institutional (8.5 per cent); 3.3 hectares industrial

52 53 54 55 56 57

Ibid., p. 3. Faist, “Making and Remaking the Transnational”, p. 76. Ibid., p. 77. Ibid., p. 78. Ibid., p. 87. See Figures 1 and 3.

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(0.2 per cent). There remain the conservation strip of 434.2 hectares (25.8 per cent), open space 712.4 hectares (42.2 per cent); recreation 11 hectares (0.7 per cent), circulation and car parks 141.4 hectares (8.4 per cent).58 From the aerial map,59 it is evident that the Camp could only expand on the arable lands eastwards. A huge expanse of land owned by the Deeper Christian Life Church, another Pentecostal church, borders on the south fringes. In the North and West are located the LagosIbadan motorway and a fast sprawling suburb, an emerging city which has emerged and expanded in direct response to the existence of the Redeemed City. This new, autonomous settlement in Mowe and Loburo villages is an eclectic mix of residential homes, housing estates, retail markets, churches, and mosques. Further expansion of the physical boundaries would depend on material resources, power dynamics, renegotiation with neighbours, and land reacquisition. Besides the soaring population of Camp’s residents and workers, several millions visit it annually for a multiplicity of reasons including pilgrimage, church events, building construction, or commercial activities. Most of these visitors transcend religious, denominational, cultural, ethnic, class, and gender boundaries. They include Christians, Muslims, and adherents of the indigenous religion. Therefore, the motivations for visiting a transnational religious and social space vary. The increasing itinerancy of religious leaders and members has implications for place-making. The complex peregrination of the GO is an indication of the transnational tendencies of this brand of African Christianity.60 His travel schedules portray him as a “world class traveller” with frequent trips to virtually all continents of the world. The GO undertakes frequent visits to RCCG parishes in Europe, the US, and other parts of Africa and the world, as well as attending programmes of churches and organizations with which the RCCG has ecumenical links. The significance of these travels does not lie simply in the number of cities or countries visited but more in the motive. Transnational networks involving African-led churches such as the RCCG in both home and host contexts are assuming increasing significance for African migrants and those they left at home. The range and nature of ties include new ecumenical affiliations, pastoral exchanges, special events and conferences, prayer networks, internet sites, international ministries, publications, audio/video, and tele-evangelism. The link “low” is multidirectional, both sending and receiving links, glocal and transnational.

58 Redemption Camp Master Plan, 2017, p. 33. See also B. Adedibu, “Sacralisation and Spatial Transformation of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Redemption Camp across Borders: A Qualitative Approach”, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 75 (2019) 2, a5428. https://doi.org/ 10.4102/hts.v75i2.5428. 59 See aerial image and map of the Redemption Camp as in Figures 1 and 2. 60 Adogame, African Christian Diaspora, pp. 160–167.

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The proliferation of social ties and relationships among new African migrants, and between immigrant-led churches, host churches and their home base has implications that we can understand contextually. Some of these groups frequently organize programmes which are local in nature but which have a transnational focus that links the local church with other churches globally. Such events as the Holy Ghost Congress parade a mix of leaders and members from both local and transnational settings.61 Presidents, Senators, legislators, religious leaders, traditional rulers, and entrepreneurs are among the frequent guests.62 Well ingrained in the dynamic transnational religious space of the Redemption Camp are residents, tenants, guests and visitors differentiated by social, class, ecclesial, religious and gender hierarchies. The visibility and invisibility of their presence thus involve the interchange of multiple actors with oblique power relations. While the hotels, resorts, and guesthouses jostle to providing hospitality, lodging services for thousands of guests who attend the Holy Ghost Congresses, they generate enormous revenue for the proprietors. The Holy Ghost Congress and other events that take place within the Redemption City present an avenue for commodifying books, texts of pastoral ministrations, gospel music, songs, video films, anointing oil, documentaries and programmes of participating leaders and churches made into books, diaries, almanacs, souvenirs, and audio-visual products, clothing, food and beverages. This annual event also demonstrates intra/ inter religious networking,63 bringing together religious leaders and participants from various countries with significant global and transnational ramifications.

Mediating Transnational Religious Spaces The transnational nature of the RCCG in Nigeria and its diaspora challenges the assumption that migrants usually cut off ties and links with their homeland after integration into the new host contexts. Most new African-led churches

61 The Congress programme booklet often highlights distinguished guests from a past event. See, for instance, “HGC: A History of Great Expectations and Manifestations”, The Redeemed Christian Church of God 2018 Holy Ghost Congress – Glory Ahead, December 3rd–8th, 2018, Redemption Camp: The Holy Ghost Congress of the RCCG, 2018, pp. 21–23; see pictorial illustrations in O. Olubiyi, “The Holy Ghost Congress: The Coming of the Global Summit”, p. 149. 62 Ibid. 63 A. Adogame, “Betwixt Identity and Security: African New Religious Movements and the Politics of Religious Networking in Europe”, Nova Religio: The Journal of Emergent and Alternative Religions 7 (2003) 2, pp. 24–41; Adogame, African Christian Diaspora, pp. 191–211.

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such as the RCCG are rooted locally in the land of origin, in their new host contexts, but also in the intra-communal web which links them with different places across the globe.64 These communities are connected through ties in the realm of religion, economy, friendship, kinship, politics – increasingly so through the virtual space of telephones and the Internet, which has become a central feature of the maintenance of diasporic identity. New African-led religious organizations have appropriated the use of websites, TV and interactive technologies in the transmission of their religious ideologies, as a recruitment strategy for new clientele, but also as a way of maintaining links with members and branches transnationally.65 The physical (non-)visibility, demographic stature, and social mobility of the RCCG are linked to the media technological revolution. Such churches acquire, utilize and appropriate the print and electronic media for the transmission of their religious messages as well as the commodification of religious paraphernalia. The RCCG has its own television channels, Dove Vision, accessible on Sky Cable Television Channels. Liveway Radio and Liveway TV are RCCG Gospel media outreach ministries.66 Through these mediated sources, church programmes such as the Holy Ghost Congress and other events have a local, global, and transnational reach. The procurement of media space and time involves huge financial investment. Their relative success and attraction of a huge clientele resonate with ways they have tuned and (re)packaged their religious messages. Thus, the RCCG’s self-positioning, public role and social relevance carves it out as a figment of African modernity.

Conclusion This essay has discussed the RCCG’s Redemption Camp in Nigeria and its replication in the USA as embodied, lived religious and social spaces rooted within transnational experiences, practices, and processes. Such spaces are in flux; they are continually contested and negotiated in ways that result in creativity

64 A. Adogame, “Raising Champions, Taking Territories: African Churches and the Mapping of New Religious Landscapes in Diaspora”, in: T. L. Trost (ed.), The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 21–46. 65 A. Adogame, “The Quest for Space in the Global Religious Marketplace: African Religions in Europe”, International Review of Mission 89 (2000) 354, pp. 400–409. 66 See RCCG Dove Television and Liveway radio at https://dovevision.org/; http://rccg.camp7. org/; https://tunein.com/radio/Liveway-Radio-s105680/.

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and innovation. By focusing on the routinization of an annual religious event, the Holy Ghost Congress we have been able to show the extent to which African Pentecostal churches such as the RCCG can be located within the global trend of religious transnationalism We have also explored the significance of the increasing mobility and itinerancy of religious leaders and members between transnational religious spaces, as well as the appropriation of new media technologies, an evolving dimension of the transnational process.

Johara Berriane

7 Transnational Evangelical Spaces in Muslim Urban Settings: The Presence and Place-Making of African Christian Migrants in Morocco Since the late 1990s, Morocco has been transited by an increasing number of primarily sub-Saharan African migrants en route to Europe. However, due to the reinforcement of border controls by European states, the transit space that Morocco used to be has gradually morphed into a buffer zone, where many of these migrants find themselves blocked and thus need to re-evaluate their migration aspirations. As a consequence, African migrants have tended to settle in Moroccan cities, where they have then managed to integrate into specific niches of the Moroccan urban economy.1 Despite the comparatively small number of migrants in Morocco (representing approximately 0.2 per cent of the total population), they are becoming more visible in the urban space, and Moroccan society is becoming increasingly aware of its role as an immigration country. This awareness has been growing since late 2013, when the Moroccan King proclaimed that the nation had become a host country for migrants and instructed the government to establish a global migration policy. The main outcome was the launching of two large operations for the regularization of undocumented migrants, during which around 50,000 migrants received residency status.2 This new political setting has encouraged the more stable and permanent settlement of “regularised” migrants but has failed to limit the arrival and circulation of newcomers. Although many African migrants still consider Morocco as a stepping stone, transit has never been the sole motivation of migrants entering the country. Recent research has rather shown that even prior to the launching of its migration policy, Morocco had already been a destination in its own right for

1 M. Kettani and M. Péraldi, “Les mondes du travail: Segmentations et informalités”, in: M. Péraldi (ed.), D’une Afrique à l’autre. Migrations subsahariennes au Maroc, Paris: Karthala, 2011, pp. 53–70. 2 J. Afrique, “Maroc: des centaines de migrants subsahariens interpellés et déplacés”, Jeune Afrique, 31 August 2018, available at https://www.jeuneafrique.com/622218/societe/maroc-descentaines-de-migrants-subsahariens-interpelles-et-deplaces/ (accessed 10 June 2019). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-007

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diverse migrant populations from Africa, Europe, and other origins,3 involving complex and changeable motivations to immigrate.4 Finally, even the transient presence of migrants in North Africa has an impact on the spaces that are crossed.5 One way to analyse the effects of this new presence of strangers in Moroccan cities is to look at the effects on religion. The presence of Christian migrants has been particularly visible in cities such as Rabat and Casablanca, where Born-Again Christian groups have been establishing spaces of worship that challenge local conceptions of religious practices and aesthetics, while introducing alternative forms of belonging that fit with the migratory projects of many sub-Saharan migrants encountered in Morocco. The “religious place-making” of Christian migrants represents only one quite marginal aspect and means of participation of the geographically and culturally diverse migrant communities in Morocco. However, analysing migrants’ religious place-making – in the sense of “the activity or establishing a particular locality for religious practice”6– enables us to extend our understanding of the extent that “moments” spent in Morocco7 have a meaning for people on the move, who both identify with this space and make it their own, contributing through the allocation of new meanings and values while connecting with transnational religious territories.8 This chapter attempts to empirically analyse the extent to which the religious spaces produced by such place-making are embedded in the transnational religious territories and participate in the everyday life and migration projects of their members. Drawing on the “production of social space” as a dialectic relationship between the physical space, the representation of space, and spaces of representations,9 religious sites are understood here as “dynamic

3 M. Timéra, “Aventuriers ou orphelins de la migration internationale: Nouveaux et anciens migrants ‘subsahariens’ au Maroc”, Politique Africaine 3 (2009) 115, pp. 175–195. 4 M. Collyer and H. de Haas, “Developing Dynamic Categorisations of Transit Migration”, Population, Space and Place 18 (2012) 4, pp. 468–481. 5 S. Bredeloup, “Sahara Transit: Times, Spaces, People”, Population, Space and Place 18 (2012) 4, pp. 457–467, at 461. 6 G. Hüwelmeier and K. Krause, “Introduction”, in: G. Hüwelmeier and K. Krause (eds.), Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets and Mobilities, New York: Routledge, 2010, p. 8. 7 J. Berriane, “The Moroccan Moment and Communities of Itinerants: Mobility and Belonging in the Transnational Trajectories of Sub-Saharan Migrants”, in: O. Bakewell and L. Landau (eds.), Forging African Communities: Mobility, Integration and Belonging, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pp. 57–74, at 83. 8 D. Garbin, “Regrounding the Sacred: Transnational Religion, Place Making and the Politics of Diaspora among the Congolese in London and Atlanta”, Global Networks 14 (2014) 3, pp. 363–382, at 365. 9 H. Lefebvre, La production de l’espace, Paris: Anthropos, 2000.

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entities” that are not merely embedded locally but also represent “the product of wider contacts” and “global forces”, in the sense of “the geographical beyond, the world beyond the place itself”.10 From this point of view, the religious sites in Morocco that are utilized and shaped by sub-Saharan migrants may help us explore the manner in which the religious institutions of migrants are simultaneously anchored in particular places and shaped by global change and transnational migration and circulation. Considering the religious place-making of Christian African migrants in Morocco may facilitate our understanding of how, in a state that has only recently recognized its role as a host country, religious minorities negotiate their presence and identify strategies to make their religion visible; moreover, this may shed light on the migrants’ position in local power relations and on their means/tools of contestation and local engagement. The adoption of Islam as the official state religion of Morocco and the attempt to control any religious expression in public have certainly had an impact on religious presence in the urban space. This situation constitutes a challenge for Christian migrants, who have to respond to the pre-established “urban spatial regimes” by “marking, crossing and negotiating boundaries between sacred and profane, religious and secular, personal and public spaces [. . .] as they seek to carve out places to be”.11 This chapter is based on ethnographic research in five different churches recently founded by migrants (two in Casablanca and three in Rabat) that I visited during three stays in 2015, 2016, and 2017.12 I participated in several religious gatherings and held regular discussions with the members. Additionally, I conducted in-depth interviews with 17 church leaders13 in the cities of Rabat and Casablanca and five congregants who were particularly active in their churches.14 I propose to introduce the Moroccan religious context and describe how migration contributes to its pluralization and Christianization. Then I will focus on the place-making of Charismatic churches and their link with the complex Moroccan migratory pattern. Finally, I will show how church members adapt to the local spatial regime and develop strategies to become locally present.

10 D. Massey, “Places and Their Pasts”, History Workshop Journal (1995) 39, p. 183. 11 M. Vásquez and J. Dewind, “Introduction to the Religious Lives of Migrant Minorities: A Transnational and Multi-Sited Perspective”, Global Networks 14 (2014) 3, p. 258. 12 The fieldwork was funded by the German Historical Institute of Paris. 13 Among them 10 nationals from Democratic Republic of Congo, 1 from Republic of the Congo, 4 from Ivory Coast, 1 from Cameroon, 1 from Nigeria. Apart from one female pastor from Ivory Coast, all the church leaders were male. 14 Three from Ivory Coast, 1 from Republic Congo, and 1 from Senegal. Three congregants were women and two were men.

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The Pluralization and “Pentecostalization” of Morocco’s Christian Landscape The Church of the Evangelist J is located in a somewhat dilapidated dwelling house in the popular J3 district in the southern part of Rabat. Believers have to climb several dimly lit spiral staircases in order to reach a small room built on top of the original flat roof of the house that has been converted for use as a church. In contrast to the poverty of the building, the room is fitted with lush red carpet, with one of the four walls covered with a curtain made of golden and silver fabric and four fans suspended from the walls. In front of the curtain, an altar in glass decorated with plastic flowers rests next to a bass guitar. In one of the corners, six stacks of plastic chairs are stored. The Congolese evangelist J arrived in Morocco in March 2013, where he soon commenced with his “mission”. J was already involved in a church prior to his emigration from his home town, where he was trained by a Pentecostal pastor. In Morocco, he first led a prayer gathering in the living room of a female migrant before his number of followers increased and he decided to seek a larger space fully dedicated to worship. In late 2014 he established his own church in the aforementioned room after – as he reported – God had instructed him to do so.15 Collective worship takes place there on four occasions in the week: besides the Sunday service, dedicated to the adoration of God, the believers also meet on Tuesday afternoons for collective prayers, Thursday for spiritual warfare and deliverance, and on Wednesday for night vigils that take place from midnight until dawn. Besides Evangelist J, other members are involved in the church activities: a choir of 4 young Congolese men performs during every collective meeting; during Sunday services or other larger gatherings, a lady at the entrance to the room is responsible for the “protocol” and assigns a seat to each participant who arrives; while a “moderator” leads the vocal prayer and singing that introduce the preaching of Evangelist J or any other invited preacher. This church largely resembles other “house-churches” that have been founded since the mid-2000s by African migrants in Moroccan cities – especially in Rabat – and have contributed to the pluralization of the Christian landscape. Following independence in 1956, the Christian churches built during colonial times served only a limited number of European worshippers, with Christianity being perceived as the religion of the French and Spanish colonizers.16 Since the 1980s, with the arrival of sub-Saharan students and later of migrants from West

15 Interview 10, Congolese migrant, Rabat, 18 December 2015. 16 J. Baida and V. Féroldi, Présence chrétienne au Maroc, Rabat: Bou-Regreg, 1995.

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and Central Africa, the situation shifted slightly, with churches inherited from the colonial era, such as the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church of Morocco, reactivated, while later the Protestant landscape – through the foundation of migrant house-churches – expanded geographically and became more diversified. The mainline churches (Catholic and Protestant) that are officially recognized and protected by the Moroccan state appear to be unable to meet the needs of all Christian believers who currently reside in Morocco. As in other parts of the African continent, Pentecostal and charismatic movements have spread. Although slight doctrinal differences exist between the migrant churches I visited, all the believers and church leaders I interviewed in Rabat and Casablanca said they belonged to “Pentecostal Protestant churches”. This links back to a 2013 survey which found 75 per cent of the house-churches established in Rabat to be part of the Congolese revivalist movement (Eglises de Réveil) or a “neo-Pentecostal denomination”.17 Their Pentecostal orientation – as all my informants explained – is the principal reason why they do not attend mainline churches. According to my informants, the main feature of their churches (and Pentecostalism) is the central role of the Holy Spirit, considered to be “God [the Father and the Son] in another shape”,18 who is able to heal and can be perceived through miracles.19 Besides that, the importance of charisma was emphasized: the ability to function as pastor, evangelist, or prophet is above all a spiritual gift or a “divine grace”.20 During my regular visits of service, the praising of healing and testimonies of visions and miracles were prevalent, while glossolalia took place regularly, all characteristics of Pentecostal practices.21 This would also partly explain the large number of Congolese house-churches in Morocco compared to other nationalities, since Pentecostal movements have become very popular in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the 1990s.22 A survey conducted in 2013 by the Protestant Church (EEAM) revealed that 20 house-churches dispersed in several suburbs of Rabat were

17 B. Coyault, “L’africanisation de l’Église évangélique au Maroc: Revitalisation d’une institution religieuse et dynamiques d’individualisation”, L’Année du Maghreb 2 (2014) 11, pp. 81–103. 18 Interview 12, Congolese migrant, Rabat, 13 January 2016. 19 Interview 3, Ivorian migrant, Casablanca, 21 November 2015. 20 Interview 16, Congolese migrant, Tamesna, 30 June 2016. 21 B. Meyer, “Christianity in Africa: From African Independent to Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches”, Review of Anthropology 33 (2004), pp. 447–474. 22 S. Kalombo Kapuku, “La pentecôtisation du protestantisme à Kinshasa”, Afrique contemporaine 252 (2014) 4, pp. 51–71.

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founded by migrants from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Four others were run by Nigerians, one by a Cameroonian pastor and one by a Liberian prophetess.23 The house-churches I visited are exclusively frequented by migrants, particularly from Ivory Coast, both Congo states, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, and Nigeria. There are English-speaking churches typically run by Nigerians, and French-speaking churches. A few churches are bilingual, and in the Congolese churches the service is usually in French and Lingala, at least when non-Lingala speakers attend. During the Sunday services we may find professional migrants, while in the numerous religious gatherings taking place during the week, we exclusively encounter migrants who are waiting for an opportunity to move northwards. The very existence of new Christian places of worship in the poorer suburbs of the main Moroccan cities seems to indicate that Christianity is no longer confined to isolated places inherited from the colonial past. However, these semiprivate charismatic churches are not a mere side-effect of the permanent settlement of African Christian foreigners in Morocco but rather the result of diverse forms of circulation and mobility.

Morocco’s Place in the Migrant Church Leaders’ Migration: A Stepping Stone and a Permanent Destination An analysis of the life trajectories of church leaders in Morocco reveals a direct link between their migration projects and their church activities. It reflects the complexity of Morocco’s migration patterns and highlights the churches’ position as a “node” that enables both installation and circulation. Among the church leaders I interviewed we can find a broad variety of individuals with different migration backgrounds and life experiences. The time spent in Morocco varies considerably: the more established church leaders, perceived by their fellows as “elders”, arrived in 2003,24 2004,25 and 2006,26 whereas the others came after 2010, with 6 arriving between March 2013 and mid-2015. Nine of the

23 24 25 26

Coyault, “L’africanisation de l’Église évangélique”, pp. 99–101. Interview 2, Congolese, male, Rabat, 19 October 2015. Interview 27, Congolese, male, Rabat, 31 October 2017. Interview 12, Congolese, male, Rabat, 13 January 2016.

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church leaders still wish to migrate northwards. However, others have decided to settle permanently. Pastor P, for instance, who initially came in 2003 in order to continue on to Europe, now wants to remain in Morocco. He lives in Rabat with his wife and their three daughters, and even his oldest daughter – who had lived in Kinshasa for the previous 12 years – was able to join the family in 2016. Besides his religious activities, Pastor P was able to acquire a steady income and, as he told me, “become integrated”27: he owns a small shop vending African commodities in Rabat, organizes cash transfers between Morocco and the Democratic Republic of Congo and recently founded an association. Other church leaders – the Ivorians, for instance – who arrived recently, told me that their original intention was to stay in Morocco. This is the case of a female pastor, who in 2013 was sent by her Ivorian church (based in Abidjan) to Casablanca in order to establish a church branch, just after the Moroccan King had announced the launching of a migration policy and an operation to regularize migrants. When I asked the pastor about her plans, she explained to me that she wishes to remain in Morocco and thus is seeking residency, which she is optimistic about, since the Moroccan state provided residency to all female applicants in 2014.28 When I met her again in 2017, she had residency status and was founding her own church in another suburb of Casablanca.29 The fact that churches based in the Ivory Coast have decided to establish branches in Morocco can be interpreted as a subtle shift in the perception and the effective role of Morocco as an immigration country. However, the installation of Ivorian churches in Morocco does not only encourage the permanent settlement and integration of Ivorian migrants but supports multidirectional forms of mobility and circulation too.

Migrant House-Churches as Hubs for Mobility The religious place-making of migrants in Morocco contributes to the circulation of migrants. During my second interview with Evangelist J, we were constantly interrupted by his smartphone. He apologized on one occasion and informed me that he needed to take a pause in order to send a message to a “sister” (follower) who was in Turkey and needed his spiritual support. This sister – a female Congolese member of his church in Morocco – had left for Turkey

27 Interview 2, Congolese, male, Rabat, 19 January 2015. 28 Interview 3, Ivorian, female, Casablanca, 22 November 2015. 29 Interview 23, Ivorian, female, Casablanca, 1 October 2017.

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three days earlier, her aim being to reach Europe. He needed to inform her of the Bible passages she had to read in order to succeed in her journey. Later, I was informed that other former church members were likewise in Turkey, waiting for an opportunity to continue their journey, whereas others had crossed the Mediterranean and were already in Europe. Four other members of his church were planning to travel northwards in the coming month. Evangelist J attempts to maintain contact with the majority of them and even provides distance spiritual coaching before he himself finds an opportunity to join them.30 In October 2016 he explained that he would soon be leaving Morocco for another place, somewhere he did not yet know – a place “where God will send him”. However, before leaving he would entrust his church to someone else who would remain in Morocco and “carry on the work of God”.31 When I met him in late 2017, he introduced me to his “successor”, a Cameroonian man who had started to lead the church in order to give Evangelist J time to “get ready” for his second migration.32 In his investigation, Coyault found that in every house-church a person called in French connexion is responsible for connecting migrants with the networks of smugglers who organize the emigration to Europe.33 These housechurches are therefore also social spaces that not only provide spiritual and social support in Morocco, but might also help migrants – church leaders included – to pursue their journey northwards. The church of Pastor P, who inherited the “mission” from a Congolese pastor who had left for France, was also a connection point for migrants who wished to migrate to Europe. The church even rented a room furnished with thin mattresses and covers in order to host transient migrants. By late 2015, the number of “clients” had decreased, however, and he had decided to cancel the lease. As an alternative, the small office in his church has been furnished with a thin mattress and is occasionally used to host stranded migrants.34 Their role as “a connection point” with networks of smugglers has been on the one hand a substantial aspect of the churches’ existence. It has on the other negatively impacted on the churches’ reputation among local authorities.35 The tactics used by the church congregates to position themselves more favourably in the local political environment will be discussed below.

30 Interview 19, Congolese, male, Rabat, 26 October 2016. 31 Ibid. 32 Interview 24, Cameroonian, male, Rabat, 24 October 2017. 33 Coyault, “L’africanisation de l’Église évangélique”, p. 92. 34 Interview 17, Congolese, male, Rabat, 20 October 2016. 35 Interview 27, Congolese, male, Rabat, 31 October 2017.

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Besides the role of migrant-churches as connection points for the circulation of “transit” migrants who are travelling northwards, the existence of these house-churches today also facilitates the South-North and North-South mobility of images, individuals, and money. This circulation is particularly important when the church-leader becomes an intermediary for financial support from abroad. This is the case of Pastor P, who, with the help of his mentor who entrusted him with the church prior to leaving for France, made contact with a Pentecostal church based in the United States and run by a Nigerian pastor. This financial support initially enabled a move to a larger room – the basement of a villa – entirely dedicated to church activities, nowadays a meeting point for many Christian migrants from Rabat. Pastor P’s church contributes further to the transnational circulation of religious preachers, goods and migrants between Africa, Europe and North America. In May 2016, a Nigerian supporter came from the United States to Morocco in order to organize a 5-day workshop on leadership in Rabat, and on the same occasion consecrated P as the Reverend of his Church in Morocco. A few months earlier, P had hosted two Congolese preachers from Brazzaville, who, on their way to a religious gathering in France, had stopped in Rabat in order to organize a religious seminar in his church. One year before this, his followers had welcomed a French Pentecostal preacher who had led their Sunday service. The visit of international preachers appears to be a common practice also in smaller and less prominent Congolese churches. Evangelist J also plans to welcome a Congolese pastor from the United Kingdom, with whom he had become familiar thanks to a former follower who had left for London.36 The North-South circulation driven by Congolese church-leaders in particular is likely to be linked to the Congolese diaspora in the West, where transnational religious territories play a particularly important role37 through supporting those Congolese migrants who live in Morocco.38 Even in this small sample of interviewees we can notice a broad variety of social profiles and aspirations among the African Christian leaders encountered in Morocco. Whereas “transit” was previously conceived of as the main aim for the majority of the interviewed pastors, a diversification of migration projects is the rule today. This reflects perfectly the complexity of Morocco’s current migration pattern, mainly characterized by an overlapping of more or less temporal installation and consciously planned immigration. The charismatic housechurches are therefore also integrated in the transnational Christian spaces that 36 Interview 19, Congolese, male, Rabat, 26 October 2016. 37 Garbin, “Regrounding the Sacred”, pp. 363–382. 38 E. Goldschmidt, “Migrants congolais en route vers l’Europe”, Les temps modernes 620/621 (2002), pp. 208–239.

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encompass the migrants’ countries of origin (e.g. the Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast), Moroccan cities and the African diaspora communities in Europe and North America. This mobility is further enhanced by the participation of the charismatic churches from Rabat and Casablanca in Christian “cyber territories”.39 The circulation of pictures and films of sermons and religious gatherings among virtual social networks and the YouTube internet channel enables religious leaders to compensate for their local invisibility and advertise their events. In this manner, they also participate in “a transnational evangelizing strategy”40 that enables them to connect with other Christian communities – primarily in the West. Installation and planned immigration have both had an impact on Moroccan cities, among others, through the establishment of migrant house-churches in the popular migrant districts. But how do house-churches negotiate their presence in Morocco, and how do they cope with the constraints of a highly restrictive spatial regime?

Presence-Making in Invisible Places Except for the small minority of Moroccan Jews, who are recognized and protected, Moroccan citizens are officially Muslims with Sunni Islam representing, by constitution, the state religion. Moroccan law does not allow Moroccan Muslims to convert; it condemns Shia Islam and combats Christian proselytism. The Christian mainline churches (Catholic and Protestant) inherited from the colonial era are recognised and protected by the Moroccan state, but are only officially perceived as places of worship for foreigners and are controlled and monitored.41 Yet the question of religious freedom has been repeatedly raised in public and virtual social networks since 2011, with several movements and organizations campaigning today in favour of legal reform that would allow Moroccans to freely choose their religion instead of being considered Muslim by birth. However, any religious reform has yet to be planned, and Christianity – notwithstanding the existence of Moroccan Christians, who have become more vocal through online channels and virtual social networks – is still seen as the religion of the foreigner. Besides, within the Muslim sphere the state is increasingly

39 Garbin, “Regrounding the Sacred”, p. 366. 40 Hüwelmeier and Krause, “Introduction”, p. 8. 41 In 2010, the Moroccan State accused numerous French and North-American clergymen of proselytism among Moroccan orphans and expelled them from the country, while in 2017 a Moroccan man was arrested after he entered a Christian church in Marrakech.

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attempting to control the entire religious debate by integrating (and co-opting) every dissident religious scholar within the publicly funded Council of Islamic Scholars and prohibiting any divergent religious expression in public.42 Despite this, the nation attempts to promote the international image of an inclusive country that welcomes immigrants and refugees, where their human rights have been protected through the establishment of a global migration policy that has also to contribute to the tolerance of the religious and cultural diversity of its immigrants. The tensions between Moroccan society’s fear of a Christian presence and the official policy of welcoming are also perceivable in the charismatic church members’ strategies to consolidate their presence and place within the cities’ suburbs, thus challenging the very restrictive spatial regime, as well as the “different concepts of the religious and the secular”.43 The Christian churches that I studied have very similar spatial histories: initially, a few people start out meeting in a living room, before they then rent a place entirely dedicated to church activities and decorated in such a way as to emphasize its distinctiveness. This expansion is also quietly dynamic: new churches are founded, others expand, and only a small number disappear. Between 2015 and 2016, I was able to identify two newly founded house-churches in Rabat and one in Casablanca. Other churches – such as the Congolese Église du Feu de la Restauration – have founded new branches in Casablanca itself or in the newly built housing suburb of Tamesna, where many Congolese migrants have recently settled.44 The headquarters of The Light of God moved to the city of Mohammedia in late 2014 – situated between Rabat and Casablanca – where its Nigerian and Congolese leaders were able to rent a large building while retaining the small house-church in Rabat.45 Due to the legal and economic precariousness of the Christian migrant communities and their subordinate position in local power relations, these successful spatial careers are coupled with uncertainty and marginality. All the churches I visited are located in the most run-down buildings in the street. Some churches are located above brothels or illegal vendors of liquor.46 Others, such as La Manne Cachée, had had to relocate up to five times before their leaders were able to find a stable and safe site for their religious gatherings.47

42 M. Zeghal, Les islamistes marocains: Le défi à la monarchie, Casablanca: Le Fennec, 2005, p. 244. 43 Hüwelmeier and Krause, “Introduction”, p. 8. 44 Interview 15, Congolese, male, Tamesna, 30 June 2016. 45 Interview 1, Congolese, male, Rabat, 24 October 2014. 46 Interview 10, Congolese, male, Rabat, 18 December 2015. 47 Interview 12, Congolese, male, Rabat, 13 January 2016.

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In the several discussions I had with migrant pastors, the ability to rent premises solely dedicated to worship is already perceived as a sign of divine grace and the particular charisma of the church leaders. My informants – the successful pastors – consider it their religious mission to “conquer [. . .] territories for Jesus” in Morocco. Evangelist J, for instance, told me during our first meeting: In the Bible it’s said, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.” That’s what I am actually doing, even if I leave Morocco, I know that God will give good things to Morocco and God’s work will be carried forth. After I leave, other servants of God will continue His work here.48

This statement, however, somewhat contradicts the relative “invisibility” of his church and ignores the local political restrictions that prohibit Christian proselytism. All my informants, perhaps in order to protect themselves, acknowledged their difficulty in reaching out to Moroccan locals, whom they consider to be all Muslims. Indeed, some of my interviewees were very surprised to learn of the presence of Moroccan Christians who, like themselves, also meet in private.49 Therefore, the pastors primarily evangelise other African migrants and are rarely in contact with their Moroccan Christian fellows. One explanation might be the very different socio-economic backgrounds of these two communities, which do not share the same living conditions or spaces. Although there is no effective interaction between Moroccan Christians and African Christians, both groups similarly challenge the highly restrictive Moroccan regime by extending into other spaces, such as “cyber territories”,50 that facilitate their visibility within the local Christian migrant community and the transnational Christian spaces. For African charismatic churches, a local presence is also achieved through the churches’ participation in the urban soundscapes, despite the conflicts that arise. Indeed, although churches are not publicly visible, religious gatherings do not occur without becoming audible. In late October 2016, Evangelist J invited me to attend a religious gathering on a Sunday afternoon. It was the last session of a three-day seminar that he had organized. When I arrived in the street where the church is situated, I could already hear the drum, the electric bass guitar, and the religious songs in Lingala51 that passed through the wall and

48 Interview 10, Congolese, male, Rabat. 18 December 2015. 49 Interview 3, Ivorian, female, Casablanca, 22 November 2015; Interview 10, Congolese, male, 18 December 2015; Interview 15, Congolese, male, Tamesna, 30 June 2016. 50 Garbin, “Regrounding the Sacred”, p. 366. 51 A language spoken by Congolese.

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permeated into the street. Whereas no visible sign indicated the existence of a church in this street – a common feature of all migrant churches I visited – the music and loud praises of God clearly suggested that a religious meeting was taking place. Christian migrant churches seem, therefore, to be rather present through their audibility as opposed to their visibility and, through their sound practices, help to shape and sacralise the Moroccan urban space, since “sounds transgress spatial boundaries and mediate between public and private, presence and absence, visibility and invisibility”.52 This participation in the “audible city”53 does not take place without causing conflicts with the immediate neighbours. During my fieldwork, I never witnessed complaints from the neighbours or the intervention of the police. However, all my informants had at least once been confronted with conflicts with their neighbours who felt disturbed by the “noise” and knocked on the building, threw stones at the windows or even made complaints to the police.54 My informants were fully aware of the fact that they were disturbing their neighbours – particularly during their nightly prayer vigils – and attempted to identify measures to reduce the sound level through closing the windows and door or insulating with sponges or egg cartons the walls that separated the house-church from the neighbours’ houses. However, usually after one hour of prayer and chanting, these small, overcrowded rooms become uncomfortably hot, as the ventilators no longer provide sufficient fresh air and the believers are forced to open the door in order to be able to breathe normally. For that reason, perhaps, it is primarily these churches that share the dwelling with their landlords, who – in exchange for “the disturbances” caused by these religious gatherings – charge an exorbitant rent55 or are in dwellings where only African migrants live, who would not risk complaining and conflicts. Whereas disturbance was at the beginning a main reason for the spatial instability of the Charismatic church communities, who got expelled by their landlords due to pressures of the local authorities, a subtle change of the authorities has been witnessed since the launching of the operations of regularization in 2014.56 Since that time, local authorities have tended to ignore complaints made by neighbours – as long as the religious

52 M. de Witte, “Accra’s sounds and sacred spaces”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32 (3), pp. 690–709, at 692. 53 Ibid. 54 Interview 2, Congolese, male, Rabat, 19 October 2015; Interview 16, Congolese, male, Tamesna, 30 June 2016; Interview 19, Congolese, male, Rabat, 26 October 2016. 55 Interview 2, Congolese, male, Rabat, 19 October 2015; Interview 16, Congolese, male, Tamesna, 30 June 2016. 56 Interview 26, Ivorian, male, Rabat, 26 October 2017.

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gatherings do not take place in public – and even consider church leaders important representatives of the migrant communities that Moroccan cities have to “integrate”.57

Complementary Spaces for Recognition During my first meeting with Pastor P, he explained to me that in early 2015 his church was officially registered and now has the status of an association: Before we didn’t have the papers, before we didn’t have the papers, but now God blessed us by helping us to found an association. We have an association within our church and that enabled us to have the papers [to have a legal status] and we also have many different departments, a social department, a cultural department and we also pray.58

Pastor P’s association is dedicated to francophone culture and music. It is the official tenant of the basement where the church meets. His first motivation was to avoid any conflict with the local authorities. Moreover, as he and several of his fellows had received their residence permit in 2013, they now had a legal right to seek official permission for their activities. Despite his association having been founded primarily in order to gain a legal status and be allowed to organize gatherings, this association is more than a mere a facade for church activities. On the contrary, they regularly organize sport activities in the neighbourhood, distribute food and clothing donations, and host music concerts, for which they advertise in public spaces. All this, Pastor P considers as representing the charitable and cultural dimension of his church, which – through the association – can be made public. Among the church leaders I interviewed in Morocco, four had decided to found a local association59; others informed me about their intention to adopt a similar approach.60 This social activism of church leaders has to be linked to the mobilization of migrants that has been witnessed generally in Morocco

57 Observations and discussions with Moroccan human rights activists during a meeting organized by a Congolese pastor, Mohammedia, 25 November 2017. 58 Interview 2, Congolese, male, Rabat, 19 October 2015. 59 Interview 1, Congolese, male, Rabat, 24 January 2014; Interview 2, Congolese, male, Rabat, 19 October 2015; Interview 13, Ivorian, male, Casablanca, 15 January 2016; Interview 26, Ivorian, male, Rabat, 26 October 2017. 60 Interview 15, Congolese, male, Tamesna, 30 June 2016; Interview 16, Congolese, male, Tamesna, 30 June 2016.

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since 2005, where religious leaders have largely been involved. After the national and international media broadcasted a violent repression by Moroccan and Spanish border agents, resulting in two assaults upon migrants who had attempted to climb the barbed-wire border fences separating the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla from Morocco, the migration issue in Morocco became more visible. These events stimulated the further expansion of action by civil society to address the migrants’ concerns. Migrants began joining forces to demand recognition of their refugee status and press for enhanced regulation of their residence rights in Morocco.61 This process led to the establishment of several informal associations founded by African migrants with the aims of highlighting the plight of sub-Saharan migrants for audiences in Morocco and abroad, while also submitting claims for the recognition of their rights.62 These irregular migrants’ associations became more visible with the cooperation and support of local and international NGOs, which are recognized by the state and can ensure the participation of irregular migrants in demonstrations and public sit-ins.63 A large component of this mobilization has taken place in Rabat, where embassies and international organizations are primarily located and where many migrants have decided to settle after their failed attempts to cross the Spanish border fences. In Rabat, this mobilization led further to the foundation by migrants – among them also future leaders of migrant house-churches – of a social organization called “Le Comité d’Entraide”, that is supported by the Protestant Church of Morocco.64 The initiative of migrant church leaders to found associations can therefore be perceived as being part of this trend. It shows further the social and charitable dimension of the churches, an element that was often emphasized by my informants. We can even ask whether this mobilization trend also initiated the place-making of Pentecostal migrants. Certainly, it was in 2004 that one of the first house-churches was founded in Rabat. I was able to meet one of its founders, a Congolese migrant who had left his country in 2000 with the initial project of immigration to Europe. After failing to cross the fences of the Moroccan-Spanish border, he decided to

61 M. Alioua, “Le ‘passage au politique’ des transmigrants subsahariens au Maroc”, in: A. Bensaad (ed.), Le Maghreb à l’épreuve des migrations subsahariennes: Immigration sur émigration, Paris: Karthala, 2009, pp. 279–304, at 293. 62 A. Pian, “Entre ‘visibilisation’ et ‘invisibilisation’, les migrations subsahariennes au Maroc”, in: Bensaad (ed.), Le Maghreb, pp. 63–86, at 75. 63 L. Feliu i Martinez, “Les migrations de transit au Maroc: Attitudes et comportement de la société civile face au phénomène”, L’Année du Maghreb (2009) 5, pp. 343–362. 64 Interview 28, Congolese, male, Rabat, 2 November 2017. He was in charge of a social organization supporting vulnerable migrants.

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settle in Rabat in order to found – with other fellows – a charismatic church called Plénienne. This house-church, as he recalled, was also a place of mooring for stranded migrants and became regarded as a migrants’ smuggling organization, leading to numerous police inspections and expulsions. My informant, for instance, had been arrested four times in the church and expelled by the Moroccan security forces via the Moroccan-Algerian border. His situation, however, changed considerably after he commenced work with local and international NGOs and faith-based organizations such as Caritas Maroc and the aforementioned Comité d’Entraide. In 2013, he was given residency by the Moroccan state and today he is responsible for an education programme for migrant minors operated by a Protestant faith-based organization.65 A shift in the Moroccan perception of African church leaders was also perceptible at a meeting organised by a migrant association which, with the support of the publicly funded Moroccan Human Rights Council (CNDH), was officially founded in late 2017 by two church leaders from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria. During this meeting, the CNDH officials emphasised the Christian background and engagement of the two migrants as a very positive aspect that would enable them to “make a better work”.66

Conclusion The charismatic migrant house-churches in Morocco are communities that function as social networks and facilitate the local insertion of transient migrants through offering a safe place for rest, the creation of socialities and the ability to connect with NGOs that provide services to migrants in need. These spaces also become vital for the shaping of a sense of belonging in moments of circumstantial solidarity and itinerancy, or when the migrants cannot rely on strong social networks. In these spaces, the membership changes constantly, depending on the migration flows and the opportunities that arise to cross the Mediterranean or find an income, which either terminate or restrict involvement in church activities. When the practitioners decide to pursue their journey or their professional life project, their membership may continue via online or telephone communication between the traveller and his fellows or the church leader left behind. During the moment of religious involvement, the church

65 Interview 27, Congolese, male, Rabat, 31 October 2017. 66 Observations and discussions with Moroccan human rights activists during a meeting organized by a Congolese pastor, Mohammedia, 2 November 2017.

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functions as a space of becoming, where migrants experience a more intense religiosity, become Born-Again Christians and experience their migratory journey as a spiritual test. This scenario exemplifies how the religious place-making of migrants signifies processes of stability for migrant communities which consider Morocco a place of permanent settlement. However, these places are also hubs for migrants who want to move northwards and initiate reverse circulations between Morocco and their countries of origin as well as Europe, integrating Morocco in this way into transnational evangelical territories.

Klaus Hock

8 Transforming Spatial Formats: Imagined Commonalities, Imaginary Spaces, and Spaces of Imagination The starting point of this contribution is an extremely broad understanding of “religious organization”. Here, the category is used mainly to refer to religious communalization in a broad sense – ranging from loose networks to imagined communities invisibly structured by (assumed) systematic formations of togetherness. Against this background, the focus is on spaces of imagination, imagined and/or imaginary, that are generated by religious actors or what Bruno Latour calls “actants”.1 Occasionally, these actors and actants create new spatial formats, manifest and more or less “real” – such as missionary spaces or networks of holy places – but sometimes, they give rise to the evolvement of (re)invented or just replicated virtual spaces.

Generative Cultural Hybridity Emerging from Transient Spaces Let us begin with what could be termed generative cultural hybridity emerging from transient spaces2 and examine a phenomenon quite widespread in several regions of West Africa, known as zongo settlement.3 At first glance, the zongo

1 See B. Latour, “On Actor-network Theory: A Few Clarifications”, Soziale Welt 47 (1996) 4, pp. 369–381. 2 For a brief reference to zongo from the perspective of Sociology of Space see K. Hock, “Manifestation – Repräsentation – Imagination: Macht-Räume und Raum-Mächte islamischer Präsenzen in (West)-Afrika”, in: D. Cyranka and H. Wrogemann (eds.), Religion – Macht – Raum: Religiöse Machtansprüche und ihre medialen Repräsentationen, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2018, pp. 59–76, at 69–71. 3 L. Müller, Religion and Chieftaincy in Ghana: An Explanation of the Persistence of a Traditional Political Institution in West Africa, Münster: LIT, 2013, p. 284. Note: Parts of this contribution, particularly the chapter on “Divination Boards as a Cosmic Device”, have been facilitated by a research stay at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities “Fate, Freedom and Prognostication” at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-008

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seems to derive from a pattern that can be traced back to the early Islamic presence in the region. According to a formative discourse of scholarship quite common in recent decades, the history of Islamization in West Africa has been conceptualized in three phases, namely Islam (1) as an isolated foreign body (“quarantine Islam”); (2) as a religion with strong ties to the house of the local or regional ruler (“court Islam”); and (3) as the prevailing religion in quantitative terms (“majority Islam”).4 While the first phase refers to a spatial pattern of what could be termed an extraterritorially encapsulated Islam outside of the majority society’s areas, the second points to embedded Islam, and the third to expanding/expanded territoriality.5 My concern here is less with the question whether this phase model still appropriately reflects the complex process of Islamization, nor with its depth or the relation between qualitative and quantitative Islamization. Rather, my focus is on the zongo (or zango, pl. zanguna) in its spatial dimension. Originally denoting a caravan camp and later, more generically, a transit camp, zongo came to refer to a settlement located close to (mostly: major) cities and inhabited by (mainly) Hausa-speaking migrants from the Sahel.6 However, as we shall see, the zongo was generally inhabited by a population that was relatively hybrid, both in religious or cultural and in ethnic terms. This seems to have been – and still seems to be – due to the homogenizing effect of a perception derived from outsiders’ perspectives. From pre-colonial to post-colonial times, we can observe the transformative power of spatial rearrangements, combined with both (externally and internally induced) migration or resettlement and the renegotiation of societal (ethnic, religious, regional, genealogical, etc.) boundaries. Hitherto strong ties to a specific urban quarter can be dissolved, and ethnicity can be replaced by religion – or vice versa. One striking example is the spatial transformation of Accra since the nineteenth century. Here I rely heavily on the research of Deborah Pellow, not only with regard to her data, but also in consideration of changes in the discourses of scholarship.7 4 See D. Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 28 and passim. 5 Hock, “Manifestation”, p. 64. 6 See E.A. Williamson, “Understanding the Zongo: Processes of Socio-spatial Marginalization in Ghana”, SMArchS thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2014, pp. 17–18. 7 Particularly: D. Pellow, “Muslim Segmentation: Cohesion and Divisiveness in Accra”, The Journal of Modern African Studies 23 (1985) 3, pp. 419–444; Idem, Landlords and Lodgers: Socio-spatial Organization in an Accra Community, Westport: Praeger, 2002; Idem, “Migrant Communities in Accra, Ghana: Marginalizing the Margins”, in: R. Grant (ed.), Globalization and the Margins, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 111–129; Idem, “The Power of Space in the Evolution of an Accra Zongo”, in: S.M. Low (ed.), Theorizing the City: The New

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In what is today Ghana and in adjacent regions, the Muslim enclaves established around 1900 have retained their reputation as “aliens’ quarters” – despite the fact that they were far from being uniform in terms of language, culture, and ethnic affiliation. Since the early twentieth century, we can observe a significant rise in conversions to Islam of persons from southern Ghanaian ethnic groups. But this did not lead to a realignment of territorial allegiance in accordance with religious affiliation. “The zongos in Ghana are seen as ‘Muslim’, whether everyone there is a Muslim or not; but native converts to Islam do not necessarily have to live in the zongo.”8 The zongo continued to serve as “the socio-spatial referent for northern identity”,9 as “indigenous” Muslims opted to live outside the zongo, occasionally establishing new “Muslim” quarters like Madina, while “immigrant” Muslim communities continued to maintain their asserted joint religious-cultural identity. Zongo Lane in the northwestern area of the old capital centre may serve as a case in point. There, notwithstanding internal inter-ethnic disputes, primarily between Hausa and Yoruba, Islam became more and more a generative factor for identity formation, superseding ethnic identities. The tendency for religion as an identity marker to supplant ethnic allegiances continued up to early pre-independence times, when “indigenous’” conversions to Islam increased significantly. In spatial terms, however, most converts chose not to move to Zongo Lane or to any other zongo. Rather, they continued to live in their original quarters or relocated to “mixed” districts, or to new Muslim quarters. In the long run, this brought about continuous friction and fusion within the Muslim communities, multiplying the number of zanguna in each Muslim quarter. While political representation in the secular field was differentiated along ethnic lines, the fact that there can be only one Imam (who would likewise serve as a representative of Muslim unity) caused competition between different Muslim communities. With different constellations, coalitions and allegiances, this competition has continued to the present day.

Urban Anthropology Reader, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005, pp. 277–314; Idem, “New Spaces in Accra: Transnational Houses”, City and Society 15 (2003) 1, pp. 59–86; Idem, “Maps of What Matters: Community Colour”, in: P. Konings (ed.), Crisis and Creativity: Exploring the Wealth of the African Neighbourhood, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 142–162. See also H. Weiss, Between Accommodation and Revivalism: Muslims, the State, and Society in Ghana from the Precolonial to the Postcolonial Era, Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society, 2008, p. 247 and passim. 8 N. Samwini, The Muslim Resurgence in Ghana since 1950: Its Effects upon Muslims and Muslim-Christian Relations, Münster: LIT, 2006, p. 102. 9 Pellow, “Muslim Segmentation”, p. 424.

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The spatial dimension of these developments may be exemplified by disputes about the building of the new central mosque on Abose-Okai Road10 in the late 1970s and early 1980s, not dissimilar to those concerning the central mosque in Kumasi.11 We might understand these disputes as power struggles between different segments of the Muslim community – between “immigrants’ communities” in the zanguna and “indigenous’ communities” in the new quarters. In reality, however, the divisions between those two groups are multifaceted, and we find quite varied segmentations of the Muslim community, particularly in Accra. While the decision to build a new central mosque at Abose-Okai Road – outside the traditional zongo – seemed to indicate a shift from “strangers’” constituencies to “Ghanaians’” constituencies, it was in fact an “alien” Muslim who was appointed Chief Imam of the new mosque. Clearly, space made a difference. In colonial times, Accra was made up of three sectors: the indigenous/precolonial, the colonial/Western/“modern”, and the migrants’ settlements, reflecting social stratification. While the colonial administration designated a new settlement area (Adabraka) with the aim of relocating there what it called the “Hausa tribes” of the old Zongo Lane, the target group of this scheme preferred to establish its own new community area, Sabon Zongo, four kilometres to the northwest. While both districts started from the same environmental conditions – both were more or less bush areas – they developed in different directions. Sabon Zongo remained a marginalized zongo, with a weak infrastructure and a kin-based socio-political set-up, attracting migrants (“foreigners”) from the lower classes. Adabraka, on the other hand, although likewise a settlement appealing to migrants, drew them mainly from “indigenous” and higher-income groups, and turned into an attractive “modern” quarter. Nima, a quarter that started as – and remained – a typical zongo, displays many features resembling the situation in Sabon Zongo but has not developed solid socio-political structures. Compared to Adabraka, which received governmental assistance, and to Nima with its unstructured, if not disorganized societal form, Sabon Zongo is marginalized and suffers from a rotten infrastructure; but it accommodates a vibrant and somehow self-sustaining community. This points to the potential of

10 The Central Mosque in Accra was built in the 1970s for the Abossey Okai Muslim community. Since the 1980s it has been the Central Mosque for Accra. The Central Mosque at the central market at Mokola was burnt and demolished. 11 See E. Schildkrout, “Islam and Politics in Kumasi: An Analysis of Disputes over the Kumasi Central Mosque”, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 52 (1974) 2, pp. 111–138.

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the zongo as an urban quarter combining a “traditional” ethos, Islamic values, kinship ties, neighbourhood loyalty, village atmosphere, and a sense of belonging with a “modern” outlook, an urban disposition, entrepreneurial dynamics, a metropolitan disposition, network-related activities, and occupational mobility. Against this background, zongwanci, “zongo-ness”, signifies a new, dynamic identity that draws much of its power from the creative and transformative spatiality of the zongo. All this points to the fact that zongo is – or has become – quite a fluid concept. While it originally may have referred to mainly Muslim “northerners” who settled in “strangers’ quarters”, making them agglomerations with a distinctly Islamic atmosphere,12 in the course of time, due to a variety of factors – the intake of new migrants, ethnic, economic, and social changes or spatial resettlements – the zongo has transformed into a both spatial and conceptual entity characterized by a high degree of fluidity and hybridity. Once characterized by exterritorial encapsulation and in this regard similar to the “quarantine” model of early Islamization in West Africa, it has traversed its own spatial embeddedness and turned into a transformative and generative space,13 turning zongwanci – a term referring to the procreative, dynamic identity of the zongo’s inhabitants – into a “sense of belongingness”.14 Vis-à-vis urban dwellers outside the zongo, this identity is characterized by an intersectional distinctiveness that is based on internal heterogeneity and generates a “new” residential community emerging from productive diversity. Against this background, space is a catalyst and an agent of change, challenging the juxtaposition of time as something dynamic and space as something static. Moreover, we can observe space-related agency in its own right with the ability to foster social, economic, political, and religious innovation, unleashing the creative potential of urban quarters shaped by dynamic migratory transformations. Social and cultural practices are informed by and inform spatiality in such a way that by means of space, the social imaginary 15 of zongwanci is constituted. 12 D. Pellow and N. Chazan, Ghana: Coping with Uncertainty, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986, p. 102. 13 See “[Z]ongo residents differ in background and orientation from those outside but are also more acculturated [. . .] than earlier residents are [. . .]” (Pellow, “The Power of Space”, p. 307). 14 D. Pellow, “African Materiality and the House”, in: S. Low (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and the City: Engaging the Urban and the Future, London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2019, pp. 356–376, at 357. 15 “Social imaginary” must not be confused with “social imagery”, a term in the sociology of scientific knowledge, consisting of “those beliefs which people confidently hold to and live by. In particular [. . .] the beliefs which are taken for granted or institutionalized, or invested with

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The model of sabon zongo finds its antipodal complement in that of sabon gari (“new town”) during colonial times, settlements of non-Muslim migrants outside the walls of Muslim cities. In the course of time, these settlements were incorporated into the expanding territory of the cities. Likewise, and due to forced segregation, sporadically in conjunction with violent conflicts, these cities have occasionally run the risk of disintegrating into homogeneous, nearly “quarantine” quarters, spatially separated from one another. This has been the case in the aftermath of recurring inter-communal riots in Kaduna and Jos.16 Inter-communal conflicts may bring about intensified segregation that can result in violent conflict; equally, radical segregation can cause major conflicts between the inhabitants of the zongo and the surrounding population. This happened, for example, in 1992 when clashes in Zangon Kataf (in southern Kaduna State) between Muslim Hausa traders – alleged “newcomers” or “foreigners” – and Kataf (Atyap) – “indigenous” or “residents” – caused hundreds of casualties. However, the fault-lines between the opponents are fluid and may change. Sometimes, these conflicts are the result of ethnic identity politics. Territorial as well as ethnic, political or cultural specifications of zongo-spaces are continuously renegotiated – both as lieu, and as espace, to draw upon the terminology of Michel de Certeau.17

Permanent Pilgrims on Imaginative Pilgrimage From a historical point of view, the hajj as an obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca proves the importance of space and spatiality in Islam. Other examples of Muslims’ religious practice pointing to the importance of space in Islam include

authority by groups of people” (D. Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976, p. 5). 16 Interestingly, the sabon gari of colonial Kaduna city had quite a balanced ethnic composition with more than 25 per cent Hausa, between 11 and 19 per cent Igbo, Yoruba, and Nupe and nearly 30 per cent “others” (O. Oshin, “Railways and Urbanization”, in: T. Falola and S.J. Salm [eds.], Nigerian Cities, Trenton: Africa World Press, 2004, pp. 101–126, at 114). See also L. King, “From Caliphate to Protectorate: Ethnicity and the Colonial Sabon Gari System in Northern Nigeria”, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 4 (2003) 2, https://muse.jhu. edu/article/45737 (accessed 15 March 2019). 17 Michel de Certeau conceived of a place (lieu) as “the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence”, whereas he wrote on space (espace): “A space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. Thus, space is composed of intersections of mobile elements” (Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, p. 117).

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the significance of the qibla, the direction that should be faced during the ritual prayer (salât), or the Islamic calendar, generally, as well as the beginning of Ramadan. Here, Islam links time to space in a special way by aligning temporality with spatiality: the position of the moon determines the calculation of time. The significance of the pilgrimage to Mecca in this context is somewhat different. Throughout its history and notwithstanding the standardizing pressure on the part of proponents of Islamic orthopraxy, varying interpretations of the legitimate format of the hajj have emerged. One of the most prominent is the claim that as a substitute for the hajj to Mecca a pilgrim may undertake a certain number of pilgrimages to other holy places in his or her home country. This understanding has become prevalent in popular Islam, frequently nurtured by Sûfi thought and ritual. It is widespread in southeast Asia, Africa, and beyond. Some pilgrims even hold that ziyârât – visits to holy places, mostly tombs or shrines of (habitually: Muslim) saints – are even superior to the hajj.18 But there is another, more singular phenomenon that has created a very peculiar understanding and practice of hajj, featuring a distinctive relation between spatiality and religion, between space and religious practice. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the West Sudan region was affected by two complementary developments: first, by the “push factor” of rapidly increasing migration in the context of growing Mahdist movements and the ascendancy of European colonialism, and second, by the sustained popularity of the hajj on long-standing and well-established pilgrimage routes, constituting a pull towards the east.19 Over the centuries, pilgrims from Hausaland and adjacent regions on their road to Mecca voluntarily or unintentionally “got stuck” in the eastern part of what is today the Republic of the Sudan. For three, four, or even five generations, they have settled there in numerous village settlements of temporary construction. They still affirm their intention of performing the hajj and regard themselves as being in transit; yet there is no indication that they would seriously contemplate resuming their pilgrimage project. Interestingly, they are likewise considered pilgrims by observers, notably by “indigenous” Sudanese. In terms of spatiality and its cultural and social dimensions, these village settlements of pilgrims in transition could be conceptualized as phenomena similar to the zongo. Many generations of Hausa traders once established

18 See C.W. Ernst and B.B. Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and Beyond, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002, pp. 85–104, especially p. 94 and passim; or S. Bhardwaj, “Non-Hajj Pilgrimage in Islam: A Neglected Dimension of Religious Circulation”, Journal of Cultural Geography 17 (1998) 2, pp. 69–87. 19 See C.B. Yamba, Permanent Pilgrims, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995.

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networks of settlements in the immediate vicinity of existing indigenous villages, towns, and cities all over Sudanic Africa (and beyond). Hence what C. Bawa Yamba has referred to as “permanent pilgrimage” in a stationary mode: the pilgrims live in settlements serving as transition camps between their home and Mecca. At the same time, they outline a state of extended liminality, to be understood as an interim status not so much in terms of temporality; rather, it constituted something like a status of permanent temporality – or, in the words of Yamba: “not a ‘between and betwixt’ temporary construct, but one that persists as a permanent state”.20 In this regard we can identify two contradicting spatial concepts: space defined by its geographical position in relation to Mecca (the nearer the pilgrims move to Mecca, the more spatial sacredness) and space that draws its sacredness from baraka, the blessing power of a shaykh, whose residence is transformed into an alternative centre of pilgrimage. The ultimate source of sacredness for both spaces is God, and the “vicarious pilgrimage”, as manifested in the second case, coming along with suspension of the obligatory hajj, is sanctified by reference to the incomprehensible will of God. The phrase in sha’llâh – “if God wills” – turns into a dictum substantiating the “permanent” pilgrims’ ontology. As pilgrims, they live in a state of permanent pilgrimage. This static time-space continuum is perceived by them as a transit station on their road to a final destination – an arrival point that they most likely will never reach: “these beliefs have led to a paradoxical conception and praxis of pilgrimage [. . .]; a praxis which does not necessarily entail the expected spatio-temporal progression, but if at all a progression that is analogous to life itself.”21 Contrary to the usual understanding of pilgrimage, the “permanent pilgrims” conceive of the hajj as a symbolic journey. They develop a peculiar perspective on Mecca that does not exist now but solely in time future, since it can be only reached in the future. [I]t seems that the idea of ‘the future’, as the pilgrims conceive it and talk of it, is best understood in terms of space rather than time. This would account for why eastward movements towards Mecca, on the one hand, are seen as corresponding to the increasing sacralization of space, while movements between sets of pilgrimage villages in close proximity to each other are, on the other hand, talked of as bringing the pilgrimage closer to Mecca.22

20 Ibid., p. 2. 21 Ibid., p. 3. 22 C.B. Yamba, “Going There and Getting There: The Future as a Legitimate Charter for Life in the Present”, in: S. Wallman (ed.), Contemporary Futures: Perspectives from Social Anthropology, London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 109–123, at 119.

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By and by, the juxtaposition of Mecca “as a holy spot located in absolute space and time”23 and the permanent pilgrims’ villages “as located to relative space and time”24 became inverted. Due to the symbolic and analogical understanding of Mecca, proximity to the baraka of a shaykh in the villages brought the “permanent pilgrims” closer to Mecca (in terms of transcendence) than the “spatialized” pilgrimage aiming at Mecca (in terms of immanence). In so far as the future (Mecca) is an immanent spot, it is sufficient (only) to strive to reach it. But in so far as it is a transcendental source of all that is holy, it has no true location in time and space, and the pilgrims live, as they do, as if they were trying to reach it. (italics in the original)25

From a perspective that focuses on the spatial dimensions, it may be helpful to introduce the distinction between imaginary and imagined spaces. While Mecca, the location of transcendence, so to speak – an immanent spot endowed with religious significance designating the pilgrims’ destination – represents an imagined space, the “permanent” pilgrims’ destination is an imaginary space located “somewhere beyond”, virtually linked to the shaykh’s dwelling in settlements holding the status of “permanent transience”. Both in its imagined and in its imaginary configurations, space has been furnished with meaning, in this case mainly by pilgrims and their performances as well as by a variety of deployments moulding the parameters of spatiality. Inversely, even imagined and imaginary spaces make a difference by impacting on the pilgrims’ acts, deeds and thoughts. Thus, space acquires a generative dimension, triggering changes and transformations as well as sparking creative reactions and dynamic courses of action. The imaginative pilgrimage of these “permanent pilgrims” discloses an interrelation between imagined and imaginary spaces with regard to the pilgrim’s destination that brings about both a redefinition of pilgrimage and a reconfiguration of the pilgrim’s community. By this means, the dynamics of spaces implicitly shape distinctive religious practices and communities beyond their respective factual manifestations.26

23 24 25 26

Ibid., p. 121. Ibid. Ibid. See the figures relating to spatial and chronological dimensions in: ibid., pp. 116, 118.

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Divination Boards as a Cosmic Device My final, more extensive example refers to the interrelation of divination and spatiality. In Africa – and indeed elsewhere – divination is a ubiquitous phenomenon, cross-cutting religion, politics, economy, and any other domain of society. As to the cosmological, ontological, and epistemological dimensions of divination, space seems to be of minor importance, traceable solely in cosmology that, as a specific concept of the world and its general structure, its “set up” and its particular characteristics, bears reference to spatiality, albeit more metaphorically. As regards the ontological dimension of divination, prima facie at least, spatiality does not seem to constitute a formative factor. Epistemology, again, as a specific rationale for the formation and circulation of knowledge, pre-shaping an elaborate knowledge system, seems to be geared towards abstract – and therefore beyond spatial – categories. As to divination, it is unnecessary here to ponder about its semantics, usage, development, or occurrence. The following definition reflects current research on divination in this domain and implicitly references African aspects: Divination is a way to solve a problem of a client, by a technique to gain additional knowledge about the client’s history and present situation in life. The technique involves a standardized knowledge that accesses hidden aspects of reality, often in a mediated interaction between specialist and client. The technical forms of divination are legion, and usually involve a randomizing agent or act (throwing or rubbing objects, animals or parts of animals), or the inducement of trance and intuition, which then lead to complex interpretations of calculations. Those interpretations and calculations are often based upon substantive bodies of local or regional knowledge, sometimes in the form of a fixed corpus, most often incorporated in more diffuse systems of insight.27

In this definition spatiality does not form a constitutive factor of divination, at least not at first glance. This seems to be the case for any type of divination in Africa, reflecting the entire variety of forms and expressions of divinatory practices and concepts that are found all over the world. All such phenomena can be classified according to categories that we find already in “classical” discourses influenced by Cicero’s treatise De divinatio,28

27 W.E.A. van Beek and P.M. Peek, “Reality Reviewed: Dynamics of African Divination”, in: Idem (eds.), Reviewing Reality: Dynamics of African Divination, Münster: LIT, 2013, pp. 1–22, at 1–2. 28 W.A. Falconer (trans.), De Divinatione by Cicero, vol. 22, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923, Latin text with facing English translation: http:// penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cicero/de_Divinatione/home.html (accessed 15 March 2019); D. Wardle (trans. with introduction and historical commentary), Cicero on Divination: De Divinatione, bk. 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

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and it seems reasonable to distinguish between two major types of divination, namely, inductive-(geo)mantic and intuitive-mediumistic divination. Inductive(geo)mantic forms of divination start from decoding the meaning of randomly produced patterns or figures. Objects (like cowries, bones, seeds, etc.) thrown on the ground or traces left by animals in the sand form structures that, as complex codes, can be deciphered by the diviner who has acquired expertise in this field. This is performed in a complex process of communication and interaction with numerous human and non-human actors and powers involved. Intuitivemediumistic forms of divination start from the (innate, acquired or transmitted) disposition of an expert who – due to this peculiar disposition – is himself the locus where complex codes are represented and performed. Methodically, the deciphering is done by the means of spirit possession, trance, or the acquisition of any other extraordinary altered state of consciousness, inducing hypersensory modes of perception. However, the differences between those two types of divination should not be over-emphasized, as there are many mixed or intermediate forms. In order to reflect on the spatial dimension in divination, I have chosen an example of the first category: Ifá, the best-known type of divination in Africa and beyond. Etymologically, Ifá is most likely derived from the verb fá – “to wipe, shave, clean, scrape”29– and accordingly denotes “that which is scraped off”, “the act of wiping”. But it also signifies, as an old dictionary puts it, “the god of palm-nuts” (evidently referring to the metonym of Òrúnmìlà) and “a tool with two handles (used to scoop out the pulp of green calabashes)”.30 William Bascom, the doyen of research into Ifá divination, interprets the deity’s name Ifá thus: “because he ‘scrapes’ (fa) sickness and other evils away from those who are afflicted, or because he scrapes the powder of the divining tray in marking the figures.”31 Unexpectedly, the spatial dimension appears in both a metaphorical and a tangible dimension, referring to the realm of Ifá/Òrúnmìlà and to the realm of the divination board. Further implicit references to spatiality show up in other aspects of Ifá divinatory practice. Let us take the example of the most important technique of Ifá, a cleromantic system providing for the interpretation of randomly produced figures by “casting Ifá”.32 This practice is based on the production and interpretation of patterns, odù, generated by operating with 16 palm

29 S.A. Crowther, A Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language, London: Seeleys, 1852, p. 130. 30 Ibid., p. 110. 31 W. Bascom, Ifa Divination: Communication Between Gods and Men in West Africa, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 107. 32 Ibid., p. 40.

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nuts (ikin ifá). For retrieving these patterns, the babaláwo shakes the palm nuts in his hands, then claps his hands, trying to catch as many nuts as possible with his right hand. Depending on the results, the babaláwo draws lines in the powder on the divination tray, arranged in two columns. For one nut left in his left hand, he marks two lines, for two nuts, one line; if more than two are left, the operation is invalid and must be repeated. After eight “drawings”, the odù is found. Each half of the patterns can be combined with itself or with the other 15 remaining patterns, making up 16 × 16 = 256 possible odù/figures. In 16 cases, the figures on the right and left are identical, constituting the 16 major odù. A sort of hierarchy starting from the 16 principal odù and continuing with the 240 ordinary odù (with regional variations) becomes operative when alternative options are given during the consultation of Ifá and must be ranked. While the patterns (odù) are derived from spatial arrays, represented in two-dimensional, binary-coded forms, they also refer to a metaphorical realm beyond spatiality. Of major importance in Ifá divination are the verses or poems corresponding to the figures and applied as tools of interpretation. They are likewise called odù and form a corpus of “orature”,33 orally transmitted, unwritten “scriptures”, the odù ifá, made up of a broad variety of genres, from incantations to proverbs. The babaláwo with his expertise in divination is expected to memorize these odùs and be able to apply them in the appropriate way when consulted. This requires knowledge of Yoruba mythology, to which these odù are linked, providing intricate information on the relationship between the various actors and agents referred to in the odù, thereby endorsing the ranking of the odù, which is important for the appropriate application of the peculiar odù. But there is another crucial reference of Ifá divination to spatiality, namely, its allusion to the place where, according to Yoruba self-perceptions, Ifá as well as Yoruba identity has got its very “mythological” foundation: Ilé-Ifè in southern Nigeria, the cosmogonic centre of the Yoruba and the world. Ilé-Ifè – literally “the place where the earth has been spread” – is in a way comparable to the sacred centres of the major religions and signifies for the Yoruba what Jerusalem signifies for Jews, Mecca for Muslims, or Benares for Hindus.34

33 Pio Zirimu, a Ugandan linguist, scholar, and literary theorist, is credited with having introduced this term. See P. Auger, The Anthem Dictionary of Literary Terms and Theory, London: Auger Anthem Press, 2010, p. 210; A.A. Roscoe, Uhuru’s Fire: African Literature East to South, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 9; N. Thiong’o, “Notes towards a Performance Theory of Orature”, Performance Research 12 (2007) 3, pp. 4–7. 34 See J.K. Olupona, City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

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It is the place where the tangible-material of this world and the intangibleimmaterial of the other world meet, a topographical representation of cosmogony and creation, a place of origin of the cosmic order and thereby the axis mundi, the axial centre of the world. Numerous mythological traditions link Yoruba culture, Yoruba religion, and Ifá divination to Ilé-Ifè, the centre of the world as well as of the cosmos that is represented in the diviner’s divination tray. Accordingly, the cycle of festivals (including a specific Ifá festival) re-enacts the worldly order by referring to its mythological origin and demonstrates the vital importance not only of Ilé-Ifè as “orthogenetic”35 epicentre of Yoruba civilization and history, but also of Ifá divination as a kind of genetic code of Yoruba tradition, or as the default mode of Yoruba identity. This again is reflected topographically in the location of the temples and shrines that have been allocated to certain spaces in Ilé-Ifè, thus incidentally determining the geographical site, expansion, and layout of the city. To put it in a different perspective: the overall set-up of Ilé-Ifè has been demarcated by a divinatory original resolution. Real (territory), imagined (map) and imaginary (cosmic) spaces coincide. The cosmogonic foundation and cosmological extrapolation of Ifá divination is reflected also in every single feature of both the performances (which actualize a rich “ritual process”) and the entire apparatus, including a variety of ritual paraphernalia related to Ifá consultation. Let us take just two more or less randomly selected examples of how instruments that at first glance serve just functional purposes become repercussive of the cosmos and of cosmic occurrences. First, the divining tray (opon ifá) in itself represents the entire cosmos. This is reflected not just in the carvings on the tray, as Henry John Drewal has observed: While we marvel at the complex imagery on the tray’s border and wax eloquent about such sights, we forget that the hollow area carved into the underside of the tray creates a sound chamber. The tray is a wooden drum. When an Ifa priest strikes its surface with the pointed end of a divination tapper, the sound reverberates in order to ‘communicate between this world and the next’ as the diviner Kolawole Oshitola (1982) explained to me. Sacred sounds, not just images, create a transcendent, evocative experience of art.36

35 D. Eck, “The City as a Sacred Center”, in: B. Smith and H.B. Reynolds (eds.), The City as a Sacred Center: Essays on Six Asian Contexts, Leiden: Brill, 1987, pp. 1–11, at 2, referring to R. Redfield and M. Singer, “The Cultural Role of Cities”, Man in India 36 (1956) 3, pp. 161–194. 36 H.J. Drewal, “African Art and the Senses”, http://www.sensorystudies.org/sensorialinvestigations/african-art-and-the-senses/ (accessed 15 March 2019).

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While the focus of our considerations is not primarily on the creative power of image and sound to induce transcending effects, it is evident that the ritual performance links the divination tool to the cosmos, thereby transforming the divination tray into a receiver of cosmic repercussions or, vice versa, evoking a cosmic resonance. By divinatory performance, the divination tray transmutes into a cosmic soundboard, a resonating body of cosmic signals. The second example refers to the divining powder, iyerosun. It is taken from a piece of wood infested by termites that eat through the white-coloured parts of the African sandalwood tree. Iyerosun is occasionally referred to in Yoruba mythology, which even links it to Olódùmarè, the supreme being, and to the orishá Ifá/Òrúnmìlà.37 While it is not clear why exactly termite-produced dust from other plants or trees is considered an unsatisfactory substitute, it is evident that the “production process” of iyerosun links micro- and macrocosmic dimensions as well as life and death; and so it makes sense that any other surrogate, like sand, is inacceptable. We could refer to more examples of divination practices that closely relate to Yoruba cosmology, thereby linking microcosmic and macrocosmic dimensions. But it is more important to recognise the conceptual correlation between divination and cosmology, positioning divination in the primal set-up of the cosmos and its spatial arrangements, as a tool for linking the major cosmological realms. There is “this world” here (ayé) – with humans, animals, plants, minerals – and the subjacent realm of ilè, the earth below and the abode of Onile; and there is “that world” there (òrun) – where we find Olódùmarè, a more or less inactive supreme being, agents such as Odùduwà (commissioned by Olódùmarè), and other orishá (ambiguous beings, sometimes referred to as “gods”), as well as spirits and ancestors. Ashé, a foundational, performative and relational power pervading the entire cosmos, links both “worlds” and acts as the source of all individual powers and all empowerment, constituting communication and inter-relation between all beings and entities, these being all of the same ontic quality. There is no dualistic ontology between beings or entities in this world (ayé) and that world (òrun). Dead human beings become ancestors and can even transmute into orishá. In this context, due to ashé’s faculty for linking spatial cosmological layers, thereby accumulating cosmic powers and generating focal points of power, ancestral authority is enacted and put into effect.

37 See J.A.I. Bewaki, “Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief and the Theistic Problem of Evil”, African Studies Quarterly 2 (1998) 1, pp. 1–17, at 9.

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A quite recent aspect of the interface between spatiality and cosmology is the use of modern technologies such as electronic tablets for casting Ifá. What at first glance seems to be autodidactically acquired knowledge on Ifá, selfsustained and self-taught, proves on closer examination to be appropriated through “traditional” channels of learning. For example, an app for Ipads (unfortunately no longer available) was developed by Onaje X. Offley Woodbine,38 who started his career as a basketball player in an Ivy League Team, but then decided to study philosophy and theology. Columbia University Press published his revised doctoral dissertation under the title “Black Gods of the Asphalt”,39 and it was longlisted for the 2017 PEN/ESPN award for literary sports writing. Between 2004 and 2012 he was trained in Ifá divination and initiated as a babaláwo.40 Thus even those who advocate the use of cutting-edge technologies in Ifá divination are inclined to get their expertise officially accredited by initiation by a recognized babaláwo, preferably with credentials referencing back to Nigeria. On the other hand, we can observe a tendency towards “re-creating” assumed Yoruba identity in a concrete and material guise. This becomes evident in projects like the construction near Sheldon, SC/USA of Oyotunji village, which is closely related to Ifá divination. As to the intersection of spatiality and divination, we have multiple layers of spaces that refer to different modes of communalization and, derived from that, varied formations of togetherness – imaginary, imagined, and factual.41 Thus, Yoruba cosmology is characterized by attributing to the cosmos a holistic, equilibrium-like quality with highly permeable boundaries between this world and the other world. The non-dualistic, permeable set up of the Yoruba cosmos makes Ifá divination “work”, as it gives experts in this field, diviners,

38 See A. Adogame, “Towards Digital Divination? Modes of Negotiating Authenticity and Knowledges in Indigenous African Epistemologies”, in: K. Hock (ed.), The Power of Interpretation: Imagined Authenticity – Appropriated Identity. Conflicting Discourses on New Forms of African Christianity, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016, pp. 235–257, at 254–255. 39 O.X.O. Woodbine, Black Gods of the Asphalt: Religion, Hip-Hop, and Street Basketball, New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. 40 Interestingly, he was initiated by Bishop Ezekiel Lijadu, head of an African Instituted Church, the Evangelist Band Mission (EBM), which proves the strong permeability between different religious traditions and Ifá divination. See https://ifadivination.wordpress.com/aboutbishop-e-a-lijadu/ (accessed 15 March 2019). 41 K.M. Clarke, Mapping Yorùbá Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities, Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, pp. 51–106 and passim. See the “Reading of the Year”, https://www.oyotunji.org/reading-of-the-year1.html (accessed 18 March 2019) as well as other products and services in the same vein (https://www.oyotunji.org/spiritualservices.html (accessed 15 March 2019)) in Oyotunji village.

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particularly the babaláwos, the prospect of “reading the signs” that link the individual’s – or the community’s – condition to its overall context, taking into consideration “signs” that hint at potential impacts beyond what is immediately evident. The coincidence of real (territory), imagined (map), and imaginary (cosmic) spaces is represented in the divination tray and activated by a high-ranking diviner or babaláwo (“father of the secrets”). The example of Ifá divination points to strategies of claiming religious authority and securing authorization to perform approved divinatory practices by triggering processes of interference between multidimensional layers of space – real, imagined, and imaginary – embodied in the divination board as a representation of cosmic communion and as an emblematic point of reference for ancestral authentication. But Ifá divination is not just about religious authority and power. As a process of communication, it also constitutes community or, to put it more clearly: depending on the context, it may contribute to the integration of existing communities – particularly in traditional Ifá divination – and create both an imaginary community – embracing agents of this world and that world – and an imagined community of practitioners, that is: of both consultants and those seeking advice, generally, and of the community of experts, particularly.

Conclusion The topics touched upon in this chapter seem to reflect recurrent themes of a generic nature, which emerge both in my three case studies and in studies of transnational religious space in different contexts. From our case studies we draw seven observations. 1. At a general level, there is a dialectic interrelation between spatial flows, on the one hand, and phenomena of congealment, on the other. Whereas some zanguna prove to be dynamic catalysts of migration in territorial, socio-economic, and cultural terms, others turn out to be cul-de-sacs for individuals and groups in their search for a (new) home and a (new) identity. Likewise, while Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca “got stuck” in the eastern Sudan, with their terrene hajj coming to a standstill, the pilgrimage turned into a celestial project, opening up new routes for the transnational flow towards an imaginary spatial dimension. For its part, Ifá, one of the most mobile divination systems on a global level, seems, next to many other purposes, to serve individuals and groups all over the world as a fixed, but unconfined transcendental point of reference by

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creating transnational religious spaces in all its real, imagined, and imaginary dimensions – at first glance, at least, devoid of any blockages. 2. A variety of factors hampering or facilitating global flows can be identified. Serious impediments to the mobility of religious ideas or practices are recognisable in only two of the three cases: the “permanent pilgrims” may be hampered by socio-economic, cultural (and partly: linguistic) divides; and the zongo may by confronted by inter-communal tensions in the context of divisions between the religious and the ethnic. As to facilitating factors, we have noted: (a) a multicultural fluidity, a flexible use of transport options and, outstandingly, the atmosphere of zongwanci, resonant of the ideal of transcultural fluidity in the social imaginary of the zongo; (b) multilingualism, aviation, and air traffic, computerbased communication and modern information technology; a manifest example of “portability” in the shape of Oyotunji village; and religiouscultural resonance of a peculiar type, both relating, transcending and relocating spaces in the case of Ifá divination; (c) the atmosphere of uttermost piety among the “permanent pilgrims”, linking hardship with reverence for the shaykhs and their baraka. 3. With regard to the question of visibility vs. invisibility, we have a solid visible presence of (transnational) religious spaces in all three examples. We should also bear in mind the soundscape, which in the case of the zongo accompanies external and internal visual differentiation – for example, between different religious constituencies, predominantly between Muslims and Christians. In Ifá divination the soundscape pervades all layers of space – for example, the divination board provides a resonator for (and image of) the cosmic order, while the use of electronic tablets extends visually and audibly into cyberspace, making spaces of different layers permeable to each other. 4. Territorialization and de-territorialization are closely interlinked in all three examples, most prominently in the case of Ifá divination. Here, a spatial “interdigitation” refers not only to a territorially based linkage between palpable spaces, but transforms into an “interdigitalization” of de-territorialized virtual spaces. 5. Apart from the case of the “permanent pilgrims”, there is a strong oscillation between privatization and (re)collectivization, as well as between individualization and communalization. The zongo provides options for redefining spatial borders in a flexible way. Spaces can be both enlarged and downsized, mostly to the advantage of women and young people who, by negotiating the boundaries of public and private spaces, have been successful in repositioning themselves in their respective communities. The same applies to Ifá

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divination, where, due to the migratory and transcultural dimensions of transnational spaces in this field, the trend towards individualization seems more pronounced than in other contexts. In both cases, gendered spaces are transformed and redefined in a flexible way: they may effect emancipation in the case of the zongo – by shaping both protected and unrestricted zones for communication and novel lines of action; and in the case of Ifá divination they may facilitate participation by opening new avenues for women to assume functions hitherto restricted to male diviners. 6. In all three examples the notion of “nation”, if used at all, is largely restricted to a more or less metaphorical meaning. While there are references to ethnic and cultural allegiances – “Hausa” in the cases of the zongo and the “permanent pilgrims”, “Yoruba” in the case of Ifá divination – the entities referred to are fractured, at least conceptually. “Nation” becomes the signifier for the social imaginary. This is clearest in the zongo example, where zongwanci serves as a frame of reference for a nation that is more imaginary than imagined. 7. Last but not least, there is the question of “religion” as a discrete field – and the question of the relation between “religion” and its others. What is evident from our examples is that religion cannot be referred to as a given entity. Rather, it is categorized by a fundamental fluidity and hybridity, and what makes it “religion” is mainly the outcome of both emic and etic discourses. A case in point is the relationship between religion and divination. While at first glance Ifá divination from time immemorial seems to have been part of (Yoruba) religion, closer inspection shows that it has acted as a broker between what has been conceptualized as Yoruba religion, Christianity, and Islam.42 Against this background, Ifá divination provided – in terms of manifest territory as well as in terms of virtual attribution – the space that the adherents of different “religions” were willing to share. In a zongo setting, again, space provided the metaphorical and material frame within which diverse religious groups emerged, differentiating and amalgamating themselves. We can deduct from these examples that due to its sort of generative properties, space can serve as a cause of religious integration, diversification, and transformation, even a transformation of religion into an elusive formation beyond one particular tangible religion.

42 See J.D.Y. Peel, “The Pastor and the Babalawo: The Interaction of Religions in NineteenthCentury Yorubaland”, Africa 60 (1990) 3, pp. 338–369; Idem, Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000; Idem, Christianity, Islam and Oriṣa Religion: Three Traditions in Comparison and Interaction, Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.

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This chapter has argued that spaces are not simply “real” entities in the shape of a spatial frame for the deeds of actors or “real” entities formed and produced by actors. Spaces can likewise be created as imagined or imaginary entities by the generative power of imaginative practices. The example of the zongo has shown how spatiality informs the social imaginary, which in turn shapes spatiality; the “permanent pilgrims” have illustrated how “real” spaces may be transformed into both imagined and imaginary spaces that, in turn, affect and transmute the spatial and social set-up of the pilgrims’ settlements and model their social imaginary; and Ifá divination, in turn, exemplifies the manifold layers of space and their interrelation with varied categories of communalization. The impact of “real”, imagined and imaginary spaces contributes to the emergence of novel organizational structures, ranging from loose networks to de-territorialized imagined communities, invisibly structured by (assumed) systematic formations of togetherness.

Wei-Yi Cheng

9 Transitioning the Vietnamese Ullambana Festival to Taiwan This paper will discuss three Vietnamese Ullambana Festivals (“Vu Lan” in Vietnamese) that took place in Taiwan in August/September 2018. My discussion will focus on the translocative elements of the Vietnamese Buddhist network in Taiwan and the influence of modernism on the ritual performance of the Vietnamese Ullambana Festival. The Ullambana Festival is frequently translated as the “Ghost Festival” and associated with Chinese Buddhism. One good example is Stephen Teiser’s The Ghost Festival in Medieval China,1 which offers an English translation of the Chinese Ullambana Sutra2 and insights into the mythological and social discourse of the Ullambana Festival in medieval China. The core idea is to conduct offerings to the sangha and then transfer the merit gained from this to one’s deceased relatives, ancestors or even unrelated hungry ghosts. But the Ullambana Festival is not exclusively Chinese Buddhist: similar rituals can be found in Southeast Asian countries such as Laos3 and Cambodia.4 When the Chinese Ullambana Sutra was transmitted to Vietnam is unknown; but reports of the Ullambana Festival in Vietnam can be found as early as the fifteenth century.5 It has remained popular in Vietnamese Buddhism to this day.6 Little has been written about Vietnamese Buddhism in Taiwan despite the rapid growth of the Vietnamese diaspora in Taiwan since the 1990s, partly as a result of transnational marriages and also due to the migration of labourers.

1 S.F. Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. 2 Foshuo yulanpen jing 佛說盂蘭盆經 [The Ullambana Sutra Spoken by the Buddha], CBETA, T16n0685. 3 P. Ladwig, “Feeding the Dead: Ghosts, Materiality and Merit in a Lao Buddhist Festival for the Deceased”, in: J.C. Holt, J.N. Kinnard, and J.S. Walters (eds.), Constituting Communities: Theravada Buddhism and the Religious Cultures of South and Southeast Asia. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003, pp. 119–141. 4 J.C. Holt, Theravada Traditions: Buddhist Ritual Cultures in Contemporary Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2017, pp. 239–308. 5 M.C. Dinh et al., The History of Buddhism in Vietnam, Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2008, p. 170. 6 Thanh-Tri Phan 釋善香, “Foshuo yulanpen jing yu qi xiaodaoguan zai Yuenan de liuchuan 《佛說盂蘭盆經》與其孝道觀在越南的流傳” [The Spread of the Ullambana Sutra Spoken by the Buddha and its Notion of Filial Piety in Vietnam], MA thesis, Ming Chuan University, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-009

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The relatively large Vietnamese diaspora in Taiwan creates a demand for religious services. Yu’s survey of devotees of a Vietnamese Buddhist group in central Taiwan, one of the few studies on this subject, finds that Buddhism provides social support, emotional security as well as the comforting belief in the salvation of one’s deceased relatives.7

Translocative Network Today, it is difficult to think of a religion that is “bounded” within national borders. Even the small, rural Buddhist temples that I have visited in Taiwan or Sri Lanka have some kind of transnational connection. It is even more so with Vietnamese Buddhism in Taiwan. The concept of “translocality” highlights the importance of local-to-local connections in transnational religion and permits an “agency-oriented” approach to the migration experience.8 I will call the case-studies in this paper “translocative networks”. As Tweed has argued, “[r]eligious flows – and the traces they leave – move through time and space [. . .]. They change over time and move across space.”9 “Translocative” is a more abstract term than “translocal”, which means the connection between different places that are normally within a nation state.10 The three cases discussed here are “translocal” because all the monastic actors involved do not live in their temples in Taiwan but in students’ dormitories in various universities, and their traveling from one node (dormitories) to another (temples) to provide religious services at weekends and during holidays creates translocality. Although they are “translocal”, they are also “translocative”, since they bring the Vietnamese Ullambana Festival across time and space to Taiwan. “Network”, it emerged in the Leipzig workshop, refers to “a patterning device that allows us to

7 Yu M. 俞明仁, “Yuenan xinyimin yu fojiao xinyang: yi taiwan yuenan zhide fojiao wenhua jiaoliu xiehui weili 越南新移民與佛教信仰：以「台灣越南智德佛教文化交流協會」為例” [Vietnamese New Immigrants and Buddhist Belief: A Case Study of the Taiwan-Vietnam Zhide Buddhist Cultural Exchange Association], Yuan Kuang Journal of Buddhist Studies (December 2017), pp. 135–198. 8 K. Brickell and A. Datta, “Introduction: Translocal Geographies”, in: K. Brickell and A. Datta (eds.), Translocal Geographies: Spaces, Places, Connections, Farnham: Ashgate, 2011, p. 3. 9 T.A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 62–64. 10 I am grateful to Jens Reinke for pointing this out to me. Personal communication, 17 January 2019.

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visualize transnational religious spaces as nodes and their connecting lines”.11 All three cases are loosely and horizontally connected, without a permanent site in Taiwan and devoid of structural hierarchy (with the exception of Hoang Phap Pagoda, more later) – characteristics that match more with “network” than “organization”. The first case is the only one in the three cases that has a centralized authority or an institutional base – Hoang Phap Pagoda. Hoang Phap Pagoda was founded by the monk Ngo Chan Tu (1901–1988) in Hoc Mon District, Ho Chi Minh City, in 1957.12 After the decease of the founder, the abbotship of Hoang Phap Pagoda passed to his senior disciple, Thích Chân Tính (b. 1958), who has been instrumental in expanding the works and fame of Hoang Phap Pagoda. According to his disciple, Thích Tâm Luân (b. 1989),13 Thích Chân Tính claims to be inspired mostly by Vietnamese monks such as Thích Thanh Từ (b. 1924) and Thích Thiện Hoa (1918–1973), but a trip to Taiwan in 1990 inspired him to renovate the method of Dharma propagation. Hoang Phap Pagoda has since become a household name in southern Vietnam. Multimedia, online sermons, Buddhist dramas, retreats, etc. are used to propagate Dharma. Its success can be seen from the fact that twenty thousand people were estimated to have attended its Ullambana Festival in Ho Chi Minh City in 2018. “Hoang Phap” literately means the propagation of Dharma, and its members are encouraged to live up to this ideal. “My Master always encourages us to propagate Dharma”, said Thích Tâm Luân, “wherever we go, he wants us to buy a parcel of land and build a temple there.” This idea was not realized in Taiwan due to financial difficulties and a lack of interest on the part of Thích Tâm Luân. Having originally come to Taiwan to study Chinese, Thích Tâm Luân stayed on to study for a BA degree. As following up the research in 2019, he has migrated to the United Kingdom, and for the moment, there seems to be no candidate to take his place as the missionary of Hoang Phap Pagoda to Taiwan. But he has no intention of giving up his Vietnamese congregation in Taiwan: during his study in Taiwan, he built up a congregation of Vietnamese followers with whom he met regularly for Dharma lessons and religious services. Although Hoang Phap Pagoda does not have a branch temple in Taiwan, social media enable Thích Tâm Luân to stay in contact with his congregation and continue to run religious activities in Taiwan. Thích Tâm Luân is not the first Vietnamese monk to manage his congregation in Taiwan through social media. My second case relates to a congregation founded 11 Philip Clart, personal communication, 24 December 2018. 12 “Chua Hoang Phap”, https://www.chuahoangphap.com.vn/en/ (accessed September – November 2018), author unknown. 13 My main informant.

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by a Vietnamese monk who no longer lives in Taiwan. Thích Minh Tuệ too came to Taiwan as a student and founded the congregation of “Tuệ Quang” (“benevolent light”) in Taichung (a city in central Taiwan). But he returned to Vietnam upon graduation in 2016. The difficulty of obtaining a residence visa means that few Vietnamese student-monastics can stay on in Taiwan after graduation. Since then, Tuệ Quang has been run by a fellow Vietnamese monastic student, Thích Đồng Lợi (b. 1984).14 In the narrative of the Tuệ Quang congregation, Thích Minh Tuệ remains the abbot, and he travels to Taiwan every month to preside over religious functions. Thích Đồng Lợi is understood to be a mere minister of the congregation. He too came to Taiwan as a student and did not know Thích Minh Tuệ prior to their encounter in Taiwan. The two monks met at a Buddhist ritual and Thích Đồng Lợi was subsequently entrusted with the ministry of Tuệ Quang. The third case constitutes an even clearer instance of a network. Phổ Bi (“universal compassion”) was founded by a group of Vietnamese monastic students in New Taipei City in 2013. While studying in Taiwan, they were approached by Vietnamese migrants with a request for religious services. In 2013 they rented an old apartment unit and founded a “temple” named Phổ Bi. Those who originally founded Phổ Bi have already left Taiwan, but the ministry of Phổ Bi is continued by other Vietnamese monastic students. They host religious services and Dharma study classes every weekend, important religious rituals regularly (i.e. the Lunar New Year Festival and Ullambana Festival), and occasionally charity work (e.g. a food drive for the homeless, services for Vietnamese spouses in transnational marriages, etc.). The Vietnamese monastic students study at different universities and did not necessarily know one another prior to studying in Taiwan. The need for a sufficient number of monastics to perform religious services has led to the emergence of a network in which Vietnamese monastic students gain acquaintance with one and another. The network is formed through word-of-mouth, personal connection with other monastic students studying in the same institute, and through social media. The abbot of Phổ Bi is elected among the core of Vietnamese monastic students each year, but there is no formal structure of Phổ Bi. The monastic members come and go and it is difficult to estimate the size of monastic membership at any given time. Although some former Vietnamese monastic students have founded more permanent religious organizations in Taiwan, the number is small. Taiwan’s unfriendly immigration policy means that it is difficult for the monastic students mentioned here to envision pursuing a religious career in Taiwan – though not entirely impossible. I am currently conducting fieldwork with a Vietnamese

14 My student at Fo Guang University and a key informant.

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Buddhist group in Taiwan, founded by a Vietnamese Buddhist nun who is in Taiwan on a student visa, but has invited another Vietnamese Buddhist nun to Taiwan on a missionary visa for the ministry of her organization. The Vietnamese founder nun claims that she has a long-term plan for her organization in Taiwan. Because the fieldwork is still at an early stage, this fourth group cannot be analysed here. It has been suggested that to understand transnational religion is to “to trace the flow of people, rituals, artefacts, beliefs, and institutions across spatial and temporal boundaries”.15 The flow of people, especially the Vietnamese householder-migrants, plays a crucial role in setting up the network of transnational Vietnamese Buddhism in Taiwan. Even Hoang Phap Pagoda did not start its religious activities in Taiwan with a missionary agenda. The monastic founders of the three cases discussed above began to operate in Taiwan only after being approached by Vietnamese householder-migrants. In the field of Buddhist Studies, attention is often given to monastic actors, whereas householder-actors are often neglected. However, in the three cases discussed here, householder-actors are fundamental in creating the translocative flow. The majority of devotees in all three cases are Vietnamese women who come originally from southern or central Vietnam and are married to Taiwanese men; the few northern Vietnamese are mostly male migrant-workers. Religious work in the three cases also serves a cultural/social purpose, by creating a “home away from home”. As we will see in the next section, Vietnamese householders are translocative actors, who may live in different locations in Taiwan and travel for religious work. The monastics are also translocative actors. One commonality among the three cases is that they are all set up by Vietnamese monastic students who travel to Taiwan to study. Instead of living at their “temples” in Taiwan, they live at student residences at different universities across Taiwan and only travel to their “temples” to conduct a service at weekends or during the holidays. Both the monastics and householders travel not just across national-borders but also within Taiwan. Through the flow of Vietnamese actors, a translocative network is formed and enables the actors to be transported back to a Vietnamese spatial setting while still being in Taiwan. This is what Tweed calls “crossing and dwelling”, to “make meaning and negotiate power as they appeal to contested historical traditions of storytelling, object making, and ritual performance in order to make homes (dwelling) and cross boundaries (crossing)”.16

15 T.A. Tweed, “Theory and Method in the Study of Buddhism: Toward ‘Translocative’ Analysis”, Journal of Global Buddhism 12 (2011), p. 23. 16 Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, p. 74.

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Ullambana Festival 2018 All three Ullambana Festivals discussed here took place in Taiwan in August/ September 2018. Although the Ullambana Festival is supposed to take place on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month,17 contemporary practical considerations (e.g. the need for devotees to be off from work in order to participate in the ritual) mean that the Ullambana Festival need not necessarily take place on the traditionally designated date. In all of the cases discussed here the Ullambana Festival was shifted to a weekend. All three cases exhibit elements of translocative religion, namely, the creation of sacroscapes (spatial) and the shifting of ritual narrative (temporal).

Creation of Sacroscapes The term “sacroscapes” is borrowed from Tweed to suggest that “religious confluences, are not static. They are not fixed, built environments.”18 The characteristics of sacroscapes are very apparent in the three cases, for none of the people concerned was able to conduct the Ullambana Festival in their own sacred places in Taiwan. Although all three rent apartment units in Taiwan to conduct a small but regular religious service, for an event as big as the Ullambana Festival, ritual spaces had to be borrowed. For the festival, Hoang Phap Pagoda rented an auditorium in a public library in New Taipei City, and Tuệ Quang rented a community centre auditorium in Taichung. By so doing, they transformed what is normally a secular space into a sacroscape where a sacred religious ceremony could be performed. This transformation takes the form of sacred objects and network of religious professionals. Religious objects, endowed with a sense of sacredness can bring a feeling of awe to devotees and thus transform the space from something mundane to something holy. That is, “artifacts anchor the tropes, values, emotions, and beliefs that institutions transmit, and [. . .] the religious create artifacts and prescribe procedures for their use.”19 In the cases of Hoang Phap Pagoda and Tuệ Quang, the organizer-monks brought in their own Buddha images and bright yellow20 cloths for the ritual. Once the bright yellow cloths covered the tables

17 A. Cole, Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism, Paolo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 87. 18 Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, p. 61. 19 Ibid., p. 68. 20 A symbolic colour of Buddhism.

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and a Buddha image and flowers had been placed on the tables, a sacred shrine was immediately created. In the case of Tuệ Quang, images of Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha were also placed on tables on either side of the Buddha image, and Buddhist flags were brought in to decorate the place. Through decoration with sacred objects, a mundane place was transformed into a sacred space where one of the most important rituals in Mahayana Buddhism can be performed. This space is temporary and fluid and therefore best described as a “sacroscape”. Sacred objects alone do not make the ritual function: it is only with religious professionals that sacroscapes can commence ritual performance. Monks from Vietnam were invited to hold Ullambana Festivals in Taiwan. The abbot of Hoang Phap Pagoda, Thích Chân Tính, led more than a dozen monks (and more than one hundred householder-devotees) from Vietnam for the Ullambana Festival in Taiwan. The founder monk of Tuệ Quang, Thích Minh Tuệ, also travelled from Vietnam to Taichung to perform the Ullambana Festival. National border-crossing is only one aspect of the monastic network. Vietnamese monks and nuns from different monastic lineages, traditions,21 and localities in Taiwan joined the ritual performance in all three cases. They were monastic students who normally lived in different colleges or universities around Taiwan but were invited to perform Ullambana Festivals. The presence of senior monks and a large number of other monastics no doubt attracted Vietnamese devotees, not only because Buddhists believe that offering to sangha members accumulates the most merit22 but also because in the Ullambana Sutra, offering to sangha is prescribed by the Buddha as the mode of salvation for the dead.23 The Ullambana Festival of Hoang Phap Pagoda attracted more than five hundred attendees, and Tuệ Quang estimated to have had over three hundred attendees. These attendees were mostly Vietnamese migrants, either migrant workers or women married to Taiwanese men. Because they were late migrants, there is no animosity between migrants from North and South Vietnam, as one might find among earlier Vietnamese immigrant groups in the West. Interestingly, the attendees were not limited to residents of a particular locality (New Taipei City in the case of Hoang Phap Pagoda or Taichung City in the case of Tuệ Quang). I met a Vietnamese woman in both festivals who informed me that she and a

21 In the case of Tuệ Quang, a Theravāda monastic student from Bangladesh also participated in the ritual. 22 P. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and Issues, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 391. 23 Cole, Mothers and Sons, p. 59.

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few friends kept track of Vietnamese Buddhist events in Taiwan through social media and would travel to as many rituals as possible. Vietnamese Buddhist rituals made her, as she said, “feel like at home”. Another group of devotees hired a bus and travelled from Taipei to Taichung for the Ullambana Festival of Tuệ Quang. They also kept track of Vietnamese Buddhist events in Taiwan through social media. But it is the case of Phổ Bi that is most telling in terms of networking. Phổ Bi borrowed the sacred space of a Chinese Buddhist temple – Shandao Nunnery – for the Ullambana Festival. Shandao Nunnery is situated in New Taipei City in what now an industrial area, where many foreign migrant workers congregate. Its abbess, Ven. Zhaoding 照定 (b. 1944),24 came to know several Vietnamese monastic students some years ago and has since offered her temple as a lodging place for Vietnamese monastic students during their off-semester time. If “[d]iasporas are webs, and webs consist not only of fibres or ropes, but also of nodes that link them together”,25 the small apartment unit of Phổ Bi was the first nodal point to link Vietnamese Buddhists, and the Shandao Nunnery offers another nodal point for important rituals to take place. Moreover, the “web” is expanding to Vietnam and to Canada, thanks to the World Wide Web. One of the regular monastics of Phổ Bi26 is an acquaintance of the wellknown Vietnamese-Canadian monk Thích Pháp Hòa (b. 1974) and made the suggestion of inviting him to preside at the Ullambana Festival. Thích Pháp Hòa was born in Vietnam and is currently the abbot of Truc Lam Monastery in Edmonton, Canada.27 Through his charismatic Dharma sermons, which are broadcast on the internet, Thích Pháp Hòa has become well known and has followers around the world. Having accepted the invitation, Thích Pháp Hòa became the centre of Phổ Bi’s Ullambana Festival (see below). He was accompanied to Taiwan by more

24 “Di shiyijie lishizhang: Zhaoding Fashi 第十一屆理事長:照定法師” [The 11th Chairperson – Ven. Zhaoding], New Taipei City Buddhist Association, http://www.buddha-nt.org.tw/product_de tail/land-ctop-2/index.php?Product_SN=210708&PHPSESSID=&Company_SN=500320&Product_ Site_Classify_SN=46818 (accessed 23 November 2018), author unknown. 25 D. Haller, “Let It Flow: Economy, Spirituality, and Gender in the Sindhi Network”, in: W. Kokot, K. Tölölyan, and C. Alfonso (eds.), Diaspora, Identity and Religion: New Directions in Theory and Research, London: Routledge, 2004, p. 195. 26 Phổ Bi has no membership structure. The Abbot is elected among Vietnamese monastic students by popular vote every year, but most monastic students come and go. It is therefore difficult to speak of an “official” membership. 27 “Happy Life – Thich Phap Hoa (Lac Viet Pagoda, Taipei, Taiwan on September 15, 2018)”, Tu Viện Trúc Lâm, 23 November 2018, https://www.thayphaphoa.com/song-hanh-phuc-thaythich-phap-hoa-chua-lac-viet-dai-bac-taiwan-ngay-15-9-2018/ (accessed 27 November 2018), author unknown.

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than two hundred devotees from Vietnam and more than one hundred members of the Vietnamese diaspora who lived in North America and Europe. Thích Pháp Hòa’s arrival at Taiwan’s airport, where he was greeted by almost one hundred devotees, was streamed live on Facebook. Phổ Bi’s Ullambana Festival was the biggest of the three cases, with more than one thousand attendees. Most were Vietnamese, with a few Taiwanese devotees of Shandao Nunnery. Phổ Bi’s extensive network of people links Vietnamese devotees and monastics in different glocalities. With its connection to the local Buddhist establishment (Shandao Nunnery), the sacroscape was crafted from an existing Buddhist sacred space rather than being created from a secular space. The transformation was not from secular to sacred but from Chinese to Vietnamese Buddhism, with Vietnamese Buddhist objects decorating the sacred space of Shandao Nunnery. As in the other two cases considered here, the sacred space is fluid, crafted at the time of need and transformed back to its original state after the ritual performance. This flow of sacroscapes, which are not a fixed or specially built sacred environment, can be understood as “translocative”. Another interesting commonality in the three cases is the flow of religious tourism: both the monastic and the householder actors travelled for more than merely attending the ritual. The religious actors are known to travel for the purpose of missionary work and pilgrimage,28 but in the Vietnamese Buddhist network, the householder-actors also travel for tourism. Vietnamese householder-devotees did not travel with their monastic masters to Taiwan merely for participation in the Ullambana Festival, but stayed in Taiwan beyond the duration of the festival and visited various tourist and Buddhist sites, thus participating in “religious tourism” in the truest sense.

Shifting of Ritual Narrative The term Ullambana Festival is traditionally translated into English as “Ghost Festival” and understood as transferring merit to deceased relatives and hungry ghosts, thus enabling their salvation.29 A more traditional way of performing the Ullambana Festival, which emphasizes the salvation of the deceased, still

28 Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, pp. 128–131. 29 Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China, p. 3.

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exists in Vietnam,30 but the ritual performance in all three cases was relatively short, entertaining, and with a focus upon the narrative of filial piety. Due to the practical concern that householders may have little free time off from home and/or work, two of the Ullambana Festivals discussed here were held at weekends and purposely shortened to 3–4 hours. The exception was Phổ Bi: since its performance took place in a Buddhist temple (rather than a secular space), its ritual performance included the traditional three-day chanting of Buddha’s name and the Ullambana Sutra, and its main ritual performance lasted a whole day (Table 9.1). All three ritual performances were entertaining in comparison to the Chinese Buddhist Ullambana Festival performed in contemporary Taiwan. The Hoang Phap Pagoda and Phổ Bi invited professional Vietnamese singers to perform at their Ullambana Festivals, and in all three cases poetry reading and rose pinning took place, drawing tears from many attendees. According to Phan and my informants, ever since Thích Nhất Hạnh (b. 1926) in 1962 published his poem, A Rose for Your Pocket,31 which recounts parental kindness and sacrifice for one’s children, poetry reading, and the pinning of roses on the attendees’ clothes to commemorate their parents have been part of the ritual performance of the Vietnamese Ullambana Festival.32 The Ullambana Festival is sometimes called “Mother’s Day” in contemporary Vietnam. Table 9.1: Phổ Bi’s Ullambana Festival Schedule, 16 September 2018. : a.m.

Arrival

: a.m.

Dharma talk by Ven. Thích Pháp Hòa

: a.m.

Vu Lan (Ullambana) ritual

: p.m.

Vegetarian lunch

: p.m.

Sutra-chanting & transferring merit

: p.m.

Dharma talk by Ven. Thích Pháp Hòa

: p.m.

Taking refugees in triple-gems

: p.m.

Supper

: p.m.

Buddhist songs concert (by Vietnamese pop singers)

30 Phan, “Foshuo yulanpen jing yu qi xiaodaoguan zai Yuenan de liuchuan”. 31 English translation, see Thich Nhat Hanh, A Rose for Your Pocket: An Appreciation of Motherhood, Surry Hills, Australia: ReadHowYouWant, Large Print Books, 2012. 32 Phan, “Foshuo yulanpen jing yu qi xiaodaoguan zai Yuenan de liuchuan”, pp. 96–104.

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The contemporary Vietnamese Ullambana Festival constitutes a manifestation of Buddhist modernism. McMahan cites Thích Nhất Hạnh as one of the figures responsible for making Buddhist modernism and popularizing the modernist version of Buddhism throughout the world.33 Buddhist modernism is a response to Western colonial incursion and a reassertion of Buddhist values, one of its tactics being to de-emphasize rituals.34 Poetry reading, rose pinning, and the performance of songs transform the other-worldliness of the Ullambana Festival into this-worldliness by making the ritual entertaining and focusing upon parental kindness. The translocative element is apparent. Thích Nhất Hạnh himself was influenced by Western/modernist discourse and in turn has influenced contemporary Buddhist discourse across national borders. Table 9.1, taken from Phổ Bi’s Ullambana Festival posters, reveals the bias against other-worldly ritual. More time was given to the Dharma talk by Ven. Thích Pháp Hòa than to the performance of sutra chanting and the traditional ritual performance associated with salvation of the deceased. The time slot for the “Vu Lan (Ullambana) ritual” in fact contained poetry reading, singing performance, and pinning roses. Although the ritual of transferring merit to deceased relatives and hungry ghosts was still performed, the narratives of all three cases were predominantly this-worldly. To begin with, in all three cases the Ullambana Festivals was entitled “Ceremony of Vu Lan & Paying Gratitude to One’s Parents”. In the poems35 read out to the attendees during the festivals, the attendees were reminded of their dwelling in a foreign country and their inability to be at their parents’ side to fulfil the duties of filial piety. The sermon of the abbot of Hoang Phap Pagoda, Thích Chân Tính, encouraged the attendees to pursue a Buddhist life-style and save money to support their parents back in Vietnam. Tuệ Quang’s Ullambana Festival included a segment that invited parents and children to go up to the stage and the children then to wash the feet of their parents; many parents were moved to tears during this foot-washing performance. This is understood as a gesture to remember and repay one’s parents’ kindness. Taken together, the messages sent out from

33 D.L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. 6–14. 34 R.K. Payne, “Intertwined Sources of Buddhist Modernist Opposition to Ritual: History, Philosophy, Culture”, Religions 11 (2018) 9, p. 366, https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/11/ 366/notes (accessed 24 November 2018). 35 Only Hoang Phap Pagoda read out A Rose for Your Pocket. The other two cases read out a poem composed by a Vietnamese monastic student who also participated in the Ullambana Festivals of Tuệ Quang and Phổ Bi. His poem also recounts the parental kindness and sacrifice for the children.

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the three Ullambana Festivals were this-worldly and emphasized filial piety. In other words, they are demythologized and display the Buddhist modernism36 that has slowly emerged since the twentieth century. If “[religious] flows, or sacroscapes, are historical as well as geographical” and they “change over time and move across space”,37 the three Ullambana Festivals reflect transtemporal characteristics. By holding the Ullambana Festival, the actors are transported back to the origin of the religion, when the Buddha supposedly gave the instructions concerning the Ullambana Festival. Through the transfer of merit to the deceased, the actors are connected with people of the past; by adopting modernist discourse, they cross and dwell in the time of modernity. These performances were therefore transtemporal.38

Conclusion Because the Ullambana Festival is also a major religious event in my own culture (Chinese Buddhism in Taiwan), it is inevitable that I compare what I observed in the Vietnamese festival in Taiwan to that of Chinese Buddhism. Two points stand out. Firstly, I was struck by the extensive translocative network and the role of social media. All three cases rely heavily on the translocative network that was generated and enhanced by social media. Vietnamese householder devotees are linked through social media and form a translocative network in which they communicate and travel to various glocalities. The network also makes it possible for Vietnamese monastics from various glocalities to preside over the Ullambana Festivals: whether they reside in Vietnam or in other countries, social media enable them to remain informed of one another’s activities transnationally. Even Vietnamese monastic students and householders who lived in different localities in Taiwan and did not know one another prior to the religious event could be solicited through social media. Several monastic students I personally know of attended all three or at least two of the festivals discussed here. The reason given is generally: “There are not enough [Vietnamese] monastics in Taiwan and therefore I come to help.” Social media facilitate the information flow and translocative communication, including the maintenance of monastic leadership in the

36 McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism, p. 8. 37 Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, p. 64. 38 My gratitude to Thomas Tweed for pointing this out to me. Personal conversation, 13 December 2018.

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absence of a corporal presence in Taiwan. This virtual presence both exemplifies and intensifies the translocative networking of Vietnamese Buddhism in Taiwan. The reliance on social media as the means of communication perhaps signals a new pattern of religious network, in which physical location gives way to virtual presence. Secondly, I was surprised by the extent of temporal crossing in the ritual performance, i.e. the modernist elements. Having grown up in a culture where the ritual of the Ullambana Festival is prescribed in a kind of rule book and still more or less carried out in accordance with rules laid down in medieval China,39 performance such as poetry-reading, pinning roses, and singing performance at a Ullambana Festival seemed odd to me. The question is why this modernist transformation occurs in the Vietnamese Ullambana Festival but not in my own culture. One might point to the influence of popular and influential monks. The mainland Chinese monks who came to Taiwan after fifty years of Japanese colonization were shocked by the customs and practices of Buddhism in Taiwan, many of which they considered to be heterodox.40 It became necessary to install what the mainland Chinese monks considered the “orthodox” Chinese Buddhism in Taiwan41; hence the strict adherence to the pre-modern rules of ritual performance. On the other hand, all my Vietnamese informants pointed to the role of Thích Nhất Hạnh in the modernist transformation of the Vietnamese Ullambana Festival. All three cases discussed here share a history of having been founded by Vietnamese Buddhist monastic students, relying heavily on social media and utilizing translocative networking. They are also similar in the doctrine they preach. According to my informants, because their devotees tend to be overwhelmed with work, little time can be spared for Dharma study. Consequently, my monastic informants preached what they considered “surface” Dharma and “easy” practice, namely, Pure Land ritual. The three cases differ in their networking structure. While Hoang Phap Pagoda has a physical home temple in Ho Chi Minh City and its unit in Taiwan functions as its branch-temple, the other two emerged without a home temple back in Vietnam and thus cannot be considered branch-temples. But while the founder monk of Tuệ Quang remains

39 See C. Lin林嘉雯, “Taiwan fojiao yulanpen yigui yu yinyue de shijian 台灣佛教盂蘭盆儀軌 與音樂的實踐” [The Buddhist Ullambana Ritual and Music Practice in Taiwan], MA thesis, Tainan National University of the Arts, 2008. 40 Ibid., pp. 112–115. 41 One good example is a book by the popular monk Master Sheng Yen, Orthodox Chinese Buddhism: A Contemporary Chan Master’s Answers to Common Questions, O. Chang and G. Douglas (trans.), Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2007.

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in contact and more or less in control of Tuệ Quang, the founding monks of Phổ Bi have already let go and handed over the ministry of Phổ Bi to the succeeding generation of Vietnamese monastic students. It will be interesting to see how the different networking structures shape the development of the three cases in the future.

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10 Vietnamese Transnational Religions: The Cold War Polarities of Temples in “Little Hanois” and “Little Saigons” On certain rare occasions, history provides us with a sequence of events that seem to mimic the protocols of a social science experiment. Imagine a population of several million people abruptly displaced from the same homeland during the same decade – some of them having fled illegally on boats or crossed borders through third countries to capitalist nations and been classified as refugees, a number of the others having been sent to socialist nations under statesponsored labour exchanges and classified as contract workers. Then imagine that these socialist nations suddenly transformed into market economies at the end of that first decade and many of these guest workers transformed themselves into small-scale entrepreneurs, showing a talent for market transactions and building transnational networks across the former socialist world. Only then would the two diasporas – the refugees in the capitalist world and the contract workers in the former socialist world – come back into contact with each other and find not only that the formerly divided halves of their own homeland had been reunified but also that one of the largest host lands – Germany – was also reunified, and countries like the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland were now part of the European Union. These people, of course, are the Vietnamese, and this imaginative exercise describes a real sequence of events, taking place over the 1980s and 1990s and providing the background for the divergent histories of two very different overseas Vietnamese communities. It would be possible to call these two communities the “capitalist refugees” versus the “formerly socialist workers”, but these categories are somewhat misleading, since it is the formerly socialist workers who have shown themselves to be successful business entrepreneurs in establishing wholesale markets in eastern European capitals, and it is capitalist refugees who have instead invested in education and professional careers for their second generation. We prefer to call them “Little Hanois” and “Little Saigons”, since these are both labels that have been embraced by the communities themselves in many

Note: This paper is based on field research conducted jointly and funded by the Global Religion Research Initiative at Northwestern University. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-010

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different international locations.1 They refer to the rival capitals of the war-torn nation of Vietnam – a nation that never accepted its supposedly temporary division into north and south – but both of them also carry conceptual and cultural significance that should be explained. They each represent loyalties to cities and regions that are not limited to the political entities that they were attached to for a quarter century. These two names have symbolic meanings for the home land that they left, as well as political connotations. They are abbreviated by overseas Vietnamese in many different countries as the “Red Flags” and the “Yellow Flags” (although in fact both flags contain both colours, with the Hanoi flag having a yellow star on a red background and the Saigon flag having red and yellow stripes). “Little Saigon” is, after all, an idea as well as a place, and it is because it is an idea that it can be transplanted, to some extent, to California or to some other location. When the newly reunited Socialist Republic of Vietnam decided to change the official name of that city to Ho Chi Minh City, the baptizing of Vietnamese enclave communities as “Little Saigons” took on the political flavour of defying the new government. Saigon, famous for its entrepreneurial energy and playful lifestyle, is often visually represented by the central Bến Thành market, and in southern California the “Little Saigon” in Garden Grove is represented by the Asian Garden Mall (known in Vietnamese by the names of the three statues representing Happiness, Wealth, and Longevity) which flies the yellow and red striped flag that no longer has a country, but is seen as a symbol of heritage and – for some people – “freedom”, in contrast to Hanoi’s red flag with a yellow star. “Little Hanoi”, in contrast, is represented not only by its red flag but also by the many monuments to Hồ Chí Minh in the former socialist world – including a huge square named after Hồ Chí Minh in Moscow (where his face is four storeys high), busts of Hồ Chí Minh in government-funded cultural centres, and his fire-damaged portrait (Figure 10.1) in the offices of the Union Générale des

1 The label “Little Saigon” has been officially adopted by California cities like Westminster and Garden Grove (both in Orange County) and is used more loosely for communities in San Jose, Houston (Texas), Falls Church (Virginia), New Orleans (Louisiana), and the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas. “Little Hanoi” is not used as often on signs to designate neighbourhoods, but we did hear it used descriptively to designate communities of workers who came to eastern Europe and the USSR from the north or emigrated after the reunification of Vietnam in 1975 to historically communist nations. The recent Czech film called “Miss Hanoi” (https://www.film center.cz/en/czech-films-people/466-miss-hanoi [accessed 15 April 2019]) both echoes the American musical titled “Miss Saigon” and affirms the ways in which Vietnamese-Czech people define themselves in relation to the northern capital city.

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Figure 10.1: The fire-damaged portrait of Hố Chí Minh hanging in the Paris offices of the Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France (Photograph by Janet Hoskins).

Vietnamiens de France,2 an organization of students and workers founded by Hồ Chí Minh in Paris in 1919. It is also often represented by the eleventh-century One Pillar Pagoda, which stands close to the Hồ Chí Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, and now also has copies in front of the Hanoi-Moscow shopping centre in Moscow and the Linh Thứu Buddhist temple in the Berlin suburb of Spandau. People who group themselves in “Little Hanois” are proud of their victory in the extended 2 The bottom edge of this portrait was burned in a fire caused by a Molotov cocktail tossed into the Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France offices on 30 April 1975, when Saigon fell to the victorious communist forces. The UDVF decided to continue to display this “wounded” portrait as a symbol of the suffering and divisions of that day (Figure 10.1).

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civil war and celebrate their ties to the current government. Most of them also proudly identify with their past as workers, even if many now own their own businesses and are deeply involved in the new market economy. Our theoretical approach to the study of these diasporas is not simply comparative, in the anthropological sense of the analysis of cultural patterns to explain differences and similarities among societies, but relational – in Édouard Glissant’s sense of looking at the system of relations where identities are constructed in relation to others and not in isolation.3 While both refugees and contract workers were Vietnamese, there were already important cultural differences between southern Vietnam – the seat of an eclectic, modernist, and entrepreneurial population before 1975 – and northern Vietnam, which was more communitarian, deferential to authority, and collectively oriented even before the victory of the Communist Party. And the relational dynamics of scattered refugee resettlement in western countries versus workers housed collectively in factory dormitories separated from the local population in socialist nations have also created different experiences of exile. One thing that has been shared by both groups is precarity, dangerous displacements, and memories of trauma and suffering. The phenomenon of the “boat people” (thuyền nhân or người vượt biên) who crossed dangerous seas, were attacked by Thai pirates, and risked dying before they were washed up on the shores of Thailand or Malaysia or rescued by Western boats has its parallel in what are sometimes called the “truck people” (người xe tải) or the “forest people” (người rừng) – Vietnamese in eastern Europe who also crossed dangerous borders illegally, endured long journeys hidden in the back of trucks underneath other merchandise, and wandered through frozen forests to reach their new homes.4 The sufferings of the refugees to escape and “attain freedom” are extensively documented by refugee writers and are also linked to a common idea of the “debt of freedom” owed to the new host land.5 But the sufferings

3 E. Glissant, Poetics of Relation, B. Wing (trans.), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997. 4 USC doctoral scholar Anh Thang Dao has detailed the very cold and perilous journey that her family made to Poland in the 1980s (A.T. Dao, “Song for A Lost Home”, in: I.T. Pelaud et al. [eds.]), Troubling Borders: An Anthology of Art and Literature by Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora, Seattle: University of Washington Press 2013, pp. 79–89. Another woman, who travelled to Germany through the Ukraine with her husband and two small children, described “walking by night through dark forests and crossing rivers”, with several members of her group dying along the way (G. Hüwelmeier, “Socialist Cosmopolitans in Postsocialist Europe: Transnational Ties among Vietnamese in the Cold War Period and Thereafter”, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12 [2017] 1, pp. 130–158, at 146). 5 See M.T. Nguyen, The Gift of Freedom: War, Debt and Other Refugee Passages, Durham: Duke University Press, 2012.

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of contract workers without citizen status, and more recent undocumented immigrants to Europe were also great, and subject to a similar and more enduring precarity due to their undocumented status. So, it seems worthwhile to tell a “tale of two exported simulated cities” – both the “Little Hanois” and the “Little Saigons” – and to look at the debts and obligations that each has entailed. Both sets of communities have developed new symbolic icons and spiritual practices which fuse religion and politics. In Little Saigons, the refugee experience and its trauma has been subject to religious interpretation. One example is the Caodai doctrine that the Vietnamese are “God’s chosen people”, who had to suffer the Fall of Saigon in order to globalize.6 Another is the Catholic diasporic cult of an ethnically Vietnamese Virgin Mary, “Our Lady of La Vang”, described as appearing to comfort her persecuted followers, whose worship has now spread from the diaspora to Vietnam itself.7 Activist Buddhist refugee monks associated with the United Buddhist Church (now banned in Vietnam) lead demonstrations they see as defending religious freedom and protesting the policies of the current government. In Little Hanois, the performance of patriotism at Buddhist temples is a well-regulated expression of diasporic identity (supported by the Vietnamese government). But there are also less regulated phenomena, such as the worship of Hồ Chí Minh not only as a national hero but as a healing spirit, perhaps even the Jade Buddha, who can be channelled by spirit mediums.8 While Vietnamese Buddhists as individuals are welcome to worship

6 See J.A. Hoskins, The Divine Eye and the Diaspora: Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015; J.A. Hoskins, “God’s Chosen People: Race, Religion and Anti-Colonial Resistance in French Indochina”, Asia Research Institute working paper series, no. 189, National University of Singapore, September 2012. 7 Catholics and Caodaists in the diaspora have coordinated their efforts with those of Buddhists since May 1992, when the Pope invited two hundred Vietnamese religious leaders to Rome for a “Prayer Day for Peace in Vietnam”. This event precipitated the formation of a Vietnamese Interfaith Council (Hội Đồng Liên Tôn), which has become one of the most influential political advocacy groups in the diaspora. It has run voters’ drives and endorsed political candidates in the US, and raised funds for humanitarian social causes. See T.H. Ninh, Race, Religion and Gender in the Vietnamese Diaspora: The New Chosen People, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, p. 197. 8 See C.V. Hoang, “‘Following Uncle Hồ to save the nation’: Empowerment, Legitimacy and Nationalistic Aspirations in a Vietnamese New Religious Movement”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 47 (2016) 2, pp. 234–254; H.T. Ho Tai, “Female Spirit Mediums and the Cult of ‘Uncle Ho’ in Today’s Vietnam”, seminar paper presented at the Center for Transpacific Studies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 6 April 2016. For an account of spirit writing connected to the worship of Hồ Chí Minh, see G. Hüwelmeier, “Spirit Writing in Vietnam: Political Lessons from the Beyond”, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 20 (2019) 3, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14442213.2019.1603250.

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at all temples in Europe, two rival Vietnamese Buddhist organizations with very different political agendas present a spectacle of continuing conflict with no formal contact or organizational collaboration. The religious arena is still marked by Cold War polarizations which are much less evident in many other domains. Rather than being a terrain of reconciliation, Buddhist temples and the sacralization of flags as symbols remain at the root of deep cultural differences. In order to examine the idea of separate diasporic religious expressions among Vietnamese refugees and immigrants, we will (1) outline how and when these different groups arrived. The conditions they met in their new host countries were quite different, but they also built on different cultural and political orientations clearly defined before their departure. Then (2) we will examine how these communities come together at churches, temples, and pagodas, and also at shopping malls, wholesale markets, and places of commerce. Finally (3) we will focus on the particular symbolism of the flag and why it has become so important to both diasporic communities, who remain polarized and divided more than 40 years after the end of the war, when these ideological oppositions are said to have disappeared in most places in the world. We will also note the importance of other religiously imbued cultural figures like the Hung Kings, Hồ Chí Minh, and the Catholic “Our Lady of La Vang”, who have all been the subject of veneration in Vietnamese communities in Europe.

Arrivals and Departures: “Little Hanois” vs. “Little Saigons” Our research began with the “Little Saigons” of California and the famous concentrations of Vietnamese businesses and cultural centres in the Orange County of southern California and the San Jose area of northern California. In 2016, the US Census Bureau estimated the total population of Vietnamese Americans was 2,067,527. California and Texas had the largest populations of Vietnamese Americans, with 40 and 12 per cent of the total population, respectively. Other states with many Vietnamese Americans were Washington, Florida, and Virginia. The largest number of Vietnamese outside Vietnam is in Orange County, California (184,153), and about 41 per cent of the Vietnamese immigrant population lives in five major metropolitan areas: in descending order, Los Angeles, San Jose, Houston, San Francisco, and Dallas-Fort Worth. The next largest population of former refugees is in France (an estimated 350,000), followed by Australia (294,000) and Canada (157,000). Almost all of the Vietnamese who came as

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refugees between 1975 and 1995 to these various host lands are now citizens of their country of residence.9 The story is very different for those Vietnamese who came to eastern Europe during the same decades. After Hanoi’s victory in 1975, the country was devastated by the long years of war, and other socialist countries proposed to help rebuild Vietnam (and bolster their own manufacturing sector) by importing workers for factories in eastern Europe, with the understanding that a significant percentage of their salaries would go directly to the Vietnamese government. Much of the rest of their salaries, of course, was sent back to relatives in Vietnam, usually in the form of export goods, which the families kept for their daily use or could resell on the market after arrival.10 Refugees and former workers came to the divided Germany at the time when Cold War divisions were at their strongest: 35,000 refugees arrived in West Germany starting in 1979, and about 70,000 contract workers began to arrive in East Germany in 1980. The two migration streams brought refugees from the former South Vietnam and students and contract workers from the former North Vietnam. The 2016 census estimated that 176,000 people of Vietnamese origin lived in Germany, two-thirds of them being foreign-born migrants. Almost half of them (85,000) still had a Vietnamese passport.11 Other countries which received many Vietnamese contract workers were the Czech Republic (83,000), Poland (52,000), and Russia (35,000), out of a total of more than 200,000 Vietnamese workers sent to eastern Europe from 1981 to 1990.

The Living Conditions of Contract Workers Vietnam was desperately poor in the 1980s and early 1990s, so there were many people who wanted to leave their country to earn a better living and enjoy a higher

9 See J.A. Hoskins, “Sacralizing the Diaspora: Cosmopolitan and Originalist Indigenous Religions”, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12 (2017) 2, pp. 108–140; J.A. Hoskins and T.H. Ninh, “Introduction: Globalizing Vietnamese Religions”, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12 (2017) 2, pp. 1–19. 10 See C. Schwenkel, “Rethinking Asian Mobilities: Socialist Migration and Repatriation of Vietnamese Contract Workers in East Germany”, Critical Asian Studies 46 (2014) 2, pp. 235–258; Idem, “Socialist Mobilities: Crossing New Terrains in Vietnamese Migration Histories”, Central and Eastern European Migration Review 4 (2015) 1, pp. 13–25. 11 See F. Bosch and P.H. Su, “Invisible, Successful and Divided: Vietnamese in Germany since the late 1970s”, United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, February 2018, p. 15.

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quality of life in eastern Europe. The people who were assigned to be sent to Europe were selected because they were diligent workers, and some were prioritized as children of high-ranking Communist Party officers (quan chức). People with “suspect” family backgrounds or ties to the former regime of the south were not selected. Another stated goal of sending Vietnamese workers to other socialist countries was to train a more sophisticated workforce, allowing workers to eventually return from factories to train workers in Vietnam’s newly industrialized sector. The officially led exchange of factory workers for revenue ended abruptly in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communist governments in many eastern European countries, but the flow of immigrants from Vietnam did not. Strictly controlled conditions were common for Vietnamese factory workers in Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. Their passports were taken away from them to keep them from escaping, and they were told not to socialize with local people or even workers of the opposite sex. Any woman found pregnant was sent back to Vietnam immediately, as was also true for women students sent to the Eastern European universities based on their high scores in university entrance exams. Housed in single-sex dormitories where they were closely surveilled by government-appointed managers, these workers contributed 12 per cent of their wages directly to the Vietnamese government in an effort to revive the planned economy after many years of war.12 When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, most of the factories closed abruptly and about 70 per cent of all Vietnamese workers were literally thrown into the streets. Factory workers in Germany were paid to return home, receiving 3,000 German marks (about USD 1,800) and a free ticket to Vietnam.13 About twothirds of them, some 40,000 people, did return to Vietnam. But many of those who accepted the payment later travelled back to post-socialist Europe using a visitor’s visa, staying illegally with their relatives or paying fees to a labourexporting service, since they realized that they could make much more money in Europe and their children would have a brighter future.

12 G. Hüwelmeier, “Socialist Cosmopolitans”, p. 145. 13 G. Hüwelmeier, “Spirits in the Marketplace: Transnational Networks of Vietnamese Migrants in Berlin”, in: M.P. Smith and J. Eade (eds.), Transnational Ties: Cities, Identities and Migrations (Comparative Urban and Community Research, vol. 9), New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2008, pp. 131–144, at 137; C. Schwenkel, “Socialist Mobilities: Crossing New Terrains in Vietnamese Migration Histories”, Central and Eastern European Migration Review 4 (2015) 1, pp. 13–25; Idem, “Vietnamese in Central Europe: An Unintended Diaspora”, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12 (2017) 1, pp. 1–9, at 5.

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A “cigarette mafia” grew up, consisting of traders who paid protection money to Vietnamese gangs and often clashed with each other, with 35 cases of murder between rival Vietnamese gangs reported in Berlin in 1996 alone (see Figure 10.2).14 The unsavoury reputation that became attached to certain border towns, however, did not apply to most Vietnamese vendors. A new government regulation during the transition to a market economy allowed Vietnamese people to become the owners of small shops and snack bars. Skills that workers in textile factories had developed to tailor jeans and shirts in their spare time were translated into lucrative small businesses.

Figure 10.2: A sign we photographed in Sapa Market, Prague says, “Erase your police record in Germany” (Photograph by Janet Hoskins). The service is provided by an office that offers legal advice, ways to pay fines to remove the record of earlier infractions, and sometimes also ways to get “new papers” in order to be able to establish a legitimate business.

14 Hüwelmeier, “Spirits in the Marketplace”, p. 138.

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The woman owner of a nail salon in Dong Xuan Market in Berlin told us that in the 1989–1992 East German transition from a controlled economy, “gathering goods from one market and reselling them at another could make a lot of money” and the vendor could amass a small fortune. Vendors successful in street-based trade saved their money and used it to establish bigger and largerscale businesses, such as factories, grocery stores, restaurants, or real estate in Vietnam. She compared their earning capacity at the time to “catching the gold showering down from the skies”. She and her husband opened an “Asian” restaurant, labelled as Chinese and Thai, since Vietnamese food was not yet well known. Shortages of fresh vegetables, milk, and bread opened up opportunities for Vietnamese workers, who proved much more entrepreneurial than many European citizens of former socialist countries. “Czech and Russian people didn’t know how to make money, but for Vietnamese immigrants in Europe, it was common sense”, a Vietnamese trader in Prague told us as we visited the wholesale Vietnamese market Sapa. “They had been taught that it was bad to sell things for a profit, to get them wholesale, and then sell them again at a markup in smaller shops. We knew about these things, since we had been sending western goods back to Vietnam for resale for many years.” The scarcity of clothing, food, and household items that followed the collapse of the collective economy meant that the Vietnamese street markets and roadside shops filled an immediate need. In the 1990s, resale and wholesale markets which became an important part of an underground economy focused on cigarettes, alcohol, and other semilegal commodities.15 While former workers successfully “reinvented” themselves as entrepreneurs, these markets were often seen as shady, dangerous places, where illicit drugs could circulate and crime was also high. Today, almost every Czech country town has a Vietnamese grocery market, and Vietnamese restaurants and take-away shops in German cities are increasingly upscale. Former smugglers and black marketeers have become the owners of legal businesses, although there remain stereotypes of Vietnamese as gangsters and drug dealers. In Prague, a Czech anthropologist told us that “it was the Vietnamese transnational traders who taught the Czech people how to be capitalists”. The revival of religious life in Little Hanois reflects the culture of workers from rural areas now settled in urban centres. Nostalgia for the traditional villages where workers grew up is displayed in the small Buddhist temple in Prague’s Sapa market, with one altar deliberately styled like a traditional

15 More details are available in S. Broucek, The Visible and Invisible Vietnamese in the Czech Republic, Prague: Institute of Ethnology CAS, 2016.

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bamboo house in the countryside. Evocations of the homeland (quê hương) are tied to performances of folk songs and traditional dances, rather than the more westernized love ballads so popular in Little Saigons. One popular bar where community meetings are held is called “the village headman’s house”. The village atmosphere is also associated with popular worship of Vietnamese Mother Goddesses. The uncertain world of petty commerce has an elective affinity (to adopt Weber’s term) for people who worship the capricious pantheon of Đạo Mẫu spirits, who may bestow gifts of prosperity. It is not surprising that such practices have found a new home in the ethnic enclaves grouped around wholesale markets in cities like Berlin, Warsaw, and Prague.16 The worship of Mother Goddesses close to places of commerce is a pattern in northern Vietnam that moved into eastern Europe during the same decade (1995–2015) in which it enjoyed a resurgence in Hanoi.17 During this time popular beliefs and rituals that once been attacked as wasteful and superstitious (and suppressed by government regulations) again became a conspicuous feature of contemporary city life. Markets and modernity are tied to the revival of the worship of nature-based spirits in Vietnamese communities in both Europe and Vietnam, due to the belief that “efficacious spirits” can reward their followers with success in attracting clients, building small businesses, and achieving prosperity and a harmonious family life. A former refugee woman in Berlin described the rise of these ritual practices as showing a “fondness for magic” (sùng bái ma thuật), asserting that Marxist materialism manifests itself in religious practices such as praying to win the lottery, to be able to lure clients from rival vendors, and to become a more successful commercial entrepreneur. She contrasted them to the more contemplative practices of meditation, scripture study, and social work associated with Buddhist centres in Huế and Ho Chi Minh City. As an educated professional from southern Vietnam, she said: “I see religion as the centre of morality, the moral way of life, not a place where you seek material benefits or you become rich.”

16 G. Hüwelmeier, “Bazaar Pagodas – Transnational Religion, Postsocialist Marketplaces and Vietnamese Migrant Women in Berlin”, Religion and Gender 3 (2013) 1, pp. 75–88. See also G. Hüwelmeier, “Socialist Cosmopolitans in Postsocialist Europe: Transnational Ties among Vietnamese in the Cold War Period and Thereafter”, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 12 (2017) 1, pp. 130–158. 17 K. Endres, Performing the Devine: Mediums, Markets and Modernity in Urban Vietnam, Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2011; T.H. Nguyen, The Religion of Four Palaces: Mediumship and Therapy in Viet Culture, Hanoi: The Gioi Publishing House, 2016; P.Q. Phuong, Hero and Deity: Tran Hung Dao and the Resurgence of Popular Religion in Vietnam, Chiang Mai: Mekong Press, 2009.

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She described many practices at the temples in eastern Berlin as “silly superstitions” (ngu ngốc mê tín dị đoan), which she condemned from the perspective of elite forms of religious practice like those of Zen Buddhism, Catholicism, and Caodaism. Her use of categories like “superstition” and “erroneous folk beliefs” echoes a modernist criticism of folk religion which has been a significant part of debates in Vietnam for over a century. Some of the workers who travelled to Germany in the 1980s were from southern Vietnam, not just the north – but since their migration took place after Vietnam had been united, they are generally part of communities that are coded as “Little Hanois”, and they join associations that proudly fly the Hanoi flag (cờ đỏ) rather than the refugee associations which fly the yellow flag of Saigon. A woman from Da Nang whom we interviewed in Berlin described how her team was housed in Dresden and assigned work in a textile factory. When the factory was closed in late 1989, she stayed on with her husband and young son, but they were obliged to sell things in the streets to stay alive. She told us that at that time her co-workers heard that capitalism was a system characterized by “the jobless and the homeless”. They were afraid of the impending transformations and returned to Vietnam. She herself, however, had had experience in small-scale trading and sewing before the fall of the Berlin wall and so decided to stay: At that time no one knew what the rules were. We sold whatever people would buy, and didn’t know how to get the right paperwork or pay taxes. [. . .] Later, when we knew that tax collectors were going around, we gradually started to become part of the legal trading system. When we knew what the rules were, we followed them, since we did not deliberately break the laws. In the old days of the subsidy economies [the 1980s], we knew nothing. At the end we gradually became more stable, paid taxes, did the paperwork, and someone advised us how to do it. Before we were all groping around and trying to survive with whatever we had.18

The Living Conditions of Refugees in Germany and France It was a very different story for refugees. While contract workers had to scramble around to figure out how to support themselves after 1989, refugees were provided with resettlement help from the government in all of their new homes. As soon as they arrived, refugees in West Germany were assigned to a sponsoring family, who would help them to integrate into the local setting; 18 Fieldnotes, May 2018.

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some of these relationships lasted for the rest of their lives. Schoolchildren received tutoring to catch up with their classmates, and older adults could qualify to go to the Goethe Institute to study for certification in order to attend university.19 But refugees were spread out across West Germany, so they never formed a concentrated ethnic community. Since many struggle to raise their children to speak and read Vietnamese, the Buddhist temples founded by refugees offer language and culture classes along with religious instruction. In Germany and France, as in the United States, the first refugees were dispersed across many geographic areas, often sponsored by Christian churches, with the expectation that this would help them to integrate into mainstream society. After a few years, many refugees decided to move closer to other family members, often choosing to settle in the emerging ethnic enclaves known as the Little Saigons.20 In France, the largest number of refugees settled in the Paris area, and for some time the large public housing units known as “Les Olympiades” sheltered many new arrivals. For that reason, the thirteenth arrondissement came to be seen as the “quartier asiatique”, and it still has many Chinese and Vietnamese-owned restaurants and grocery stores. A neighbourhood association of “former residents of Indochina” organizes Lunar New Year festivities, but the Vietnamese population itself is – as in West Berlin – highly dispersed throughout the city. Contract workers, on the other hand, were housed together in complexes near their factories in East Berlin, and later deliberately chose to settle in areas where other Vietnamese were concentrated. What Zhou and Bankston have called “ethnic social capital” was clearly a part of their survival strategies, but the very fact that they appeared to be part of closed communities increased social stigmatization of the Vietnamese in eastern Berlin (and in eastern Europe more generally) as gangsters and criminals.21 There is also evidence that they were discriminated against in housing and employment after 1990.22 Vietnamese

19 Bosch and Su, “Invisible, Successful and Divided”, p. 3. 20 See J.A. Hoskins, “Caodai Exile and Redemption: A New Vietnamese Religion’s Struggle for identity”, in: P. Hondagneu-Sotelo (ed.), Religion and Social Justice for Immigrants, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006, pp. 191–210; see also T.H. Nguyen, “Integration, Changes Tradition and Cultural Identities of the Vietnamese Diasporic Community: The Case Study at Silicon Valley, California”, Tạp chí Văn hóa học [Journal of Cultural Studies] 5 (2015), pp. 15–32. 21 M. Zhou and C.L. Bankston, Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States, New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1998. 22 Bosch and Su, “Invisible, Successful and Divided”, p. 5; F. Hillman, “Riders on the Storm: Vietnamese in Germany’s Two Migration Systems”, in: E. Spaan, F. Hillmann, and T. Naerssen (eds.), Asian Migrants and European Labour Markets: Patterns and Processes of Immigrant Labour Market Insertion in Europe, London/New York: Routledge, 2005, pp. 80–100.

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Buddhist associations in former socialist countries came to be formed in the early 1990s, in part to provide social services for workers who did not have access to medical care, food, shelter, or funeral services.

Two Versions of Buddhism and Two Rival Sanghas While Buddhism has long been described as Vietnam’s largest religion, somewhat different forms of Buddhism have developed in the northern and southern parts of the country, and since 1954 these have been identified with different organizations. Popular Buddhism all over the country has been primarily devotional, associated with the Pure Land (Amidist or Tịnh Độ) sect, but the Buddhist reform movement in the 1920s brought new prominence to Zen (Thiền), especially in Saigon and the old imperial capital of Huế. The emphasis on meditation of the Trúc Lâm school of Zen is found in the influential writings of Thích Nhất Hạnh (b. 1926), who is without doubt the most widely read Vietnamese Buddhist figure in the west. He helped found the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (Giáo Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam Thống Nhất or UBCV) in Saigon in 1964, and came to be known as a prominent peace activist. Exiled since 1966 for proposing a reconciliation that pleased neither the Saigon nor the Hanoi government, he came to live in rural France and run meditation workshops from Plum Village (Làng Mai), attracting a large international following. After the communist victory in 1975, the Hanoi government dissolved all existing Buddhist organizations and formed a single, state-sanctioned group called the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha (Phật Giáo Việt Nam or PGVN) in 1981. All other Buddhist organizations, including the UBCV, were not allowed to operate publicly. As Chapman notes: “There now exist two Buddhist representative bodies in Vietnam: one authorized, sponsored and controlled by the government, and representing Buddhism in its official assemblies, and the other, the UBCV, more difficult to define since it no longer has an official base and its leaders are no longer recognized by the authorities as legitimate”.23 A 2004 Ordinance on Religious Belief and religious Organizations affirms each citizen’s right to religious belief, but also says any “abuse” of religion “to undermine the country’s peace, independence and unity” is illegal.24

23 J. Chapman, “The 2005 Pilgrimage and Return to Vietnam of Exiled Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh”, in: P. Taylor (ed.), Modernity and Re-Enchantment: Religion in Post-Revolutionary Vietnam, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007, pp. 297–340, at 309. 24 Ibid., p. 312.

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Most former Vietnamese refugees in Europe are associated with the UBCV (although many are also Catholic or secular), while most former migrants and contract workers are associated with the PGVN. Thích Nhất Hạnh was historically associated with the UBCV, but he is now independent of it and has been able to visit Vietnam several times since 2005, and his once banned books are now widely available for purchase. The resurgence of interest in Buddhism in twenty-first century Vietnam is evident in both northern and southern regions, but still takes somewhat different forms.25 Buddhism in Hanoi today is a tradition that is deeply infused with worldly religious practices of “conspicuous devotion” which include making offerings (cúng thường xuyên), chanting, and praying for greater material prosperity.26 As Soucy notes: Vietnamese religion, as a general characteristic, embraces the mundane, revels in money and business, and affirms an essential goodness of material wealth and success, as well as valuing longevity, health and happy families with many descendants [. . .] The most dominant theme in explanations of the purpose of Buddhist practice was that of bringing good luck and wealth to the practitioners and to their families.27

He notes the contrast with doctrinal Buddhism, which preaches that everything in the world is unsubstantial, and the cause of suffering is an excessive attachment to these worldly things. Pure Land practice, marked by the wearing of dark brown robes for devotional Buddhists, predominates in northern Vietnam, and it is contrasted with the Zen tradition which is more common in southern Vietnam, and marked by the wearing of grey robes.28 Followers of the Zen tradition, taught in famous pagodas in the central city and former imperial capital of Huế, see this as a “higher practice” than the popular devotionalism of the north. These regional differences in Buddhist practice are also echoed in oppositions between former southern refugees and former northern contract workers. A Buddhist monk at Khuông Việt temple in the Parisian suburb of Orsay explained the situation in these terms:

25 Philip Taylor notes that it is misleading to argue that the outlawing of the southern-based United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (Giáo Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam Thống Nhất) in today’s Vietnam has prevented the powerful resurgence of Buddhism in public life. “Buddhism in Vietnam is blossoming in a sea of transnational flows, re-emerging from obscurity like a resplendent lotus” (Taylor, Modernity and Re-Enchantment, p. 28). Communist party leaders have taken on elements of Buddhist reform movements (attacking superstition and developing a coherent national tradition) in the hopes of forging an enlightened society with a strong ethical orientation. 26 A. Soucy, The Buddha Side: Gender, Power and Buddhist Practice in Vietnam, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012. 27 Ibid., pp. 89–90. 28 Ibid., p. 134.

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When Vietnamese people came here and built these temples, the temple’s religious orientation depended on the builders. Vietnamese Buddhism in the central region, stretching from Quang Tri to Ca Mau, is more refined because it has been through many reforms and changes, and has eliminated superstitious local practices from its core worship. Up North, wartime lasted such a long time. The government created many new regulations on religions, so after many years, Buddhism was pushed back to the state it was in many years before. Since 1975, those things have eaten so deep at the blood and hearts of the people there, so to fix that problem is very difficult. In Buddhism you can only give advice [. . .]. The first generation might be very stubborn, the second generation will be a little less, and the third generation will be even less.29

The importance of religious gatherings was initially much less for Vietnamese contract workers in officially secular socialist states. Since workers were generally young and their parents were still alive, few even had ancestral altars in their dormitories, although almost all of them came from homes where offerings were regularly made at family altars.30 Since 1990, Vietnam has experienced a resurgence in popular religious activity, as have the host countries in the post-socialist world and this has influenced overseas Vietnamese communities. The first religious gathering points were small altars which appeared in the 1990s at the wholesale markets or bazaars where many Vietnamese worked as vendors.31 Most of the Vietnamese Buddhist pagodas and Mother Goddess temples in Germany and the Czech Republic opened in the twenty-first century, but there were small pagodas near Paris and Moscow already in the 1990s. It is not unusual in the “Little Hanois” to see prominent merchants seek out the advice of a spirit medium, fortune teller or psychic when they want to make an important business decision. There are also a number of temples (in Erfurt [Germany], Moscow, and Warsaw) built for the spirit possession practice of lên đồng, which honours Mother Goddesses (Đạo Mâu) who are believed to be able to bestow gifts of health, prosperity, and success in both business and love.32 One Buddhist temple stands as a significant exception to the rule that congregations are highly polarized politically – the Linh Thứu Buddhist temple in

29 Fieldnotes, Paris, June 2018. 30 Hüwelmeier, “Bazaar Pagodas”, pp. 75–88. 31 Ibid., pp. 80–81. 32 H.T. Nguyen, The Religion of Four Palaces; H.T. Nguyen and K. Fjelstad, Spirits Without Borders: Vietnamese Spirit Mediums in a Transnational Age, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011; H.T. Nguyen and K. Fjelstad (eds.), Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in Contemporary Vietnamese Communities, Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 2007. For Mother Goddess worship among Vietnamese Americans, see J.A. Hoskins, “The Spirits You See in the Mirror: Spirit Possession in the Vietnamese American Diaspora”, in: J. Lee (ed.), The Southeast Asian Diaspora in the United States, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014, pp. 73–100.

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Spandau, just west of Berlin. In this temple administered by nuns, the religious leadership has tried to reconcile the differences between refugees and migrants. While Linh Thứu was initially founded by refugee groups, after the fall of the Berlin Wall the Vietnamese population of migrants from the former East Germany (the “red flags”) came to be larger than the population of former refugees in West Germany (the “yellow flags”). The nuns have insisted that no national flags should be brought to the grounds of the pagoda. A small shrine commemorates the sufferings of those who came by boat, and a much larger replica of the eleventh-century “One Pillar Pagoda” of Hanoi now stands in front of the main temple entrance. The children of former refugees and those of migrants now sit together in classes about Vietnamese culture, language, and religion, and their families come to celebrate together large-scale festivals like Vesak, celebration of Buddha’s birth (Figure 10.3). The nuns have been successful mainly because they have chosen not to take sides in these political divisions.

Figure 10.3: Celebration of Vesak, the Buddha’s Birthday, at the Linh Thứu Buddhist temple in Spandau, just west of Berlin in May 2018 (Photograph by Janet Hoskins).

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As the capital cities of two countries with large divided populations, Berlin and Paris are mirror images of each other. German statistics indicate that roughly two-thirds of Vietnamese people in Germany are former migrants or contract workers, while roughly one third came as refugees,33 while informal assessments about the French community (where the census does not count race or ethnicity) are more or less the reverse: Former refugees and students from the former South Vietnam form the majority, with those affiliated with the “Red Flag” a significant minority. Since it was Hồ Chí Minh himself who founded the first overseas Vietnamese organization (the Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France) in Europe in 1919 they are, however, a historically significant minority with a long history of militant protests against the American war in Vietnam, and next year they are preparing to celebrate a century of revolutionary activism.

Religions and Flags in Little Hanois and Little Saigons In the “Little Saigons” of the United States, Canada, and Australia, Buddhist pagodas and Catholic Churches were important centres in helping to resettle refugees, offer English classes to older adults and Vietnamese classes to their children, and serving as gathering places for the community. The US is also a country where religion is often fused with ethnicity: Barack Obama observed that Sunday morning is the most segregated moment in American public life, a time when people who may otherwise mix at work, in schools and even in neighbourhoods gather with others of similar ancestry to worship the sanctification of their heritage. Churches had sponsored many of the first generation of Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s, often providing a year of free rent, bundles of hand-me-down clothes, and sometimes also expectations that the families would respond with the gesture of converting to Christianity (often just before they left to move to another community where it would be possible to once again follow their own religious traditions).34 The veneration of the former Saigon government has become part of familial worship at ancestral altars in the homes of former refugees in the US, Canada, and Australia: A small yellow striped Saigon flag (cờ vàng) is very often placed just beside the images of Buddha, the Virgin Mary, or the Caodai

33 Bosch and Su, “Invisible, Successful and Divided”, pp. 1–22. 34 Hoskins, “Caodai Exile and Redemption”, p. 200.

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left eye of God. This flag symbolically represents the vanished regime as a sort of ancestor: an important part of family history, and a now deceased, but still influential and possibly benevolent spiritual authority. People that I interviewed about this custom described it as “showing respect” or “keeping alive the memory of their homeland”, but of course it does so with an explicitly political interpretation.35 The red Hanoi flag, in contrast, is never placed on ancestral altars (even by those very loyal to the regime) precisely because its government is still very much alive. An early refugee community in San Jose represented its ties to ancestors by building a temple to the legendary Hung Kings (founders of the imperial dynasty), where ceremonies are held to celebrate the first Vietnamese state over three thousand years ago.36 This historical festival is also celebrated in the Sapa market in Prague, and by several Vietnamese communities in both eastern and western Germany. The ritual commemoration of the Hung Kings was a national holiday under both the Hanoi and Saigon regimes and could be a meeting ground for formerly opposed communities.37 In both Germany and France, some Buddhist temples are associated with the “Red Flag” (and formally linked to the government sanctioned Vietnam Buddhist Sangha or PGVN), while others are associated with the “Yellow Flag” (and affiliated with the United Buddhist Church of Vietnamese in Europe, UBCVE). The flying of the Red Flag was most clearly marked at Buddhist temples in Prague and Moscow – two places where there were very few former refugees. While the red flag itself is not flown at two temples in the Paris suburbs that are affiliated with the Hanoi-approved Vietnam Buddhist Sangha, there is a history of politically charged conflicts among the followers of these temples. One man who serves as a mediator between the Vietnam Buddhist Sangha in Hanoi and the temple followers in Paris said he is in an extremely difficult position, since members of one of the temples even tried to change their affiliation about a decade ago. While he knows many former refugees and works with them on the temple governance committee, he nevertheless asserted that there 35 Hoskins, “Introduction: Globalizing Vietnamese Religions”, pp, 1–19; Hoskins, “Sacralizing the Diaspora”, pp. 108–140. 36 K. Fjelstad and N.T. Liem, “Bảo tồn di sản, giáo dục con cháu: Thờ cúng Hùng Vương ở Thung lũng Silicon, California, Mỹ” [Safeguarding Heritage, Education Children], in: Conference Proceedings, Tín ngưỡng thờ cúng tổ tiên trong xã hội đương đại: Trường hợp tín ngưỡng thờ cúng Hùng Vương ở Việt Nam [The Worship of Ancestors in Contemporary Society: The Case Study of Hùng Kings in Viet Nam], Hanoi: Văn hóa Thông tin, 2011. 37 O. Dror, “Foundational Myths in the Republic of Vietnam (1955–1975): ‘Harnessing’ the Hùng Kings against Ngô Đình Diệm Communists, Cowboys, and Hippies for Unity, Peace, and Vietnameseness”, Journal of Social History 51 (2017) 1, pp. 124–159, at 124–125.

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“could never be a reconciliation” or even any formal cooperation between the two opposed strands of Buddhism.38 In 2008, members of the anti-communist student group AEGVP (Association Générale des Etudiants Vietnamiens de Paris or Tổng Hội Sinh Viên Việt Nam tại Paris) decided to quite consciously reinvent a tradition by sanctifying the Saigon flag. The association was founded in 1964 at the Hiền Lương restaurant on the rue de Broca in Paris’s fifth arrondissement (Latin Quarter) to support the Saigon government. Several hundred of its members returned to Vietnam in 1972–1973 to work to help the current regime, even though their French nationality protected them from the draft. Its former President in 1972, Trần Văn Bá, returned to Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon and was executed for plotting against the government.39 The yellow striped flag was created by the emperor Thành Thái in 1890, at the same time that he encouraged celebrations of the Huong Vuong dynasty. It was adopted by former emperor Bao Dai in 1948 for a supposedly “sovereign” Vietnamese state within a proposed French Union, and it is this date which is commemorated in the ceremonies held in 2008 and 2018 to celebrate a Vietnam which would be “free, democratic, and sovereign”. On 9 June 2018, they celebrated the seventieth anniversary of this “sanctification” of the flag by parading a giant yellow striped flag through the thirteenth arrondissement, Paris’s “Asian quarter”, starting at a popular Vietnamese market (Tang Frères) and proceeding to a rally to protest the communist government’s abuse of human rights. Two weeks later, Buddhist monks in the now outlawed Unified Buddhist Church led a large demonstration at the Human Rights Square in front of the Eiffel Tower, waving the Buddhist flag, the French flag, and dozens of yellow flags to challenge the legitimacy of the present Vietnamese government and protest new laws on Internet censorship and leasing new economic zones to China. Political partisanship is particularly marked in the Paris area because the monks who lead the largest Buddhist temple in Europe – Khanh Anh, in the Paris suburb of Evry (affiliated with the UBCV in Europe) – are also actively organizing demonstrations against the policies of the current Vietnamese government. For this reason, a diplomat in Paris told us that government cadres should never not go to the temples of the “Yellow Flags”.

38 Fieldwork, June 2018. 39 See N.C. Nguyen, Le Temps des ancêtres: Une famille vietnamienne dans sa traversée du XXe siècle, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2018.

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The flags even appear in a somewhat disguised fashion in Vietnamese restaurants in Berlin and Paris. In 2005, a newly opened restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg, the tourist zone of East Berlin, raised the Hanoi flag in front of its entrance and took the name “Onkel Ho”.40 Across town, the refugeeestablished restaurant called “Monsieur Vuong” installed a red and yellow striped awning over their entrance. And another refugee affiliated restaurant called “District Một” (after the fashionable central area of Saigon) set up yellow striped outdoor café tables to signal its regional and political loyalties (Figure 10.4).

Figure 10.4: The refugee affiliated restaurant called “District Một” (after the fashionable central area of Saigon, now Hồ Chí Minh City) set up yellow striped outdoor café tables reminiscent of the Saigon flag (now outlawed in Vietnam) to signal its regional and political loyalties.

40 Hüwelmeier, “Bazaar Pagodas”, p. 139.

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Community and Spirituality in the “Little Hanois”: Markets, Citizenship, and Symbols of Unity The Dong Xuan Market in the former East Berlin has emerged as a cultural centre for former workers and recent migrants, where celebrations were held for Hồ Chí Minh’s birthday, Vietnam’s national day, and other “patriotic” occasions. While some younger members of refugee families said that they enjoyed eating at restaurants there or getting services like haircuts and manicures, most of the older generation chose not to visit. They have separate cultural associations to gather for the Lunar New Year, the Mid-Autumn Festival and other Vietnamese holidays. Unlike groups in Paris or the “Little Saigons” of the US, Canada, and Australia, refugee groups in Berlin do not explicitly commemorate the fall of Saigon as “Black April”, but they do observe separate community rituals. A number of the migrants who now live in Germany, Poland, Russia, and the Czech Republic are undocumented, but most have a renewable short-term visa, which allows them to be “guest workers”. Every few years they have to renew their visa or return to Vietnam. Some of them broke the law and stayed over to work illegally for a number of reasons: Some were afraid that if they returned to Vietnam, they would lose their chance to get a visa due to their illegal status. Others simply needed to save enough money to cover the renewal fee, or may have failed to pass the citizenship exams in Germany or in the Czech Republic (which require mastery of the language of the host land). Many others are in a sort of limbo, with a legal status as guest workers but no clear path to permanent residency. They remain Vietnamese citizens, and some of them may plan to return to Vietnam when they retire, but they do not have the status of citizens in Europe – which virtually all of the former refugees now have. As one Vietnamese intellectual who has spent more than 30 years in Russia and now has both a Russian and Vietnamese passport explained: Most Vietnamese people immigrated to Europe with a plan to stay there for only a limited time. They came to try to earn as much money as possible and save it for their return to Vietnam. But as the years passed, and they stayed on longer in Europe, their children were not fluent in Vietnamese, and so they hesitated to return because they had formed another life there. They had settled into a different lifestyle and they could see that the situation in Vietnam was unstable. Only after about a decade did many of them decide to stay in Europe for the rest of their lives. This is when a number of them started to invest long term in opening new businesses, usually in retail, new technologies, pharmacies, and transnational currency trading.41

41 Fieldnotes, Moscow, June 2018.

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Most Vietnamese who have come to Europe in the last decade are young people. They are similar to undocumented workers in the US or elsewhere in Europe who have described their status as one of homelessness, an unsettled and unmoored state in which they are forced to lie to get by. As journalist Jose Antonio Vargas noted in his memoir Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, the lives of undocumented workers have to be about “constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from [them]selves.” While living illegally in a country that does not consider them as its own, they make a temporary home in an ethnic enclave, but can not be sure that they will be able to stay there either. The head nun at a Buddhist temple in Moscow shared a sad story about a funeral where she was invited to perform the Buddhist death rituals in Russia. A number of young illegal vendors in Moscow steal away, living temporarily in very small and shabby apartments with hopes of saving money to pay the debt they borrowed for the trip. They try to get several year work-permits and visas. Many of them have no money for medical care, and can end up isolated in hospitals with no relatives or close friends when they die. The Buddhist congregation in Moscow has to take responsibility to give these indigent workers a proper funeral. We also attended another funeral sponsored by a Buddhist temple, this time in Berlin, when a worker suddenly died and no one had the information to contact his family back in Vietnam. While he was described as a loner with few close friends, many members of the work team that had migrated with him to Berlin attended the funeral and prayed for him to show their solidarity after his death. The newly popular cult of Hồ Chí Minh as a figure of healing and spiritual power appears in the “Little Hanois” as the invisible power behind certain recent developments. When we visited a Buddhist temple in Brandenburg headed by a dynamic young monk who had been quite successful in raising funds to build a large new temple, we were told by one follower “We are very grateful to Hồ Chí Minh for sending us this new monk” – although since Hồ Chí Minh died in 1969 and the monk was not even born until 1973, that was not a historical possibility. A spirit medium in a small village near Prague proudly showed us a withered old apple where she “saw the face of Hồ Chí Minh”, and interpreted this as a blessing for her home temple to the Mother Goddesses. Another spirit medium in Paris told us of “channelling” Hồ Chí Minh’s spirit when he sat contemplating his bust in the Vietnamese cultural centre, or the offices of the Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France where Hồ Chí Minh’s portrait was burned in 1985. From the perspective of one monk in the UBCV, Hồ Chí Minh’s spirit itself is not at rest because his remains have not been treated as they should have been. Although he had published a will requesting that he be cremated and his

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ashes scattered over the whole country, he was instead mummified in the Soviet tradition, and his body continues to be displayed at the Hồ Chí Minh mausoleum. The discomfort with this rather “un-Buddhist” treatment of his remains signals the ways in which this “patron saint of the revolution” may also be used to express more recent understandings of spiritual power.

Debts to the Homeland and Debts to the Hostland Both former refugees and former contract workers stress their shared experiences of trauma, displacement, and precarity. And both commemorate these experiences at ceremonial occasions and send remittances to family members which are perceived as ways of “re-paying their debts”. Refugee organizations like “Thank You Germany”42 in Berlin re-enact the idea of the “debt of freedom” while the livelier folk performances of the homeland associations (hội đồng hương) made up of former workers show the idea of a “debt to the homeland”, also always present in religious charities and social services directed to send assistance back to their region of origin. Many former refugees see their trauma as moral experience, which shows the sacrifices that they made for “freedom”, and the character-building project of achieving educational and professional success in a new country. People in the “Little Saigons” of the United States, Canada, and Australia are now well established and have achieved relatively high levels of education and professional employment. But since they initially came as refugees, they still see themselves as a “stateless diaspora”, in the sense articulated by Gabriel Sheffer that they are “dispersed segments of nations that have been unable to establish their own independent state”.43 While many of them now visit Vietnam, they

42 This refugee association, called Danke Deutschland (after a famous song) in German or Cám ơn nước Đức in Vietnamese, sponsors cultural gatherings with food, dances, and entertainment in places like Spandau (Berlin). It is an interesting question why West German refugees have expressed the “thank you for rescuing us” argument most strongly. Former refugees in France, while often proud of their associations with elite French schools and universities, almost all also profess to despise the oppressions of French colonialism. And for Vietnamese Americans, the US is both the rescuer and the betrayer – betrayer because of the perception that the US could have won a military victory, but chose not to, and rescuer because there was a willingness to receive refugees in the 1980s and former prisoners in Vietnamese re-education camps and their families in the 1990s. 43 G. Sheffer, Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 73.

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are reluctant to identify with the current government, while still strongly asserting their loyalty to Vietnamese culture and tradition. While younger Vietnamese-Americans have now to some extent turned against this, arguing that they were the pawns in an American propaganda effort to show how “wewin-even-when-we lose”,44 former refugees in Germany remain deeply grateful for the assistance they received, and feel a debt to reciprocate. For former contract workers, the debt is felt instead to their homeland. While their own hardships have been intense, they acknowledge that many of them are now wealthier in the west than they would be in their home country, so they also suffer from a sense of debt and obligation to their homeland, and the relatives they left behind. Thus, they feel they need to repay this debt through remittances and performances of patriotism in both religious and secular contexts. In Germany, the Czech Republic, and Russia, many Vietnamese workers occupy lower rungs of the social ladder and are not citizens of the host nation. But they send a significant portion of their earnings back to Vietnam – most of them simply as gifts to family members, but for the wealthier ones also as investments. They should be classified as a “state-linked diaspora”, intimately “connected to states of their own ethnic origin”.45 The most successful of them have established transnational trading enterprises which require them to visit Vietnam at least annually, and some send their children back to live with relatives in Vietnam so that their language skills will remain at the native speaker level. The links to the Vietnamese state are expressed not only through economic activity but also in affiliations with “patriotic” religious groups, cultural events, and even Facebook pages.

44 Y.L. Espiritu, Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refugees, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014; Nguyen, The Gift of Freedom. 45 Sheffer, Diaspora Politics, p. 73. Grazya Symanska-Matusiewicz writing about the Vietnamese community in Poland, describes them as a “state-bound” or “state-linked” diaspora which is deeply affected by religious trends in the homeland. Looking at various organizations with a gendered analysis, she argues that institutions and movements either opposing the Vietnamese state or maintaining their independence from its official structures are the most likely to provide women with the opportunity to play a leadership role. In this respect, religious institutions seem not to differ from other associations. She says that groups which work closely with the Vietnamese government are male dominated, while those that are more distant from it or oppose it have more women leaders. See G. Symanska-Matusiewicz, “Political Power, Religion and Gender: The Case of the Vietnamese in Poland”, Central and Eastern Migration Review 7 (2018) 2, pp. 153–164, at 160.

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Conclusions: Are the Sufferings of Refugees and Migrants Really so Different? Several recent critics have argued that the distinction between “migrant” and “refugee” is a false one,46 since asylum has traditionally been granted to people fleeing countries that have a bad relationship with the host country (for the US, this used to be people “fleeing communism”), while others, perhaps equally desperate and fleeing both violence and extreme poverty, are classed as “migrants”. Shifting geopolitical alliances seem to have greater weight than any direct assessment of danger, persecution, or suffering. It is also increasingly difficult to separate economic hardship from political disenfranchisement and political persecution. Today’s migrants are often fleeing gang violence, corrupt governments, and economies impacted by climate change, so their lives are as endangered as the lives of people more conventionally described as refugees. We argue that we need a dynamic and relational concept of religious innovation in the face of precarity, which can be applied to both refugees and contract workers. Precarity helps us to understand how refugee trauma is in many ways similar to the trauma and dislocations of factory workers suddenly unemployed and told to return to their homeland. While contract workers in Eastern Europe did not “lose their country”, they did lose their livelihood and were cast aside during a period of transition that they turned into an opportunity to develop new ways of seeking a living – even if these new ways included smuggling, operating black markets in the chilly streets of border towns, and finding ways to get “new papers” to cover up a criminal record. Vietnamese American writers, including our colleague and occasional collaborator Viet Thanh Nguyen, as well as historian Phuong Tran Nguyen and cultural critic Mimi Thi Nguyen depict their refugee status as their defining feature of their overseas community.47 But many diasporic Vietnamese were never refugees, yet

46 M. Gessen, “Trump’s Asylum Proclamation and the False Distinction Between ‘Migrant and Refugee’”, The New Yorker, 12 November 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/news/ourcolumnists/trumps-asylum-proclamation-and-the-false-distinction-between-migrant-andrefugee; C. Kulkathas, “Are Refugees Special?”, in: S. Fine and L. Ypi (eds.), Migration in Political Theory: The Ethics of Movement and Membership, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 249–268. 47 P.T. Nguyen, Becoming Refugee American: The Politics of Rescue in Little Saigon, ChampaignUrbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017; V.T. Nguyen, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016; V.T. Nguyen, The Refugees, New York: Grove Press, 2017; V.T. Nguyen (ed.), The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2018; M.T. Nguyen, The Gift of Freedom.

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they define their experiences as travelling overseas in order to send material support back to their homeland, and note the considerable amount of trauma, suffering, and bare bones precarity that they have had to endure in order to do so. We see a great many communalities in these experiences, whatever flag was flown to dignify these sacrifices. Early scholars of Vietnamese religion such as Paul Mus described its essence as “cadastral”,48 a spiritual practice that marked the boundaries of community and ordered political authority in space. For displaced Vietnamese, creating new forms of community overseas has become linked to setting up new altars to both sacred and secular figures, with Hồ Chí Minh placed in the same spaces at the goddess of mercy Quan Âm. In Vietnam, the veneration of goddesses provided a lens through which rural-urban migrants and traders made sense of the new market economy.49 This practice was carried to eastern Europe in the twenty-first century, where former factor workers turned small businessmen have prayed to the same spirits to help them succeed on new terrain. We argue that the centrality of the refugee experience and a sanctified yellow flag in “Little Saigons” is paralleled in “Little Hanois” by the traumas of the migrant worker experience and the fusing of the red flag with a spiritualized image of Hồ Chí Minh. Overseas Vietnamese identity is not quintessentially that of the refugee, but is today a more complex mixture of former refugees, workers, students, and more recent immigrants. Despite the tenaciousness of these polarities, they seem doomed to eventually disappear into a more cosmopolitan identity for these people who share so much more than just a language.

48 P. Mus, “Cultes indiens et indigènes au Champa”, Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême Orient 33 (1933), pp. 367–410, p. 370. 49 Taylor, Modernity and Re-Enchantment, p. 8.

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11 Tiantai Transnationalism: Mobility, Identity, and Lineage Networks in Modern Chinese Buddhism Current scholarship on modern Chinese Buddhism has tended to focus on the globalized reform organizations that have emerged in Taiwan in the last few decades. The success of these groups, such as Fo Guang Shan 佛光山 and Tzu Chi (Ciji 慈濟), has made it easy to overlook other paradigms of transnational transmission in modern Chinese Buddhism. These organizations, with their strong “corporate” identities and centralized management of assets and personnel, are relatively new.1 Yet little is known about the vast array of other Buddhist networks that followed different expansion paradigms in forming transnational connections. Focusing on the growth and expansion of the Tiantai 天台 lineage network that predates or parallels the development of the above-mentioned groups, this chapter examines the role of religious kinship as a cohesive norm of affiliation. Despite their decentralized nature and fluidity, these “traditional” networks remain immensely powerful and influential in shaping Chinese Buddhist practices. The expansion of the Tiantai network can be attributed to an innovative lineage transmission practice, in which Dharma transmission was disassociated from the succession of temple abbotship. Subsequently, the network drew in a diverse group of lineage holders, who travelled far and wide to spread Tiantai teachings. Such reformulation of identity and orthodoxy was instrumental in shaping the border-crossing experience of Chinese Buddhists in the twentieth century. The inclusion of these groups in our (re)conceptualization of modern Buddhist transnationalism will shed light on the multifaceted flow and exchange of religious capital in the making of global Chinese modernity. For the purposes of this paper, while fully acknowledging its nuances, I deploy the term transnationalism in a loose sense, meaning the transfer of knowledge, identity, and human capital across various political territories and boundaries. Therefore, the Tiantai monastics moving between mainland

1 For comprehensive accounts of the history, development, and organizational structure of Fo Guang Shan and Tzu Chi, see S. Chandler, Establishing Pure Land on Earth: The Foguang Buddhist Perspective on Modernization and Globalization, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004; and C. Huang, Charisma and Compassion: Cheng Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Movement, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009, respectively. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-011

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China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and North America in the second half of the twentieth century are here considered transnational agents. I focus on two of the most prominent Tiantai masters in the twentieth century: Dixian 諦閑 (1858–1932) and his Dharma heir Tanxu 倓虛 (1875–1962). They built and restored a number of major monasteries, founded a handful of influential Buddhist seminaries, drew a large following among China’s social and political elites, and brought about a revival of the Tiantai lineage and teaching across and beyond China. The first section examines Dixian and his role in educational reform in the first decades of the twentieth century; the second focuses on Tanxu and his lineage transmission practice. Although often characterized as “conservative” or “traditional” and hence not “modern”, a series of innovations has nonetheless allowed the Tiantai lineage to gradually grow into an extensive yet fluid network with considerable social and spiritual capital in the Chinese Buddhist world. Therefore, like their reformist counterparts, “conservative” Chinese Buddhists too, are cosmopolitan. According to Holmes Welch, Chinese Buddhism has historically been held together by informal networks of affiliation that were centred on religious kinship, charismatic monks, and regionalism. These networks were diffused, localized, and “superimposed haphazardly upon each other”.2 By situating the modern Tiantai network within Welch’s typology, I will show that, despite its fluidity, it consists primarily of lineage holders who are faithfully devoted to their teachers, whereas regionalism might play a role in some cases. However, rather than the haphazard overlapping of relations, it is a distinct lineage network that strongly shapes the religious identity of its members. Furthermore, Buddhist seminaries, such as those founded by Dixian and Tanxu, provided the locales in which meaningful kinship and affiliations have been further formed and imagined.

Dixian and Modern Monastic Education Dixian was born into the Zhu 朱 family in Huangyan 黃巖 County, Zhejiang 浙江, in 1858. His father died when he was 15, and he was sent by his mother to work as an apprentice at his maternal uncle’s medical clinic. A few years later, he got married and set up his own clinic in the county town. When he was twenty, he sought tonsure as a Buddhist novice after his mother, wife, and son died. Three

2 H. Welch, The Practice of Modern Chinese Buddhism, 1900–1950, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967, pp. 403–406.

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years later he received full ordination at the famous Guoqing Monastery (國清寺) on Mount Tiantai, where he had his first awakening experience during a winter meditation retreat.3 After travelling to various monasteries to attend lectures on the Lotus Sutra, he received Dharma transmission from the forty-second generation Tiantai master Jirui 迹瑞 (n. d.), who was also the abbot of Longhua Monastery (龍華寺) in Shanghai. In addition to preaching various Mahāyāna sūtras such as the Lotus and Śūraṅgama, Dixian was also actively involved in Buddhist educational reform when the first wave of modern Buddhist schools emerged between 1903 and 1911. When Yang Wenhui 楊文會 (1837–1911) founded the Jetavana Hermitage (Qihuan jingshe 祇洹精舍) in Nanjing in 1907, Dixian served as the Proctor and gave instruction on Tiantai doctrine.4 He was also the co-founder and principal for the Jiangsu Sangha Normal School (Jiangsu seng shifan xuetang 江蘇僧師範 學堂), founded in Nanjing in 1909. Scholarship has paid little attention to the first wave of modern Buddhist schools. It is commonly understood as a transitional, reactionary strategy to avoid temple confiscation that had a negligible impact on the overall development of modern monastic education. As Welch puts it, “none lasted long enough to be important in itself.”5 Sometimes the names of schools and monks involved are mentioned in passing as evidence that the monks merely pretended to promote modern education, whereas their real motive was to escape temple confiscation.6 There is a consensus that the miaochan xingxue 廟產興學

3 Dixian, Dixian dashi yiji 諦閑大師遺集 [Posthumously Collected Works of Master Dixian], Hong Kong: Huanan xuefoyuan, vol. 1, 1952, p. 1. See also Yu L. 于凌波, Minguo gaoseng zhuan chubian 民國高僧傳初編 [Initial Volume of Biographies of Eminent Monks of the Republican Era], Taipei: Yuanming, 1996, p. 179; and Yu L., Xiandai fojiao renwu cidian 現代佛敎人物辭典 [Biographical Dictionary of Modern Buddhism], vol. 2, Gaoxiong: Foguang chubanshe, 2004, pp. 1621–1624. 4 The reformers Taixu and Ouyang Jingwu were among the students of the Jetavana Hermitage, which closed after one academic year due to financial difficulties. See Chen B. 陳兵 and Deng Z. 鄧子美, Ershi shiji Zhongguo fojiao 二十世紀中國佛教 [Twentieth-Century Chinese Buddhism], Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2000, p. 82. 5 H. Welch, Buddhist Revival in China, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 13. 6 He J. 何建民, “Cong Qihuan jingshe dao Wuchang foxueyuan 從祇洹精舍到武昌佛學院” [“From the Jetavana Hermitage to the Wuchang Buddhist Academy”], Jindaishi yanjiu 近代史研究 [Modern Chinese History Studies] 4 (1998), p. 114; Dongchu 東初, Zhongguo fojiao jindaishi 中國佛 教近代史 [A History of Modern Chinese Buddhism], Taipei: Zhongguo Fojiao wenhua guan, 1974, p. 78; X. Yu 學愚, Fojiao, baoli yu minzu zhuyi: Kangri zhanzheng shiqi de Zhongguo Fojiao 佛教、 暴力與民族主義: 抗日戰爭時期的中國佛教 [Buddhism, Violence, and Nationalism: Chinese Buddhism during the Second Sino-Japanese War], Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011, p. 58.

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(build schools with temple property) campaign served as a wake-up call for the Chinese Buddhists to contemplate their own efforts to reform Buddhist education. Modern Buddhist education in China, according to this line of argument, did not begin until the more “serious” schools emerged.7 In fact, the influence of the sangha schools seems to be rather modest when compared with the relative success and scholarly attention the later Buddhist academies ( foxueyuan 佛學院) achieved. However, we do not know enough about Buddhist participation in educational affairs in this period, as related activities are not as well documented as the later Buddhist schools. This formation period is historically significant in the story of Buddhist modernity in China, as it sowed the seeds for two of the most significant developments in Chinese Buddhism in the twentieth century: first, the change in the administrative structure and self-understanding of Buddhism through the founding of various associations (at both the local and national levels), though their actual control over all Buddhist temples nationwide is debatable; and second, the emergence of a new discourse on Buddhist participation in nation-building projects, manifested in the attempt to adopt and respond to the national educational reform programme.8 Dixian’s most remembered undertaking in Buddhist education was his founding of a Tiantai sangha school that was the largest and most influential in Zhejiang. In 1913, the year after he was installed as abbot of the Guanzong Monastery (觀宗講寺) in Ningbo 寧波, he set up the Guanzong Study Society (Guanzong yanjiushe 觀宗研究社) within the monastery.9 With financial support

7 Deng Z. 鄧子美, Chuantong fojiao yu Zhongguo jindai hua: bainian wenhua chongchuang yu jiaoliu 傳統佛教與中國近代化: 百年文化衝撞與交流 [Traditional Buddhism and Chinese Modernization: A Century of Cultural Conflicts and Interchange], Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe, 1994, pp. 108–109. 8 On the rhetoric “Saving the nation with Buddhism” (fojiao jiuguo 佛教救國), see R. Lai, “Praying for the Republic: Buddhist Education, Student-Monks, and Citizenship in Modern China, 1911–1949”, PhD thesis, McGill University, 2013, chap. 2; S. Travagnin, “Concepts and Institutions for a New Buddhist Education: Reforming the Saṃgha Between and Within State Agencies”, East Asian History 39 (2014), pp. 89–102. 9 Guanzong Monastery was originally one of the contemplation halls (guantang 觀堂) of Yanqing Monastery (延慶寺) founded by the Song Tiantai patriarch Siming Zhili 四明知禮 (960–1028). It had fallen into a state of disrepair in the late Qing. When the magistrate of Yin County 鄞縣, in present-day Ningbo, invited Dixian to take up the abbotship, he agreed on the condition that he be allowed to rename the monastery Guanzong and set up a Buddhist school within the monastery. He Jianming has pointed out that Taixu was involved in the initial planning of the school. See He J., “Minchu xingjiao fengchao yu Ningbo Guanzong yanjiu she de kaiban 民初興教風潮與寧波觀宗研究社的開辦” [“Buddhist Revival and the Founding of the Ningbo Guanzong Study Society in the Early Republican Era”], Fayin 法音 [The Voice of Dharma] 12 (2009), p. 48.

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from the Beijing political elites Ye Gongchuo 葉恭綽 (1881–1968) and Kuai Ruomu 蒯若木, the school was renamed Guanzong School (Guanzong xueshe 觀 宗學舍) and expanded to include both a study and a research division in 1919. At its founding in 1913, admission to the Study Society was limited to resident monks at the Guanzong Monastery due to the lack of funding. Later on, a small number of monks from the outside were allowed to attend. By 1919, the school had around forty students divided into the preparatory class (yuke 預科) and the general class (zhengke 正科). In 1928, the school was further expanded and renamed Dharma Propagation Study Society (Hongfa yanjiushe 弘法研究社).10 The curriculum, for which Dixian was the principal instructor, focused primarily on Tiantai doctrine. Student life was very similar to that of a traditional public monastery (conglin 叢林). Discipline was strict, and students followed a rigorous daily routine. For two hours each afternoon, the Dharma master would ascend the teaching platform in his red robe to formally expound a passage from the scriptures; students from the different classes would obediently listen to the sermon, which was preceded and followed by regular daily devotions, meditation, and communal rituals.11 As other newstyle Buddhist schools began to adopt the blackboard, assignments, examinations, diplomas, as well as secular subjects and foreign languages into their curriculum, Dixian’s traditional pedagogy would remain the distinguishing feature for his school and those founded by his student Tanxu in later years. Welch observes that this system of teaching and learning was still practised at major Chinese monasteries in the Republican period.12 Such an intensely formalized and ritualized monastic training system has often been critically scrutinized and compared to the modern Buddhist academies in the Buddhist discourse on monastic education during the Republican period. In

10 Chen Y. 陳永革, Fojiao honghua de xiandai zhuanxing: Minguo Zhejiang fojiao yanjiu 佛敎 弘化的現代轉型: 民國浙江佛教硏究, 1912–1949 [The Transformation of Buddhist Propagation: A Study of Buddhism in Zhejiang during the Republican Period], Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua, 2003, p. 62; Fang Z. 方祖猷, Tiantaizong Guanzong jiangsi zhi 天台宗觀宗講寺志, 1912–1949 [Tiantai Guanzong Temple Gazetteer, 1912–1949], Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2006, p. 146; Li S. 李四龙, Tiantaizong yu Fojiaoshi yanjiu 天台宗與佛教史研究 [Research on the Tiantai School and Buddhist History], Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2011, p. 163. According to Huiyue 慧嶽, however, the Guanzong Study Society and Guangzong School were originally separate entities that were merged to form the Dharma Propagation Study Society in 1928. See Huiyue, Tiantai jiaoxueshi 天台教學史 [A History of Tiantai Teachings], Taipei: Zhonghua Fojiao wenxian, 1974, p. 320. 11 Welch, Revival, pp. 107–110; Tanxu 倓虛, Yingchen huiyi lu 影塵回憶錄 [A Memoir of Shadow and Dust], Hong Kong: Zhonghua fojiao tushuguan, 1993, p. 64. 12 Welch, Practice, pp. 310–314.

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analysing the cause for the lack of spiritual vigour and doctrinal creativity in late imperial Chinese Buddhism, scholars often point to the stagnant ritualism and deemphasized scriptural learning associated with Chan in the public monasteries’ pedagogy.13 When writing about specialized training institutions such as Yuexia’s Avatamsaka University (Huayan daxue 華嚴大學) and Dixian’s Guanzong School, Taixu (1890–1947) doubted if these “schools for fostering Dharma teachers” (fashi yangcheng suo 法師養成所) in the doctrine of one school or lineage would produce sangha members who were prepared to lead and sustain Buddhism in the modern age.14 Even Welch, who is not always enthusiastic about the reformist project, comments that the atmosphere at the Guangzong School was “too old-fashioned for many of the younger monks.” One of his informants even reported that “some students could not take the rigours of the program and died of tuberculosis.”15 Yet it is important to note that the proposal for Buddhist educational reform in the late Qing and early Republican periods was not always univocal – not even among the so-called reformists. In fact, the call for a new Buddhist education by reformist monks was not a wholesale rejection of traditional training. Rather, many lamented the demise of virtue in public monasteries and their failure to live up to their own model as places that fostered enlightenment.16 In can be argued that the revitalization of this traditional clerical training system lied at the heart of Dixian and Tanxu’s project. The Guanzong School produced a generation of graduates who went on to establish or teach at other monastic schools across the country. Armed with a specialized training in Tiantai doctrines and, for quite a few, lineage transmission from Dixian, these monks gradually formed a community with a distinct “sectarian” identity. Even Taixu acknowledged that Dixian’s school led to the appearance of a “Dixian lineage” within the Chinese Sangha.17 In fact, the

13 Guo P. 郭朋, Ming Qing fojiao 明清佛敎 [Ming-Qing Buddhism], Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1982, p. 7; Jiang C. 江燦騰, Ming Qing Minguo fojiao sixiang shilun 明清民國佛教思想 史論 [On the Intellectual History of Buddhism in the Ming, Qing, and Republican Periods], Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1996, pp. 89–91. 14 Taixu, “Seng jiaoyu zhi mudi yu chengxu 僧教育之目的與程序” [“The Goal and Program in Monastic Education”], in: Taixu dashi quanshu 太虛大師全書 [The Complete Works of Master Taixu], vol. 17, Taipei: Shandaosi fojing liutongchu, 1980, p. 475. 15 Welch, Revival, p. 110. 16 For a vivid biographical account for monastic training and criticism of the abuse and laxity at public monasteries during the Republican period, see Chen-Hua, In Search of the Dharma: Memoirs of a Modern Chinese Buddhist Pilgrim, C. Yü (ed.), D. Mair (trans.), Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. 17 Taixu, Quanshu, vol. 13, p. 1432.

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debate on conglin vs. foxueyuan was far from over. One can even say that it has shaped the way Chinese Buddhists discuss the goal and purposes of education up to the present day.18 Dixian also lectured tirelessly and authored numerous commentaries during his lifetime.19 He was especially well connected with the political elites in Beijing in the early years of the Republic. In 1915, he was invited by Yuan Shikai to deliver long sermons in Beijing.20 He met his lifelong patrons Ye and Kuai on his second teaching tour to Beijing in 1918. In addition to their generous donation for the expansion of the Guanzong School, Ye would remain a major patron for Dixian and Tanxu’s temple construction and educational projects in the following decades. Between 1913 and his death in 1932, Dixian attracted many students from across China to study Tiantai thought and sūtras with him.21 He had over twenty tonsure disciples and transmitted the Tiantai lineage to twenty-four monks, most of them students at his school. These monks would eventually bring about a Tiantai revival that spread beyond China’s borders during the second-half of the twentieth and well into the twenty-first century. Before moving on to Dixian’s legacy, I would also point out that although he was often targeted by China’s young monks as the conservative and rigid “old monk” (jiuseng 舊僧) who was preventing Chinese Buddhism from modernizing, Dixian’s relationship and interaction with many progressive monks were more complex than they have been portrayed. For example, Renshan 仁山 (1887–1951) was mostly known for his involvement with Taixu in the famous “Jinshan Conflict” (da nao Jinshan 大鬧金山) in 1912, when they attempted to

18 Education in contemporary Chinese Buddhism lies beyond the scope of this chapter. For the various contemporary organizations and teachers that consider modernizing Buddhist education their mission, see Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land; Changhui 常慧, Shengyan fashi fojiao jiaoyu lilun yu shijian 聖嚴法師佛教教育理論與實踐 [The Theory and Practice of Venerable Shengyan’s Buddhist Education], Taipei: Fagu wenhua, 2004. 19 For the collection of his works, see Dixian, Yiji, 4 vols (see fn 3). 20 When Yuan’s Beiyang government, in an attempt to bring religion under state control, promulgated the Rules for Temple Management (Guanli simiao tiaoli 管理寺廟條例), which also disbanded the General Chinese Buddhist Association founded only two years earlier, there were rumours that these Rules were based on Dixian’s requests. This generated much criticism and attack from other Buddhist leaders in the country. From his sealed confinement, Taixu wrote a letter condemning Dixian. See Taixu, “Taixu zizhuan 太虛自傳” [“An Autobiography of Taixu”], Quanshu, vol. 29, p. 200. On the Rules, see V. Goossaert and D. Palmer, The Religious Question of Modern China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 59; Dongchu, Jindai shi, p. 113. 21 Dixian’s Dharma heir Baojing 寶靜 (1899–1940), a graduate of the seminary, took over the administration and teaching until it was forced to close down at the outbreak of the war in 1937.

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turn the well-endowed Jinshan Monastery (金山寺) into a monastic school.22 Lesser known is the fact that Renshan later attended Dixian’s Guanzong School and, in 1919, founded a Tiantai institute in Northern Jiangsu. Renshan would spend the remainder of his life teaching and composing commentaries on Tiantai, Huayan, and Yogacara thoughts.23 Another Guanzong graduate was the reformist monk Changxing 常惺 (1896–1939), who was instrumental in Taixu’s educational and institutional modernization projects.24 This dispute between the “old” and “new” factions in the monastic establishment was more than just an ideological debate. Beside the competition for authority and orthodoxy, the “old” monks formed the immensely powerful lineage and temple networks that controlled a substantial proportion of monastic landholdings. It was also a process of differentiation. By calling themselves “new”, young monks in China attempted to distinguish themselves from the “old monks” – elders who controlled the well-endowed public monasteries but did not support their reformist projects, especially educational modernization. Therefore, criticism of the conservative monks, often painted in broad strokes, was important to the formation of the new-monk identity. As we have seen in the case of Dixian’s career, the “conservatives” had apparent advantages in implementing their reforms. The story of their success and legacy can only be understood when positioned beyond the narrative of the “old” vs. the “new”. Furthermore, as the examples of Renshan and Changxin have shown, there was much overlap, interaction, and exchange between the rival groups, if indeed they should be considered rivals at all. As one of the most renowned monks of his time, Dixian was instrumental in the nascent reform project in Buddhist monastic education. He is also remembered as a compassionate teacher who deeply cared about the wellbeing of his students. He was especially concerned about spreading Buddhism beyond its historical stronghold in the Lower Yangzi region. As such, he would admit students from Northern China and encourage them to return to their native places to teach. As a charismatic and prolific preacher, Dixian cultivated a large following among the social elites. These lay patrons not only supported his many undertakings, but also proved to be indispensable in supporting the growth of the Tiantai network driven by Dixian’s students.

22 Welch, Revival, pp. 28–33; D. Pittman, Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu’s Reforms, Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press, 2001, pp. 74–77. 23 Chen, Fojiao honghua, p. 94; Yu L. 于凌波, Minguo gaoseng zhuan chubian, pp. 82–83. 24 Dongchu, Jindai shi, pp. 850–879.

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Tanxu and the Tiantai Lineage Network One of Dixian’s students often credited for continuing his effort in reviving Tiantai Buddhism and spreading it beyond the Lower Yangzi region is Tanxu. As the founder of nine monasteries, 17 lecture halls, and 13 seminaries, he was without a doubt one of Dixian’s most prominent Dharma heirs. In 1875, Tanxu was born into the Wang family in a poor fishing community in Beitang village, east of Tianjin.25 He received a few years of basic education, then got married at the age of seventeen. Two years later, in 1894, he travelled to Fengtian 奉天 (present day Shenyang) to work for a distant relative in the tobacco trade. But he left after a few months, when news broke that the Japanese army was moving towards Fengtian. Upon returning home, he found out that his father had died. He now had to shoulder the burden of supporting his family. He had worked in the county magistrates’ office, the local government, and eventually as a healer blending fortune telling and medicine, a trade that he learned from a friend.26 In 1908, now the owner of a thriving pharmacy, he moved his family to Yingkou 營口. In his memoir, Tanxu recalled that he had wanted to leave home and seek the spiritual path from an early age. Before he sought tonsure as a novice, he had spent several years studying the Śūraṅgama Sūtra (Lengyan jing 楞嚴經) on his own. He is said to have achieved a deep level of understanding, being able to teach and discuss sophisticated Buddhist doctrine with his lay Buddhist friends. For a monk of his time, Tanxu was ordained very late in life – he was 43 and had six children.27 In 1917, he travelled to Ningbo to receive full ordination under Dixian at the Guanzong Monastery, where he would remain until 1920 to study Tiantai doctrine. At first, he was heckled for being an older Northerner who could not understand southern accents. But later, he excelled in his study. Dixian is said to have been very kind to him and impressed with his diligence and ability to explain complex doctrinal concepts.28 Concerned with the lack of vitality in Buddhism in the North, Dixian encouraged Tanxu to return there to spread the Dharma. In the following decades, Tanxu founded, revived, or expanded major temples in the cities of Harbin 哈爾濱, Changchun 長春, Yingkou, and Qingdao 青島. These cities were marked by a heavy foreign presence at the time – from 25 Tanxu, Yingchen, vol. 1, p. 2. 26 J. Carter, Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth-Century Monk, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 34. 27 Tanxu, Yingchen, vol. 1, pp. 45–46. 28 Yu, Xiandai fojiao renwu cidian, vol. 1, pp. 800–803.

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Western imperial powers competing for resources to the occupation by the Japanese army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Despite Tanxu’s insistence on his apolitical propagation of the Dharma in the region, Carter characterizes his activity as a form of nationalism in resisting foreign encroachment.29 When he was teaching at the Wanshou Temple Buddhist Seminary (Wanshousi foxueyuan 萬壽寺佛學院) in Fengtian in 1923, he received an invitation from the general Zhu Ziqiao 朱子橋 (1874–1941) to help establish a Buddhist temple in the city of Harbin. A former Russian concession, the city had no Buddhist monastery prior to this time. Tanxu’s task was to oversee the construction of a temple, the Jile Monastery (極樂寺), so as to compete with the local landmarks of foreign architecture by inscribing a Chinese identity onto the heart of the city. When construction was completed the next year, Tanxu, now the temple’s abbot, established the Jile Monastery Buddhist School (Jile si fojiao xuexiao 極樂寺佛教學校). He received Dharma transmission as the fortyfourth generation Tiantai lineage holder from Dixian in 1925.30 In subsequent years, he built Bore Monastery (般若寺) in Changchun, Lengyan Monastery (楞嚴寺) in Yingkou, and Zhanshan Monastery (湛山寺) in Qingdao. Tanxu rose to prominence quickly. His monasteries and seminaries attracted a large number of students because of their welcoming policies. Jile Monastery had around four hundred monks in residence in 1927; his seminary in Qingdao attracted over a hundred and twenty students in its inaugural class.31 He was nominated to join the Chinese delegation to the East Asian Buddhist Conference in Tokyo in 1925, whose members included Taixu, Daojie 道階 (1870–1934), Chisong 持松 (1894–1972), Zhang Zongzai 張宗載 (1896–?), and Ning Dayun 寧達蘊 (1901–?). In 1948, with Ye Gongchuo’s help, Tanxu left Qingdao for Shanghai and eventually arrived in Hong Kong. There, with the help of Zhu Ziqiao, he was able to revive the abandoned Hongfa Hermitage (Hongfa jingshe 弘法精舍) and established the South China Buddhist Seminary (Huanan xuefoyuan 華南學佛院). Until his death in 1963, Tanxu preached at his seminary as well as around Hong Kong. Tens of thousands of lay people took the Three Refuges with him. He also gave Dharma transmission to a few dozen monks. Besides his success in building monastic schools and enrolling students, Tanxu is also remembered as a prominent Tiantai master who transmitted the lineage beyond mainland China.

29 J. Carter, “Buddhism, Resistance, and Collaboration in Manchuria”, Journal of Global Buddhism 10 (2009), p. 193; Carter, Heart of Buddha, p. 106. 30 Pan G. 潘桂明 and Wu Z. 吳忠偉, Zhongguo Tiantaizong tongshi 中國天台宗通史 [A General History of the Chinese Tiantai School], Nanjing: Fenghuang chubanshe, 2008, p. 738. 31 Tanxu, Yingchen, vol. 2, p. 170.

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An innovative move in Tanxu’s propagation of Tiantai lineage was his “transmission without succession” (chuanfa bu chuanzuo 傳法不傳座), which he saw as essential to the institutional health of the tradition. There were three forms of affiliation based on religious kinship – tonsure, Dharma, and ordination. One could only have a “tonsure family”, and a tonsure temple was usually smaller and more local. Full ordination and Dharma transmission almost always took place at larger public monasteries. While every novice was expected to take full ordination after a probationary period, only a select few, usually those who were recognized for their talent or spiritual capacity, were granted Dharma transmission. Since the Ming and Qing, a large majority of monks and nuns belonged to the Chan lineages of Linji 臨濟 or Caodong 曹洞 upon tonsure, whereas the Huayan 華嚴 and Tiantai lineages were bestowed during Dharma transmission. During both tonsure and Dharma transmission, a candidate would be given a Dharma name, which indicated his/her generation within the lineage.32 It was not uncommon that a monk might receive transmission in more than one lineage. Receiving transmission into a lineage also did not exclude one from studying other doctrines or following other practices. Although the notion of the transmission of Dharma is inherent to Chan identity, the practice of Dharma transmission only began to become institutionalized during the Song period, when transmission certificates were issued to certify and authenticate Dharma heirs in the Chan lineage. During the late Ming, Dharma transmission was further associated with the succession of monastery abbotship.33 Zhang Xuesong has rightly observed that this was closely related to widespread kinship practices, manifested in the production of genealogies, ancestral halls, and family rules during this period.34 Welch loosely classifies the practices into institutional and private transmissions that marked a disciple’s introduction into a specific Dharma family that had genealogies going all the way back to the historical Buddha. An institutional transmission, which was most common in the Jiangsu 江蘇 area, was a 32 Welch, Practice, pp. 279–281, 403. 33 J. Wu, Leaving for the Rising Sun: Chinese Zen Master Yinyuan and the Authenticity Crisis in Early Modern East Asia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 72–75. Transmission certificates were called sishu 嗣書in the Song, yuanliu 源流 during the Ming and Qing, and fajuan 法卷 in the Republican and contemporary periods. See also H. Welch, “Dharma Scrolls and the Succession of Abbots in Chinese Monasteries”, T’oung Pao 50 (1963) 1–3, pp. 93–149. 34 Zhang X. 張雪松, Fojiao “fayuan zongzu” yanjiu: Zhongguo zongjiao zuzhi moshi tanxi 佛教 “法緣宗族”研究：中國宗教組織模式探析 [The Dharma Lineage in Chinese Buddhism: A Study on the Organizational Model in Chinese Religion], Beijing: Renmin daxue chubanshe, 2015, p. 111.

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“seal of office” that established succession to the abbotship. Despite the common claim of an authentic Chan lineage, many Dharma lineages were monastery-specific, meaning that a Dharma transmission ceremony was performed to identify and secure Dharma relationship between the current cohort of candidates for the abbotship and the future one. It was not uncommon that, during a collective Dharma transmission, several masters would transmit the lineage to several Dharma heirs at the same time. These Dharma heirs would serve as abbot according to the order prescribed in the transmission scroll, a document detailing the genealogy. On the other hand, a private transmission involved a single master transmitting to a single disciple, and no succession was guaranteed.35 Tanxu spoke against Dharma transmission that presumed succession, as he saw several problems with such practice. First, it was conducive to factionalism within the community when a teacher favoured candidates from the same native place or with whom he had a personal connection. Second, when more than one candidate received Dharma transmission, it instigated unnecessary competition and tension among the Dharma heirs of the same teacher. Lastly, such practice could lead to a decline in the spirit of the tradition and the quality of future leaders, as teachers often picked successors who were younger, less spiritually attained, and therefore more obedient.36 When succession became a right, he argued, then one would just wait for one’s turn after receiving transmission. Instead, he thought selection should be based on a disciple’s capability as a teacher and administrator. By considering the transmission of Dharma lineage a completely separate issue from the management of the monastic community and property, he did not hesitate to make as many lineage holders as he deemed appropriate, according to their spiritual capacity and insight into the Dharma. He therefore urged his students to travel far and wide to spread Buddhist teaching and the Tiantai lineage. Today, a glance of the list of former and current executives of the Hong Kong Buddhist Association reveals the large number of Tiantai lineage holders. Jueguang 覺光 (1919–2014) received transmission from Baojing 寳靜 (1899–1940), a contemporary of Tanxu and Dharma heir of Dixian. Yongxing 永惺 (1926–2016) first attended Tanxu’s seminary in Qingdao and later graduated from his South China Buddhist Seminary after relocating to Hong Kong. Together, Jueguang and Yongxing led the Hong Kong Buddhist Association

35 Welch, Practice, pp. 158, 315. 36 Tanxu, Yingchen, vol. 2, pp. 226–236.

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for over half a century. According to one estimate, over half of all Buddhist temples in Hong Kong claim a Tiantai affiliation.37 Another outstanding Tiantai monastic in Hong Kong, the nun artist Xiaoyun 曉雲 (1912–2004), was a tonsure disciple of Tanxu who founded the first Buddhist university (Huafan University 華梵大學) in Taiwan in 1990. The Tiantai dominance in the Buddhist landscape in Hong Kong later led to the spread of the lineage to North America. Ledu 樂渡 (also spelled Lok To, 1923–2011), Chengxiang 誠祥 (1920–2006), and Xingkong 性空 (b. 1924) were all graduates of seminaries founded by Tanxu who received Dharma transmission from him. With the approval of Tanxu, Ledu departed for San Francisco in 1963. He relocated to New York the next year at the invitation of several lay Buddhists. He also founded the Sutra Translation Committee of the United States and Canada in 1974, which has translated over thirty Chinese Buddhist works into English.38 In 1967, Ledu invited his peers Chengxiang and Xingkong to visit North America. They settled in Toronto and established the first Chinese Buddhist temple, Cham Shan Temple (Zhanshan si 湛山寺), currently the largest Buddhist temple in the city. These organizations remain active and significant centres for the dissemination and propagation of Buddhism up to the present day. Furthermore, the lineage identity and loyalty among these monastics remains so strong that subsequent leaders of their organizations would all take on Tiantai transmission. Because of the prestige that Tanxu enjoyed and the customary practice of granting Tiantai lineage to more than just a few in every generation, Tiantai lineage holders gradually grew into a wide yet tightly connected network that commands considerable social and religious capital in much of the Chinese Buddhist world.

Conclusion: What is in a Transmission? Due to the lack of a centralized authority, Chinese Buddhism has historically been held together by informal networks of affiliation. Unlike the various sects in Japanese Buddhism or modernist Buddhist organizations based in Taiwan, the Tiantai lineage does not have a headquarters. Autonomous temples and monasteries within the lineages are connected through a fluid, flexible, and diffused network of identity and affiliation. In fact, the fluidity of such decentralized networks

37 Huiyue, Tiantai jiaoxueshi, p. 336. 38 Carter, Heart of the Buddha, p. 6. Sometimes the translation project is attributed to the Young Men’s Buddhist Association founded by Ledu in the same year. The relationship between the two entities is unclear.

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poses a challenge in terms of both access and visibility, and is the primary reason why they are often overlooked in scholarly literature. However, this mode of affiliation represents the majority of the Chinese sangha up to the present day. Rather than being sectarian and exclusive, the modern Tiantai network can be thought of as a complex and extended “Dharma family” that offers its members authority and legitimacy. By expanding the narrative of modern Chinese Buddhist transnationalism to include understudied groups such as Tiantai, we will be able to better understand the intersection between institution, identity, and spatial dislocation, as well as how kinship and alliance are formed, maintained, and disseminated in modern Chinese Buddhism.

Peter Lambertz

12 Of Ancestors and Others: Cultural Resonance from Japan among Spiritualists in Kinshasa I identify with Meishū Sama’s teachings as an African because from my birth onwards people have always told me that the dead are not dead.1

The quotation summarizes the recurrent theme during a weekly teaching session at the Johrei Centre of the Congolese branch of the Japanese new religion Sekai Kyūseikyō (SKK/Church of World Messianity) in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Japan’s tradition of ancestor veneration has been maintained and also transformed by Japan’s countless new religions (Shin Shūkyō), which have been multiplying their global reach ever since the 1950s. Among Messianiques in Kinshasa, as Jérôme stressed during his teaching session, the core teaching by SKK’s founder Meishū Sama concerning the crucial spiritual role of ancestors resonates strongly with the spiritual wisdom many local practitioners deem themselves to have inherited from their own “African” forefathers. But in the remainder of his lecture-like teaching session, Jérôme did not just emphasize the powerful cultural resonance between Congo and Japan. He also underscored the violence and injustice that the Christian pastors of the countless sensationalist born-again charismatic churches inflict on Africa’s ancestors when inciting their followers to demonize and cut all ties with them, perceiving them as forces that obstruct the liberation of the born-again subject in her/his often newly achieved but highly unpredictable urban habitat. In times of the “Pentecostal revolution”,2 which has been propagating for decades a regime of personhood built around the autonomous Christian subject, who should aim for independence from ancestral ties, such “African” and potentially “Afro-centric” wisdom – “the dead are not dead” is the name of a famous Afro-centric poem by Birago Diop – is indeed a position that is not easily celebrated by everyone.

1 “J’identifie avec les enseignements de Meishū Sama en tant qu’Africain parce que dès ma naissance les gens m’ont toujours dit que les morts ne sont pas mort.” (Teaching session by Jérôme Bosoku at the Church of World Messianity, Kinshasa, July 2010). 2 R. Marshall, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-012

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In Africa’s cities the seldom studied non-Christian “spiritual movements” (emic term) such as SKK can only be understood if their “centrifugal” mimetic outward orientation is complemented by the “centripetal” incentive to generate symbolic capital, embodied difference and critique within the local socio-religious space. Spiritual movements such as SKK on the one hand express a claim to membership in a “new global society”3 and on the other allow for the generation and embodiment of aesthetic difference within the local sphere.4 The concept of “resonance” enables us to combine both these tendencies in a stereoscopic, symmetric way. To understand how transcultural resonance from Japan lends the Congolese practitioners of Japanese spirituality in Kinshasa considerable confidence and pride vis-à-vis their Pentecostal local others, this chapter will proceed in three steps. After a first part that contextualizes Kinshasa’s spiritual movements, a description of the Messianiques’ “ancestor worship” will illuminate the relevance of the idea of “resonance”, with the role and portability of names appearing as one of its amplified key features. A third part will present the ways in which these cases of cultural resonance are locally conceptualized in the context of Congo’s and Kinshasa’s post-colonial particularity. It will become apparent that the resonance from Japan is locally crafted with a view to strengthening local understandings of Africa and African identity, which inadvertently repeats a historical pattern of the Japanese experience with Western orientalism.

Spiritual Movements in Kinshasa Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, has between 10 and 12 million inhabitants and has become known for its proud and pumping popular culture of extravagance, exaggeration, and aesthetic intensity. Beer, music and dance, the Holy Spirit, prayer and deliverance; laughter, debate and argument: Kinois (the city’s inhabitants) have a liking for amplification and distortion, for distraction from both the hardship and the monotony of an often-limiting present. The constant overdrive of sensory stimulation and the simultaneous inflation and “overheating” of meaning in this city built of words5 have become a way of life. The 3 J.G. Ferguson, “Of Mimicry and Membership: Africans and the New World Society”, Cultural Anthropology 17 (2002) 4, pp. 551–569. 4 P. Lambertz, Seekers and Things: Spiritual Movements and Aesthetic Difference in Kinshasa, New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2018. 5 F. De Boeck and Marie-Françoise Plissart, Kinshasa: Tales of the Invisible City, Ghent and Amsterdam: Ludion, 2004, p. 12; F. De Boeck, “La ville de Kinshasa, une architecture du verbe”, Esprit 12 (2006), pp. 79–105.

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offer presented by the city’s uncountable born-again churches (also called Pentecostal Charismatic Churches, or PCC), which have come to dominate the city’s religious landscape, of perpetual renewal through daily charismatic, embodied prayer, is lived by many as an urgent reshuffling of one’s cards of chance in the daily hope for a miracle. Unlike the various local forms and expressions of Islam and Christianity in Africa, which have been studied by scholars of religion in Africa for a long time, an alternate current of people and movements, which has existed for some decades and is currently on the rise in Africa’s multiple urban worlds, has received insufficient attention. Neither Islamic nor Christian, but rather feeding into the spectrum of new religious movements (though this term tends to obscure the intricate local continuities with longstanding traditions), followers of “spiritual movements” (an emic term) are generally critical of PCC. Kinshasa hosts a whole scene, a “milieu”6 indeed of people and movements, who call themselves “seekers” and “spiritualists”. Spiritual movements7 include Eckankar, the Brahma Kumaris Spiritual University, the Association of the Supreme Master Ching Hai, CERVA (Centre de Recherche sur les Valeurs Africains), AMORC (Rosicrucianism), the Grail Movement, but also a number of Japanese new religions such as Sukyō Mahikari, the Mokichi Okada Association International (MOA), and two other branches of Sekai Kyūseikyō: the Église Messianique Mondiale (EMM) and the Temple Messianique Art de Johrei (TMAJ), the latter being a local-cum-transnational schismatic offshoot dating from 2012.8 The EMM movement was founded by Mokichi Okada 岡田茂吉 (1882–1955), also called Meishū Sama (“Lord of Light”, 明主様), in Japan in 1935 and started going global in the 1950s. In Japan, and also elsewhere, it has known a number of schisms, creating different organizational networks with various transnational trajectories. This explains why in Congo there are four movements of Japanese inspiration today that propagate the practice of channelling divine healing light from Japan. Their successive arrivals in Kinshasa since the 1970s were encouraged each time by a local schism that necessitated the connection with yet another internationally available branch. EMM was imported to Congo in 2001 from Luanda (the capital of Angola), where it had been introduced ten

6 C. Campbell, “The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularisation”, in: A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain, vol. 5, London: SCM Press, 1972, pp. 119–136. 7 Rosalind Hackett has first drawn attention to these movements, calling them “spiritual science movements”. See R. Hackett, “The Spiritual Sciences in Africa”, Religion Today 3 (1986) 2, pp. 8–11. 8 For more on the last two movements, see Lambertz, Seekers and Things, pp. 35–68.

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years earlier by Afro-Brazilian missionaries from Brazil. Clearly, there is a religious South-South connectivity at work beyond the realm of Pentecostalism. In the DRC, the movement had about 2500 regular followers in 2014, mainly in the urban centres. In 2012 I witnessed a local schism in Kinshasa, which gave birth to the Temple Messianique Art de Johrei. If in the 1980s spiritual movements were generally attractive to the Zairian political and neo-bourgeois elite, EMM and TMAJ stood out on account of their attempt to popularize and democratize the movements’ messages by reaching out to Kinshasa’s large popular class. This explains why their working language is Lingala and not French. Spiritual movements emphatically distinguish themselves from the bornagain churches, mainly by referring to their own very open and outspoken use of religious materiality, including holy calligraphies, flowers used as spiritual thermometers, and amulets that act as receivers of divine, invisible light (mwinda ya Nzambe, “God’s light” / “divine light”) from Japan: this light is channelled in a healing ritual called “Johrei” (“purification of the spirit”, 浄霊), in order to burn impurities that people have accumulated in their spiritual bodies because of sins and toxins. It is important to stress the electric cosmology9 that spiritual movements propagate. In the early 1900s the writings of nineteenth-century US-American New Thought spiritualists were circulating in Japan, where they influenced members of the Ōmoto movement, including the founder of the new religion Seichō-no-Ie 生長の家, Masahara Taniguchi 谷口雅春 (1893–1985), and Sekai Kyūseikyō’s founder Mokichi Okada. The passion for Mesmer’s magnetic theory resonated strongly across the Pacific, to such an extent that Taniguchi and Fenwicke Holmes, one of New Thought’s key representatives in the USA, even published a monograph together. Jointly reflecting on the power of thought, they write: The whole universe is a living organism and so, though unseen, the network of what may be called the cosmic nerve tissue spreads everywhere, so that when a man wants something, that desire is transmitted to the organ whose function it is to gratify it. This is what we call in Seichono-Iye [sic] the “Boundless Supply” or “Everything granted at will”.10

9 H. Behrend, “Electricity, Spirit Mediums, and the Media of Spirits”, in: L. Jäger, E. Linz, and I. Schneider (eds.), Media, Culture, and Mediality: New Insights into the Current State of Research, Bielefeld: transcript, 2010, pp. 187–200. 10 F.L. Holmes and T. Masaharu, The Science of Faith: How to Make Yourself Believe, Tokyo: Nippon Kyobun-sha, 1962, p. 210, quoted in: R.T. Carpenter and W.C. Roof, “The Transplanting of Seicho-no-ie from Japan to Brazil: Moving beyond the Ethnic Enclave”, Journal of Contemporary Religion 10 (1995) 1, pp. 41–54, at 47.

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Given that all mind and all matter are connected as if in a neuro-electrical network, nothing happens randomly, as thoughts, words and other things invisible have a mechanical impact on the course of affairs. Kinshasa’s seekers strongly believe in a world that is governed by such spiritual laws. Unaware of the deeper historical entanglements with mesmerism, they passionately identify cultural resonances between Japanese spirituality and what they see as the wisdom of their “African” forefathers. The law of attraction, for instance, according to which Le hazard n’existe pas – things do not occur randomly – was crucial to nineteenth-century spiritualists and is widely recognized in Kinshasa too. In a somewhat Aristotelian critique of the overarching focus on Nzambe akosala (“God will act”) among local Pentecostalists (one spiritualist explained to me that he was an outspoken Marxist), the world, albeit composed of quite a lot of “invisible” (but precisely not immaterial) processes, is perceived as reacting to a “scientific” causality of action and reaction. This feeds into, picks up, transforms, and deescalates the widespread parlance about invisible processes and mystique machinations that are at work in the city today, often as a result of the Pentecostal fear-mongering that widens the pastors’ clientele. Thus, teaching sessions are organized about the spiritual origins of accidents and deaths (the reason why certain crossroads are collectively cleaned), which, as in other parts of Africa, have long been known to have spiritual origins. Spiritual movements propagate and encourage a seemingly “scientific” imagination that explicates the causalities at work between mind and matter. Such reasoned pondering is attractive, if not exciting, to the inhabitants of the ville-spectacle that is Kinshasa. It entails a soothing effect, offering those who strive to deal with this totally unreliable, unpredictable, and somewhat disorderly urban universe, an intellectualist promise to explain, predict, and enable them to come to terms with their own lives.11 A powerful ambiguity, however, is maintained: while to some spiritualists this scientific character demystifies the invisible workings of words, thoughts, and political affairs, to others it is the proof for a superior form of magic. It should not be forgotten that in Kinshasa science and scientific specialization are commonly integrated into the local cosmological continuum of invisible forces at work and their understanding and manipulation by specialists.12

11 R. Horton, “African Conversion”, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 41 (1971) 2, pp. 87–108. 12 See H.G. West, Ethnographic Sorcery, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

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Science, however, be it “spiritual” or “natural”, is at the service of, and beneficial to, society, as can be seen from the local depiction of sorcellerie ya baMindele (“the sorcery of the Whites”) as science associated with progress, while sorcellerie ya baAfricains is understood to serve mostly evil ends.

Generating Resonance: Japanese “Ancestor Worship” in Kinshasa On Resonance Media anthropologists have used the concept of resonance to indicate the perceived affinities and the effects of appropriation in instances of transnationally circulating and mediated cultural materials. In his work on Nigerian audiences of Bollywood movies, Brian Larkin asks “why one media form – Indian film – has resonance in the very different cultural environment of northern Nigeria”.13 He points to “resonant images” that generate “cultural as well as individual resonance”.14 Not without analogical reference to the acoustic physicality of sound, Flagg Miller has studied the “moral resonance” that the vibrant audio-recording industry in southern Yemen generates as the foundation of political activism.15 In his work on the cultural flows that exist between Asia and Africa in Ghanaian Hinduism and their local dynamics, Albert Wuaku suggests the concept of “repertoires of resonance”.16 Although his use of the concept reveals its rich analytical potential, none of the above scholars has pointed to the materiality upon which resonance depends. Whilst resonance responds to impetus and soundbites from afar because of a perceived sympathetic affinity, it depends on vibrating materials and is therefore always a local phenomenon that is locally produced. Distant though the original sound impetus may be, resonance necessitates a material body (Resonanzkörper), which lends it a particular local texture and expression, which usually alters the

13 B. Larkin, “Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities”, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 67 (1997) 3, pp. 406–440, at 434. 14 Ibid., p. 428. 15 F. Miller, The Moral Resonance of Arab Media. Audiocassette Poetry and Culture in Yemen (Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs, vol. 38), Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. 16 A.K. Wuaku, Hindu Gods in West Africa: Ghanaian Devotees of Shiva and Krishna, Leiden: Brill, 2013.

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input that has caused it, either by muting, amplifying, or distorting it. This, in turn, emphasizes the importance of locally authorized sensitivities.17 The study of transnationally circulating cultural materials can benefit from the notion of resonance, because it allows us to integrate both globalizing, “centrifugal” dynamics and localizing, “centripetal” ones. This makes it possible to grasp both deterritorializing and reterritorializing dynamics without losing sight of local actors and the materials and things their practices depend upon, resulting in the agency they share as human and non-human actors. Moreover, resonances encourage us to scrutinize local settings for potential instances of amplification and/or distortion, as the case of Japanese ancestor worship in Kinshasa shows. The perceived resonance between “Japanese” and “African” cultural materials is not just an implicit occurrence, but also an explicit theme of debate and discussion among Messianiques. Japan being popularly known as a destination for Congolese bands (see Zaiko Langa Langa’s epic album Nippon Banzai. Au Japon of the year 1986) and for the Kimono cult of the most exquisite “Japonnais” among adepts of the extravagant SAPE movement, several Messianiques also claim that Lingala and Japanese are “quite similar languages”, mainly because of certain terms such as “Kasai” existing in both languages. On a weekly basis both EMM and TMAJ organize teaching sessions (Li.: mateya; Fr.: enseignement) at their headquarters and various Points de Johrei across the city, where local responsables explain the various teachings of their founder Meishū Sama (Mokichi Okada) to the followers (bandimi). These sessions are held in Lingala and are important moments of appropriation and translation of what is understood to be “from Japan”. A pragmatic spiritual use of plants/flowers (fololo), the “power of words” (nguya ya liloba), the role of spirits and our human soul after death, the origins of illness and of evil of all sorts, as well as, of course, the importance of ancestors (bakoko) for the well-being of the living, are recurring and popular topics.18

17 J. Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, London: Bloomsbury, 2004. 18 Although the resonance Congo’s Messianiques perceive between Japan and their own culture is indeed multifarious, here I am chiefly concerned with ancestors and their worship. For the spiritual use of Ikebana flower arrangements and the “transcultural reassurance” that arises from the Japanese theory of the power of words, see Lambertz, Seekers and Things, pp. 95–123, pp. 195–224.

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Japanese “Ancestor Worship” in Kinshasa The interpretation of misfortune as the result of unhappy influential ancestors is historically grounded both in Africa and in Japan. In Japan, it was especially common in the economically troubled first decade following the Second World War: “The teaching that ancestor worship would relieve people from distress was persuasive: however, after rapid economic development took place and the living conditions of the people improved markedly, the notion of suffering ancestors lost its appeal”.19 In Kinshasa, both ancestors and their Christian counterpart, the Holy Spirit, continue to be an important intellectual and embodied means to counter misfortune and come to terms with the uncertainties of a highly volatile present. Each Wednesday morning and on the first Sunday morning of the month, “prayers for the uplifting of ancestral souls” (prière pour l’élévation des âmes des ancêtres) are held in the different units of the EMM and TMAJ movements. Among Messianiques these prayer sessions are commonly referred to as culte des ancêtres (“ancestor worship”). The catalogue of offerings differs from the ritual sacrifice to the ancestors of a chicken and palm wine, which several older Messianiques (EMM’s and TMAJ’s followers) remember from their childhood in the village. In EMM food offerings are consistent with the Japanese model and include merely rice, salt, and a glass of water. TMAJ, on the other hand, has enhanced the minimalist Japanese-style offerings of water, salt, and rice offered in EMM by an extensive list of local edibles, which are installed one after the other in front of the Goshintai 御神体 calligraphy: first, the set of little Japanese pots with rice, salt, and water, followed by an impressive fish from the Congo River (mbisi ya mayi), which is prepared for the offering by tying its head and tail together with a string and stuffing a salad leaf into its mouth, whereupon it is placed on a bed of salad with tomato slices around it. This is followed by a big basket of fruit, a bundle of pondou (cassava leaves), a pain carré (square bread), a tray of aubergines and a green cabbage, a basket full of sweets, biscuits, and lollipops, and finally two baskets: one with envelopes of money and another with a pile of ancestor lists. Every Wednesday morning and every first Sunday of the month, followers are requested to bring ancestor lists (Fr. listes/formulaires des ancêtres, Li. mikanda/formulaires ya bakoko) on which they have inscribed the names of as

19 K. Morioka, “Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan: Continuity and Change”, in: G.A. DeVos and T. Sofue (eds.), Religion and Family in East Asia, Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 211.

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many “ancestors” as possible (usually not more than forty or forty-five, because the pre-edited forms do not have more lines). For each ancestor, some information about the degré de parenté (kinship relation) is requested, and at the end of each list the total number of inscribed ancestors is indicated. The kind of kinship relations invoked in these lists is at first sight somewhat surprising. Striking is, for instance, the overwhelming presence of “ancestors” who are not older than or are at least of the same generation as the list’s author him-/herself. What is more, an impressive number of extra-kin “ancestors” appear on the lists, such as friends, neighbours, neighbours’ children, and even former heads of the Congolese/Zairian state. At first sight, these results go against scholarly expectation, which intuitively connects something called culte des ancêtres (ancestor worship) with lineage. The inclusion of nonfamily members is surprising, since the structural-functionalist credo on ancestor worship in Africa established by Meyer Fortes20 and Jack Goody21 contends that it is a rule that ancestors are at least members of one’s lineage. The inclusion of nonkin members and historic personalities departs even from Kopytoff’s finding22 about the equivocality of ancestors and elders. From a “Japanese” point of view, the arbitrary inclusion of departed non-kin members is less surprising, because in Japan a transformation of the notion of ancestor has been witnessed in accelerated fashion since the end of the Second World War. The signifier of the “ancestor” concept has remained intact, but the signified has been adapted to rapid urbanization and intense industrialization in the first half of the twentieth century, which accompanied a thorough weakening of the large-scale family household (Jap. ie 家). As a result, “Japan’s notion of ancestrality has undergone a change from a unilineal view which includes distant ancestors beyond even indirect experiences [. . .] to a concept which limits ancestors to close kin within the range of direct experience, but extends bilaterally”.23 The question who is one’s ancestor was no longer a structural given, but had gradually become a matter of personal choice, regardless of lineage, generation, and gender. The “worshipping” practitioner thus transformed from being subjected to custom and lineage obligations into the subject of his/her own moral authority,

20 M. Fortes, “Some Reflections on Ancestor Worship”, in: M. Fortes and G. Dieterlen (eds.), African Systems of Thought, London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 122–142. 21 J. Goody, Death, Property and the Ancestors: A Study of the Mortuary Customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa, Paolo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1962. 22 I. Kopytoff, “Ancestors as elders”, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 41 (1971) 2, pp. 129–142. 23 Morioka, “Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan”, p. 206.

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who himself/herself chooses those he/she wishes to remember.24 Morioka sees this as a “privatization” of ancestor worship.25 As we can see from Messianiques’ lists in Kinshasa, this arbitrary, much more personalized than collective, way of conceiving of who is one’s “ancestor”, which remains the persistently and proudly utilized emic term, appears to correspond very well to the sensitivities and needs of Kinois today. Japan’s New Religions, in particular Reiyūkai, were largely responsible for “democratizing” ancestor rites by transferring them from Buddhist priests in temples to lay persons.26 This innovation resonates with the needs of Congo’s urbanites: Messianiques thus break with the African tradition that stipulated that the ancestral rite was a privilege for the living elder of a lineage.

The Matter of Names Messianiques are encouraged by their ministers to make an effort to find out the names of their great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers in both their paternal and maternal lineages. They do this by asking their parents or kin, in order to be able to list as many ancestral souls as possible. An example is a list that mentions fourteen arrière-grands-pères (great-grandfathers) and eight arrièregrands-mères (great-grandmothers). I had visited Régine (41) several days in a row, after joining ministers Faustin and José for a nettoyage maison at her new place in the neighbourhood of Yolo, where she had moved with her two children only recently. Régine had just returned from her job when I arrived in the afternoon. She works as a clerk at the national aviation agency (RVA). She excused herself and let me sit on the sofa in front of the television she had turned on for me, probably to keep me busy, or perhaps to distract me while she composed her ancestor list. She instructed her younger sister, who lived with her, to keep the children out of the room for a while, then went to her room and returned with a photocopy of an empty list. She sat down, closed her eyes and seemingly pronounced a prayer. Then she started filling in names, fairly swiftly I thought, but always with her eyes closing

24 R. Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan, Paolo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1974, p. 183. 25 K. Morioka, “The Appearance of ‘Ancestor Religion’ in Modern Japan”, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 4 (1977) 2/3, pp. 183–212, at 207. 26 H. Hardacre, Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan: Reiyūkai Kyodan, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984; S. Shimazono, From Salvation to Spirituality: Popular Religious Movements in Modern Japan, Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2012.

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during little interruptions, before filling in the next line. “You have to do it properly, with true concentration and an open heart; you have to offer them your love. Otherwise it will not work”, she explained to me later. When the list was filled in up to number 45, she stopped. Régine had not conducted any special enquiry to find out the names of people she did not know, except for the sisters of her mother, who died before she was born. As for the rest: I know the name of my father, of his father, of my mother and her parents. For the others, often we had funerals at our home, and also three [colleagues] of our office have died, so I put them [on the list]. [. . .] I have also put my friends from the institute who have already died, and then the Presidents of the Republic. The paper is at home now, but as soon as I find [some money for] an offrande [donation], I will pray and, the next day I will deposit this. This is how God saves these souls, these ancestors”.27

That money too is given to ancestors at first sight resembles the emphasis on money donations in Pentecostal churches, where, just like in mainline churches, mabonza (alms) are given. Similar to the gifting of money in African Pentecostalism,28 the underlying logic is not one of charity, but of sacrifice, which is meant to activate and catalyse a cycle of reciprocity. Among Messianiques this takes a particular form in the practice of Sorei Saishi 祖霊祭 祀, understood to be a master hotline to a particular ancestor, who, in return for a 10 USD donation, receives a special spiritual elevation treatment. The ritual is performed by registering the ancestor in a ledger reserved for Sorei Saishi, whose details are then communicated by e-mail to the headquarters in Guarapiranga (Sao Paolo, Brazil). About a week later, a confirmation e-mail is sent back to the Messianique, which in Kinshasa is usually printed and handed to him/her by the secretary of the Church. Bernard (47), who hosts a Point de Johrei of TMAJ on his compound in the poorer neighbourhood of Kingabwa and relies on the 30 USD of rent from the TMAJ “church” for a living, explained to me that this “more up-to-date, Japanese” way of praying to the ancestors was what makes Messianiques’ spirituality so powerful. In a teaching session, offrandes (donations) to one’s ancestors were explained to me as la face matérielle de la gratitude, the “material side of gratitude”. This emphasis on gratitude is important also for the moment of creating the ancestor list. Gratitude vis-à-vis others, including the dead, implies an ideal

27 Régine, Yolo, June 2013. 28 P. Hasu, “World Bank and Heavenly Bank in Poverty and Prosperity: The Case of Tanzanian Faith Gospel”, Review of African Political Economy 33 (2006) 110, pp. 679–692; O. Kalu, African Pentecostalism: An Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

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of self-positioning and self-awareness and can therefore be seen as a mental attempt to repair and restore reciprocity with the dead, whom especially PCCs tend either to demonize or to place in a symbolic quarantine, because they hinder the psycho-genealogical liberation of the “born-again” subject.29 As Régine had shown me, the same is true for the moment of creating these lists, which have to be handwritten and composed with a “sentiment” of inner peace, love, and gratitude. The act of writing is carried out as a meditative selfcentring. While it is difficult to verify this for every Messianique, in Régine’s case the very moment of writing down an ancestor’s name was lived as generating an intimate tie with the respective ancestor. “It is a prayer, really” explained Régine, which necessitates its proper ritual time-space. Other Messianiques confided to me that they often repeat a standard set of names on a weekly basis, including their grandparents’ and Mobutu’s name, for instance. Many keep a model sheet in their homes – a mnemonic device, indeed archive, containing the names they do not know by heart. But the actual list has to be written down by hand every week. Bernard takes the whole day to compile his list, waiting for inspiration (emic term) to come and reveal to him which another ancestor he has not yet added to his list. For several years he has been beginning his list with the name of his deceased mother and her sister, who were twins, chiefly because of his daughter’s and his second wife’s apparent infertility. “I have had a lot of experiences”, he explains, “because both have had several children after that”.30 As a result of the culte des ancêtres he learned to practise at EMM and later TMAJ, his mother frequently appears in dreams, at times revealing to him the premonition of future events. Thus, he knew that his daughter would score 57 per cent in her state exam before the results were announced. The choice of ancestors to appear first on the list depends on the problem his prayer is meant to resolve. If he is facing a financial crisis (Li. mpiaka), he chooses his uncle, who was a successful businessman. For fertility and health his mother remains the main addressee. That a name is more than an abstract symbol, code, or representation but has the performative and iconic ability to actually embody the person to whom it belongs – like a sonic icon, the acoustic version of a Byzantine sacred painting that is its representation and does not merely symbolize it, just like a mantra that ritually performs its meaning – can best be grasped if one imagines putting down on a list, or uttering, the name of one’s deceased child. The name makes a person’s spirit something portable, comparable to a picture or a statue.

29 See Lambertz, Seekers and Things, pp. 227–230. 30 Bernard, Kingabwa, September 2018.

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As Nancy Munn has shown, it enables the person to expand herself in space and time, and thus to generate fame.31 The weekly filling in of EMM/TMAJ’s ancestors on forms by individual Messianiques can thus be compared to a commemorative “throwing” (Li. kobwaka) of deceased persons who are close to the Messianique concerned. This concept refers to the public shouting of names by what are called atalakus (“criers”, “attractors of attention”), an important constituent of a Congolese orchestra. Names are “thrown” both during concerts and on records.32 While the atalaku’s role is to attract and socially weave the music and the band into the wider audience by means of names as iconic contact points, Messianiques do the same within their own selected community of spirit kin. In both cases, this has the obvious laudatory purpose of enticing sponsors and protectors, living ones in the case of the atalakus and dead ones in that of Messianiques. The iconic nature of the name also explains the prominence of other namebased practices, such as the ndoyi (namesake). The namesake phenomenon is significant and respected in Kinshasa, and can be seen as an appellative birthmark. Like ancestors, birthmarks are called koko in Lingala. People who carry the same name inevitably have a homologous connection and therefore something in common. The name is their spiritual connection point. In Kinshasa’s Pentecostal circles it is common for departed namesakes, especially if they qualify as bakoko, to possess a descendant, an occurrence known as a malédiction de nom (cursing by name). The notion that a name sign, be it spoken/aural or written/visual, may act as a spiritual channel, a medium, between two signified persons carrying it, dead or alive, can furthermore be seen in the ways in which Messianiques handle their lists. Bernard, for instance, enhances the possibility of his mother and other ancestors appearing in his dreams by placing the list underneath his pillow the night before it is enshrined. At the end of the actual culte des ancêtres event, all lists are systematically burned in order to undo the material mediation at work in the paper and the ancestral names it carries. This act was explained to me as “freeing” the ancestors from the paper, which had been enshrined at the

31 N. Munn, The Fame of Gawa: A Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in Massim Exchange, Durham: Duke University Press, 1986. 32 See B.W. White, “Modernity’s Trickster: ‘Dipping’ and ‘Throwing’ in Congolese Popular Dance Music”, in: J. Conteh-Morgan and T. Olaniyan (eds.), African Drama and Performance (Research in African Literatures: African Expressive Cultures), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004, pp. 198–218; L. Tsambu Bulu, “Luttes symboliques et enjeu de domination sur l’Espace de la Musique populaire à Kinshasa: Critique praxéologique des sociabilités de la scène musicale kinoise (1990–2010)”, PhD thesis, University of Kinshasa, 2012.

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altar (autel) so as to uplift the ancestor concerned. In this process, the lists become “sacred objects”, which, as is known from sacred trash in other contexts, require appropriate disposal. “One cannot just place them in the trash bin, what impression will the ancestors have if, after praying to them, we place them in the trash bin?”33 Irene Stengs denotes the precarious matter she calls “sacred waste” as “material residues and surpluses that cannot be disposed of as just garbage (or rubble), but neither can be kept or left alone”.34 The writing of name lists, locally understood to be “the Japanese way of praying to the ancestors”, resonates well with local semiotic ideologies35 regarding names and their potential. Whether the lists are perceived merely as a resonance or indeed as being similar in their Congolese and Japanese realities, and to what extent amplification or even distortion occurs, is of lesser importance to local practitioners. In Kinois’ understanding the resonance is loud and clear.

Transnational Reverse Orientalism That the perceived connivance between Japanese spirituality and African spiritual wisdom was not just discursive positioning and rhetorical debate and opinionating became clear to me when two older members of TMAJ, who had grown up in Kasai and been living in one of Kinshasa’s poorer suburbs, Kingasani, invited me to join them on a visit to their traditional healer (nganga), who lived near Mangengenge and had the power to both heal and harm, and whom they would regularly meet for health-related counselling. Before reaching his compound, which was recognizable as enclosed with a number of plants, one of my two Messianique guides instructed me on no account to touch anything the nganga might give or offer me. During the meeting, he even made sure I was sitting out of reach of the nganga, to whom the scene appeared to offer great amusement. Though some of EMM’s ministers stress that their faith is the purely positive counterpart to the negative “African habit” of kosimba nkisi (“touching magical charms”), many Messianiques see the Japanese and African

33 Bernard, Kingabwa, September 2018. 34 I. Stengs, “In Conversation: Sacred Waste”, Material Religion 10 (2014) 2, pp. 235–238, at 235. 35 W. Keane, Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter (The Anthropology of Christianity, vol. 1), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

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spiritual registers as strongly resonating with each other. For my two guides, there was a direct continuity between the two. While in Pentecostal circles the spatial entity of cultural reference is habitually the United States, Brazil, Nigeria, etc., Messianiques are more concerned with “Africa” as the cultural spatial reference. Jérôme’s statement mentioned at the beginning of this chapter was the recurrent message of a teaching session on the role of ancestors at the Point de Johrei on Avenue Lufulwabo (Kinshasa) in July 2010. Having been a Protestant pastor before he in the 1980s became a leading Messianique intellectual, he repeatedly stressed the importance of what Messianiques refer to as the culte des ancêtres (ancestor worship), thus outspokenly recycling the orientalizing concept of “ancestor worship” from what V.Y. Mudimbe has called the “colonial library”.36 Christian missionaries had soon legitimized their “civilizing” endeavours by lumping together under the umbrella of “African Traditional Religion” various elements that appeared “magical” and “superstitious” to them. Scholars such as Paul Landau have shown how this label captured what was in reality mainly a product of leading questions posed in Christian and Muslim discourse about the Other.37 Especially Protestant missions presented African Traditional Religion as the work of Satan,38 thus laying the ground for today’s diabolization by neo-Pentecostal pastors, who use the same discursive repertoire to demonize anything seemingly “traditional” involving secrecy, ritual, and/or religious materiality.39 Although syncretism became, after World War II, a kind of trademark of the globalizing Sekai Kyūseikyō, Messianiques in Kinshasa practise Sekai Kyūseikyō with an awareness that it is a Japanese religion, which has reached their country in order to validate and resurrect the power and cultural pride of their own ancestors. The concept of reverse orientalism was developed by Faure to describe efforts of the Kyoto School and the New Kyoto School in Japan to counter the orientalizing essentializations of (Zen) Buddhism and

36 V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. 37 P. Landau, “‘Religion’ and Christian conversion in African History”, The Journal of Religious History 23 (1999) 1, pp. 8–30. 38 B. Meyer, Translating the Devil: Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999; M. Kalulambi Pongo, “Christianisme et image de l’Autre en Afrique belge: Les categories de langages dans les strategies de denomination”, Cahiers d’Études Africaines 33 (1993) 130, pp. 275–293. 39 R. Hackett, “Discourses of Demonization in Africa and Beyond”, Diogenes 50 (2003) 3, pp. 61–75.

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Eastern philosophy by Western scholars.40 The aim was to turn their external depictions into a positive facet of Japan’s own uniqueness. According to Borup, the constitution of Zen Buddhism in Japan cannot be understood without taking into account the cultural pride it has made possible.41 Utilizing Edward Said’s canonical conceptualization of “Orientalism”, the concept of reverse orientalism refers to how “the oriental”, which is the object of orientalizing clichés, may strategically utilize the same clichés and cultural materials to its own advantage. In other words, the stereotypes and depictions on which orientalist accounts rest are converted into assets of cultural pride and a means of staging one’s own uniqueness. Just like Messianiques, also the followers of Eckankar re/produce spiritual wisdom as a reaction to the “orientalizing” denigration of African spirituality by Catholic missionaries, following the same pattern of reverse orientalism as EMM’s and TMAJ’s ancestor worship. There has been substantial feedback from colonial and missionary anthropology and their culturalizing discourse into the populations that once were the “objects” of these studies. Therefore it is difficult to estimate whether such culturalizing knowledge about death and the ancestors, for instance, reflects people’s true convictions, on the one hand, or whether it is rather performed to generate one’s own being “African” or “Bantu” as a cultural resource of identification within the pluralistic landscape of the city. No “autochthonizing” project today excludes the globalizing scale of reflexive feedback, which EMM and TMAJ exemplify so well, in that they enlighten their African followers on how to handle and re/produce their own heritage with imported strategies, tactics, and theories from afar. No doubt the challenge lies precisely in the globalizing mobility of those materials that facilitate such cross-reflexive cultural productions of urban subjectivity. EMM’s and TMAJ’s explicit use of the culte concept strategically recycles the French concept of worship, as it was used in the “colonial library” of classical anthropology and missionary knowledge production, feeding it back into contemporary religious popular culture. Seemingly inspired by Japan’s unique cultural history, EMM’s/TMAJ’s reverse orientalism is indeed an attempt at symbolic retaliation against perceived subjugation under Christian missionary hegemony ever since missionary activity started. This tendency also exists among

40 B. Faure, “The Kyoto School and Reverse Orientalism”, in: C.W. Fu and S. Heine (eds.), Japan in Traditional and Postmodern Perspectives, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995, pp. 245–282. 41 J. Borup, “Zen and the Art of Inverting Orientalism: Buddhism, Religious Studies and Interrelated Networks”, in: P. Antes, A.W. Geertz, and R.R. Warne (eds.), New Approaches to the Study of Religion, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004.

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followers of other spiritual movements. Concerning the law of karma and reincarnation, for instance, a member of Eckankar explained to me that his forefathers had known very well that children who died at an early age were often returning ancestors, who had come to pay a debt: “Our ancestors knew (a lot of things), but there has been a major disruption somewhere, by the Catholic fathers. [. . .] Our ancestors knew all this! But they have been disturbed by colonization”.42

Conclusion In Japan, rapid transformation and contrasting modes of social life and organization were mitigated, brokered, and managed by countless new religions, their engagement with the popular spheres of society, and their eclectic and variegated reshuffling of foreign and pre-existing cultural materials. Like other transnationally engaged Japanese new religions, Sekai Kyūseikyō has travelled and indeed “globalized” itself, with more than just a set stock of cultural décor and ritual paraphernalia. Implicitly, as an unrecognized and unknown stowaway, Japan’s deeper historical experience is on board as well. To Messianiques in Kinshasa, Japan’s way of transforming its own cultural inheritance so as to embrace, support, and encourage the novel conditions of urbanity with concomitant pressure to individualize the person, appears to be a promising and soothing alternative to the Pentecostal rhetoric of rupture that largely places the ancestors in quarantine. This allows people to produce their “own” heritage and tradition with a smile of superiority and difference. By presenting their “ancestor worship” as part of their local “African” heritage, Messianiques unknowingly re/produce strategic “reverse orientalism”. While in Japan this led to the construction of the invented tradition of Zen-Buddhism as an icon of Japaneseness, Messianiques practice of “ancestor worship” in Congo is seen as strengthening their identification as “Africans”. This chapter has focused upon the practice of Japanese “ancestor worship” in two different Congolese branches/offshoots of the Sekai Kyūseikyō movement. In Kinshasa, Japanese new religions are lived by a great number of their practitioners primarily as a response to the Protestant discourse of demonization that is propagated by the Églises de réveil (churches of awakening). Various Messianiques, as well as adepts of Eckankar, have explained to me how 42 Kingabwa, 14 April 2013.

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important dreams are as channels of spiritual communication, adding that Meishū Sama, to whom dreams were likewise of utmost importance, confirmed in his teachings what they had first learned from their elders in the African village they grew up in. The same holds true for the power of words, which Meishū Sama theorizes in his writings,43 and which is literally celebrated as an amplified resonance offering cultural reassurance. The distortion of the Japanese culte des ancêtres by TMAJ through the integration of Congolese food donations further attests to this. Sekai Kyūseikyō’s messianism as a globalizing movement offers people the hope of being lifted out of their spatial containers and being enabled to participate in a more global community of cosmopolitans, similar in a way to the prospect of the Pentecostal Holy Spirit. This fits James Ferguson’s argument about mimetic movements being expressions of “claim[s] to membership in a ‘new global society’”.44 However, to understand the attraction of spiritual movements like EMM and TMAJ in urban Africa, we have to consider not only their “centrifugal” prospect for membership in a more cosmopolitan world society but also their “centripetal” potential to thereby generate locally – within their particular urban worlds – a considerable amount of symbolic capital and difference. The concept of resonance, with its emphasis on instances of local amplification and distortion, has allowed us to integrate these two perspectives upon the transnational religious spaces in African cities today.

43 Lambertz, Seekers and Things, pp. 195–224. 44 Ferguson, “Of Mimicry and Membership”, pp. 551–569.

Frédérique Louveau

13 Japanese Spiritualities in Africa: From a Transnational Space to the Creation of a Local Lifestyle In the capitals of West Africa, Senegalese, Ivorians, Beninese, or Congolese kumite, waiting for the beginning of tsukinamisai this Sunday, “do okiyome” in the daidōjō while others are reading the goseigen to “raise” their sōnen.1 This sentence, strewn with words in Japanese from the theology of a “new new religion” (shin shinshūkyō) transplanted from Japan to West Africa, Sukyō Mahikari 崇教真 光, is common in the mouths of its African initiates. Founded in 1959 on the Japanese archipelago by a former officer of the imperial army, Sukyō Mahikari is one of those spiritualities from Japan which have succeeded in gaining a foothold on African soil: the Tenrikyō 天理教 Church2 in Congo-Brazzaville, Sekai Kyūsai kyō 世界救世教, Temple messianique Art de Johrei,3 and Sekai Mahikari Bunmei Kyōdan 世界真光文明教団4 in Congo-Kinshasa, Soka Gakkai International in Ivory Coast, as well as other spiritualities formed in more diffuse networks, such as reiki 霊気, which have succeeded in Senegal. While some of these Japanese churches are derived from Buddhism, Sukyō Mahikari is distinguished by its

1 Kumite 組み手: initiates; okiyome お清め: ritual of purification; daidōjō 大道場: place of worship; tsukinamisai 月次祭: monthly ceremony of thanks to the god Su 主の大御神様; goseigen 御聖言: sacred book of the group; sōnen 想念: “deep thought”, is the object of the spiritual work of followers who aim to make their thought and behaviour conform to the theological teachings of the group. 2 See J.F. Mayer, “Tenrikyo au Congo-Brazzaville: l’inculturation d’une nouvelle religion venue du Japon”, https://www.religion.info/2017/10/13/congo-brazzaville-inculturationtenrikyo/ (accessed 15 June 2019). 3 See P. Lambertz, Seekers and Things: Spiritual Movements and Aesthetic Difference in Kinshasa, New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2018. 4 Sukyō Mahikari’s founder, after adhering to several Japanese “new religions”, from which he borrowed a certain number of theological elements, founded Sekai Mahikari Bunmei Kyōdan (Church of the World True-Light Civilization), which split into two groups upon his death in 1974. Following a dispute, the courts granted the right of succession to a member of the founder’s staff in preference to his adopted daughter. The former prolonged the destiny of this religion, whose name he retained, while the latter carried with her a large part of the adepts and founded a new branch that she named Sukyō Mahikari. It is this branch that is the subject of my research, because it is the one that has established itself with the most success in various African countries, where it has today 32 dōjōs, whilst Sekai Mahikari Bunmei Kyōdan is present in only a few African countries. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-013

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allegiance to the Shinto tradition. These Japanese religions implanted in Africa share a transnational dimension that structures them and a sociological peculiarity, that of converting Africans to whom religious authority is entrusted. Reiki 5 is an exception in the sense that it has found an echo among European migrants in Africa.6 Sukyō Mahikari started to spread outside Japan in the 1960s in accordance with the desire of its founder to “conquer” Paris, the only city he saw in his only missionary vision overseas. Mahikari was then transported by expatriates, businessmen, and migrants, who took it to many countries on all continents, including Africa, especially south of the Sahara. Following the advent of independence, charismatic heads of state carrying a strong ideology were eventually obliged to submit to structural adjustment policies and liberalization of the economy. These local situations in several countries of West Africa weakened large sections of the population, especially civil servants. In the process of expanding beyond Japan, Sukyō Mahikari did not give rise to isolated and fragmented missionary enterprises of the charismatic and syncretic type. On the contrary, it has put in place, on a world scale, a pyramid-like transnational structure – giving it the vernacular name of “Organization” – making it possible to prevent local reinterpretations and counteract any tendency to split off. Reiki, by contrast, is not configured around a spiritual centrality, but in rather loose networks, formed by individual “masters” and their disciples in accordance with the migrations of these people. In the context of religious transnationalization, little research has been devoted to Asian religion in Africa. Early research on religious transnationalization in Africa was devoted to the analysis of the networks of Christianity (especially in its Pentecostal form) and Islam, showing that these religions adapt to an increasingly dense “religious market” resulting from the “fragmentation of religious authority” by developing strategies through an aggressive proselytism.7 As Colonomos has observed,

5 Reiki is a technique developed in Japan by Mikao Usui (1865–1926). The kanjis “rei” and “ki” mean “spirit” and “energy”. Among the collectives that wanted to standardize this practice, the French Federation of Traditional Reiki, for example, has fixed this definition: “energy of the spirit”. Reiki, as conceived by its founder, consists of a technique based on the imposition of the hands of a practitioner on the body of a person to heal its sufferings through the development of its inner resources. 6 Ethnographic field data produced in November 2018 in Saint-Louis, Senegal, from my ongoing research. 7 L. Fourchard, A. Mary, and R. Otayek (eds.), Entreprises religieuses transnationales en Afrique de l’ouest, Paris: Karthala, 2005.

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The notion of transnational networks aims by definition to identify flexible and informal modes of relationship that bypass the institutions of nation-states by taking advantage of the resources and logistical support of multinational organizations, but without becoming structured as supranational institutions.8

Other analyses devoted to African prophetic movements and Pentecostalism, Latin-American and Afro-Brazilian religions, and religions marked by a strong African identity, show that they “go beyond all social, local and national boundaries”; as André Mary and Stefania Capone argue, the transnational “defines any activity initiated and conducted by non-institutional actors, be they organized groups or individuals, transcending the borders of nation-states without erasing them”.9 They highlight the main features of religious transnationalization, which makes sense only within a re-globalization “and especially an inverted globalization (north-south, centre-periphery)10 compared to the major religions of imperialist nation-states; we are witnessing the creation of polycentric networks, independent of major strategies of institutions”; the formation of a new spiritual geography of the world; different phases, including the globalizing circulation of the meaning that is produced and its necessary relocation, which led Robertson11 to develop the concept of “glocalization”. If African religions, in the course of transnationalization, overthrow the orientation of globalization, the same goes for Japanese religions, as Clarke’s book shows.12 Other research has emphasized the role played by migration in religious transnationalization,13 pointing out that “deterritorialization processes are rarely successive reterritorialization, thanks also to the parallel production of discourses on the origins that make it possible to ‘re-anchor’ what has been

8 A. Colonomos (ed.), Sociologie des réseaux transnationaux. Communautés, entreprises et individus: lien social et système international, Paris: L’Harmattan 1995, cited in A. Mary and L. Fourchard, “Introduction. Réveils religieux et nations missionnaires”, in: Fourchard et al., Entreprises religieuses, p. 18. 9 S. Capone and A. Mary, “Les translogiques d’une globalization religieuse à l’envers”, in: K. Argyriadis et al. (eds.), Religions transnationales des Suds: Afrique, Europe, Amérique, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012, pp. 28–29. 10 Ibid. 11 R. Robertson, “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity”, in: M. Featherstone, S. Lash, and R. Robertson (eds.), Global Modernities, London: Sage, 1995, pp. 25–44. 12 P.B. Clarke (ed.), Japanese New Religions in Global Perspective, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2000. 13 S. Bava and S. Capone, “Religions transnationales et migrations: regards croisés sur un champ en mouvement”, Autrepart 56 (2010) 4, pp. 3–16.

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‘deterritorialized’ in new spaces, real or symbolic”.14 The notion of “local” is therefore unavoidable in the transnational dimension. My approach favours the study of the process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization of Sukyō Mahikari in Africa. Deleuze and Guattari created the concept of deterritorialization15 with reference to the political, the social and even the scientific world “This is [. . .] a twofold movement where reterritorialization reassigns the territorialized space, and in this case the deterritorialization was simply one of the moments of reallocation of the territory.”16 If Mahikari can be compared to Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban religions in many respects,17 this should not obscure the fact that it does not have the same historical and cultural roots: the creation of the transnational Mahikari space took place in accordance with a local appropriation of the story of the origins, which is new to the followers. In other words, unlike Afro-Brazilian cults, it is not a religion carried by forced migration and therefore does not focus upon the same quest for Africa on the part of its initiates. For its part, reiki is a technique of well-being that recreates a transnational community through local affinities. This chapter deals with the creation in Senegal of a local space based on a new lifestyle through a transnational religious organization from Japan. From ethnographic data from surveys conducted between 2001 and 2018 in the dōjōs of Mahikari, I will analyse the local dynamics of Mahikari in an articulation of global to local. I will highlight what Mahikari’s presence, bearing characteristics derived from Japanese culture and Shinto religion, reveals in contemporary African societies. I will also briefly discuss the practice of Reiki, a healing and well-being technique originating in Japan, in order to emphasize the institutional aspect of religious transnationalization. Here too the “clients” seek a therapeutic solution and find themselves in a spiritual universe, but Reiki is explicitly a healing technique, whereas Mahikari is defined above all as a spiritual group, refusing to be classified as a healing group. I will consider the way in which the pyramidal structure of Mahikari, piloted from Japan, articulates with local concerns of the Senegalese adepts, leading them

14 S. Capone, “A propos des notions de globalisation et transnationalisation”, Civilisations 51 (2004) 1/2, pp. 9–22. 15 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Capitalisme et schizophrénie: L’Anti-Oedipe, Paris: Minuit, 1991. 16 G. Elbaz (ed.), Diasporas protéiformes, Saint-Denis: Presses de l’Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, 2010, p. 145. 17 S. Capone and K. Argyriadis, “Adaptations et réappropriations dans la religion des orisha: La relocalisation des religions afro-américaines en question”, in: Capone and Argyriadis (eds.), La religion des orisha: un champ social transnational en pleine recomposition, Paris: Hermann, 2011, pp. 9–44.

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to develop a specific “lifestyle”. My analysis is on three different scales: 1) the transnational dimension of the spiritual organization with its theological and liturgical foundations, 2) the individual dimension of Mahikari, which provides its African followers with a “personal power” to participate in the development of their country while fabricating an imaginary of development, and 3) the relation to politics and the state. We will first examine the creation of a transnational spiritual space between Japan and Africa, then the local creation of a lifestyle and finally the ethics of politics.

Creation of a Transnational Spiritual Space between Japan and Africa The Franco-African Spiritual Space: Circulation of Practices Sukyō Mahikari was founded in Japan in 1959 by Yoshikazu Okada 岡田良一, an imperial army officer from a samurai family, who later renamed himself Sukuinushisama 救い主様. During a coma caused by a fall from his horse he is said to have received “revelations” from the Su God, who ordered him to mobilize people to restore heaven on earth and form the Civilization of Yoko 陽光文明. This was to be composed of individuals selected according to their purity. Thus, Mahikari gathers “initiates” (kumite 組み手) endowed with a sacred medallion (omitama 御み霊) allowing them to carry out the ritual of purification (okiyome お清め), which is said to eliminate the “spiritual impurities” (toxins) lodged in bodies and souls. These impurities are the result of a person’s sins as well as sins passed on by ancestors and accumulated through the principle of reincarnation. Sukyō Mahikari’s spiritual teachings are strongly inspired by Shinto, even though they contain references to Buddhism, Christianity, and Judaism.18 Indeed, as if the founder had planned from the outset the transnationalization of his

18 L. Hurbon, “De la Bible à la parole. Oralité et écriture dans les sectes”, Cahiers de littérature orale 21 (1987), pp. 115–130; B.J. McVeigh, Gratitude, Obedience, and Humility of Heart: The Cultural Construction of Belief in a Japanese New Religion, Unpublished PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1991; C. Cornille, “Jesus in Japan: Christian Syncretism in Mahikari”, in: P. Clarke and J. Sommers (eds.), Japanese New Religions in the West, Sandgate: Curzon Press, 1994, pp. 89–103; P. Knecht, “The Crux of the Cross. Mahikari’s Core Symbol”, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22 (1995) 3–4, pp. 321–341; F. Louveau, Un prophétisme japonais en Afrique de l’Ouest. Anthropologie religieuse de Sukyo Mahikari (Bénin, Côte d’Ivoire, Sénégal, France), Paris: Karthala, 2012.

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“sacred art”, in his book of revelations (goseigen) he asks “all the initiates of the world” to worship at the shrine of Izumo, the one where his mother is said to have prayed to be granted a child. The teachings and rituals are observed identically in all countries of implantation, which leads to a structural and spiritual homogenization. Thus, what we find is not syncretism, but rather the adoption of Mahikari’s system of meaning by all the world’s followers and without major reinterpretation. This feature contributes to creating a unique geographical space, especially between Europe and Africa, which converge in one of five existing “regional delegations”, along with Asia, North America, Latin America, and Australia. Thus, the links established by Mahikari between Europe and Africa, francophone Africa in particular, revive historical links among the countries created at the time of French colonization. However, in 2009, Ivory Coast inaugurated a larger structure called Oya dōjō 親道場, which connects it directly with Japan, whereas it had to pass through France beforehand. This structural reconfiguration has been inherent to the internal development of Mahikari, but it also reflects the process of reconfiguration of Franco-African relations dating from the French colonization of this country, which has experienced an important political and identity crisis since the 1990s, peaking in 2001. The fact remains that in this space all followers are initiated in the same embodied practices underpinned by the same liturgy. As mentioned above, the founder Sukuinushisama had only one missionary vision: that of implanting Mahikari, from the day after its creation in 1960, in Paris. Implantation in Africa developed from Paris thanks to the southward migration of a few Europeans. During its early years in Paris, Mahikari found followers especially among members of the Asian diaspora, who practised their spirituality in the Japanese restaurants that were emerging there. Soon French people became interested, and a more formalized structure was created in 1971. Among these French people was one initiated woman who followed her husband, a Lebanese man, to Ivory Coast, where he set up a soap factory. She was the principal actor in the establishment of Sukyō Mahikari in Ivory Coast in 1974. Although intending to spend only a year there, in the end she remained for 36 years, serving as the head of the religious organization, which met with astounding success. The Ivorian structure became the hub of all of Africa. In that same year of 1974, a Beninese businessman initiated in Ivory Coast moved to Senegal, where he assembled a group that officially institutionalized Mahikari in 1982 after practising it at home. Since then, followers have rented a house in Dakar, constituting the first “centre of practice”. After a few years, the dōjō’s success was sufficient to make it the main structure of Senegal, the jundōjō of Dakar. Senegal has a very large majority of Muslims. Islamization took place here during the conquest of northern Senegal by the Almoravids in the eleventh century. This Islam comes from the Sufi branch and is composed of brotherhoods,

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the Tijanniyya and Mouridiyya being the two largest. Christianism appeared in the fifteenth century with the arrival of the first Europeans and is stronger in the South of the country. As the Muslim brotherhoods regulate the “religious field”,19 spiritual groups like Mahikari can only integrate into it if they adopt certain strategies.20 On the other hand, for individualized practices such as Reiki, in which the dual relationship between master and client is central, insertion into the spiritual and religious landscape is more a matter of tolerance, ignorance or indifference. While Mahikari, if perceived as a religious institution, risks the wrath of both Catholic and Muslim groups, Reiki is very little known. The latter follows the migration of masters able to settle in different countries for a given time, or who initiate lineage successors on the ground. Practised most often in a personal space, it does not have the same visibility as Mahikari, which is registered as a “non-profit association” at the Ministry of the Interior. In its pyramidal organization, Mahikari has built a network to connect the world. In order to exist, small local groups resulting from gatherings of followers must obtain authorization from the global headquarters in Japan. Established in Takayama, in the Prefecture of Gifu, the Headquarters (maison-mère) represents the spiritual and administrative head of all structures throughout the world. The headquarters communicates directly with five major structures called “regional delegations”, high offices operating as administrative and spiritual entities and gathering pertinent information. Within these delegations, “leaders” and doshi 導 士 (“missionaries”) of the religious movement circulate to bring specific lessons to the dōjōs or to support activities, some of which cannot take place without the leaders’ training. “Missionaries” are travelling staff; they circulate from dōjō to dōjō all over the world, sometimes staying only a few months, strengthening the links between the head of the institution and these branches. They are assigned to a local dōjō for a mission of limited duration to ensure that followers respect the original liturgy to the letter. They also “translate” the teachings to fit a given cultural context, in order to encourage membership in challenging environments. The movement of insiders also includes that of persons who migrate or travel with families or for professional reasons and are attached to an on-site dōjō. The social background of the followers of Mahikari has identical characteristics in different countries, which in fact creates a homogenous transnational social community. Mahikari recruits Africans in West African cities who maintain

19 P. Bourdieu, “Genèse et structure du champ religieux”, Revue française de sociologie 12 (1971) 3, pp. 295–334. 20 F. Louveau, “Un mouvement religieux japonais au cœur de la pluralisation religieuse africaine: Sukyo Mahikari au Bénin, en Côte d’Ivoire et au Sénégal”, Politique africaine 123 (2011) 3, pp. 73–93.

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their religion of origin, whether Christian or Muslim. Followers are middle-class or even higher. They are mostly civil servants, especially teachers and hospital staff, as well as some elite persons. It is a minority and elitist movement that aims to maintain its “distinction” as a special part of the Senegalese religious landscape. Although it is a minority movement, it is not a marginal one: it shares the same symbolic stakes as other religions, including Protestant churches that have become visible since the 1990s. Throughout the country Mahikari is considered a “sect”, a derogatory term that, in Europe, denies any spiritual value and, in Africa, serves to denounce witchcraft practices. The two continents join together to describe Mahikari as a satanic group. Lacking Mahikari’s institutional visibility, Reiki does not provoke the same denunciations or violence.

Practices between Spirituality and Healing: A Transnational Symbolic Logic Although Mahikari does not adapt to the local context, it does reconfigure the religious landscape. Indeed, among the Japanese religions that have most successfully travelled to the West, such as Soka Gakkai, the International Zen Association, and Tenrikyo,21 Mahikari has the peculiarity of having found its niche in the religious landscape of West African countries, including that of healing for the urban middle classes. In developing countries, religion is one of the possible remedies in the case of illness. Thus, the Senegalese population consults the marabouts of Islam or Pentecostal and Evangelical Protestant churches just as they would doctors in a hospital. Mahikari is part of these therapeutic remedies and attracts members from the same social niche as do religious movements of the American New Age. The same is true for Reiki: “clients” seek a therapeutic solution and find themselves in a spiritual universe. The first reason why followers adhere to Mahikari is to find a remedy for their illness even if the practice is primarily spiritual.22 The leaders are working hard to transform the image of Sukyō Mahikari among African people who see it as a “healing group”. Mahikari’s explicit goal is to purify human beings in order to form the “Civilization of Yōkō”, which will inhabit the paradise that

21 L. Hourmant, “Les nouveaux mouvements religieux japonais en France entre laïcisation et euphémisation du sacré”, Social Compass 42 (1995) 2, pp. 147–276. 22 See C. Cornille, “Le dilemme du recours thérapeutique dans une nouvelle religion japonaise”, in: F. Lautman and J. Maître (eds.), Gestions religieuses de la santé, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993, pp. 237–246; F. Louveau, Un prophétisme japonais en Afrique de l’Ouest. Anthropologie religieuse de Sukyo Mahikari (Bénin, Côte d’Ivoire, Sénégal, France), Paris: Karthala, 2012.

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will come to earth after the Baptism of Fire 火の洗礼. Note that this aspect of the teachings places it in the category of New Age religious movements. The followers’ spiritual activities are focused upon their own purification, so that they may be among the chosen. They are also turned towards purification of the environment, to make possible the advent of paradise. Purification consists of the elimination of spiritual impurities called “toxins” through the okiyome ritual, which transmits between two partners the Light of the Su God by the palm of the hand to different places on the body. The Light of the Su God is transmitted at the same time to the environment by way of public spaces, nature, animals, objects, food, etc. This purification by the Light of an individual and the environment conditions the advent of paradise. Okiyome is therefore the central ritual of Sukyō Mahikari. It is the followers’ main weapon to eliminate spiritual impurities they see as the cause of life’s diseases and disorders. For Mahikari, these impurities are present in the human body for three reasons: 1) the inevitable hardening process of the components of the universe, 2) the ingestion of dyes and toxic products, and 3) negative thoughts (bad sōnen). These three principles govern the adepts’ view of the world, since the three main causes of the production of impurities concern: 1) the individual’s integration into an uncontrollable universal mechanism, 2) modern society, and 3) one’s relationship to others. These three principles are easily adopted by the followers in each country and are the key to understanding Africans’ shift towards adopting this system of meaning, especially since they are articulated within the logic of witchcraft. Indeed, according to Mahikari, these spiritual impurities block the proper functioning of the body by accumulating there and thus causing diseases. Diseases are considered the result of an imbalance of the body. This view is very close to the principles of folk medicine as well as to the theory of the mechanical body, which states that the body is balanced around the circulation of moods and that diseases are caused by bad moods that must be eliminated, for example by bleeding. It applies in Africa as well as in the West. These spiritual impurities have two parallel consequences: they are responsible for more or less serious illnesses and they prevent spiritual elevation. Through okiyome, the individual can thus rise spiritually and improve his health. It is for this last benefit that the followers learn Mahikari: they seek a cure for an unexplained illness. This unexplained character of the disease is associated with witchcraft. In other words, after consulting the marabouts, the doctor and the hospital, some Africans go to the dōjōs of Mahikari, hoping to be healed. Thus, the processes of healing and of spiritual elevation are closely related. They depend on both the removal of impurities by okiyome and the adoption of a new ethic to prevent spiritual impurities from occurring again. Thus, it is

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advisable to be benevolent towards one’s neighbour, not to create conflicts, to have no bad thoughts and not to incur the wrath of others. The adoption of this new ethic is at the centre of the followers’ spiritual work. And the best way to test the quality of the sōnen, that is to say, the deep thought, is to train by means of those around you. Relationships with others are scrutinized. For example, a workout consists of smiling all day, whatever happens, to observe what happens to one’s interlocutors. Are they still angry? Do they change their behaviour? Do they become calm? This experiment is also carried out on plants. Thus, insiders have always grown plants or leafy vegetables to test the effectiveness of light and their sōnen. If the plants wither or die in contact with an initiate, it is because the person’s level of impurity is high and his or her deep thought is bad. By contrast, as long as the plant remains beautiful and thrives, everything is fine! This explains why the practice of maintaining a garden, yōkōnoen 陽光の園, is systematic in the dōjōs of Mahikari, even in arid African areas. The garden has a contemplative aim and accompanies spiritual work. The influence of Buddhist meditation and Japanese gardens can be seen here as a medium for meditation. Thus, in all places of worship the followers try to arrange gardens according to their abilities. While in some cases it is only flowers that are cultivated to adorn the altar of the Su God, in others the followers have set up vegetable gardens in the hope of achieving food self-sufficiency. In addition, the initiates train in organic farming, as fertilizers are understood to produce spiritual impurities in the body that the Light cannot entirely eliminate. Finally, the garden has an educational role in raising young people’s awareness about ecology. This global institutional network homogenizes a space in which followers feel they belong to a universal community going beyond local religious quarrels concentrated around theological debates and proselyte competitions. Membership leads, in turn, to a local process of individualization and to a commitment to one’s nation.

From Self-Awareness to the Local Creation of a Lifestyle Support for the Individualization of African Followers Augustine’s example is representative of the way in which Senegalese followers localize the symbolic logic of healing proposed by Mahikari in a process of

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individualization.23 The initiates are led to reflect on their own lives and act on them to build a lifestyle in the light of the teachings. Augustine’s illness allows her to focus on herself. Her illness becomes an event whose inner workings must be discovered. Her own illness becomes significant. Also, an analysis of oneself results from taking into account one’s personal past, translated through Mahikari’s grid of reading: “I came back (to the dōjō). And there, I had awareness. I realized that I had had abortions. Yes. Because in the family, there are people who make fetishes, witchcraft, to kill babies. The spirits took my babies.” The Teachings say: “When you stop a pregnancy, you stop a process of life. So, in the eyes of God, we killed. If a person makes this big mistake, every time she comes before God, she will have to make up for that mistake.”24 The initially sick person finds an explanation for the harm he has undergone. Its cause is of a spiritual nature related to behaviour inappropriate to the will of the Su God, rather than an infection. Correcting the behaviour and adopting a consistent lifestyle should allow him to regain his health. The disease leads individuals to conceive of their place in the universe, projecting them into a transnational community. Thus, Augustine explains her current evils as the consequences of actions carried out in the past. In addition, she discovers her place in the universe. Indeed, she finds a place in the ancestral family order, since she learns that she is carrying in her impurities produced by the bad actions of her own ancestors. Moreover, she realizes that her existence is linked to a world she did not know, that of spirits and invisible forces. Adherence to Mahikari therefore involves the followers in an expansion of their space-time. Their individuality is reconnected to an earlier past, a present and a future that put them in touch with elements that go beyond national borders. Through the experience of “manifestations of minds”, under the influence of the Light, these characters of the past are manifested through the initiates’ body to signify the meaning of their present diseases and misfortunes, anchored locally but deterritorialized. For example, in the dōjō of Dakar, a Senegalese follower told me how one day, during a session of okiyome, a samurai spoke through him: “I got up and made gestures like a samurai, even though I have never been to Japan. I didn’t even know it. I made gestures like in karate, as if I had a huge sword in my hands.”25 Individuals belong to a

23 Augustine (pseudonym, as for other followers) is a Senegalese woman living in Dakar, Muslim, 39 years old, not married. 24 Interview with the Senegalese leader of the dōjō of Dakar, 8 August 2014, Dakar. The leader is a Senegalese Muslim, around 40 years old, married. 25 Interview with Malick, a Mahikari initiate at the dōjō of Dakar, 30 July 2006, Dakar. Malick is a Senegalese 40-year-old Muslim, married, a businessman.

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deterritorialized transnational spiritual community even though they strongly territorialize Mahikari’s practices. The initiates say that they realize their body must be read as a melting pot of memory. It accumulates the consequences of any action, and none is innocuous: “The problems are due to the present time. We must try not to make mistakes and the present moment is the sum of all we have done more than what our ancestors did. And all that is the result of our life in the present moment.”26 The followers therefore discover that their body contains spiritual impurities which are the reason for their present misfortunes. The teachings of Mahikari reveal to them the means by which they can avoid generating spiritual impurities and thus polluting themselves further: [To] harmonize their vibrations with the divine vibrations, it is necessary to have the three virtues of the yokoshi (initiated): kansha (thanks and the request for forgiveness), sunao (adaptability to all the circumstances that God organizes), geza (humility of the heart) [. . .]. As soon as you enter the dōjō’s door, you’re in training, you are learning the three virtues.27

Moreover, “we must overcome the two feelings that bother us all the time even when we practice: ga (egocentrism) and manshin (pride).”28 On this basis, the follower begins self-observation and works to improve his behaviour: “I have changed a lot since I started. Before, when there was something wrong, I got upset right away. Now, I smile, I thank God and everything is in order.”29 Thus, the initiates become masters of themselves and of their behaviour and participate in some way in their own destiny by controlling their actions, thus gaining power over the course of their own lives. This work on oneself is part of a search for perfection: We should look at the good qualities in others. When someone goes beyond us, we talk about them, especially here in Senegal. They say, did you see how he walks? We criticize him. One should look at the good qualities of others and make them one’s own. If you have ten friends, you take a quality from each of them and you try to acquire them; that gives you ten new qualities.30

The path to perfection has the ultimate goal of achieving the degree of purity that will allow followers to step out of the wheel of reincarnations and become divine

26 Interview with the Senegalese leader of the dōjō of Dakar, 12 August 2014, Dakar. 27 Interview with the Senegalese leader of the dōjō of Dakar, 8 August 2014, Dakar. 28 Interview with the Senegalese leader of the dōjō of Dakar, 8 August 2014, Dakar. 29 Interview with Boubacar Diop, a follower of Mahikari at the dōjō of Dakar, 22 August 2014, Dakar. Boubacar was a Belgian man (today deceased) living in Senegal, around 50 years old, ambassador of Belgium, converted to Islam, married. 30 Interview with the Senegalese leader of the dōjō of Dakar, 8 August 2014, Dakar.

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beings. Thus, the initiates make a constant effort in order to divinize themselves. Thanks to Mahikari’s teachings and the work that followers strive to do on their own, they reinvest their bodies, become aware of their active individuality, find self-esteem and rebuild an “ego” by putting in order the constituent elements on the one hand, and selecting and integrating the best components on the other.

A “Personal Ability” upon Act on the World This effort of self-improvement would not have the same meaning if it were not associated with the transmission of the light by the palm of the hand (okiyome). Through the ceremony of initiation to the “sacred art” initiates receive a medallion, omitama, which is a link between God and Man that alone grants the power of purification. Through omitama, everything is purified: human beings, food, animals, houses, cars, nature. Collective purifications are organized to cleanse the surroundings of a city or the apartment of an initiate going through a difficult ordeal, for example. Many stories relate the “experiments” that adepts live through in the practice of their “art”, stories that are often used as objective evidence against the scepticism of their interlocutors. The initiates, by wearing this medallion and cultivating behaviour in accordance with the Teachings, thus discover a real power that differentiates them from others: “God gave us this power, this art to help others. People must think to themselves that these people are different, they are not like the others.”31 This power is used for an exclusively altruistic purpose, since the initiates have the mission to prepare humanity for the advent of the Great Purification of the twenty-first century that will be fatal to those who are not ready. Thus, their individual body is revalorized, put in order, and transcended in order to be able to become a power to help others. This power is associated with an awareness of one’s personal spirituality and a need to emancipate oneself from the institutional tutelage of religions by dispensing with any kind of clergy. Aïssatou, who belongs to the Muslim brotherhood named Tijaniyya,32 explains that the marabouts are not good, because they are intermediaries between humans and God. People entrust everything to the marabouts. They are relying on them. They are completely disempowered, while they should get closer to God.

31 Interview with the Senegalese leader of the dōjō of Dakar, 12 August 2014, Dakar. 32 Aïssatou is a Senegalese woman, 37 years old, not married. Her father has great responsibilities within the Tijaniyya brotherhood.

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Mahikari aims to teach the initiates to become independent, to take responsibility and to establish a direct link with the Su God. Also, such an initiate will say that in Mahikari, “We understand that we become our own marabout.”33 The individual takes all his strength here. He can be alone before God and has the power to act. Similarly, the practice of Mahikari gives followers the power to appropriate their own national history through the imagination of places via the prism of the teachings. During a car trip to the reforestation camp (shurenkai 修練会) in the vicinity of the city of Saint-Louis, Moussa34 became a road hog, nearly causing an accident several times. Adja explains his dangerous behaviour in terms of the intervention of the spirit world of the slave trade era: He (the driver) was disturbed by spirits who did not want us to go to Saint-Louis. The spirit world in this town is very oppressive. This is to be expected, given what happened there. Saint-Louis was a place of slavery. This was an important point for the slave trade. There are plenty of spirits of spite, lots of them. It is not a welcoming city. We feel in the atmosphere that there is something. The spirit world is very oppressive. That’s why. Whenever a yokoshi wants to go to Saint-Louis, it’s quite a problem.35

Every event has a cause and finds its place in a local historical context. The adepts can participate, thanks to their power of purification, in a repairing of local historical events in which they take full part, since they are related to the ancestors who directly experienced these events. We can say that they still live past history, their national history. Thus, they reclaim and assume the consequences of key events in African history.

Building of the Nation and the Relationship with the State Design of a Triple Nation The followers are part of a transnational community but are fully rooted in the local and commit themselves to improving the living conditions of their fellow

33 Interview with Mustapha, an initiate of the dōjō of Dakar, 10 August 2014, Dakar. Mustapha is Senegalese, around 40 years old, Muslim, married, a civil servant. 34 Moussa is Senegalese, around 30 years old, Muslim, not married, a civil servant. 35 Interview with Adja, an initiate of the dōjō of Dakar, 10 August 2016, Dakar. Adja is Senegalese, 21 years old, a schoolgirl, not married.

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citizens. Like African Pentecostalism and the Afro-Brazilian cults36 that convey an imaginary of the Nation oriented to their origins, initiates of Mahikari, being on the spot, concretize this imaginary of restoration of the Nation by indulging in criticism of the public action local, and launching a citizen action guided by the teachings. For them, the weak State abandons its citizens, even though it would have the means to contribute to the country’s development if its leaders did not monopolize public resources. Criticizing leaders’ corruption and the weakness of the State, the followers seek to address the problem on their own level, even if they say they are apolitical. First, they work towards the moralization of the State through work on themselves, enabling them to become examples for society and leaders. Thus, by appropriating and integrating the ethics and values of the Japanese religious movement for themselves, they hope to influence others to adopt healthier and more moral behaviour. This ethics boils down to three concepts: sunao 素直, kansha 感謝, geza 下座 (submission, recognition, humility). Without frenzied proselytism, without preaching, without any demonstration of strength except for the passive one of the transmission of the Light, the adepts apply these precepts to define new relationships with others. In this way, relationships within society will only be improved by way of a virtuous “snowball effect” at the level of citizens as well as leaders. Proselytism is also strongly oriented towards this audience. Criticism of the State is accompanied by a critique of its European heritage, and the followers replace the model of European development by one that combines imaginations of Asia, Africa, and Europe. This marriage between the three continents represents for the adepts the optimal road to development. Asia, and in particular Japan, is seen as having managed to reconcile both modernity and spirituality, whereas Europeans are said to have given up spirituality for a life of material goods, and Africans are thought to have abandoned the material in favour of fetishes.37

Rehabilitation of the National Environment The followers participate in the cleansing of the public space. Through these activities they implement a development model based on selected qualities of the

36 Capone and Argyriadis, “Adaptations et réappropriations dans la religion des orisha”, pp. 9–44. 37 This logic was also that of Ivorian prophets, notably the prophet Harris, who, a century ago, passed through numerous villages in order to burn the fetishes and convert the populations. See J.P. Dozon, La cause des prophètes: Politique et religion en Afrique contemporaine, suivi de La leçon des prophètes par Marc Augé, Paris: Seuil, 1995.

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three continents. Spiritual impurities that attract sorcerers also attract vengeful spirits and discontented ancestors at crossroads, which could cause accidents. The followers purify public spaces with the Light in order to chase away spirits. But also, they physically clean the streets of waste in order to palliate the failures of the State regarding the sanitation of its spaces and collective resources. In the same vein, the followers engage in reforestation in order to protect and restore the environment. In Senegal, Mahikari operates on the same level as NGOs, carrying out reforestation in the Great Pan-African project of the Great Green Wall. In addition to their day-to-day activities, they occasionally participate in larger-scale undertakings called shurenkai-gatherings of many young people working for the common good. Mahikari specializes in environmental protection work. The growth of environmental awareness in Europe since the 1990s is reflected in Africa, and the globalization of Mahikari’s teachings is leading to a homogenization of practices. In the beginning, Mahikari’s followers engaged in amateur reforestation, saying they had identified a village or neighbourhood that they felt needed greenery. The youngsters deployed to plant trees at locations chosen according to their own criteria during the day with the idea that such planting could only be beneficial. But at night, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood came to uproot the plants, annihilating the work provided by the young people. Today, however, Mahikari is recognized as an official actor in the construction of the Great Green Wall, a major pan-African project to combat desertification, and receives awards of excellence from African heads of state. In the same concern to rehabilitate the local natural environment, the followers of the Dakar dōjō were entrusted by the city with a parcel of land in the Hann forest park, located about five kilometres north of the city centre: Seeing the activity of the young people, the director said, my goodness, I would like to give you a plot; it is the botanical square, and you will take care of it. This is Sukyō Mahikari, you will make it your business and I would like the botanical square to be revived, because it has existed throughout time and now it has fallen into neglect. There are labels with the scientific names of the trees to be placed at the foot of each tree and we will put the trees back in place. It was agreed upon and the result corresponded exactly to what was proposed.38

This is the third year in a row that Mahikari followers have been working every month on the development of this plot, and the results are remarkable: So, at first, the garden was abandoned; really, it had fallen completely. [. . .] And then, the park became green. [. . .] Even if it is not as beautiful as a park in Europe, it is quite different from Dakar. Then we worked on the greenery, we renewed the tags, and

38 Interview with the leader of Mahikari’s dōjō of Dakar, 14 July 2015, Dakar.

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afterwards we re-painted all that needed to be painted. We got rid of piles of garbage. We tidied up, and then the botanical square had become a dense forest. We pruned. We removed everything. Now it is well pruned and there will be a closely followed maintenance program.39

Thus, Mahikari allows humans to become aware of their power over nature and the development of their own environment or even their country. Other reforestation activities include the replanting of trees in nature reserves. For example, Mahikari has reached an agreement with the director of Gumble Nature Park, which buys the cuttings that the adherents replant. But the idea is even more ambitious, since the leader involves the villagers in these activities in order to teach them notions of conservation. Thus, when the guardianship disappears, the inhabitants will become autonomous masters of nature: “The goal is to sensitize the villagers to reforestation. They participate now. They learn and then we let them do it alone. The goal is to take charge of their environment. Mahikari gives the impetus. It’s a motor, in a way. Then they must be able to fend for themselves.” Thus, Mahikari, as an actor for development, sensitizes and trains young adults in the country to protect and restore nature as a contribution to local development. This programme aims to revitalize Africa in the eyes of young people, in order to make them lose the desire to migrate. Their investment in the environment and local development is a way to help anchor local insiders.

Conclusion The ethnography of Mahikari allows us to think of the process of transnationalization as containing a simultaneous double movement: a deterritorialization and a reterritorialization. In other words, the initiates belong to a transnational spiritual community controlled by the pyramidal structure of the Organization. The practices and liturgies are the same all over the world, and regular transnational spiritual meetings (monthly ceremonies of thanks to Su God, the birthday of the founder, etc.) connect African adherents with the whole world, something that is reinforced by a team of missionaries circulating in local groups to homogenize the practices. This institutional arrangement leads to the creation of a homogeneous spiritual space between Africa and Asia. At the same time, the transnational spiritual experience is conditioned by the fact that, for local initiates to adhere, the “reading grid” must be meaningful to them. What we call “reading grid” is the framework of the spiritual 39 Interview with the leader of the dōjō of Dakar, 6 May 2001, Dakar.

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teachings of Mahikari shared by each initiate. In other words, it is the simplest form of the system of thought of Mahikari, a diffuse form so light that it can be applied in all cultural contexts and can lead to an understanding of both global and local situations. This transnational grid has a dual dynamic. First, it enables an analysis of Senegalese concerns both at the level of disease and at that of the need to individualize in a society where Senegalese experience permanent pressure (from their family, entourage, and religious authorities). The initiates then find in Mahikari a force, a power, allowing them to free themselves from their spiritual chains, or at least to take a step back. As we have seen, Mahikari speaks in particular to public servants and office-holders. Then, the Mahikari “reading grid” brings meaning to the experience of local initiates while operating an extension of their usual space-time by connecting them to both ancestors from African worlds and aspects from other nations, often from distant ages. The individual dimension is then widened between a past, a present, and a future transcending the temporal limits of life on this earth, and also transcending national borders. The appropriation of Mahikari’s system of meaning in Africa gives rise to the creation of a new development model that challenges the old European model and supports active participation in the development of African countries. This involves building individuals’ capabilities by protecting them from witchcraft and social ills that are experienced as obstacles to development, and by training them to reconcile development and spirituality, a capability which they imagine to be the secret of power of Asia. Thus, Mahikari plunges the initiates into a space between Africa and Asia in which their existential, social, political, and environmental stakes have become significant thanks to the same system of meaning as one finds in Japan.

Nikolas Broy

14 American Dao and Global Interactions: Transnational Religious Networks in an English-Speaking Yiguandao Congregation in Urban California In the year 2007 there is still a vast American wilderness that extends from the borders of California deep into the American interior, the Midwest and plains states. It is a wilderness of spiritual opportunity, a wilderness where a voice is proclaiming a better way, a different way, an enlightened way. It is the voice of the I-Kuan Tao, which until two years ago was virtually unheard here. [. . .] We have learned that just as the pioneers of the western frontier struggled and persevered, we too must struggle and persevere. We must improve our own practice, giving up bad habits, and embracing proper conduct so that our example shines before others. [. . .] We have learned that just as the original colonists, we must be satisfied with small beginnings that grow into large results and blessings. An enormous oak tree starts its life as a tiny acorn.1

This statement is from the pen of Bill,2 an approximately sixty-year-old Taijiquan 太極拳 instructor, spiritual seeker, and practitioner of the Taiwanese religious movement Yiguandao 一貫道. Having established itself as an independent religious organization in the early twentieth century and exhibiting an innovative synthesis of Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist teachings as well as sectarian traditions and popular religious influences, Yiguandao is at present one of the fastest growing religious movements in Asia and among Chinese migrants worldwide.3 Bill, who was raised as a Roman Catholic and is based in the suburbs of Indianapolis, had a profound interest in the spiritual and bodily practices

1 “Two Years in Indiana, by Bill Bunting”, http://greattao.org/english/2008-01.htm (accessed 15 November 2018). 2 Throughout the paper, I chose to identify some Yiguandao activists by their real names, as they appear in both publicly accessible primary sources (websites and journal articles) and in their own essays and blogs. Accordingly, there is no reason to conceal their identities by using pseudonyms. 3 D.K. Jordan and D.L. Overmyer, The Flying Phoenix: Aspects of Chinese Sectarianism in Taiwan, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 216–266; Y. Lu, The Transformation of Yiguan Dao in Taiwan: Adapting to a Changing Religious Economy, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008; S. Billioud, Reclaiming the Wilderness: Contemporary Dynamics of the Yiguandao, submitted to Oxford University Press, forthcoming. On the global spread of Yiguandao, see N. Broy, J. Reinke, and P. Clart, “Migrating Buddhas and Global Confucianism: The Transnational Space Making of Taiwanese Religious Organizations”, Working Paper Series des SFB 1199 an der Universität Leipzig (2017) 4, pp. 1–36, at 20–24. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-014

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of “Asian philosophies” for years until he came across a Daoist-related website run by an activist belonging to an Yiguandao temple in Los Angeles County, California. Then, in 2004, he became a member of the congregation. The quotation epitomises not only his individual religious fervour and missionary zeal, but also reflects a much deeper engagement with the Yiguandao convention of perceiving proselytization as “opening the wilderness” (kaihuang 開荒) and making land arable. While most studies on Chinese religions overseas draw attention to how they predominantly cater to the diaspora communities and serve to establish and maintain ties between migrants and those who stay behind,4 this chapter analyses an English-speaking congregation of Yiguandao – usually translated as the “Way of Pervading Unity” or the “Dao that Pervades Everything” – and their endeavour to transcend traditional patterns of interaction and networking through the use of computer-mediated communication.5 Drawing on ethnographic data from my fieldwork conducted in Los Angeles and San Francisco in February and March 2018, published Yiguandao materials, and internet resources, this chapter addresses the spatial configurations of this group in and beyond urban California. It seeks to understand how members of this group shape, transform, and contest spaces of religious interaction. In particular, it investigates how the frequent use of internet resources helps to foster new geographies of circulation that extend beyond the usually local outreach of most Yiguandao congregations in America. Section 1 sketches Yiguandao’s development in the United States, and in Los Angeles in particular, in order to establish some background information. With a few exceptions, Yiguandao’s endeavour in the US has not yet been the object of detailed research.6 Here, I also outline the history of the Los Angeles temple that belongs to Jichu Zhongshu 基礎忠恕

4 Ibid., pp. 7–9. 5 I shall use “Chinese” in a broad sense to refer to individuals and communities tracing their origins back to Chinese ancestry and sharing Chinese cultural notions and practices, such as the Chinese language. Instead of indicating national identities of individual members of these communities, I will use “Taiwanese” or “PRC/Mainland Chinese” to distinguish them. 6 E.A. Irons, “Tian Dao: The Net of Ideology in a Chinese Religion”, PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, University of California, Berkeley, 2000; Pan C., “Attaining the Dao: An Analysis of the Conversion of Adherents of Yiguan Dao”, PhD thesis, Trinity International University, 2009; Yang H. 楊弘任, “Yiguandao Luoshanji yingyu daochang de wenhua kuajie chutan 一貫道洛杉磯英語道場的文化跨界初探” [A First Look at the Transcultural Activities of an English-speaking Yiguandao Community in Los Angeles], Conference Paper of Yiguandao quanqiu chuanbo ji qi yingxiang guoji xueshu yantaohui 「一貫道全球傳播及其影響」國際學 術研討會 [International Conference “The Global Spread of Yiguandao and its Significance”], D2, 2017, pp. 1–29.

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(“Foundation, Loyalty and Reciprocity”), which is one of the largest and most successful Yiguandao divisions. Section 3 introduces the object of this case study, a group of English-speaking Yiguandao practitioners that I name the “Tao Talks” group – a name chosen from their weekly online instalment. Section 4 analyses how the frequent use of computer-mediated communication enables the group to transcend regional, religious, and cultural boundaries by reaching out to sympathizers of “Asian philosophies” on an almost global scale. It explores how the group’s catering to a pool of spiritual seekers embedded in a westernized version of Chinese Daoist philosophies have helped to transcend traditional modes of proselytization in Yiguandao. Finally, Section 5 argues that this model of religious interaction contributes to crossing conventional cultural, linguistic, and spatial boundaries and thereby open new geographies of circulation for Yiguandao teachings and practices.

Yiguandao’s Mission to the City of Angels While the earliest missionary endeavours reaching beyond the Chinese mainland and Taiwan date back to the late 1940s and were directed towards other East and Southeast Asian countries,7 Yiguandao’s earliest engagements in the United States commenced during the late 1960s and early 1970s in the Chinatowns of New York and Boston as well as in San Francisco.8 Missionary activities gained momentum particularly in the 1980s, responding to the implementation of new immigration policies for highly educated Asians during the 1970s, which led to increasing numbers of Taiwanese business and education migrants arriving in North America.9 In addition, this development reflected the economic and political circumstances in Taiwan, which was a predominantly agricultural society until rapid industrialization, urbanization, and a boost in general education gathered speed in the early 1970s.10 Accordingly, most Yiguandao practitioners at that time were still primarily concerned with making a living and had few resources for travel or migration. Furthermore, Taiwan’s emigration policy and restrictions imposed on migrants to many countries (such as the United States, 7 Mu Yu 慕禹, Yiguandao gaiyao 一貫道概要 [An Outline of Yiguandao], Tainan: Tianju shuju, 2002, pp. 134–152, 156–157, 172, 184. 8 Ibid., pp. 201–206. 9 C. Chen, Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, pp. 19–23. 10 P. Clart, “Sects, Cults, and Popular Religion: Aspects of Religious Change in Post-War Taiwan”, British Columbia Asian Review 9 (1995/1996), pp. 120–163, 129.

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Australia, and Canada) were another factor in restraining outmigration and missionary activities.11 In contemporary America, Yiguandao congregations can be found in most places with a fair number of Chinese, ranging from New York, Boston, and Miami to Houston, Dallas, and Honolulu. Regarding the number of followers, estimates vary between 100,000 and 200,000 practitioners, and there were more than three-hundred temples and private shrines by the early 2000s.12 However, due to the segmentary structure of Yiguandao and the high degree of fluidity in terms of actual participation as well as remigration, it is difficult to give exact numbers. Based on data provided by my informants as well as on published Yiguandao materials,13 there currently appear to be at least twelve divisions active in Los Angeles. Unlike the early activities in America’s traditional Chinatowns in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Los Angeles temples are located in a part of the San Gabriel Valley that was described by Li Wei as the LA “ethnoburb”, namely – and among others – the cities of Monterey Park, Alhambra, Baldwin Park, Temple City, and El Monte.14 According to Li, the ethnoburb differs from older Chinatowns, which were ethnic enclaves located in the densely populated city centres, in that they are situated in suburban areas where Chinese do not represent the majority anymore and Chinese businesses extend beyond the traditional ethnic economy, such as running Chinese restaurants and supermarkets.15 Even though some of them, such as the city of El Monte, have a lower percentage of Chinese than adjunct cities, it had the highest number of Chinese-owned warehouses and distribution centres in the entire region in 2001.16 Hence, it is no wonder that many – but not most – practitioners and activists of the temple’s Chinese congregation live or work in the ethnoburb. Because of Yiguandao’s compartmental structure and the favouring of vertical networks within the branches instead of cross-branch interaction, the situation in Southern California presents a very complex picture. While there is a limited degree of cooperation among most divisions – most of which are headquartered in Taiwan, whereas others hail from Hong Kong and Korea –

11 Song G. 宋光宇, Tiandao chuandeng: Yiguandao yu xiandai shehui 天道傳燈: 一貫道與現代 社會 [The Heavenly Way Transmits the Light: Yiguandao and Modern Society], Banqiao: Sanyang, 1996, pp. 429–432. 12 Mu Yu 慕禹, Yiguandao gaiyao 一貫道概要, p. 209. 13 Ibid., pp. 204–208. 14 W. Li, Ethnoburb: The New Ethnic Community in Urban America, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009. 15 Ibid., pp. 42–49. 16 Ibid., p. 115.

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it is restricted primarily to large events (such as charities, temple anniversaries, etc.). In terms of proselytization and day-to-day business, however, congregations belonging to one branch do not interfere with others. Further complicating the picture, even within one branch single congregations retain regular relationships with their respective head temples in Taiwan, but less so with fellow branch communities that adhere to another head temple. This leads to the slightly ironic situation that, for instance, Jichu Zhongshu’s Los Angeles and San Francisco headquarters – which are geographically only 572 km away from each other – are organizationally and religiously closer to their respective head temples in Taiwan, almost eleven thousand km away.17 This fairly odd feature of how networks are being ordered in Yiguandao is the result of the concept of the “golden thread” (jinxian 金線), which channels the transmission of religious expertise and authority into vertically arranged networks.18 These ties are imagined as threads that run from every individual of one particular congregation through her or his “initiation master” (dianchuanshi 點傳師) to the current branch leader (designated “senior”, qianren 前人, or in some cases also “venerable transmitting master”, laodianchuanshi 老點傳師), the founder of the branch (“venerable senior”, laoqianren 老前人), and eventually to the original patriarchs Zhang Tianran 張天 然 (1889–1947) and Sun Huiming 孫慧明 (1895–1975).19 In this chapter, I will focus on one particular group of activists belonging to Jichu Zhongshu.20 Headquartered in Taoyuan County in north-western Taiwan, it is one of Yiguandao’s largest branches and runs an impressive transnational network of temples and congregations. Its Los Angeles community goes back to the activities of “transmitting master” Yang Bizhen 楊碧珍 (1938–2011) who migrated from Taiwan during the late 1980s. Its headquarters, Quanzhen daoyuan 全真道院, was originally established in Baldwin Park in May 1989 and finally relocated in 1994 to its current position on Lower Azusa Road in El Monte – both of which are located in the aforementioned “ethnoburb”, about 25km east of downtown Los Angeles.21 In the early 1990s, Yang’s husband, Dr. Joseph 17 For similar observations in Canada, see P. Clart, “Opening the Wilderness for the Way of Heaven: A Chinese New Religion in the Greater Vancouver Area”, Journal of Chinese Religions 28 (2000), pp. 127–144, at 133. 18 Lu, The Transformation of Yiguan Dao in Taiwan, pp. 55–60. 19 See ibid., p. 121. and an Yiguandao monograph on the topic: Yang Mingzhang 楊明章, Jinxian yu xiudao 金線與修道 [The Golden Thread and Cultivating the Dao], Banqiao: Zhengyi shanshu chubanshe, 2003. 20 If not designated otherwise, data are derived from my fieldwork observations, informal conversations with practitioners, and interviews. 21 Chen Zhengfu 陳正夫, Chengxian qihou: Yiguandao maixiang shijie de hongyuan 承先啟後: 一 貫道邁向世界的宏願 [Inherit the Past and Usher in the Future: The Great Vow of Yiguandao

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Chen (Chen Zhengfu 陳正夫, b. 1939), joined the team and helped to consolidate the community. Due to his effort and engagement, Quanzhen temple rose to transregional and even global significance, as it became the site of the “World I–Kuan Tao Headquarters” (official abbreviation is WITH, Ch. Yiguandao shijie zonghui 一貫道世界總會), founded in 1996, and the “Great Tao Foundation of America” (Meiguo Yiguandao zonghui 美國一貫道總會), established in 2006.22 Both institutions are representational bodies that serve to facilitate communication with government officials, cultural agencies, and other religious organizations. Accordingly, California and particularly this temple serve as Jichu Zhongshu’s hub in its global expansion.23

Yiguandao and the “Tao Pop Culture”: The Tao Talks with Derek Lin Most Yiguandao engagements in the Los Angeles area – and in other countries, for that matter – are not only very much local in nature insofar they target practitioners and sympathizers based in this particular region. Moreover, they also cater primarily to the Chinese communities. Consequently, it is no wonder that most Yiguandao congregations appear to be predominantly Chinese. And even some of their English-speaking groups are still dominated by second-plus generation Chinese. On the other hand, the group of activists that will be analysed in the following pages is not only primarily non-Chinese, but also their online and offline engagements enable them to transcend conventional boundaries of circulation and interaction. The “Tao Talks study group” – as I am referring to them by the name of their weekly online instalment – came into existence about twenty years ago and is intimately related to the activities of the charismatic Yiguandao lecturer, translator, and activist Derek Lin. Born in 1960s Taiwan where he was exposed to American culture already back in his childhood days,24 he moved with his family to the

towards the World], Taipei: Zhengyi shanshu chubanshe, 2015, pp. 17–15, 33–34. See also the temple websites: http://www.greattao.org/html.html and http://truetao.org/tao/ (accessed 2 February 2018). 22 Ibid., pp. 51–58, 172–175. See also the official websites http://www.with.org/ and http:// www.taousa.org/ (accessed 17 November 2018). 23 Ibid., p. 39. 24 Unless otherwise noted, the information come from my interview with Derek at Quanzhen temple, 25 February 2018.

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United States in the 1980s. While his parents had been involved in the activities of Quanzhen temple for many years already, he only began to participate regularly when their health began to decline and he wanted to spend more time with them – thus epitomizing the characteristic Chinese impetus to support and care for one’s parents, encapsulated in the Confucian value of “filial piety”. Derek considers himself “unconventional”, which may explain why he – even though a Yiguandao lecturer (jiangshi 講師) and thus a fairly well-established religious specialist in the religious hierarchy – is not regularly appointed to lecture for the Chinese-speaking community as well. Because of his apparent success in attracting non-Chinese followers, they seem to let him do his own thing. Yet, he is more than a maverick, as he and his Taiwanese-born wife publish the bimonthly temple bulletin Quanzhen tongxun 全真通訊, which serves as the official community newsletter and reaches out to both Chinese and English-speaking members.25 Founded in the late 1990s, it celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2018. Derek has translated various Yiguandao materials into English, among them introductions to teachings, basic principles, and regulations for Dao cultivators.26 In addition, he is widely known as an “award-winning, bestselling author in the Tao genre” (self-description from his website Taoism.net). He is appreciated not only for his translation of the Daoist classic Daodejing 道德經 (Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published in 2006), but he also authored books that address Dao-related concepts and values in a more practical manner, namely The Tao of Daily Life (published in 2007), The Tao of Success (2010), The Tao of Joy Every Day (2011), and The Tao of Happiness (2015). While arguably not especially reliable because of the possibility of fake commentaries, the customer reviews on his Amazon.com website indicate that most readers seem to hold his work in high esteem: thus, as of 16 November 2018 his translation of the Daodejing generated 4.7 stars out of 5 (from overall 125 reviews), while The Tao of Daily Life even earned 4.8 stars (from overall 163 reviews). In addition, all of his five books are listed among the top 100 of Amazon’s best sellers in the category of “Taoism” and “Tao Te Ching”, his translation even ranks as number 31.27 With overall more than 1,000 hits for “Taoism” and 480 for “Tao Te Ching” on Amazon, his publications rank among the more popular ones. Even though these numbers and online

25 The temple’s online archive provides access to the journal back to October 2005, see http://greattao.org/monthly/index.htm, 20 November 2018. 26 See, for instance, some of the essays collected on “The Great Tao Foundation of America” websites (http://greattao.org/html.html, as well as http://truetao.org/tao/ [accessed 19 November 2018]). 27 See https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Books-Tao-Te-Ching/zgbs/books/297525/ref= zg_bs_pg_2?_encoding=UTF8&pg=2 (accessed 16 November 2018).

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ratings do not necessarily translate into offline reality, they nevertheless hint at the popularity of Derek’s work among Daoism-interested people. Besides being a recognized author in the field of Daoism-related writings, Derek’s commitment to the Yiguandao community is also particularly felt in the realm of websites and online activities. Already in 1998, he launched the websites TrueTao.org and Taoism.net, where he posts anything from small notes, didactic stories, and essays to translations and information about his English Dao class. According to internal material, in the mid-2000s the site had approximately two-thousand hits per day.28 While I was not able to test these claims, average numbers of visitors on Taiwanese Yiguandao websites (that openly display these numbers) suggest that the site must have been quite popular: for instance, the primary websites of other divisions, such as Baoguang Jiande 寶光 建德 and Andong 安東 counted between 1,300 and 1,400 as well as 1,400 and 1,500 hits per day in early November 2018.29 Note that these websites are the principal references for followers worldwide, which is why the data traffic of TrueTao.org appears somewhat out of the ordinary. In addition to websites, around the same period Derek began to run regular English-language classes for the temple youth that a couple of years ago have been translated into an off- and online event entitled “Tao Talks with Derek Lin”, which is scheduled on Sundays from 10:30 to 12:30 a.m. (Pacific Standard Time). The sessions are held at Quanzhen temple but simultaneously broadcast online using the webinar software. After each class, the session is uploaded to a YouTube channel, which was created in 2014 and as of 25 January 2019 had 1,280 followers and 2,280 followers as of 27 April 2020.30 Since it had only 747 followers in early February 2018, it appears to grow steadily. Finally, Derek is also involved in the “Tea House forum”, which advertises itself as a “[c]ommunity to converse about the Tao in harmony and mutual respect.”31 It is a fairly open platform to discuss matters related to Eastern spirituality, such as how to apply the teachings of the Daodejing in daily life, enquiries by newcomers who feel lost in the huge market of Dao philosophies, and discussions about Dao and environmentalism, but also very practical enquiries, such as where to obtain certain books or tips for a healthy relationship. In addition,

28 JCZZ 11 (2006) 215, pp. 30–31. The abbreviation refers to Jichu Zhongshu’s mouthpiece Jichu zazhi 基礎雜誌 [Foundation Monthly Bulletin], a monthly bulletin published by the Taoyuan headquarters since 1989. 29 See the websites http://www.bgjd.org.tw/ and http://www.andong.org.tw/index.php. 30 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsPVNGGfoy7_vqhi_lT9eVA (accessed 25 January 2019). 31 https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/teahouse/ (accessed 9 November 2018).

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there are also threads related to physical regimens, such as Taijiquan and Qigong 氣功, but also to meditation and the occult Book of Changes (Yijing 易 經). Having been launched in 2012, the forum had 908 members (including me) as of 12 November 2018. Judging from a cursory look at data traffic (number of postings and views), however, the forum’s most vibrant period appears to have been years ago. For instance, besides me, only four other new participants registered in 2018 and all of them have not shown any activities since their registration in January or February. While it is reasonable to assume that there are many lurkers among the 908 members of the forum – i.e. people who observe online activities without actively participating in them – most threads started in 2018 only generated low numbers of hits, ranging from 3 to 73. On the other hand, most of the threads that reached up to more than 3,000 hits did so over a period of several years. Derek’s work – both his books and his online enterprises – serves as a bridge between Jichu Zhongshu’s Los Angeles community and the apparently large pool of “seekers” in the field of “Eastern spirituality” in the United States.32 Thus, the 1960s counterculture and the New Age movement with their accentuation of values such as naturalness, holism, tranquillity, and environmental concerns have helped to create what David Palmer and Elijah Siegler have termed a “Tao Pop culture”33: Centred on teachings and practices derived from the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi 莊子 (often transliterated as “Chuang-Tzu”), and other works, this culture has established Daoist vocabulary and concepts, such as qi 氣, Yin and Yang, or Tao/Dao in the American religious landscape. Because Daoism (and what was conceived to be Daoism) has often been understood in opposition to the dominant church-style of religion and rendered as free and unrestrained, Daoist-related teachings have spread particularly in New Age circles.34 The prominence of the Daodejing in these circles is not at all coincidental, as it is the second most translated book in the world after the Bible and an important source of inspiration in the New Age scene.35 Siegler assumes that there exist roughly between 10,000 and 32 On America’s “spiritual marketplace”, see W.C. Roof, Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. 33 D.A. Palmer and E. Siegler, Dream Trippers: Global Daoism and the Predicament of Modern Spirituality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017, pp. 16–17. 34 R. Madsen and E.T. Siegler, “The Globalization of Chinese Religions and Traditions”, in: D.A. Palmer, G.L. Shive, and P.L. Wickeri (eds.), Chinese Religious Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 227–240, at 237–239; Palmer and Siegler, Dream Trippers, pp. 9, 15–17, 64–68. 35 E.T. Siegler, “The Dao of America: The History and Practice of American Daoism”, PhD thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2003, pp. 314–317; Palmer and Siegler, Dream Trippers, pp. 15–17.

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30,000 self-identified American Daoists,36 but the number of people who communicate and practise Daoism-related subjects without being affiliated to a Daoist organization may be much higher. Most of these people became acquainted with Daoism during a high school or college class or were lent a book by a friend, most often the Daodejing.37 The other important starter is Benjamin Hoff’s popular The Tao of Pooh (first published in 1982), which employs the fictional hero Winnie the Pooh to convey Dao-related teachings to a larger audience. Still today, it is one of the best-selling Daoism-related books on Amazon.38 By being familiar with both “orthodox” Yiguandao teachings and practices that highlight individual moral cultivation, persistence, and hard work based on a relatively strict conduct of life on the one hand, and the American “Tao pop culture” that stresses individuality, nonchalance, and a “just go with the flow” mentality on the other, Derek serves as a cultural mediator who brokers between the two circles of interaction.39 His message appeals to a considerable cohort of Western sympathizers, because he portrays Yiguandao as the form of spiritual and moral self-improvement that many seekers are apparently looking for. Here, prior knowledge of or longing for authentic “Asian spiritualties” appears to have set the stage for Derek’s success. Similar observations have been made among other Yiguandao groups in Paris and London, where most non-Chinese practitioners found their way to Yiguandao through earlier engagements with Daoist philosophy (such as the Zhuangzi), East Asian healing practices (such as Japanese Reiki 霊気), or Buddhist meditation.40 However, unlike these other examples it appears that the Tao Talks group is predominantly if not almost exclusively non-Chinese in 36 E.T. Siegler, “Chinese Traditions in Euro-American Society”, in: J. Miller (ed.), Chinese Religions in Contemporary Societies, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006, pp. 257–280, at 277. 37 Siegler, “The Dao of America”, pp. 314–317. 38 Ibid., pp. 227–228, 265–269. 39 See N.C. Schubert, “‘Gatekeeper’ und ‘Broker’ als Schnittstellen zwischen religiösen Organisationen”, in: A.-K. Nagel (ed.), Diesseits der Parallelgesellschaft: Neuere Studien zu religiösen Migrantengemeinden in Deutschland, Bielefeld: transcript, 2012, pp. 207–240, 212, 216; A. Dietze, “Cultural Brokers and Mediators”, in: M. Middell (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Transregional Studies, London: Routledge, 2018, pp. 494–502. 40 S. Billioud, “De Taïwan à Maison-Alfort, réflexions sur la globalisation du Yiguandao”, La Religion des Chinois en France, Colloque international, Paris, 18 May 2016, https://www.gsrlcnrs.fr/colloque-18-20-mai-2016/ (accessed 29 January 2019); Yang H. 楊弘任, “Zongshe yu zhuanyi: Yiguandao zai Yingguo de xingdongzhe wangluo fenxi 綜攝與轉譯：一貫道在英國的 行動者網絡分析” [Syncretism and Conversion: An Actor-Network-Analysis of Yiguandao in England], in: Huang Y.黃應貴 (ed.), Richang shenghuo zhong de dangdai zongjiao 日常生活中 的當代宗教 [Contemporary Religion in Everyday Life], Taipei: Qunxue chubanshe, 2015, pp. 235–274, at 269.

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terms of its composition. Thus, with a few exceptions, all the Tao Talks people I spoke to or whom I read about in Yiguandao materials do not have a Chinese familial background. Derek’s, his collaborators’, and the listeners’ inclination towards Dao-related topics is also mirrored in the Tao Talks series, which predominantly focuses on Daoist topics. Usually, Bill – who was mentioned briefly above and whom I will discuss below – begins the session by discussing in a fairly practical way how to apply the Dao in one’s daily life. Half an hour later, another online participant – usually it will be Ed (see below) – adds the “message of the week”. Then, Derek will join in to discuss at length one chapter of the Daodejing for about one hour. Compared to Taiwanese classes about this and other traditional Chinese scriptures, the discussion is fairly lengthy, which is most probably due to the cultural gap, as most Taiwanese Dao cultivators are quite familiar with the text already from their primary or secondary socialization. Before and after the class, there will be basic ritual gestures, such as bowing three times towards the main altar of Quanzhen temple. This is perfectly in line with similar Yiguandao events in Taiwan and elsewhere. After the class is finished, each lecture is uploaded to the YouTube channel. For the future, Derek is also preparing translations of the Scripture of Clarity and Quiescence (Qingjingjing 清靜經) and the Platform Sutra (Liuzu tanjing 六祖壇經) – both of which are popular Daoist and Chan/Zen Buddhist texts. The group’s focus on Daoist contents constitutes a fascinating difference to the Chinese-language classes provided at Quanzhen temple. Thus, judging from topics depicted in the bimonthly newsletter, the Chinese community prefers to discuss Confucian classics and Buddhist texts: for instance, in 2018 the community discussed The Great Learning (Daxue 大學), The Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸), The Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing 孝經), and the Analects (Lunyu 論語), but also the aforementioned Buddhist Platform Sutra. There are, however, no Daoist texts listed. This separation in terms of what is discussed in the classes is also mirrored on the social level. Thus, the “offline” participants of Tao Talks usually remain predominantly among themselves. Even during the communal vegetarian lunch, which is served right after the collective ritual at noon, English-speakers would usually group together. Yet, several rather advanced non-Chinese cultivators also join larger events of the entire congregation, such as Chinese New Year celebrations.

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From Lurking to Commitment: Networks and Interactions Derek’s various online enterprises serve an important function for the group, as they help to condense vague interest and online lurking into commitment and interaction – both online and offline. Thus, all the people I spoke to or whom I read about on Derek’s and other websites or in Jichu Zhongshu’s mouthpiece bulletin were first acquainted with Derek and the temple through his online services. In addition, because computer-based interaction is not restricted to specific locales and enables sympathizers to participate in the class and the forums from basically all over the globe, it makes it possible for Derek and his peers to establish a transregional and even transnational network of likeminded people. Judging from what I experienced at the temple and what I learned from Derek, most participants of the Tao Talks are not located in the greater Los Angeles area. For instance, on the two occasions when I attended the class, less than ten people would show up in person. However, according to Derek, there are usually “thirty plus connections” in the webinar, which results in approximately fifty listeners every Sunday, because some connections have more than one listener. According to Derek, there are participants across the United States, but also in Canada, South America, and in Europe. Some of them have turned from interested sympathizers into committed Dao practitioners, and a couple of them have even set up their own congregations and domestic shrines. For instance, there are English-speaking chapters in Indianapolis and Seattle, all of which go back to initial contact made by Dao-interested seekers with Derek’s online enterprises.41 In addition, there are even occasional visitors from other countries, such as a young man from the Netherlands, who had been a fervent listener to Derek’s class and was glad to take the opportunity to visit the temple in person in 2012.42 Computer-mediated communication and the involvement of new media is particularly strong in Derek’s English-speaking congregation. Other Yiguandao groups, such as the fellow Jichu Zhongshu temple Zhongshu daoyuan 忠恕道院 in San Francisco, also imitate Derek’s model by providing a similar web-based programme.43 Likewise, other Asian new religious movements in the United States,

41 See JCZZ 11 (2005) 203, pp. 24–28; 7 (2017) 343, pp. 40–43; 10 (2017) 346, pp. 20–25; 11 (2017) 347, pp. 18–25; 12 (2017) 348, pp. 14–25. 42 “Temple Visit in Los Angeles”, https://taoism.net/ikuantao/templevisit.htm (accessed 5 November 2018). 43 Informal conversation at the temple, 10 March 2018.

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such as Vietnamese Đạo Cao Đài 道高臺 – commonly known as Caodaism – also invest in online engagements, and Californian activists have been equally successful in generating “internet converts”.44 While the extent of online participation is apparently more significant than its offline counterpart, most committed participants have at least once taken a journey to attend the meeting in person. For instance, during my first visit there was a young man of Latin American origin in his early thirties who came all the way from San Diego (approximately 200 km further south) in order to join the class that he had listened to online for quite a while. Upon his first encounter with Derek and the entire atmosphere of the temple, he almost immediately went through the initiation procedure and formally became a member of Yiguandao. This pattern is mirrored in the experiences of most other members of the Tao Talks group, who usually participated in the online meetings for months or even years before finally coming to the temple in person and joining the community. While most regular participants (both online and offline) at one point in their Dao-related career chose to be initiated into Jichu Zhongshu and to become full-fledged members of the group, some prefer to stay unattached even after participating in the classes for years. One of these was a man in his late fifties, whom I encountered twice during my fieldwork: having been born in Honduras, he became acquainted with Daoism when he studied in Paris (he was a student of the well-known professor Kristofer Schipper, one of the leading scholars in Daoism), and after he moved to Los Angeles about twenty years ago, he has regularly participated in the Tao Talks, either in person or online. Yet he prefers not to be formally initiated, as he considers himself too much a maverick to become an official member of this congregation. Despite the significance of Derek’s activism, the Tao Talks series is not a “one-man show”, but there are several collaborators, some of whom live far away and cannot attend the class in person. Yet all participate online on a regular basis and several are actively involved in teaching. One of them is Bill, who began training in martial arts (including Okinawa Karate and several Chinese martial arts) in 1971.45 Having shared a profound interest in the spiritual

44 J. Hoskins, The Divine Eye and the Diaspora: Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism, Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015, pp. 197–208. 45 If not noted otherwise, this section draws on the following articles and essays from the website of Bill’s Taijiquan school: “Press Release: Tao Practitioners Dedicate First Ever Authentic I-Kuan Tao Shrine in Indiana”, http://indianataichi.com/press.htm (accessed 6 November 2018); “Taoists will gather to dedicate shrine in Carmel”, by J.J. Shaughnessy, originally published in the “faith and values” section of the local newspaper Indianapolis Star, http://indianataichi.com/indystar. htm (accessed 6 November 2018); and Bill’s own account “On Opening the Shrine”, http://indian

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aspects of East Asian martial arts for years, Bill finally made his way to Derek’s websites after a long period of seeking. One year after his initiation into Yiguandao, he chose to open a household shrine on his own. Today, he also runs a Taijiquan school, which according to his website is intended to be a place “where the deep spiritual values and wisdom as well as the physical aspects of genuine Asian martial arts could be preserved.”46 Being profoundly inspired by Derek’s interpretations of the Daodejing, he adopted a vegetarian diet one year before founding his household shrine – a choice that proved to be instrumental in curing a long-standing skin disease.47 In Yiguandao theology and practice, vegetarianism plays a pivotal role as a measure of commitment to the course of cultivating one’s inherent moral nature and saving the world. For the consecration ceremony of his temple two Taiwanese-American transmitting masters and a couple of helpers travelled from Los Angeles to Indiana. The religious artefacts and emblems required for a Yiguandao shrine – e.g. an incense burner, religious effigies, Chinese calligraphies, and a “Mother lamp” (mudeng 母燈), which symbolizes the supreme deity “Eternal Venerable Mother” (Wusheng Laomu 無生老母) – were sent from the LA temple by UPS.48 Eventually, Bill’s shrine became the centre of a local “Tao study group”, which is basically a circle of people (some of whom have received the Dao) who regularly listen to the Tao Talks at Bill’s place on Sunday afternoon (due to the time gap of three hours).49 While being part of Quanzhen’s temple network, Bill also invests in expanding his own network. According to his account, only two years after consecrating the temple in 2005, he had already engaged in various proselytizing activities in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, and Michigan. Eventually, by using the Internet, person to person communication, and business travel, he was able to attract “21 souls to the Great Tao.”50 In 2017, a Taijiquan student of Bill’s also established his own household shrine. Having visited Quanzhen temple in

ataichi.com/openshrine.htm (accessed 6 November 2018). This essay has also been published in the monthly journal of the Yiguandao General Association of the Republic of China: Yiguandao zonghui huixun 一貫道總會會訊 [Yiguandao General Correspondence] 1 (2005) 160, pp. 39–49. Jichu Zhongshu’s bulletin also reported about the event, see JCZZ 11 (2005) 203, pp. 24–28, equally reprinted in Yiguandao zonghui huixun 9 (2005) 168, pp. 50–55. 46 See his slightly outdated website http://indianataichi.com/instructors.htm (accessed 6 November 2018) and also his rather recent blog: http://indianataichi.blogspot.com/. 47 JCZZ 11 (2005) 203, p. 25. 48 Ibid. 49 See the blog: http://carmeltao.blogspot.com/ (accessed 8 November 2018). 50 “Two Years in Indiana, by Bill Bunting”, http://greattao.org/english/2008-01.htm (accessed 15 November 2018).

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2015 in order to obtain the Dao, he also joined a group trip to Taiwan the same year, which left him so impressed that only one year later he decided to become a vegetarian. Finally, in April 2017 his temple was consecrated by the two transmitting masters who travelled from LA to Indiana along with Derek and a couple of helpers.51 Only slightly later, a third private shrine opened, and now the Indiana community hopes to establish the first public Yiguandao site in the Midwest.52 As this brief excursus demonstrates, Derek and Bill were successful in establishing a local community of Dao followers who are connected to their principal temple Quanzhen daoyuan primarily through computer-mediated interaction. Bill serves as the core node within the network of Indiana’s English-speaking Jichu Zhongshu congregation – as he is personally acquainted with all members and is also responsible for having attracted most of them; yet Quanzhen temple represents the sole source of legitimacy: with both Derek as the core node within the entire network of English-speaking members and the transmitting masters as those who are allowed to initiate neophytes into the teachings. The other member of the group is Ed, a high-profile martial artist who trained with Bruce Lee’s major student Jerry Poteet (1936–2012) and who has been an initiated member of Quanzhen temple since 2004.53 Having been trained in various martial arts for more than four decades – including Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do (derived from Cantonese jiht kyùhn douh 截拳道, Ch. jiequandao), Shōtōkan Karate 松濤館空手, Muay Thai, Shaolin Kung-Fu, Japanese and Brazilian Jujitsu 柔術, Kali (a Filipino martial arts), Qigong, and Taijiquan – Ed is an extraordinarily well-known martial artist who also trained a number of Hollywood celebrities and movie stars. Since 2007 he and his wife run their own sports centre “Ekata” in the Santa Clarita Valley, about 80 km northwest of Quanzhen temple.54 Because Ed wanted to convey Yiguandao’s crucial message of unity, Derek recommended this name, which in Sanskrit means “one” or “oneness” (from Skt. ekatā). Designed to teach “adults and children to live a healthy, balanced life by training not only the body, but the brain” (website blurb), Ekata centre focuses on merging modern sports with purported Eastern holistic approaches to integrate mind, body, and spirit. Consequently, the

51 JCZZ 7 (2017) 343, pp. 40–43. 52 JCZZ 10 (2017) 346, p. 21. 53 This section draws on my interview with Ed at his sports centre in Santa Clarita, 28 February 2018 as well as on his essay “The Journey of a Thousand Miles”, http://greattao. org/english/2014-04.htm (accessed 6 November 2018). If not designated otherwise, all information and citations are from this interview. 54 See the centre’s website https://ekata.net/ (accessed 15 November 2018).

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centre emphasizes mindfulness very much. In addition, Ed proclaims: “We feel that by providing a family-based series of activities that incorporate eastern health practices, philosophy, western science and universal spirituality we can help bridge the worlds of east and west.”55 Furthermore, he sees the significance of the Dao not only in individual cultivation, but also for the entire society: “Our western society is fraught with aggression, stress and fear. I feel our new approach to fitness and well-being might be an instrumental method by which principles of the true Tao might be introduced in a nonthreatening manner.”56 Having been raised as a Roman Catholic in Kentucky, Ed considers himself an open-minded Christian who already during his youth developed a profound interest in what he calls the “Eastern philosophies”. Like many other members of Derek’s circle, he used to be a spiritual seeker and has studied with various Zen masters and Tibetan Buddhist Lamas. However, he never felt quite accomplished until he eventually came across Derek’s website Taoism.net in 2004. Being impressed by the “authenticity” of what was written there, he and his wife visited Quanzhen temple on the following Sunday, participated in Derek’s class, and received the Dao the same day. After a couple of years, Ed and his wife adopted a vegetarian (and his wife even a vegan) diet, and in April 2014 their shrine was consecrated on the upper floor of Ekata sports centre.57 Today, the shrine is used for all mediation sessions – as it is also advertised in the caption to one photograph on Ekata’s homepage. Because Ed did not want to scare away his customers – the gym is located in a predominantly white and Christian neighbourhood that another informant even described as “Trump-supporter white” – he chose not to display typical Yiguandao-related idols on the altar, so that the shrine cannot be mistaken for a “worshipping entity”. Consequently, there is only a simple altar with an incense burner, the “Mother lamp”, and Chinese calligraphy at the back. While he was able to attract eight to ten people to Yiguandao, he was not as successful as Quanzhen’s transmitting masters had hoped. Thus, Ed is convinced that Yiguandao is appealing to most of his students as a philosophy and not as a religion. Just a couple of weeks before I met him in February 2018, he had started a pilot group of about twenty people in the local Catholic church that he also belongs to, in order to study what Eastern philosophy and mindfulness have to add to the Christian faith.

55 “The Journey of a Thousand Miles”. 56 Ibid. 57 JCZZ 8 (2014) 308, pp. 20–25.

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From this brief description of the religious careers of Bill and Ed there emerges an interesting pattern: practitioners of East Asian martial arts appear to be drawn to Derek’s interpretations of the Dao. Thus, he sees an innate connection between the physical practices and what he teaches about the Dao, because he asserts that “these martial arts oftentimes embody the philosophy of the Dao in physical action.” It is about diligent hard work and dedication, while the “Americanized version” of Dao cultivation merely urges people to “go with the flow” and “just let things be”.58 In his study of Yiguandao practitioners in 1990s Vancouver, Philip Clart noted that many non-Chinese participants had a background in Chinese martial arts and related bodily practices as well.59 Judging from my fieldwork experience, this seems to be a typical non-Asian phenomenon, which is not visible in contemporary Taiwan, but which I found occasionally in Austrian and South African Yiguandao congregations.60 Whereas quite a few dedicated activists and leaders in the early history of Yiguandao were involved in bodily practices – such as one of Zhang Tianran’s leading disciples Sun Xikun 孫錫堃 (1883–1952), an authorized master of baguazhang 八卦掌 and head of the martial arts school “Morality Martial Arts Academy” (Daode wuxuehui 道德武學會) in Tianjin before he joined Yiguandao in 193461 – this link appears to have been lost during Yiguandao’s transition to Taiwan. As outlined above, many Daoist-oriented seekers and practitioners in the United States found their way into the field through Taijiquan, Qigong, and Kung-Fu.62 In the case of Derek’s circle, not only Bill and Ed, but also some of their students joined the group. Moreover, the aforementioned participant in the Sunday classes who prefers not to be initiated into Yiguandao also experienced Daoism first through martial arts during his adolescence. In another case, an Indiana native who was in his early twenties at the time of his initiation in 2005 was a student of Korean taekwondo 跆拳道 from the age of five. Just by accident, he read about the opening of Bill’s temple in the Indianapolis Star and went to participate the next day out of pure curiosity. Having been initiated right away, he also joined a Taiwan tour organized by Quanzhen temple.63

58 Interview with Derek Lin, Quanzhen daoyuan, El Monte, 25 February 2018. 59 Clart, “Opening the Wilderness for the Way of Heaven”, p. 139. 60 Ethnographic fieldwork in Vienna (June 2016) and Johannesburg (October – November 2017). 61 See Song G. 宋光宇, Tiandao chuandeng, p. 60. On his martial-arts career, see B. Kennedy and E. Guo, Chinese Martial Arts Training Manuals: A Historical Survey, Berkeley: Blue Snake, 2005, pp. 270–272. 62 Siegler, “The Dao of America”, pp. 329–339. 63 “Fish Out of Water, by Tommy Datzman Jr.”, http://greattao.org/english/2005/2005-11.htm (accessed 6 November 2018).

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Conclusion: Transnational Spaces of Religious Interaction at the Intersection of Online and Offline Studies in computer-based interaction have shown that users of the Internet tend to have larger social networks than non-users. In addition, they tend to be exposed to other sources of information and resources. Consequently, they are not restricted to building meaning and establishing social relationships based on location, occupation, and social class: interpersonal ties are usually produced on the basis of affinities.64 Thus, “strong ties” – such as family and friends – are more likely to be socially similar and to know the same persons, and consequently they are more likely to possess the same information. On the other hand, “weak ties” of internet communication are not necessarily related to living in the same place or working in the same company, and they hence enable actors to connect to more diverse social circles.65 Similarly, the case of the Tao Talks group shows how the use of computermediated communication enables Derek and his peers to transcend traditional ways of proselytizing in Yiguandao and thereby to open new geographies of circulation. Usually, Yiguandao activists tend to proselytize primarily within the “strong ties” of family and friends on the one hand, but also along the lines of “weak ties” of co-workers and colleagues on the other. Yet both sorts of ties are still predominantly based on location and social features, such as education, profession, and income. Hence, it is no wonder that most other Yiguandao communities in Los Angeles that do not employ computer-mediated communication in their outreach (or do so to a lesser degree) are more likely to be spatially bound: most members of the congregation live in the LA area. On the other hand, the Tao Talks group uses its websites, forums, and first and foremost its regular webinar instalment in order to transcend these rather narrow circles of interaction and to reach out to sympathizers and Dao-related spiritual seekers on a transregional basis. The focus on shared interests rather than on similar social characteristics enables specialized communities, such as the Tao Talks group, to foster cognitive homogeneity and to develop a community of people

64 M. Castells, The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 121, 126; B. Wellman, “Physical Place and Cyberplace: The Rise of Personalized Networking”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25 (2001) 2, pp. 227–252, at 234. 65 See Wellman, “Physical Place and Cyberplace”, p. 246; D. Easley and J. Kleinberg, Networks, Crowds and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 46–51. 66 See Wellman, “Physical Place and Cyberplace”, p. 246.

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who are like-minded but more diverse in terms of location, culture, and social class.66 Thus, this case study shows that the Tao Talks group is comprised of spiritual seekers, Catholics, practitioners of East Asian martial arts, and curious individuals from various places and countries. In addition, it also demonstrates that the network created by Derek and his peers extends from El Monte to its major chapters in Indiana and Seattle, as well as to more loosely related listeners and sympathizers located in North America, Europe, and even Africa.67 It appears that the use of new media is a particular strength of the Tao Talks approach, as the internet provides a safe space for interested sympathizers to explore Dao-related teachings and to familiarize themselves with the group at their individual pace and without much pressure.68 Thus, whilst first-hand contact in cyberspace does not demand many individual resources (time, energy, effort), Chinese Dao cultivators’ missionary zeal often leaves Western practitioners bewildered. While the computer-mediated activities of the Tao Talks group provide an almost deterritorialized approach to religious proselytization and community building, which has clearly facilitated the propagation of Yiguandao in the United States and beyond, specific places – such as Quanzhen temple and Bill’s Indiana temple – still play a pivotal role in maintaining, managing, and expanding the online and offline networks of interaction. Thus, as the famous sociologist Manuel Castells noted in the first volume of his classic trilogy The Information Age (1996): “The space of flows is not placeless, although its structural logic is. It is based on an electronic network, but this network links up specific places, with well-defined social, cultural, physical, and functional characteristics.”69 Furthermore, he added: “other places are the nodes of the network; that is, the location of strategically important functions that build a series of locality-based activities and organizations around a key function in the network. Location in the node links up the locality with the whole network. Both nodes and hubs are hierarchically organized according to their relative weight in the network.”70 The case of the Tao Talks community corroborates this view: whereas the internet facilitates cross-boundary communication and interaction, actual

67 For instance, there are numerous posts and essays of a certain Jos Slabbert on Derek’s websites, such as http://www.taoism.net/theway/home.htm and http://www.taoism.net/theway/ taoistao.htm (accessed 6 January 2019). The author appears to have been active in the late 1990s and early 2000s and at that time was based in Namibia. 68 See Easley and Kleinberg, Networks, Crowds and Markets, pp. 43–76. 69 M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture, vol. 1, Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, p. 443. 70 Ibid.

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places are still important for the overall network: first, these are the places where the classes are being taught. While it would be easy and probably even more convenient for Derek to broadcast the Tao Talks directly from his home, he still chooses to come to Quanzhen temple every Sunday – which doubtlessly contributes to his charisma and aura of authenticity. Second, the Tao Talks group is far from becoming an “online religion”, as there need to be places – temples and shrines, but also small niches established by individuals in their private residences and dedicated to religious cultivation – where the Dao cultivators can practise what is preached.71 The emphasis on offline interaction and practice helps to hinder the online networks from becoming too loose and fragile. Even though many participants in the Sunday Tao Talks may feel merely loosely committed, Derek’s and his collaborators’ commitment is instrumental in aggregating or condensing these individual-centred networks in the “offline” world.72

71 On private “sacred spaces” as individual sanctuaries for religious cultivation, meditation, and mindful practices see Derek’s talk “The I Kuan Tao Shrine and Creating Your Own Sacred Space”, https://youtu.be/FoCDhwcETnc (posted 28 September 2014, accessed 6 January 2019). 72 See Castells, The Internet Galaxy, pp. 128–131; H.A. Campbell, “Understanding the Relationship between Religion Online and Offline in a Networked Society”, Theory, Culture & Society 80 (2012) 1, pp. 64–93, at 83.

Jens Reinke

15 Generating Global Pure Lands: Renjian Buddhist Civic Engagement within and beyond the Chinese Diaspora Communities Worldwide During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, civic engagements of religious actors in China underwent a series of changes that were linked to the newly emerging nation state project. Facing pressure from Western powers and a modernized Japan, the Chinese aimed to transform their country into a modern nation state. In order to survive, native religious traditions had to adapt to the new circumstances. Facing criticism from modernist intellectuals, Buddhist actors began to emulate Protestant engagements in the fields of education and charity in order to proof the usefulness of their tradition to the modern nation state project. Almost a century later, the Taiwanese renjian Buddhist order Fo Guang Shan 佛光山 (Buddha’s Light Mountain), founded by the Chinese Buddhist monk Hsing Yun 星雲 (born on 19 August 1927) in 1967, has been able to realize many of the ambitious plans of its early twentieth-century predecessors. Yet instead of confining itself to Taiwan or China, facilitated by global flows of post-1965 Chinese migration, the order has expanded its civic engagement across the whole globe. Former modes of religious civic engagement that were linked to a specific nation state building project have in this process become deterritorialized and adjusted to new settings. Based on ethnographic data, this chapter considers the activities of two Fo Guang Shan overseas temples: the Hsi Lai Temple in Los Angeles, USA and the Nan Hua Temple in Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa. It examines how Fo Guang Shan and its lay wing BLIA (Buddha’s Light International Association) through deterritorialized modes of early modern civic engagements have generated a variety of linkages with the mainstream society as well as local Chinese diaspora communities of Fo Guang Shan’s new host countries all over Note: This chapter is part of my dissertation research, a multi-sited ethnographical study of the transnational spread of Fo Guang Shan. The study is integrated in a collaborative research consortium at Leipzig University “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”, which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It is based on multi-sited fieldwork in Taiwan, South Africa, the USA, China, Hong Kong, and Germany. Data were collected through temple stays, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and the analysis of Fo Guang Shan first-hand (online and print) material. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-015

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the globe. Besides contributing to the society of their host countries, Fo Guang Shan’s activities overseas are also producing effects back in Taiwan and are noticed in other Asian Buddhist circles. They help Fo Guang Shan to attract donations, and many Fo Guang Shan adherents take great pride in the global contributions of their order. Fo Guang Shan Buddhist civic engagements represent one aspect of the order’s social engagement. Others are the modernization of Chinese Buddhist ritual and religious practice and the deployment of notions of Chinese culture. Together they form a particular and very successful mode of modern Chinese Buddhist religiosity.

Native Traditions of Religious Welfare, Colonial Era Transnationalism, and the Dream of China as a Modern Nation State Long before the advent of modernity in China, religions contributed to society. Throughout Chinese history, a variety of actors – state, religious, and independent – were involved in a multitude of charitable activities. During the late Ming and early Qing, for example, benevolent societies became widespread and supplemented existing forms of charity provided by the state, Buddhist temples, and local shrines.1 Similarly, folk religious groups that formed around spirit mediums, whose revelations were sometimes collected and published in morality books, were involved in charity work.2 Traditional Buddhist social work included offering shelter and care for pilgrims, providing relief to the disadvantaged and the needy, but also accepting reformed criminals as monastics or taking in orphans to ordain them as novices.3 Yet from the nineteenth century on, with the growing presence of Europeans and Americans in China, new modes of social engagement developed. They represented a departure from late imperial Chinese forms of religiosity in that they merged foreign and native elements and linked religion to the goal of transforming China into a modern nation state.4 Charitable institutions based on Confucian 1 J.F. Handlin Smith, “Benevolent Societies: The Reshaping of Charity during the Late Ming and Early Ch’ing”, The Journal of Asian Studies 46 (1987), pp. 309–310. 2 P. Clart, “The Ritual Context of Morality Books: A Case Study of a Taiwanese Spirit-Writing Cult”, PhD thesis, University of British Columbia, 1997, p. 41. 3 H. Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970, pp. 129–130. 4 Modernity and State Formation, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008, p. 47.

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ideals merged with ideas and practices associated with nineteenth- and twentiethcentury conceptions of globalized capitalist modernity.5 In the process of remodelling established Chinese religiosities in order to modernize the country, Western Protestantism often served as a model to emulate. Protestant missionaries in China presented their religion as intrinsically modern. They emphasized how Protestantism, through engagement in the fields of charity and education, contributed to the construction of China as a modern nation state.6 As of 1914, Christians were running 11,545 elementary schools and 542 universities in China.7 Although Buddhists tried to catch up and became involved in education too, they did so on a smaller scale. They modernized the education system of the monastic sangha, and some temples also established local community schools.8 However, it would take Chinese Buddhists until the late 1980s in Taiwan to succeed in establishing their own universities. The Taiwanese order Fo Guang Shan, founded by the Jiangsu-born monastic Hsing Yun in 1967 in the south of Taiwan, was one of the first Buddhist organizations that received permission from the Taiwanese state to realize this aim.9 Another way of contributing to society was through charity. Early twentieth-century Buddhists established charities such as orphanages, prison visiting programmes, and small-scale clinics. Holmes Welch identifies a variety of motivations for these new developments in Republican-era Buddhism, ranging from traditional ones rooted in Buddhist and Confucian values to more practical ones like the avoidance of confiscation of temple property by the government, to considerations about the importance of education for the building of the modern nation state. However, he also mentions legal obligations: in 1929 and amplified in 1935, new laws forced monasteries to contribute a certain part of their income to charitable enterprises.10 Christian – and in particular Protestant – civic practices and ideas that were introduced to China by Westerners, constituted an important point of reference for the developers of a modern Chinese Buddhist religiosity. Buddhists emulated some Protestant practices and ideas, but also distanced themselves 5 V. Shue, “The Quality of Mercy”, Modern China 32 (2006), p. 415. 6 V. Goossaert and D.A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 77. 7 Ibid. 8 For a thorough examination of the modernization of monastic education, see L.K.R. Lai, “Praying for the Republic: Buddhist Education, Student-Monks, and Citizenship in Modern China (1911–1949)”, PhD thesis, McGill University, 2013. 9 Jiang C. 江燦騰, Renshi taiwan bentu fojiao 認識臺灣本土佛教 [Understanding Local Taiwanese Buddhism], Taipei: Taiwan shangwu, 2012, p. 110. 10 Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, chap. 7.

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from others. In a recent article about Christian influences on renjian Buddhism,11 Yao Yu-Shuang and Richard Gombrich argue that some of the similarities between renjian Buddhist and Christian social involvements today can be explained in terms of conscious imitation, while others represent analogous developments that occurred due to similar circumstances.12 Long Darui too has examined the influence of Christianity on modern Chinese Buddhists. He notes that Hsing Yun’s teacher Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947), who is often called the founder of modern Chinese Buddhism, imitated Christian civic practices such as establishing hospitals, orphanages, and schools for his project of a modernized Buddhism.13 Justin Ritzinger has shown that Taixu merged Western utopianism with more traditional Buddhist religious elements. Taixu reinvented the Maitreya cult, thereby merging traditional Buddhist ritual practices linked to the goal of rebirth in Maitreya’s Tuṣita heaven with activist engagement within the secular world.14 The goal was to enhance society and create a pure land on earth, a goal his student Hsing Yun continues to commit himself to. However, it is important to add that it was not only the modernizers within the Buddhist sangha who saw the need to adapt to the new circumstances. The more conservative Buddhist mainstream likewise took on what Goossaert and Palmer call the “Christian model” of religiosity. They also drew up plans (albeit not always realised) for the foundation of schools, Buddhist universities, research institutes, welfare programmes, presses and journals, and a corps of missionaries who were supposed to spread the Dharma in the military, in prisons, in hospitals, and abroad.15 New forms of Buddhist engagement with society did not simply replace former ones: rather, new amalgams were formed, in which native and foreign elements were combined. China’s encounter with an imperialist West had caused the emergence of new forms of religiosity that were linked to the project of strengthening and modernizing the country. In this process, foreign and native

11 Renjian fojiao 人間佛教 is often translated by its adherents as “Humanistic Buddhism”; however, in English, the term “humanistic” contains strong connotations of Renaissance humanism. In order to clarify the distinction between the two, I have adopted the romanized Chinese term. 12 Y. Yao and R. Gombrich, “Christianity as Model and Analogue in the Formation of the ‘Humanistic’ Buddhism of Tài Xū and Hsīng Yún”, Buddhist Studies Review 34 (2018), at pp. 199–200. 13 D. Long, “An Interfaith Dialogue between the Chinese Buddhist Leader Taixu and Christians”, Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000), p. 184. 14 J. Ritzinger, Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 123. 15 Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, p. 82.

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concepts and practices were merged in a variety of ways. Contributing to society through education and charity was of significant importance to religious actors if they wanted to adapt to and defend their space in a modernizing China. In other words, the newly evolving, socially engaged modern Buddhist religiosity was based on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century transnational entanglements with the West. Due to unequal power relations between China and the West, most of the dynamics played out within the Chinese territory. Today, Fo Guang Shan as a contemporary successor of the early Buddhist reformers continues to be involved in – and has even expanded – religiously motivated civic engagement. Yet unlike the Republican-era predecessors, Hsing Yun and his order have not confined themselves to their home region, but extended their engagements to a global scale.

Modern Buddhist Social Engagement as Religious Practice Contemporary Buddhist groups that are politically progressive and promote causes like pacifism, environmentalism, or human rights, are often labelled as Socially Engaged Buddhists. Yet it is sometimes overlooked how contemporary Buddhist social engagement is linked to earlier, nationalist Buddhist movements in Asia. Jessica L. Main and Rongdao Lai, in an attempt to highlight the linkages and continuities between pre- and post-World War II forms of Buddhist social engagement, provide a revised definition. They argue that more than any particular political agenda, be it pre-war nationalism or post-war pacifism, it is social activity in itself as a form of religious practice that constitutes the core of Socially Engaged Buddhism.16 This new approach makes it possible to include, amongst other groups, Chinese and Taiwanese renjian Buddhists. Building upon the work of Talal Asad, Main and Lai point out that in modern China the secular and the religious as political ideologies have been mutually constitutive categories, imported from the West. Main and Lai define secularization in the Chinese context as “the exercise of power on the part of secular polities to distinguish between the secular and religious in ways that undermine the resources and moral legitimacy of religious actors within the secular”.17 Socially Engaged Buddhism,

16 J.L. Main and R. Lai, “Reformulating ‘Socially Engaged Buddhism’ as an Analytical Category”, The Eastern Buddhist 44 (2013), p. 4. 17 Ibid.

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including renjian Buddhism, is a response to this process. It constitutes the “mirror image of secularization”,18 since it understands social involvement within the secular sphere of society as essentially religious. Chinese Buddhist reformers of the early twentieth century promoted an approach to their tradition that deemphasizes (but by no means completely negates) otherworldly elements in favour of a more world-affirming version of their religion. By calling it renjian Buddhism, they emphasized that it was in the human realm, rather than the realms of gods and spirits, that the Buddha achieved his enlightenment and turned the wheel of Dharma. Renjian Buddhism ought therefore to be more affirmative of worldly matters and contribute to society.19 One of the key concepts that Hsing Yun’s teacher Taixu developed in this context was the “pure land on earth”.20 This concept merged notions of the pure lands in the Chinese Buddhist canon – the popular western pure land of the Buddha Amitabha, but also Maitreya’s abode and in the Tuṣita Heaven – with many utopian elements, including socialist, Marxist, and anarchist ones popular at the time. Deemphasizing the understanding of a pure land as a place to seek rebirth in after death, renjian Buddhists now taught that the actual world at hand ought to be transformed into a pure land. For renjian Buddhists like Taixu and Hsing Yun, to sacralise the secular constitutes a modern, world-affirming way of practising the Dharma, but it also is a means to reclaim their religion’s space in society. Fo Guang Shan’s many civic engagements have to be understood in this context. For Fo Guang Shan, secular society is the space for religious practice. That applies not only to Taiwan but, through the transnational flows of Chinese post-1965 migration, has been deterritorialized and expanded to the whole globe. Thus overseas, the order’s philanthropic efforts are not just directed towards the own group, be it Fo Guang Shan Buddhists or the Taiwanese or Chinese diaspora community, but instead target society as a whole.

18 Ibid. 19 S. Travagnin, “Yinshun’s Recovery of Shizhu Piposha Lun 十住毗婆沙論: A Madhyamakabased Pure Land Practice in Twentieth-Century Taiwan”, Contemporary Buddhism 14 (2013), p. 324. 20 See Taixu 太虛, “Jianshe renjian jingtu lun 建設人間淨土論” [“Treatise on the Establishment of a Pure Land in the Human Realm”], in: Yinshun (ed.) Taixu dashi quanshu 太虛大師全書 [Collected Works of Master Taixu], Taipei: Shandao si fojing liutong chu, 1998, vol. 24, pp. 349–430.

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Generating Global Pure Lands: The Scale of Fo Guang Shan’s Global Civic Engagement In his study of Taiwanese Buddhism, Charles Jones argues that today’s renjian Buddhist civic engagement is not a new phenomenon. The difference between it and its early twentieth-century predecessors “is one of degree, not of kind”.21 Fo Guang Shan’s modernist trajectory continues to be based on early twentiethcentury renjian Buddhist ideas, but through the global flows of Taiwanese migration, the order has expanded its civic engagement to a global scale. The following section is not exhaustive but will give an idea of the extent of Fo Guang Shan’s educational and charity involvement. One of the main objectives of the Buddhist reformers at the beginning of the last century was to modernize Buddhism through education, which here has three meanings. It can refer to the religious and secular education of the monastic sangha, to religious education of the laity, and to the involvement of Buddhist actors in secular education. Fo Guang Shan has made contributions to all three fields. The first, the enhancement of the education of the monastic sangha, was particularly relevant for the development of modern Chinese Buddhism. Although the order does run Buddhist seminaries overseas, they are short-term programmes. The complete Buddhist monastic training takes place at the main seminary at the headquarters in Taiwan. The second meaning, to provide religious education for the laity, constitutes a way of proselytizing for Fo Guang Shan. Religious education is here to be understood in the broadest sense.22 Fo Guang Shan provides classes for lay Buddhists covering a huge variety of topics, including Buddhist doctrine and the application of Buddhist doctrine to one’s life, but also flower arrangement and tea culture, to mention just a few. In Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan founded several institutions for this goal. The Srimala Buddhist Institute, for example, is an institute that aims specifically at young women, for whom it offers domestic and international study trips. But the order is probably best known for its many media enterprises. Besides print and online media, Fo Guang Shan runs its own TV station. As early as the 1960s, Hsing Yun had appeared on public TV in Taiwan. From 1997 on, this was

21 C.B. Jones, Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 1660–1990, Honolulu: University of Hawaiʿi Press, 1999, p. 223. 22 The following data is based on: Foguangshan zongwu weiyuan hui 佛光山宗務委員會 [Fo Guang Shan Religious Affairs Committee], Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhou nian jinian tekan 佛 光山開山四十週年紀念特刊 [Special Issue on the 40th Anniversary of the Establishment of Fo Guang Shan], Kaohsiung: Foguang wenhua, 2008, vol. 3, chap. 3.4.

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continued at the order’s own TV station, which he founded for the purpose of distributing accessible knowledge about Buddhism. Today, the internet and social media constitute an additional field of engagement for the order. In 1992, Fo Guang Shan founded a community college, which since 2005 operates under its current name “Fo Guang Shan Open University”, renjian daxue 人間大學 (Human Realm University), with branches in every Taiwanese province. Fo Guang Shan also operates an eLearning Buddhist College that gives its adherents the opportunity for online study. In addition, Fo Guang Shan began to organize book club meetings dushu hui 讀書會. During the regular club meetings, Fo Guang Shan adherents read and discuss a text together. What kind of text they read depends on the proficiency in Buddhist doctrine of the particular group. Texts can range from a song or poem written by Hsing Yun to more difficult ones, such as Buddhist scriptures. The acquired knowledge is then tested on a regular basis through Buddhist studies exams. This practice is not only upheld in Taiwan, but also at some temples overseas. During my fieldwork stay at the Hsi Lai Temple in spring 2018, all Los Angeles subchapters of Fo Guang Shan’s lay wing, the BLIA, gathered at the temple on a weekend before the Lunar New Year celebrations to collectively take the annual Buddhist studies exam. Of the three fields of education Fo Guang Shan is involved in, secular education is the one that constitutes a form of civic engagement, since it is directed towards society in general. As of 2008, Fo Guang Shan ran several kindergartens and child education centres, elementary and middle schools in Taiwan. The order also operates five universities. Two are in Taiwan: the Nanhua University in Chiayi and the Fo Guang University in Yilan; and three are abroad: the University of the West in the US, Guang Ming College in Manila in the Philippines,23 and the Nan Tien Institute in Wollongong, Australia, launched in 2011.24 While Fo Guang Shan’s lay religious education efforts address a demographic that already self-defines as Buddhist – many of the activities promote not only Buddhism but also “traditional” Chinese culture; the activities are conducted mostly on temple grounds and can be seen as an attempt to draw people in and keep them involved – Fo Guang Shan’s involvement in secular education is different. Fo Guang Shan’s secular educational institutions overseas are not aimed at Buddhists, but address the general public. They represent moving out of the temple into general society. Together with the order’s charity engagement,

23 The following data is based on: Foguangshan zongwu weiyuan hui 佛光山宗務委員會, Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhou nian jinian tekan 佛光山開山四十週年紀念特刊, vol. 3, pp. 92–111. 24 Fo Guang Shan Nan Tian Institute, “Nan Tien Institute”, https://www.nantien.edu.au/ about-us (accessed 11 December 2018).

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these activities significantly enhance the order’s visibility in its many host societies. Since 2008, Fo Guang Shan has been involved in a range of charity programmes and campaigns in Taiwan, the PRC, and worldwide.25 In Taiwan, Fo Guang Shan organizes regular children’s camps, maintains a children’s home, an educational centre for elementary and middle school children, three senior citizens’ homes (a fourth was still one under construction in 2008), two clinics and a mobile clinic, and a columbarium. In addition, the order runs prison visiting programmes, a drug addiction rehabilitation programme, disaster relief programmes, reconstruction programmes for earthquake victims, memorial services for the victims of natural disasters, winter relief programmes for the poor, community service programmes, a hospice, environmental protection programmes, blood donation campaigns, and various training programmes for volunteers. Overseas, Fo Guang Shan is engaged in philanthropic work in Asia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and, on a smaller scale, in Europe. In the People’s Republic of China, the order has provided disaster relief aid and constructed an elementary school and a clinic. It runs prison visiting programmes and charity programmes for the needy and elderly in Hong Kong. In Japan, Fo Guang Shan provided disaster relief work after the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and operates visiting programmes at senior citizens’ homes. In Malaysia, the Philippines, India, and Sri Lanka it runs several charity and disaster relief programmes. To Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar it has donated wheelchairs and other goods. It has constructed a junior high school in Myanmar and provided free medical services in Northern Thailand and Indonesia. In Indonesia it operates several charity and disaster relief programmes. Fo Guang Shan has also provided donations for Iraq. After the 2004 tsunami, a 500,000 US dollar emergency fund was created by the headquarters of the order, and a variety of local BLIA chapters worldwide have provided further donations and disaster relief and reconstruction programmes for the victims. Furthermore, Fo Guang Shan has performed several memorial services to ensure a good rebirth for the deceased and thereby alleviate the suffering of the bereaved. In the USA the order operates a variety of programmes, including winter relief, disaster aid, medical services, bone marrow donations, computer donations, academic scholarships, charity programmes for the elderly and for homeless people, and environmental programmes such as recycling activities and community clean-ups. Fo Guang Shan even runs two columbaria: one in LA and one in Houston. In Canada, the order operates several charity programmes.

25 The data that follow derive from: Foguangshan zongwu weiyuan hui 佛光山宗務委員會, Foguangshan kaishan sishi zhou nian jinian tekan 佛光山開山四十週年紀念特刊, vol. 5.

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In Brazil the order provides medical services and runs educational and professional training programmes for local children and youths. It has even formed a football team for children from a disadvantaged background. In Paraguay it has constructed a clinic and operates several donation and charity programmes, including the sponsoring of the construction of two pedestrian overpasses. Fo Guang Shan has donated wheelchairs to Chile and provided a winter relief programme there. On the African continent, apart from a small branch centre in the Republic of Congo and (in the past) in Malawi, the order is mainly active in South Africa, where it runs several donation and charity programmes. Recently, Fo Guang Shan’s African headquarters, the Nan Hua Temple, opened the Nan Hua Academy, which provides free of charge, professional skills-training to underprivileged communities of the Kungwini Local Municipality. The school’s programmes include lessons in accounting software, word processor and other software, and Mandarin. The Nan Hua Temple sponsors a scout programme for children from disadvantaged backgrounds and operates a free performance arts boarding school for young South African women. The school will be discussed in more detail below. In Australia and New Zealand, Fo Guang Shan operates community service and several donation and charity programmes. In Papua New Guinea, the order maintains a free of charge kindergarten and runs several donation and charity programmes. Finally, in Europe, it has donated wheelchairs in France and organizes community services such as clean-up days in London. This list indicates that overseas Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagement is linked to Taiwanese migration. Fo Guang Shan is particularly involved in areas of the world where there is a big overseas Taiwanese community, such as Southeast Asia or the United States of America. However, the list also shows that in the diaspora, Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagement is also meant to benefit society as a whole. It represents a deterritorialized mode of earlier Buddhist civic engagement as developed in China. Overseas, such engagement generates an outward movement that connects the Buddhist temple space with the surrounding nonBuddhist, and non-majority Chinese society. Fo Guang Shan’s transnational civic engagement thereby constitutes one of the order’s main spaces of cross-cultural interaction. Often the degree of interaction with host societies is limited, since many of the order’s charity endeavours consist of non-recurring contributions, such as donations. However, in other cases, such as the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group and the University of the West, interaction is much more significant. Both cases are discussed below. But before looking at these two examples, let us examine how Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples through different modes of religiosity – religious practice as civic engagement as well as “traditional” practices, such as Buddhist ritual – engage on different levels with society.

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Social Engagement within and beyond the Chinese Diasporic Community During my fieldwork at the Hsi Lai Temple in California, I participated in an event that was organized by the English-language Dharma book club. Once a year, the temple cooperates with St. John Vianney Catholic Church to provide food for some of the many homeless people in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) there were about 55,000 people living on the streets in 2017.26 The Fo Guang Shan activity was attended not only by members of the English-language book club but also by members of several other BLIA subchapters. Around 5:30 p.m. about 40 people, some with a Latino background, some non-Latino whites and many Chinese Americans, gathered at the church. Led by a monastic, they brought vegetarian food and about 100 sleeping bags to hand out to the needy. The church hall was packed with tables. Most people in the room were European Americans, Hispanic Americans, and African Americans. Some people were already in an adjacent room, where camp beds were provided for people to spend the night. Others were at the back of the building taking advantage of one of the mobile showers installed for the occasion. However, most sat around the round tables of the church hall and waited for their food. Volunteers in a small kitchen heated up the vegetarian food that had been prepared at the temple beforehand. Before the dinner began, the Catholic priest and a Fo Guang Shan nun welcomed the guests. Temple volunteers who acted as waiters then served the food. The scene exemplifies how Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagement continues to be rooted in early twentiethcentury renjian Buddhist religiosity. Providing food for the homeless is a way of contributing to society in general, but by taking place in a non-majority Chinese country, it adds some complexity in terms of cross-cultural dynamics. While the Fo Guang Shan volunteers are a mixed group, the majority are still ethnic Taiwanese. Yet not one of the recipients appears to have a Chinese background. Chinese Buddhist civil engagement was informed by Western ideas and practices conveyed by Euro-American Protestant missionaries; yet in Chinese diasporic communities today, it is the Buddhists who are more involved in philanthropy. Chinese Christians in the diaspora tend to limit their charitable engagement to their own group. Comparing a Taiwanese Protestant Church with a Buddhist temple in Southern California, Carolyn Chen concludes that while the

26 USC Neighborhood Data for Social Change, “Homeless people L.A.”, https://usc.data. socrata.com/stories/s/Homelessness-in-2018-A-Snapshot-of-Los-Angeles-Cou/g8ge-um6u/ (accessed 11 November 2018).

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church limits it outreach to the ethnic community and mainly focuses on proselytization, the temple is heavily involved in charity work and has extended its public mission beyond the ethnic Chinese community.27 Many Chinese Christian churches focus on providing services for the diaspora community and assisting immigrants in adapting to their new lives.28 Yang Fenggang makes similar observations about Chinese American Christianity. He traces to church members’ evangelical faith and their Confucian cultural heritage the reluctance of Chinese American Christians to get involved in society as a whole through political participation or social service.29 Interestingly, several of the Fo Guang Shan adherents with whom I had informal conversations referred to Confucianism in order to legitimize their religion’s high degree of involvement in society. Similarly, Yang Huinan argues that renjian Buddhist social engagement is not so much rooted in a revaluation of Indian Mahayana sutras, as some reformers argue, but is linked to Confucian practice and discourse.30 But the fact that Fo Guang Shan overseas temples reach out to mainstream society does not mean that they contribute nothing to the local Chinese community. As mentioned above, the Hsi Lai Temple also operates a columbarium in the area and provides chanting services for the deceased. On a Sunday in spring 2018, a group of ten volunteers and two female monastics picked me up from a side entrance of the Hsi Lai temple’s main shrine. We drove to a big cemetery that is located not far from the temple. The monastics and lay volunteers were on a mission to conduct a funeral service, which consisted of a solemn ritual and chanting assistance for the family of the deceased. A particularly important element of the ritual is to chant the name of the Buddha Amitabha in order to assure rebirth of the deceased in the western pure land of Sukhāvatī. The Buddhist chapel was decorated with lavish flower arrangements, and the atmosphere was calm and dignified. The funeral congregation was quite small and consisted mainly of the family of the deceased and the Fo Guang Shan volunteers. The deceased was not a member of BLIA, and 27 C. Chen, “The Religious Varieties of Ethnic Presence: A Comparison between a Taiwanese Immigrant Buddhist Temple and an Evangelical Christian Church”, Sociology of Religion 63 (2002), p. 215. 28 K.J. Guest, God in Chinatown: Religion and Survival in New York’s Evolving Immigrant Community, New York: New York University Press, 2003, pp. 195–196. 29 F. Yang, Chinese Christians in America: Conversion, Assimilation, and Adhesive Identities. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, p. 191. 30 Yang H. 楊惠南, “Renjian fojiao de jingdian quanshi: shi yuan ru ru fo huo shi huigui yindu?「 ⼈間佛教」的經典詮釋是「援儒⼊佛」或是回歸印度？” [“The Doctrinal Interpretation of the Buddhist Scripture by Humanistic Buddhists: Confucianising Buddhism or Return to India”], Chung-Hwa Buddhist Journal 13 (2000), p. 479.

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normally the temple is not able to provide this service to non-members, because there are too many people in the LA area and the BLIA lacks the manpower to provide the service for everybody. However, providing a Buddhist funeral is not only a service for the diasporic community, but also represents a possibility to spread the Dharma. During my fieldwork at the Nan Hua Temple in Bronkhorstspruit, South Africa, I interviewed a leading BLIA Johannesburg member, a very elegant, elderly Taiwanese lady, who told me that she had only joined BLIA after the Nan Hua Temple offered chanting assistance for her deceased parent. Before that she had not even identified herself as Buddhist. The generous offer and solemn ritual conducted by the temple had moved her so much that she began to get involved with the Nan Hua Temple. Despite their socially engaged outlook, Fo Guang Shan Buddhists do in fact also practise Buddhist ritual. Yet the rituals, like Fo Guang Shan Buddhist lay education, address people who are either Chinese Buddhists themselves or linked to Chinese Buddhism culturally. Early Buddhist modernizers such as Hsing Yun’s teacher Taxu were quite critical of some Amitabha-related practices, and one of the aims of the early twentiethcentury renjian Buddhists was to correct the overly commercialist ritual practices of the past. Yet the critique was primarily directed against the common practice of some monastics who provided on-call ritual services for the deceased for cash. That they were critical of some aberrations does not mean that renjian Buddhists completely abandoned rituals for the deceased, including the often criticized Amitabha-related pure land practices. Death represents an elemental event in every person’s life, not just for the individual, since we all die, but also for the family of the deceased. The ritual described above aims to ensure a good rebirth for the deceased, but also represents an opportunity to console the bereaved by teaching them the Buddhist Dharma. In Taiwan, other renjian Buddhist groups also carry out this practice.31 At Fo Guang Shan too, the benefits of rituals for the living are emphasized, and ritual is used as an occasion to teach the Buddhist Dharma.32 For a Buddhist organization to be included in Main and Lai’s revised definition of Socially Engaged Buddhism, social involvement within the secular sphere of society has to be understood as essentially religious. This applies also to Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhism. Although Fo Guang Shan does incorporate the whole range of more “traditional” forms of Buddhist practice, social engagement is given a special function. Contributing to society is a way of practising the

31 J. Reinke, “Innovation and Continuity in the Pure Lands: Pure Land Discourses and Practices at the Taiwanese Buddhist Order Dharma Drum Mountain”, Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 30 (2017), pp. 199–200. 32 Y. Xue, “Re-Creation of Rituals in Humanistic Buddhism: A Case Study of Fo Guang Shan”, Asian Philosophy 23 (2013), p. 359.

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Bodhisattva path, but is also linked to modernist projects such as nation state building through welfare and education. Yet although civic engagement constitutes an important part of Fo Guang Shan renjian Buddhist religiosity, that does not happen at the expense of more conventional forms of religious cultivation. At Fo Guang Shan, the religious and the secular do not represent clearly separated entities, but permeate each other. Within the transnational framework of the diaspora, the order’s civic engagement focuses not only on one’s own community – be it the Chinese or Taiwanese diaspora community or other Fo Guang Shan Buddhists – but goes beyond these communities and contributes to the whole of society. At the same time, more traditional religious services, like Dharma assemblies and other rituals, maintain their importance within the Fo Guang Shan community, a community that primarily consists of first-generation migrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and the PRC. On a global scale, Fo Guang Shan’s civic engagement therefore generates one of the order’s main spaces of cross-cultural interaction. This leads us to discuss two examples in more detail: the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group in South Africa and the University of the West in the USA.

Spaces of Cross-Cultural Interaction: The Nan Hua Performing Arts Group The line between charity and education is not always clear-cut: As we have seen above (e.g. with regard to the construction of schools and providing of scholarships), the two forms of civic engagement often overlap. The Nan Hua Performing Arts Group or tian long dui 天龍隊 (heavenly dragon group)33 is an interesting example, since it shows that Fo Guang Shan’s social engagement constitutes an often overlooked space of cross-cultural interaction between Fo Guang Shan monastics, Taiwanese migrants, and mainstream society. The group was founded in 2013, and student enrolment began in 2014. When I interviewed one of the monastics at the Nan Hua Temple, he told me that only a single-digit percentage of the black, female population of South Africa has a university degree. After finishing high school, many young women get married, have children, and do not continue their education. The temple therefore established the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group in order to provide

33 This section is based on data collected during my fieldwork at the Nan Hua Temple in late 2017.

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learning opportunities for young women who live in underdeveloped and rural areas. The group represents one of the temple’s most successful efforts to contribute to South African society. In March 2018, it was even invited to participate in the conference of the UN Women’s Commission on the Status of Women held in New York. The Nan Hua Performance Art Group has a three-year course programme. It is free of charge, includes free board and lodging, and covers travelling expenses for performance tours. Students who have proven themselves to be responsible and diligent enough have the option to continue for two more years, during which they can serve as teaching assistants. In December 2017, the first round of students received their degrees. They decided to stay at the temple to work as teaching assistants. They also help out with the scout programme the temple has initiated in order to provide recreational activities for under-privileged children from neighbouring townships. The classes designed for the young women include computer courses and Mandarin language classes, but the main focus is on performance arts. Traditional Chinese and African drumming, traditional African dancing, African marimba xylophone playing, modern dance, Chinese martial arts, and traditional dances, are all part of the curriculum. The classes are taught by local South African as well as Taiwanese teachers. First-year students begin with the study of African performance arts taught by the local teachers, while from the second year on, they are also taught by Taiwanese teachers flown in from Taipei, who stay for about four weeks at a time and teach intensive classes in Chinese drum, dance, and performance. The students who participate in the programme come from different South African ethnic groups and different parts of the country. New students often come from the same groups as current ones, because they have heard of the programme from these students. However, Fo Guang Shan also advertises the programme in local newspapers. A prerequisite for enrolment is that students have to be female, 18 to 25 years old, and unmarried. An interview is conducted at the temple to see if they fit into the programme. So far, 131 young black South African women have been enrolled in the programme. However, many did not persevere. The current 30 were selected from a group of 200. Reasons for giving up include the fact that some women cannot adjust to the vegetarian food or the strict temple life, while others may have had difficulties with the classes. Or they just do not pass the exams that are held regularly. The overall quality of the young performers, particularly of the students of the higher classes, is impressive. The temple was even approached by a TV station and asked to participate in the popular TV show “South Africa’s Got Talent”. The young women of the second and third year of the Nan Hua Performing Arts

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Group participated and even made it to the semi-finals. The group also performs regularly at different venues in Gauteng Province, often at events organized by the local Taiwanese and Chinese communities. Once a year the second- and third-year students go on an Asia tour and perform in different Fo Guang Shan temples. They have travelled to Taiwan, the PRC, Malaysia, and the Philippines. One monastic told me that the audiences in Asia, mostly consisting of ethnic Chinese, are very touched to see young African women perform traditional Chinese arts at such a high professional level. The temple plans to further professionalize the training by expanding its cooperation with other Chinese and Taiwanese groups. The young women live on the temple grounds and are fully integrated in the daily life of the temple. They eat together with the monastics, the long-time volunteers, and the staff. Although the temple does hope to convey Fo Guang Shan Buddhist values to the students, they are not required to become Buddhists or participate in the daily morning service that is conducted in one of the shrine halls. In fact, none of the students is a Buddhist; one student is Muslim and all others are Christians. I had the opportunity to teach two classes to the students: one class for the whole student body on Chinese language learning and another specifically for first-year students focusing on Taiwanese culture and renjian Buddhism. On the second occasion the students discussed their impressions of the temple and of Buddhism, but also opened up about their life in the programme. The students reported how the Chinese Buddhist iconography at the temple – in particular the statue of the Thousand-Hand Avalokiteśvara (qianshou Guanyin 千手觀音) – had irritated them in the beginning, but over time they had got used to it. They were very impressed by the disciplined way the volunteers at the temple practise Buddhism. While they also managed to adjust to the vegetarian cuisine, several mentioned that the temple is very quiet and has many rules. Finally, everybody agreed with the following statement: “Every culture is different. But that children have to respect their parents is a notion common to Chinese and black South African culture.” There are of course significant differences between Taiwanese culture and the cultures of the local black communities, including the food and the way people talk and socialize. The difference might become even bigger because a temple is not any kind of Taiwanese space but a religious space with many rules and regulations. A Buddhist temple is a space for Buddhist practice xiuxing 修行, while the students of the Nan Hua Performance Group are young women at an age when people tend to be more interested in having fun or, going to the movies than living the quiet life of a temple. Therefore, some students leave the programme after a while, but others stay. Those who stay have adjusted to the strict environment. The young women in the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group

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are part of the temple life. They share the same environment, eating and living together. Although the temple sets the rules, it has also to some degree adapts to the situation. Compared to other Fo Guang Shan overseas temples, the atmosphere at Nan Hua is much livelier and many rules are not enforced as strictly. The Nan Hua Temple hopes to spread renjian Buddhism to the local non-Chinese South African population, but the young women of the Nan Hua Performance Arts Group, like the vast majority of non-Chinese recipients of Fo Guang Shan educational and charity engagements worldwide, do not become Buddhists. Compared to the strong missionary zeal of overseas Chinese Christians, Fo Guang Shan takes a soft approach to proselytization. However, through its local performances and the television appearances the group functions as what one BLIA member has called “cultural ambassadors” for the temple in South Africa. Furthermore, by touring other Fo Guang Shan temples in Taiwan and Southeast Asia and by appearing in the Fo Guang Shan media, the Nan Hua Performance groups represent a successful example of Fo Guang Shan’s transnational civic engagements and thereby attract donations and revenue.

Tertiary Education in the Ethnoburb: The University of the West Of the three Fo Guang Shan’s higher institutes of education that are located outside of Taiwan, the University of the West was established first. Its campus is located in Rosemead in the Los Angeles San Gabriel Valley. The valley consists of a group of Chinese suburban neighbourhoods, where the influx of a large number of Chinese in a relatively short period of time has generated large Chinese residential and business suburban clusters. The US ethnographer Wei Li has dubbed the area a Chinese “ethnoburb”, in order to differentiate it from earlier modes of Chinese settlement, such as the Chinatown.34 The campus is only a 20-minute drive away from the Hsi Lai Temple. In the beginning, the university was located on temple grounds, but in 1991 it was officially separated.35 After the construction of Hsi Lai Temple was completed, Hsing Yun began to consider founding a liberal arts university in the US. He stated: “At the time I had a thought, Americans had founded 34 W. Li, Ethnoburb: The New Ethnic Community in Urban America, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011, p. 1. 35 If not further referenced, the following information is retrieved from T. Storch, BuddhistBased Universities in the United States: Searching for a New Model in Higher Education, London: Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 11–20.

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many Christian universities in China, looking at the issue from a perspective of cultural exchange, and we should repay the United States and build a University in the US as gift to express our gratitude.”36 The University of the West was originally called Hsi Lai University. Its current name, University of the West, was adopted in April 2004. Currently, the university is organized under the Non-profit Public Benefit Corporation Law. The university defines itself as a private, non-profit, non-sectarian, co-educational institution. In 2006, the University of the West was accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). It provides four undergraduate programmes37– Business Administration, English, Liberal Arts, and Psychology – and four graduate programmes: Buddhist Chaplaincy, Business Administration, Psychology, and Religious Studies. The certificate programmes include: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), Undergraduate Certificate in Business Administration, Graduate Certificate in Business Administration, and a PostMBA Certificate in Business Administration. The University of the West is a secular university, and faculty is not required to be Buddhist.38 However, the values and the mission of the school are defined in Buddhist terms.39 Some classes cover the books of Fo Guang Shan’s founder Hsing Yun, and sometimes a monastic gives classes on certain Buddhism-related topics, e.g. on renjian Buddhism and management. The business programme has a learning through service component, and all the students enrolled in undergraduate programmes are required to take at least one religious studies course. The courses focus more on general life education than on the academic study of religion. The university has the lowest tuition fees for a private university in the state of California and in addition provides many scholarships for its students.40

36 “那時候我有一個想法，我認為美國人在中國興辦了很多教會大學，站在文化交流的立場, 我 們也可以回饋美國，在美國辦一所大學以示酬謝”, in: Hsing Yun 星雲, Bai nian foyuan 百年佛緣 [100 Years of Karmic Connections], Kaohsiung: Foguang chubanshe, 2013, vol. 5, pp. 142–143. 37 Fo Guang Shan University of the West, “Academics | University of the West”, http://www. uwest.edu/academics/ (accessed 12 November 2018). 38 If not marked differently, the following section is based on data collected during my fieldwork at the Hsi Lai Temple in the spring of 2018. 39 “Our Mission. The mission of University of the West is to provide a whole-person education in a context informed by Buddhist wisdom and values, and to facilitate cultural understanding and appreciation between East and West”. Fo Guang Shan University of the West, “Mission | University of the West”, https://www.uwest.edu/about-uwest/our-mission/ (accessed 12 November 2018). 40 President’s Scholarship, Dean’s Scholarship, and UWest Scholarship, Lotus Scholarship, Bridge Scholarship, IBEF International Buddhist Education Foundation Scholarship for monastics.

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Although the school is independent, it maintains a close connection to the temple. The presidents of the University of the West and Fo Guang Shan’s Taiwanese universities meet regularly, and the school also maintains a close relationship with the educational institutes in the Philippines and Australia. The temple provides most of the university’s financial support. There are opportunities for internships and volunteer work, but also meditation retreats at the temple. Some students have found jobs in the temple after graduation. The University of the West has a very diverse student body. About half of the students are international students. The ratio is about even in all four main tracks, with psychology attracting more domestic students. The MBA programme attracts many international students, while the religious studies and Buddhist chaplaincy students are of mixed backgrounds. The business administration programme is the biggest programme. The school aims to have a half-and-half balance of undergraduate and graduate students, but at the time of my research it had slightly more graduate students. The school has registered a rise in the number of Hispanic Americans in the undergraduate programmes, which reflects demographic developments in the San Gabriel Valley. There are more Asian exchange students than Asian American ones, but the school plans to change this. It also aims to attract more second-generation Euro American Buddhists, or “Dharma brats”. Most of the overseas students are from Asia, particularly from Chinese-speaking countries, above all Taiwan and the PRC. While the school under its old name developed a reputation in Asian Buddhist monastic circles, and the religious studies and chaplaincy departments continue to attract elite Buddhist monastics from Asia, the name change has proven successful in attracting more students in general. For local students the pronunciation of the school name has become easier, and international students prefer to receive a diploma from a university with an English, non-Chinese name. Compared to the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group, the University of the West is more independent from the temple. This is the case not only because of the physical distance between the temple and the school, but also because the university has to adhere to the regulations related to its WASC accreditation. However, while the majority of its students do not have extensive interaction with the temple, some do. In addition, the university is quite well known in Asia, and has a good reputation in Buddhist circles in other Asian countries besides Taiwan. Some of the university’s students include elite monastics from the People’s Republic of China and Thailand. Thus, the university constitutes an example of contemporary Buddhist transnationalism.

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Conclusion From its beginnings, transnational encounters have shaped the development of modernist, renjian Buddhism in China. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, amalgamations of native and foreign elements generated new forms of Chinese religiosity that were often linked to the modern nation state project. Buddhists reacted to the threat of being pushed out of the newly emerging secular sphere by revaluating the space of society as a field for religious cultivation, thereby merging the secular and the religious. To this day, engagement in the secular sphere of society continues to be the main characteristic of contemporary renjian Buddhists, including Fo Guang Shan. Certain aspects of Protestant Christian involvement in China, such as building modern schools and contributing to charity, have created models for renjian Buddhists to emulate. During the second half of the last century renjian Buddhists deterritorialized the religiously motivated civic engagement that emerged in the context of the Chinese nation state building project. Facilitated by the transnational flows of post-1965 Chinese migration, they expanded their civic engagement across the globe. While many contemporary Chinese Christians within the diaspora focus on proselytization and are even sceptical of philanthropic work, Fo Guang Shan has deterritorialized and thereby globalized its civic engagement. In comparison to many Chinese Christian groups overseas, Fo Guang Shan applies a softer approach to proselytization. Instead of primarily trying to spread the Dharma within the diasporic community, Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples aim to improve the living conditions of the population of their host society, the ultimate goal being to establish a global “pure land on earth”. But that is a long-term goal. By applying the spirit of its specific tradition – renjian Buddhism – Fo Guang Shan’s immediate focus is on contributing to society. To invest in charity and education is a form of religious practice but also means localizing oneself within the mainstream culture of the host society. The order aims to convey the values of renjian Buddhism and thereby develop local Buddhist talent, assuming that this will pay off in the long run. Through civic engagement, Fo Guang Shan’s overseas temples generate many linkages with their respective host societies. Most of Fo Guang Shan’s charity and educational activities are not intended for the actors’ own group, be it the Taiwanese or Chinese diaspora community or the community of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhists, but are meant to benefit society as a whole. Although many of the contacts between Fo Guang Shan adherents and their beneficiaries are only brief, they help to introduce the order to mainstream culture. Others, as in the case of the Nan Hua Performing Arts Group, are more sustained. Furthermore, Fo Guang Shan’s engagement overseas is producing effects back in

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Taiwan and is also noticed in other Buddhist Asian circles. This helps Fo Guang Shan to attract donations, and many Fo Guang Shan adherents take pride in the global contributions of their order. Fo Guang Shan Buddhist civic engagement represents only one aspect of the order’s social engagement, alongside the modernization of Chinese Buddhist ritual and religious practice and the deployment of notions of Chinese culture. Together these form a particular mode of modern Chinese Buddhist religiosity. Fo Guang Shan Buddhists are modernist bodhisattvas who aim to contribute to society and thereby generate a global pure land.

List of Contributors Afe Adogame, Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Religion and Society at Princeton Theological Seminary USA, [email protected]. His teaching and research interests primarily focus on new dynamics of religious experiences and expressions in Africa and the African Diaspora, with a particular focus on African Christianities and new indigenous religious movements, the interconnectedness between religion and migration, globalization, politics, economy, media, and civil society. Recent publications: (ed. with Raimundo Barreto and Wanderley Pereira da Rosa) Migration and Public Discourse in World Christianity, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019; (ed. with Nick J. Watson and Andrew Parker) Global Perspectives on Sports and Christianity, Oxon & New York: Routledge, 2018; (ed.) The Public Face of African New Religious Movements in Diaspora. Imagining the Religious ‘Other’, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014; The African Christian Diaspora: New Currents and Emerging Trends in World Christianity, London et al.: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Johara Berriane, researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, [email protected]. She has been mainly working on the nexus of mobility, migration, and religion in West and North African cities. Her work focuses on the effects of circulation and mobility on the production of religious spaces, as well as on the role of Christian and Muslim institutions in the identification of migrants and the governance of their movements. Recent publications: “The Moroccan Moment and Communities of Itinerants: Mobility and Belonging in the Transnational Trajectories of Sub-Saharan Migrants”, in: Oliver Bakewell and Loren B. Landau (eds.), Forging African Communities. Mobility, Integration and Belonging, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018; “Transit, Einwanderung und Zirkulation. Geopolitische und sozioökonomische Faktoren der marokkanischen Migrationstransition”, Berliner Debatte Initial 28 (2017) 4, pp. 95–107; Ahmad al-Tijânî de Fès: un sanctuaire soufi aux connexions transnationales, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016; “Sub-Saharan Students in Morocco: Determinants, Everyday Life and Future Plans of a High-Skilled Migrant Group”, Journal of North African Studies 20 (2015) 4, pp. 573–589. Nikolas Broy, Lecturer at the Institute for the Study of Religion, Leipzig University, [email protected]. He earned his PhD from the Institute for the Study of Religion at Leipzig University in 2014 and has worked in Leipzig, Göttingen, and Hefei (PR China). His research covers various aspects of religion in China, such as popular religious sects and redemptive societies, Buddhism, religious violence, and globalization, besides topics in the sociology of religion. Recent publications: “Maitreya’s Garden in the Township: Transnational Religious Spaces of Yiguandao Activists in Urban South Africa”, China Perspectives (2019) 3; “Moral Integration or Social Segregation? Vegetarianism and Vegetarian Religious Communities in Chinese Religious Life”, in: Paul R. Katz and Stefania Travagnin (eds.), Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions III: Key Concepts in Practice, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 37–64; “Bourdieu, Weber und Rational Choice: Versuch einer Weiterentwicklung des religiösen Feldmodells am Beispiel Chinas”, Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 25 (2017) 2, pp. 287–324. Marian Burchardt, Professor of Transregional Sociology at the Centre for Area Studies, Leipzig University, [email protected]. As a cultural sociologist, he is primarily interested in how power relations and institutions shape social life in multicultural societies. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-016

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The relationship between power, space, and social position are at the heart of his research. Recent publications: (ed. with Hansjörg Dilger, Matthew Wilhelm-Salomon, and Astrid Bochow) Affective Trajectories: Religion and Emotions in African Cityscapes, Durham: Duke University Press, 2020; “Saved from Hegemonic Masculinity? Charismatic Christianity and Men’s Responsibilization in South Africa”, Current Sociology 66 (2018) 1, pp. 110–127; “Pentecostal Productions of Locality: Urban Risks and Spiritual Protection in Cape Town”, in: Anna Strhan and David Garbin (eds.), Religion and the Global City, London: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 78–94; Faith in the Time of AIDS: Religion, Biopolitics and Modernity in South Africa, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Geert Castryck, researcher in African and global history at Leipzig University, where he is currently working at the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199: “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition”, [email protected]. He has published on urban history in East and Central Africa, on Islam in Africa, and on colonization and postcolonialism. Recent publications: “Living Islam in Colonial Bujumbura – The Historical Translocality of Muslim Life between East and Central Africa”, History in Africa 46 (2019), pp. 263–298; (ed.) The Bounds of Berlin’s Africa – Space-Making and Multiple Territorialities in East and Central Africa (special issue International Journal of African Historical Studies 52 [2019] 1); “Disentangling the Colonial City – Spatial Separations and Entanglements inside Towns and across the Empire in Colonial Africa and Europe”, in: Matthias Middell and Steffi Marung (eds.), Spatial Formats under the Global Condition, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019, pp. 183–204; “Part II: Colonialism and Post-Colonial Studies”, in: Matthias Middell (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Transregional Studies, Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Wei-Yi Cheng, Associate Professor at the Buddhist Studies Department of Fo Guang University in Yilan, Taiwan, [email protected]. She received her PhD at the Study of Religions Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Her research focuses on gender and Buddhism, the sociology of religion, contemporary Buddhist culture, and Vietnamese Buddhism in Taiwan. Recent publications: “Transnational Buddhism and Ritual Performance in Taiwan”, Contemporary Buddhism (2020); “A Discussion of Buddhist Belief and Sexuality from the Perspective of Buddhists Living with HIV/AIDS” [In Chinese], Hsuan Chuang Journal of Buddhist Studies 25 (2016), pp. 165–198. Philip Clart, Professor of Chinese Culture and History at Leipzig University, [email protected], obtained his PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1997. He is the editor of the Journal of Chinese Religions. His main research areas are popular religion and new religious movements in Taiwan, religious change and state/religion relations in China, as well as literature and religions of the late imperial period (tenth – nineteenth centuries). Recent publications: (ed. with David Ownby and Wang Chien-chuan) Text and Context in the Modern History of Chinese Religions: Redemptive Societies and Their Sacred Texts, Leiden: Brill, 2020; “Competition, Entrepreneurship, and Network Formation among Taiwanese Spirit-Writing Cults”, in: Li Shi-wei 李世偉 (ed.), Jindai Huaren zongjiao huodong yu minjian wenhua: Song Guangyu jiaoshou jinian wenji 近代華人宗教活動與民間文化----宋光宇教授紀念文集, Taipei: Boyang, 2019, pp. 107–163. Magnus Echtler, social anthropologist, who obtained his PhD from the University of Bayreuth, [email protected]. He has special interest in religions in South Africa and

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Zanzibar, in theories of ritual and practice, and in the interplay of religion and territory, power, art, emotion, and transgression. Recent publications: “Shembe, the Black Messiah: A Postcolonial Intervention”, in: Britta Konz, Bernhard Ortmann, and Christian Wetz (eds.), Postcolonialism, Theology and the Construction of the Other: Exploring Borderlands (Studies in Theology and Religion, 26), Leiden: Brill, 2020, pp. 133–169; “Pissing the Sacred: Schlingensief’s African Opera Village as a Fundraising Heterotopia”, in: Fabian Lehmann, Nadine Siegert, and Ulf Vierke (eds.), Art of Wagnis: Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa, Vienna: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2017, pp. 134–150; “Shembe is the Way: The Nazareth Baptist Church in the Religious Field and in Academic Discourse”, in: Magnus Echtler and Asonzeh Ukah (eds.), Bourdieu in Africa: Exploring the Dynamics of Religious Fields (Studies of Religion in Africa, 44), Leiden: Brill, 2016, pp. 236–266. Klaus Hock, Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Rostock, [email protected]. Trained as a theologian, he specialized in relations and separations between religions, with a primary focus on the relationship between Christianity and Islam on the one hand and religions in Africa on the other. Recent publications: Das Christentum in Afrika und im Nahen Osten (Kirchengeschichte in Einzeldarstellungen IV/7), Leipzig: EVA, 2005; (ed. with Afe Adogame and Roswitha Gerloff) Christianity in Africa and the African Diaspora. The Appropriation of a Scattered Heritage, London and New York: Continuum, 2008; (ed. with Gesa Mackenthun) Entangled Knowledge. Scientific Discourse and Cultural Difference, Münster: Waxmann, 2012; (ed.) The Power of Interpretation: Imagined Authenticity – Appropriated Identity. Conflicting Discourses on New Forms of African Christianity, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016. Janet Alison Hoskins, Professor of Anthropology and Religion at the University of Southern California, [email protected]. Recent publications: The Divine Eye and the Diaspora: Vietnamese Syncretism Becomes Transpacific Caodaism, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2015; Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People’s Lives, New York: Routledge, 1998; The Play of Time: Kodi Perspectives on History, Calendars and Exchange, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. She served as President of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion from 2011 to 2013. Adam Jones, Professor of African History and Culture History at Leipzig University until his retirement in 2016, [email protected]. He has conducted fieldwork in Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. His research deals mainly with sub-Saharan Africa before 1900, source criticism, material culture and mission photography. Recent publications: Afrika bis 1850 (Neue Fischer Weltgeschichte, vol. 19), Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2016; (ed. with Peter Sebald) Le Grand Livre des Lawson: Les archives d’une famille africaine d’Aného (Togo), 2 vols., Paris: L’Harmattan, 2018; (ed. with Mariana P. Candido) African Women in the Atlantic World: Property, Vulnerability & Mobility, 1660–1880, Woodbridge: James Currey, 2019. Rongdao Lai, Assistant Professor, Religious Studies and East Asian Studies, McGill University, [email protected]. She received her PhD in Religious Studies from McGill University in 2014. She specializes in modern Chinese Religions, focusing especially on the changing landscape in Chinese Buddhism and identity production. She was co-editor for the Eastern Buddhist feature on “Socially Engaged Buddhism” (2014), and has recently completed a book

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manuscript, based on her doctoral dissertation, on educational reform and citizenship discourse in modern Chinese Buddhism. Peter Lambertz, Postdoctoral researcher, Gerda Henkel Foundation at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin, [email protected]. He obtained his PhD from the universities of Leipzig and Utrecht. He has a particular interest in religious movements in African cities, as well as in technologies of transportation and mobility on African waterways, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Recent publications: Seekers and Things. Spiritual Movements and Aesthetic Difference in Kinshasa, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books, 2018; “The Cleansing Touch: Spirits, Atmospheres and Attouchment in a ‘Japanese’ Spiritual Movement in Kinshasa”, in: Hansjörg Dilger, Astrid Bochow, Marian Burchardt, and Matthew Wilhelm Solomon (eds.), Spirit and Sentiment: Affective Trajectories of Religious Being in Urban Africa, Durham: Duke University Press, 2020, pp. 134–159; “The Vernacular Bureaucracy of Taxi Logistics at the Airport of Dakar”, Africa Today 65 (2019) 2, pp. 51–73 (special issue Bus Stations in Africa, ed. by Michael Stasik and Sidy Cissokho). Frédérique Louveau, social anthropologist at the Université Gaston Berger, Saint-Louis (Senegal), [email protected]. Her research interests include religious globalization and mobility. She has published on how religious practitioners in West Africa may socially distinguish themselves by adopting Japanese religious practices, and about Muslims and Christians engaging in environmental protection. Recent publications: “The Spirits of the Great Green Wall in Senegal: Spirituality, Ecology and Secularization”, Journal for Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, special issue Toward a “spiritualization” of Ecology? Sociological and Critical Perspectives (forthcoming); “Mobilités européennes et renouveau religieux en Afrique: l’exemple de Sukyo Mahikari”, in G. Fabbiano, M. Peraldi, A. Poli, and L. Terrazoni (eds.), Les migrations des Nords vers les Suds, Paris: Karthala, 2019, pp. 205–221; “Le nouveau modèle de développement des adeptes africains d’une religion japonaise (Bénin, Côte-d’Ivoire, Sénégal)”, in: D. Malaquais and N. Khouri (dir.), Afrique – Asie: Arts, espaces, pratiques, Rouen: PURH, 2018, pp. 91–110; “The Environmentalism of a Japanese Religious Movement in Senegal: From Healing to Environmental Management through Sukyo Mahikari”, Cahiers d’Etudes africaines, 4 (2011) 204, pp. 739–768; “De l’islam au shinto: l’initiation de musulmans à un mouvement religieux japonais en Afrique de l’Ouest (Bénin, Côte d’Ivoire, Sénégal)”, Cahiers du HCM: Histoire, Monde et Cultures religieuses 28 (2014), pp. 79–95 (special issue D’une croyance à l’autre, le cas de l’islam); “Un mouvement religieux japonais au cœur de la pluralisation religieuse africaine: Logiques de distinction et de mimétisme de Sukyo Mahikari (Côte d’Ivoire, Bénin, Sénégal)”, Politique africaine, 123 (2011), pp. 73–93. Nguyen Thi Hien, Associate Professor and the Deputy Director of the Viet Nam National Institute of Culture and Arts Studies, Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in Hanoi, Viet Nam, [email protected]. After obtaining her PhD in Folklore from Indiana University, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and UCLA. Recent publications: The Religion of Four Palaces: Mediumship and Therapy in Viet Culture, Hanoi: The Gioi Publishing House, 2016. Jens Reinke, lecturer at the Institute of East Asian Studies, Leipzig University, [email protected]. He obtained his PhD in Chinese Studies from Leipzig University in 2020. His research interests include modern and contemporary Taiwanese and Chinese

List of Contributors

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Buddhism, the interplay of Chinese migration, transnationalism and the global spread of Chinese Mahayana, and Chinese Buddhism and nationalism. Recent publications: “The Buddha in Bronkhorstspruit: The Transnational Spread of the Taiwanese Buddhist Order Fo Guang Shan to South Africa”, Contemporary Buddhism, special issue (forthcoming); “Sacred Secularities: Ritual and Social Engagement in a Global Buddhist China”, in: Yang Fenggang (ed.), Religiosity, Secularity and Pluralism in the Global East (special issue Religions 9 [2018] 11); (with Nikolas Broy and Philip Clart) Migrating Buddhas and Global Confucianism: The Transnational Space Making of Taiwanese Religious Organizations, SFB 1199 TP03 working paper, Leipzig University, 2017; “Innovation and Continuity in the Pure Lands: Pure Land Discourses and Practices at the Taiwanese Buddhist Order Dharma Drum Mountain”, Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 30 (2017), pp. 169–210. Thomas A. Tweed, W. Harold and Martha Welch Professor of American Studies and Director of the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion at the University of Notre Dame, [email protected]. His historical, ethnographic, and theoretical research about migrant religions in the United States, religion in the Americas, and spatial articulations of religion includes six books and six edited volumes, as well as countless journal articles. Recent publications: Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997; Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, Cambride, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006; America’s Church: The National Shrine and Catholic Presence in the Nation’s Capital, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Index Abidjan 139 Accra 151, 153 actors 1, 17, 18, 21, 22, 41, 77, 124, 125, 128, 130, 160, 161, 168, 170, 173, 180, 233, 247, 280, 284, 302 – religious 39, 139, 150, 171, 173, 177, 198, 283, 287, 289 – spatial 50, 52, 82 Adams, Alfons 75 Adeboye, Enoch Adejare 114 Adedibu, Babatunde 116 Adogame, Afe 3, 4, 48, 125 Adventists 79 aesthetics 97, 228 – of space 124 – religious 36, 43, 134 Afro-Brazilian religions 230, 247, 248, 259 Akindayomi, Josiah Olufemi 114 America – North 2, 114, 118, 141, 142, 177, 211, 222, 250, 264–266, 274, 281, 291, 292 – South 2, 115, 250, 274, 275, 291 Analects (Lunyu 論語) 273 ancestors 7, 86, 90, 93, 95, 99, 103, 163, 169, 201, 227–244 – lists of ancestors 7, 234 ancestor worship 45, 46, 227, 228, 232–236, 241–243 Anglo-Boer war (1899–1902) 86 Angola 229 Asad, Talal 287 assemblages 16, 128 assemblies – Dharma 296 – Nazarite 96–106 Asia – Central 2 – East 219, 265 – Southeast 1, 2, 5, 6, 156, 169, 265, 292, 296, 299 Association Générale des Etudiants Vietnamiens de Paris 202

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110690101-017

Australia 5, 114–116, 188, 200, 204, 206, 250, 266, 290, 292, 301 Austria 114, 279 Bachmann, Traugott 68 Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich 14 Bankston, Carl L. 195 Bao Dai, emperor 202 Baojing 寳靜 (1899–1940) 216, 221 Baptism of Fire 火の洗礼 253 Bascom, William 160 Bavaria 81 Becker, Felicitas 64 Beijing 214, 216 Benedictines, O.S.B. 74, 76–79, 81, 82 Berlin 10–12, 15, 20, 25, 28–30, 32, 185, 190, 191, 193–195, 199, 200, 203, 204, 206 Berlin Congo Conference (1884–85) 3, 74, 77 Berlin Mission 74–81 Berlin wall 189, 194 Berners-Lee, Tim 18 Black Fathers 79 boat people (thuyền nhân or người vượt biên) 185 Bodhisattva 14, 296, 303 Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara 175, 298 Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha 175 Book of Changes (Yijing 易經) 271 border-crossing 6, 13, 14, 175, 211, 265, 281 borders 2–4, 6, 9, 19, 87, 92, 110, 114, 124–129, 133, 147, 148, 162, 166, 170, 183, 185, 190, 208, 211, 216, 263 see also boundaries – national 110, 127, 170, 173, 175, 179, 247, 255, 262 Bore Monastery (般若寺) 219 Borup, Jørn 242 Boston 265, 266 boundaries 13, 14, 21, 44, 89, 105, 110, 125, 126, 128, 129, 135, 151, 164, 166, 173, 209, 210, 265, 268

312

Index

– national 126, 247 – spatial 35, 44, 128, 145, 173, 265 Bourdieu, Pierre 25 Brazzaville 141 Brazil 7, 28, 230, 237, 277, 292 Buddha’s Light International Association (BLIA) 283, 290, 291, 293–295, 299 Buddhism – Chinese 5, 6, 169, 180, 181, 210–216, 222, 223, 283–286, 288, 289, 293, 295, 298, 303 see also Modern Chinese Buddhism – Huayan 華嚴 217, 220 – Renjian 人間 8, 283, 286–290, 293–296, 298–300, 302 see also Fo Guang Shan – Tiantai 天台 6, 8, 210–223 – Vietnamese 5, 6, 31, 169, 170, 173, 174, 177, 181, 187, 195, 196, 198 – Zen (Thiền, Chan 禪) 194, 196, 197, 241–243, 273, 278 Buddhist academies (foxueyuan 佛學院) 213, 214 California 8, 35, 124, 184, 187, 188, 265–279, 293, 300 Cambodia 169, 291 Cameroon 114, 135, 138, 140 Canada 5, 22, 28, 115, 116, 176, 188, 200, 204, 206, 222, 266, 274, 291 Caodai (Cao Đài, Caodaism) 186, 194, 200, 275 capitalism 87, 183, 191, 194, 285 Capone, Stefania 247 Casablanca 134, 135, 137, 139, 142, 143 Castells, Manuel 281 Catholicism 39, 194, 251 Catholics 31, 51, 68, 75, 77, 80, 81, 103, 186, 281 Central African Republic 138 Certeau, Michel de 155 Ceuta 147 Chagga 54, 66–69 Cham Shan Temple (Zhanshan si 湛山寺) 222 Changchun 長春 218, 219 Changxing 常惺 (1896–1939) 217 Chapman, John 196

charisma 50, 88, 89, 91, 114, 135, 137, 138, 141–145, 148, 176, 211, 217, 227, 229, 246, 268, 282 charity 172, 237, 283–291, 294, 296, 299, 302 Chen, Carolyn 293 Chen, Dr. Joseph (Chen Zhengfu 陳正夫, b. 1939) 268 Cherry, Stephen M. 126 Chisong 持松 (1894–1972) 219 Christian villages 62, 63 Christianity 1, 22, 31, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 49, 50, 54, 63, 64, 67, 72, 116, 136, 138, 142, 167, 200, 246, 249, 286, 294 Christians, African 4, 37, 40–50, 53–59, 62–64, 67, 72, 85, 106, 116, 124, 129, 134–138, 141–145, 149, 166, 229, 241, 246, 252 Christians, Chinese 285, 286, 293, 294, 299, 300, 302 Christian missions 2, 41, 55, 82, 83, 241, 242 chronotope (time-space) 14 Church Missionary Society 53, 65 churches – evangelical 2, 4, 6, 124 – house churches 136–143, 145, 147, 148 – Zionist 47 Cicero 159 circulation 11, 15, 17, 19, 129, 133, 135, 138, 139, 141, 142, 149, 247, 264, 268, 280 – of practices 249–253, 265 Civilization – of Yoko 陽光文明 249, 252 – Western 41, 44 Clarke, Peter B. 247 Clart, Philip 1, 35, 279 Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing 孝經) 273 Cleys, Bram 56, 57, 83 Clifford, James 15 Cold War 11, 20, 187, 188 Cologne 81 colonial rule 40, 56, 58 colonial state 2, 3, 64 colonialism 2, 42, 46, 47, 51, 82, 83, 156, 206

Index

Colonomos, Ariel 247 Comaroff, Jean 54, 69 Comaroff, John 54, 69 community 5, 26, 44, 45, 62, 71, 118, 153, 154, 158, 165, 191, 195, 200, 201, 204, 207–209, 215, 218, 221, 239, 254, 267–271, 275, 277, 280, 281, 285, 288, 290, 291–293, 296 – diaspora 6, 8, 9, 142, 264, 283, 294–296, 302 – migrant 5, 22, 39, 134, 143, 144, 146, 149 – religious 36, 38, 39, 62, 103, 104, 153 – transnational spiritual 7, 39, 248, 251, 255, 256, 258, 261 computer-mediated communication 264, 265, 274, 280 confluences 13, 14, 16, 174 Congo Free State 83 Congo, Belgian 83 Congo, Democratic Republic of 2, 7, 9, 114, 135–142, 148, 227–229, 236, 240, 243, 244, 245 see also Kinshasa Congo, Republic of 138, 142, 245, 292 see also Brazzaville contract workers 5, 183, 185, 186, 188, 189, 194, 195, 197, 198, 200, 206–208 conversion 41, 42, 44, 53, 82, 152 cosmos 14, 162–164 Council of Islamic Scholars 143 Coyault, Bernard 140 crossing 14, 22, 23, 27, 37, 39, 135, 173 cyberspace 166, 281 Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia 183, 189 Dakar 250, 255, 260 Dallas 118, 119, 122–124, 266 Dallas-Fort Worth 184, 188 dam 22, 23 dance 86, 88, 93, 103–105, 113, 228, 297 Dannholz, Jakob 45 Daodejing 道德經 269–273, 276 Daoism 270–272, 275, 279 Daojie 道階 (1870–1934) 219 Dar es Salaam 63

313

De Meulder, Bruno 56, 57, 83 Deleuze, Gilles 15, 248 Denmark 114 deterritorialization 7, 38, 125, 233, 247, 248, 255, 256, 261, 281, 283, 288, 292, 302 Detroit 115 Dharma 171, 172, 176, 178, 179, 181, 210, 214, 215, 218–221, 223, 286, 288, 293, 295, 296, 301, 302 Dharma heirs 6, 211, 216, 218, 220, 221 Dharma Propagation Study Society (Hongfa yanjiushe 弘法研究社) 214 Dharma transmission 6, 8, 210, 212, 219–222 diaspora 38, 39, 116, 126, 206, 207, 250, 292 – Chinese 6, 8, 264, 283, 288, 293, 294, 296, 302 – Congolese 141 – Nigerian 109, 113, 130 – Taiwanese 288, 296, 302 – Vietnamese 169, 170, 177, 183, 185, 186 diaspora communities 6, 9, 39, 142, 264, 283, 288, 294, 296, 302 Diop, Birago 227 divination 159, 160 see also Ifá divination Dixian 諦閑 (1858–1932) 211–221 Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong 中庸) 243 dōjō 道場 7, 8, 245, 248, 250–258, 260, 261 dreams 238, 239, 244 Dresden 194 Drewal, Henry John 162 Dubai 116 Durkheim, Emile 38 dwelling 5, 14, 23, 27, 37, 39, 43, 145, 158, 173, 179 Eckankar 229, 242, 243 Edmonton 176 education 64, 148, 183, 206, 211, 212, 218, 265, 289–292, 296 – Buddhist 213, 215–217, 280, 283, 285, 287, 289, 290, 295 Église Messianique Mondiale (EMM) 229, 230, 233, 234, 238–240, 242, 244

314

Index

Egger, Christine 53 eKuphakameni 86, 88–90, 93, 90, 103 El Monte, CA 266, 267, 279, 281 enclaves 5, 46, 56, 58, 62, 147, 152, 184, 191, 195, 205, 266 entanglement 231, 287 Erfurt 198 Eternal Venerable Mother (Wusheng Laomu 無生老母) 276 ethnicity 39, 58, 63, 64, 82, 85, 91, 106, 127, 151, 200 ethnoburb 8, 266, 267, 299 ethnographers 58 evangelists, African 44, 45, 71 Faist, Thomas 124, 126, 128 Falk Moore, Sally 68 Faure, Bernard 241 Faust, Katherine 17 Fengtian 奉天 (present day Shenyang) 218, 219 Ferguson, James G. 244 field 54, 63, 81, 85, 124, 152, 160, 164, 167, 173, 251, 270, 271, 279, 290, 302 – mission 46, 66, 67, 72, 74, 79, 82 – transnational social 16, 19, 20, 21 filial piety 178–180, 269, 273 Florida 115, 118, 276 flows 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 28, 125, 148, 165, 166, 170, 180, 232, 282, 283, 288, 289, 302 Fo Guang Shan Open University, renjian daxue 人間大學 (Human Realm University) 290 Fo Guang Shan 佛光山 6, 9, 210, 283–303 – civic engagement 7, 8, 283, 284, 288–290, 292, 293, 296, 299, 302, 303 Fo Guang University 172, 290 Fortes, Meyer 235 France 114, 140, 141, 185, 188, 195, 196, 200, 201, 205, 206, 250, 292 freedom, religious 51, 74, 80, 87, 142, 186 Froment, Delphine 54 Gambia 114 Garbin, David 39

Garden Grove, CA 184 gardens 54, 68, 76, 254, 260 Geertz, Clifford 18 Gemuseus, Oskar 62, 67 gender 127, 167, 207, 235 gender division, segregation 96–99, 129 General Overseer see under Redeemed Christian Church of God geopiety 28 German East Africa 3, 51–83 Germany, East 188, 189, 194–199, 201 see also contract workers Germany, Imperial 50, 62 Germany, reunified 111, 114, 183, 200, 201, 204, 206, 207, 283 Germany, West 10, 20, 29, 188, 194, 195, 199, 201 see also guest workers Gewald, Jan-Bart 71 geza 下座 (humility) 256, 259 Ghana 71, 109, 111, 114, 116, 152, 153, 232 Glick-Schiller, Nina 19 Glissant, Édouard 185 globalization 35, 40, 85, 110, 126, 247, 260 glocalization 247 Gombrich, Richard 286 Goody, Jack 235 goseigen 御聖言 (book of revelations) 245, 250 gospel 3, 63, 84, 96, 112, 130, 131 Great Green Wall 260 Great Learning (Daxue 大學) 273 Great Tao Foundation of America (Meiguo Yiguandao zonghui 美國一貫道總會) 268 Greece 116 Guang Ming College 290 Guanzong Monastery (觀宗講寺) 213, 214, 218 Guanzong School (Guanzong xueshe 觀宗學 舍) 214–217 Guanzong Study Society (Guanzong yanjiushe 觀宗研究社) 213, 214 Guarnizo, Luis 125 Guattari, Félix 248 guest workers 10, 11, 20, 29, 32, 183, 204 Gugglberger, Martina 53 Gülen, Fetullah 32 Gunner, Elizabeth 93, 94

Index

Guoqing Monastery (國清寺) 212 Gutmann, Bruno 67 habit 25, 44, 240, 263 habitat 25–29, 227 habitus 25, 103–105 Haiti 115 hajj 4, 155–157, 165 Hanoi 5, 184, 185, 188, 192, 194, 196, 197, 199, 201, 203 Harbin 哈爾濱 218, 219 Harries, Patrick 64 Hausa 4, 151–153, 155, 156, 167 healing 7, 113, 137, 187, 205, 230, 248, 252–254, 272 – divine 47, 229 – group 248, 252 heaven 89, 103, 115, 249, 259, 294 – dance to 104, 105 – entry, way to 14, 87, 102, 106 – Tuṣita heaven 286, 288 Hemptinne 57, 83 heritage 184, 200, 242, 243 Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine see Moravian Brethren Hespers, Franz Karl 80 Hlubi 85, 89, 90, 95, 105 Hồ Chí Minh (1890–1969) 6, 184, 185, 187, 192, 200, 204–206, 209 Hồ Chí Minh City 171, 181, 184, 193, 204 see also Saigon Hoang Phap Pagoda 171, 173–175, 178, 179, 181 Hoff, Benjamin 272 Holy Ghost Congress 4, 109, 111, 121, 130, 131 see also Redeemed Christian Church of God Holy Spirit 47, 137, 228, 234, 244 Hong Kong 6, 211, 219, 221, 222, 266, 283, 291, 296 Hong Kong Buddhist Association 221 Horton, Robin 46 House of One 31, 32 Houston 184, 188, 266, 291, 293, 294, 299, 300 Hsi Lai Temple 283, 290

315

Hsing Yun 星雲 (b. 1927) 283, 285–290, 295, 299, 300 Huế 193, 196, 197 Hung Kings 187, 201 hybridity 86, 128, 150, 151, 154, 167 hymn 90–95, 112 identity 6, 37, 39, 64, 82, 91, 104, 124, 131, 152, 154, 155, 165, 186, 209, 210, 215, 219, 222, 250 – African 228, 247 – religious 90, 102, 103, 125, 152, 211, 217, 220, 223 – Yoruba 161, 162, 164 – Zulu 104–106 identity politics 85, 106, 155 ideologies 3, 38, 82, 110, 131, 240, 287 Ifá divination 160–168 Ilé-Ifè 161, 162 illness 14, 233, 252, 253, 255 immigration policy 110, 119, 128, 133, 139, 143, 172, 260, 265 impurities 230, 253, 255 – spiritual (toxins) 249, 253, 254, 256, 260 India 2, 116, 232, 291, 294 Indiana 276, 277, 281 individualization 166, 167, 254, 255 Indonesia 111, 291 interaction 18, 24, 31, 41, 43, 46, 51, 52, 58, 63, 127, 144, 159, 160, 216, 217, 264–266, 268, 272, 274, 277, 280, 281, 282, 292 – cross-cultural 292, 296 – religious 43, 264, 265 Iraq 291 Islam 4, 31, 62, 64, 74, 135, 151, 152, 155, 156, 167, 229, 246, 250, 252, 256 see also Muslims – Sufi 156, 250 – Sunni 30, 142 Islamization in West Africa 151, 154, 250 Israel 111 Italy 114 Ivory Coast, Côte d’Ivoire 4, 111, 114, 135, 138, 139, 142, 245, 250

316

Index

Jackson, Peter 127 Jamaica 115 Japan 7, 22, 227–230, 233–236, 241–243, 244, 246, 248, 249–251, 255, 259, 262, 283, 291 Jehovah 84, 86, 88–90, 92, 94, 99, 101, 103, 105, 106 Jetavana Hermitage (Qihuan jingshe 祇洹精舍) 212 Jiangsu Sangha Normal School (Jiangsu seng shifan xuetang 江蘇僧師範學堂) 212 Jiangsu 江蘇 217, 220, 285 Jichu Zhongshu 基礎忠恕 264, 267, 268, 270, 271, 274, 275, 277 Jile Monastery (極樂寺) 219 Jile Monastery Buddhist School (Jile si fojiao xuexiao 極樂寺佛教學校) 219 Jinshan Conflict (da nao Jinshan 大鬧金山) 216 Jinshan Monastery (金山寺) 217 Jones, Charles 289 Jueguang 覺光 (1919–2014) 221 Kallweit, Johann 76 kansha 感謝 (recognition) 256, 259 karma 243 Kennedy, John F. 11 Kenya 63, 114 Khanh Anh temple 202 Khuông Việt temple 197 Kilimanjaro 54, 65–68 Kinshasa 7, 8, 139, 227–244 kinship 58, 131, 154, 210, 211, 220, 223, 235 Klaeger, Gabriel 71 Klamroth, Martin 74 Knibbe, Kim 48 Knott, Kim 22, 39, 127 Kohl, Helmut 11 Kopytoff, Igor 235 Krapf, Ludwig 3, 53, 54 Kuai Ruomu 蒯若木 214 kumite 組み手 (initiates) 245, 249 Kung-Fu 277, 279 Kyoto School 241 Lagos 3, 109, 114, 116, 118, 119, 121, 129 Lai, Rongdao 6, 8, 287

Landau, Paul 241 landscape 12, 25, 28, 44, 49, 54, 56, 58, 65, 67, 72, 82, 85, 87, 90, 91, 110, 116, 117, 122, 126, 136, 137, 222, 229, 242, 251, 252, 271 language 1, 10, 12, 16, 20, 25–28, 55, 63, 64, 72, 79, 91, 101, 105, 152, 195, 199, 204, 207, 209, 214, 230, 233, 264, 270, 273, 293, 297, 298 Laos 169 Larkin, Brian 232 Latour, Bruno 17, 150 Lefebvre, Henri 82 Leipzig 1, 35, 170, 283 Leipzig Missionary Society 45, 65 Lengyan Monastery (楞嚴寺) 219 Leshega, William 86 Levitt, Peggy 15, 126 Liberia 109, 138 Lijadu, Ezekiel 164 liminality 157 Lin, Derek 268–282 see also Tao-Talks lineage 6, 44, 58, 175, 210, 211, 215–222, 235, 236, 251 lines of communication 5, 54, 72, 83 Linh Thứu Buddhist temple 185, 198, 199 London Missionary Society 54 Long, Darui 286 Longhua Monastery (龍華寺) 212 Los Angeles 8, 188, 264, 266–268, 271, 274–276, 280, 283, 290, 293, 299 Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) 293 Luanda 229 Lunar New Year 172, 195, 204, 290 Maasai 66, 67, 69 magic 7, 193, 231, 240, 241 Main, Jessica L. 287 Malawi 114, 292 Malawi, Lake 72, 74, 75, 77 Malaysia 111, 185, 291, 298 map-making 2, 24, 28, 39, 41, 48, 62, 72, 74 maps 41, 45, 48, 50, 63, 72, 74 market 42, 44, 117, 129, 153, 183, 184, 187, 188, 191, 192, 198, 204, 208, 270

Index

– religious 41, 113, 246 market economy 185, 190, 209 martial arts 275–277, 279, 281, 297 Mary, André 245 Masahara Taniguchi 谷口雅春 (1893–1985) 230 Massachusetts 115 Massey, Doreen 127 material forms 35, 40, 42–47, 49, 50 materiality 49, 50, 230, 232, 241 Maxwell, David 55, 56, 83 McMahan, David L. 179 Mecca 4, 5, 155–158, 161, 165 Melilla 147 metaphor 1, 10, 13–18, 20, 21, 22, 25, 63 Meyer, Birgit 43, 44 Meyer, Theodor 72 Michigan 115, 276 Middell, Matthias 39, 40 migrants 87, 106, 124, 125, 126, 128–130, 134, 151, 153, 155, 246, 265 – African 133–149 – Taiwanese 265, 289, 292, 296 – Turkish 10–13, 15, 20, 28–32 – Vietnamese 169, 170, 172, 173, 176, 183–209 see also refugees migration 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 17, 20, 124, 126, 127, 133–143, 147, 148, 151, 156, 165, 170, 188, 246–248, 250, 251, 265, 266, 283 – Chinese 264, 283, 288, 302 – Vietnamese see migrants Miller, Flagg 232 minorities, religious 38, 135 miracle 92, 137, 229 misfortune 45, 47, 49, 234, 255, 256 mission Christianity 67, 84, 87 mission stations 51, 55, 56, 57, 59, 63–65, 68, 69, 71–74, 77, 83 mission – Benedictine 81 – Berlin 74–81 – Christian 2, 41, 55, 82, 83, 241, 242 – Leipzig 45, 65, 66, 67, 70, 73, 79 missionaries 3, 12, 15, 20, 24, 27, 44, 45, 49, 50, 51–59, 62, 63, 65–69, 71, 72, 79, 81–83, 87, 230, 242, 243, 251, 261, 286 missionaries, Catholic 3, 51, 56, 62, 242

317

missions, Protestant 2, 35, 40–42, 62, 285, 293 mobility 16, 39, 40, 62, 63, 71, 72, 83, 110, 113, 132, 138, 139, 141, 142, 154, 166, 242 mobility turn 16 Mobutu Sese Seko (1930–1997) 238 Modern Chinese Buddhism 6, 210, 212, 223, 286, 289 modernity 45, 85, 131, 180, 192, 210, 213, 259, 284, 285 Mombasa 54 Moore, Sally Falk 68 Moravian Brethren, Moravians 52, 62, 67, 68, 71, 74, 77, 79, 80, 81 Morioka, Kiyomi 236 Morocco – immigration country 133, 139, 141, 142, 147 Moroccan Human Rights Council (CNDH) 148 Moscow 184, 185, 198, 201, 205 mosques 11, 12, 30, 40, 129 Mother Goddesses 191, 198, 205 movements – religious 20, 50, 126, 137, 142, 247, 252, 253, 263, 274, 287 – spiritual 228–231, 243, 244 Mudimbe, Valentin-Yves 241 Muller, Carol 94 Munn, Nancy 239 Mus, Paul 209 Muslims 59, 64, 79, 128, 142, 144, 152–156, 161, 165, 166, 241, 250–252, 255, 257, 258, 298 – brotherhoods, Muslim 250, 251, 257 – Turkish Muslims 10, 15, 28, 30–32 Myanmar 111, 291 Namibia 70, 71, 281 Nan Hua Performing Arts Group (tian long dui 天龍隊, heavenly dragon group) 292, 296, 298, 301, 302 Nan Hua Temple 283, 292, 295, 296, 299 Nanhua University 290 Nanjing 南京 212 nation 6, 64, 84, 91–95, 105, 115, 133, 143, 167, 184, 207, 213, 254, 259 – Zulu nation 6, 89, 90, 93, 106

318

Index

nation state 1, 3, 4, 17, 19, 23, 37, 38, 40, 49, 124, 125, 128, 170, 247, 283–285, 296, 302 Nazareth Baptist Church (NBC) 2, 84–106 Netherlands 113, 274 networks 1, 2, 8, 19, 23, 42, 50, 59, 111, 124, 125, 128, 140, 150, 157, 168, 170, 210, 211, 217, 222, 229, 245, 246, 266, 267, 281, 282 – neural 18, 29 – religious 5, 6, 8, 38, 126, 130, 181 – social 142, 148, 280 – transnational 4, 126, 129, 183, 247 Neu-Langenburg (Tukuyu) 51, 80 New Age 252, 253, 271 New Taipei City 172, 174–176 New York 110, 222, 265, 266, 297 New Zealand 292 Ngo Chan Tu (1901–1988) 171 Nguyen, Mimi Thi 208 Nguyen, Phuong Tran 208 Nguyen, Viet Thanh 208 Nigeria 4, 31, 46, 48, 109–114, 116, 118, 119, 122, 126, 128, 130, 131, 135, 138, 141, 143, 148, 161, 164, 232, 241 Ning Dayun 寧達蘊 (1901 –?) 219 node, nodal 23, 29, 138, 170, 176, 277, 281 Norway 114 Noyes, John K. 70, 72

Paraguay 292 Paris 7, 185, 195, 197, 198, 200–205, 246, 250, 272, 275 patriarchy 88, 89, 100, 101 Peace of Westphalia (1648) 38 Pellow, Deborah 151 Pentecostalism 2, 31, 32, 47–50, 103, 112, 114, 116, 129, 132, 136–138, 141, 147, 227–231, 237, 239, 241, 243, 244, 246, 247, 252, 259 Philippines 111, 116, 290, 291, 298, 301 Phổ Bi (universal compassion) 172, 176–179, 182 pilgrimage 3, 14, 88, 102, 110, 126, 129, 155, 158, 165, 177 pilgrims 5, 126, 156, 157, 158, 165–168, 284 place-making 4, 14, 16, 25, 27, 30, 39, 40, 129, 123, 135, 139, 147, 149 places of worship 36, 39, 100, 138, 142, 254 places, sacred 87, 103, 174 Platform Sutra (Liuzu tanjing 六祖壇經) 273 Poland 183, 185, 189, 204, 207 Portes, Alejandro 125 Poteet, Jerry (1936–2012) 277 Prague 205 – Vietnamese in 190, 191, 193 prayer 11, 49, 50, 96, 99, 104, 112, 116, 129, 136, 145, 156, 186, 228, 229, 234, 236, 238 prayer cities 50, 116 proselytism, proselytization 142, 144, 246, 259, 264, 265, 267, 281, 294, 299, 302 Protestants 51, 80, 81 Pure Land 8, 14, 181, 196, 197, 286, 288, 294, 295, 302, 303 see also Buddhism purification 7, 230, 245, 249, 253, 253, 257, 258, 260

Obama, Barack 200 Okada Mokichi 229, 230, 233 okiyome お清め (ritual of purification) 245, 249, 253, 255, 257 Olupona, Jacob 113 omitama 御み霊 (sacred medallion) 249, 257 One Pillar Pagoda, Hanoi 185, 199 online religion 282 Orange County 184, 187, 188 orientalism 228, 242 see also reverse orientalism Osinbajo, Yemi 110 Our Lady of La Vang 186, 187

Qigong 氣功 271, 277, 279 Qingdao 青島 218, 219, 221 Quanzhen daoyuan 全真道院 267, 277, 279 Quanzhen temple 全真道院 268, 269, 270, 273, 276–279, 281, 282

Pakistan 111 Palmer, David 271, 286 Papua New Guinea 292

Rabat 134–148 race 11, 77, 200 rainmakers 92–94, 103, 104, 106

Index

Ratschiller, Linda 53 RCCG see Redeemed Christian Church of God Reagan, Ronald 11 Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) – General Overseer 109, 111, 114 – National Overseer 111 redemption 84, 88–90, 93–95, 105 Redemption City 3, 109–111, 116, 117, 128, 130 see also Redeemed Christian Church of God reforestation 7, 258, 260, 261 refugees 5, 10, 20, 25, 28, 29, 143, 147, 178, 183, 185–188, 193–209 reiki 霊気 7, 8, 245, 246, 248, 251, 252, 272 reincarnation 243, 249, 256 religious organizations 6, 7, 8, 18, 131, 150, 172, 196, 248, 250, 263, 268 Renshan 仁山 (1887–1951) 216, 217 reterritorialization 247, 248, 261 reverse orientalism 240–243 rights, human 39, 143, 146–148, 202, 287 ritual 5, 7, 13, 15, 27, 36, 39, 44–46, 71, 84, 90, 92–99, 102, 112, 156, 162, 172–179, 192, 201, 204, 205, 214, 215, 230, 234, 237, 238, 241, 243, 245, 250, 253, 273, 284, 292, 294, 296, 303 ritual claims 30, 31 ritual performance 163, 169, 173, 175, 177–179, 181 ritual practices 24, 49, 95, 193, 286, 295 ritual spaces 116, 122 Robertson, Roland 247 Rome 75, 81, 186 Russia 189, 190, 204, 205, 207 Sabbath 86, 89, 90, 91, 96–99, 101, 103, 105, 106 sacredness 157, 174 sacrifice 45, 95, 99, 178, 206, 209, 234, 237 sacroscape 5, 174, 175, 177, 180 Said, Edward 242 Saigon 5, 184–186, 196, 200–204 see also Hồ Chí Minh City San Francisco 12, 188, 222, 264, 265, 267 – Jichu Zhongshu temple 274

319

– Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple 12 San Jose 184, 188, 201 Saxony 81 Schanz, Johannes 65, 66, 73 Scheut Fathers 56, 57, 69 Schipper, Kristofer 275 Scripture of Clarity and Quiescence (Qingjingjing 清靜經) 273 sedentarization 56 Sekai Kyūsai kyō 世界救世教 (SKK/Church of World Messianity) 7–9, 227–230, 241, 243, 244, 245 Sekai Mahikari Bunmei Kyōdan 世界真光文 明教団 245 Senegal 7–9, 245–262 settlements 4, 5, 47, 48, 54, 56, 153–158, 168 settlers 41, 70 Shandao Nunnery 176, 177 Shanghai 上海 212, 219 Sheffer, Gabriel 206 Shembe, Amos 88, 96, 98, 101, 102, 104 Shembe, Isaiah 2, 84–88, 90–96, 101, 104, 105 Shembe, Johannes 86, 88, 96 Shembe, Mduduzi 101, 102, 106 Shembe, Vimbeni 96, 101 Sheringham, Olivia 127 Shinto 246, 248, 249 Shorimade, Samuel 115 Siegler, Elijah 271 Singapore 111, 291 singing 92, 111, 136, 179, 181 sins 2, 89, 90, 105, 230, 249 slavery 90, 258 slaves 54–56, 63 Slovakia 183 Smith, Michael P. 125 social media 5, 8, 111, 171, 172, 176, 180, 181, 290 socialist world, countries 183–185, 188, 189, 190, 195, 198, 288 Socially Engaged Buddhism 287, 295 sōnen 想念 (deep thought) 245, 253, 254 Soucy, Alexander 197 sound 24, 145, 162, 163, 232

320

Index

South Africa 2, 8, 44, 54, 69, 99, 102, 104, 106, 111, 114, 116, 279, 283, 292, 295–299 South China Buddhist Seminary (Huanan xuefoyuan 華南學佛院) 219, 221 space(s) 1, 24 – imaginary 5, 158, 165, 168 – mission 37, 52, 60, 82 – of outreach 30, 31 – of refuge 30 – transnational religious 1, 15, 30, 32, 110, 111, 113, 117, 124, 126–128, 130, 132, 165, 166, 171, 244 – ritual 116, 122, 174 – sacred 87, 103, 174 – spiritual 249, 261 – transnational 1, 10, 12, 24, 28, 30, 118, 127, 128, 167 Spain 2, 4, 114, 146, 147 spatial format(s) 2, 35, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 58, 80, 82, 150 see also spatial order spatial imagination 3, 41, 53, 57, 58 spatial order 35, 39, 52, 54, 55, 58, 81, 83, 87, 95, 96 spatial organization 38, 56 spatial practices 14, 48, 51, 82, 95 spatial regimes 3, 36, 37, 39, 135, 142, 143 spatial strategies 39, 40, 47, 51, 54, 56, 62 spatial structure 85, 97–100 spatiality 154–156, 158–161, 164, 168 spatialization 1, 35, 58, 59, 62, 82, 83, 283 Spickard, James V. 125 spirit medium 6, 187, 198, 205, 284 spiritual seekers 229, 231, 265, 271, 272, 274, 279–281 spirituality 3, 110, 113, 228, 231, 236, 240, 242, 250, 257, 259, 262, 270, 271, 278 Spreiter, Franz Xavier, O.S.B. 76 Srimala Buddhist Institute 289 Stengs, Irene 240 succession conflict 89, 92, 106 Sudan 4, 157 – eastern (today Republic of Sudan) 156, 165 – West Sudan 156 Sukuinushisama 救い主様 249, 250 Sukyō Mahikari 崇教真光 7, 8, 229, 245–262

Sun Huiming 孫慧明 (1895–1975) 267 Sun Xikun 孫錫堃 (1883–1952) 279 sunao 素直 (submission) 256, 259 sustainability 27, 2, 29, 113 Sutra Translation Committee of the United States and Canada 222 sutras 169, 175, 178, 179, 212, 216, 218, 273, 294 Sweden 114 Switzerland 114 syncretism 241, 250 Taichung 172, 174–176 Taijiquan 太極拳 263, 271, 275, 276, 277, 279 Taipei 172, 175, 176, 297 Taiwan 5, 8, 169 Tanganyika 52 Tanganyika, Lake 55, 56, 69 Tanxu 倓虛 (1875–1962) 211, 214–216, 219–222 Tanzania 45, 64, 70, 74, 76, 114 Tao Pop culture 271, 272 Tao Talks with Derek Lin 265, 268, 270, 272–276, 280–282 see also Derek Lin teachers 77, 82, 211, 215–217, 221, 252, 286, 288, 295, 297 Teiser, Stephen 169 television 111, 121, 122, 131, 299 temples 5, 6, 13, 25, 87, 89, 92, 96–101, 103, 162, 171–173, 181, 193, 198, 201, 220, 236, 264, 266, 267, 269, 270, 273–279, 281, 282, 285, 290, 294, 296, 297, 301, 302 – Buddhist 5, 6, 12, 170, 176, 178, 185, 186, 187, 191, 195, 197, 198, 199, 201, 202, 205, 213, 217, 219, 222, 284, 292, 293, 298 Temple Messianique Art de Johrei (TMAJ) 229, 230, 233, 234, 238–240, 242, 244, 245 temple network 217, 276 Tenrikyō 天理教 245, 252 territoriality 109, 110, 151 territorialization 36, 55, 58, 79, 116 territory 38, 42, 51, 54, 72, 82, 155, 162, 165, 167, 248, 287

Index

Texas 115, 118, 124, 184, 188 Thích Chân Tính (b. 1958) 171, 175, 179 Thích Đồng Lợi (b. 1984) 172 Thích Minh Tuệ 172, 175 Thích Nhất Hạnh (b. 1926) 178, 179, 181, 196, 197 Thích Pháp Hòa (b. 1974) 176–179 Tiantai see Buddhism tombstones 70 Toronto 222 toxins (spiritual impurities) 249, 253, 254, 256, 260 trade, traders 2, 4, 42, 55, 125, 155, 190, 191, 209, 218, 258 transcendence 1, 37, 43, 158, 162, 165 transhumance 67 translation 41, 64, 93, 169, 222, 233, 269, 270, 273 translocality, translocal 38, 126, 170 translocative 13–16, 25, 169, 173, 174, 177, 179 translocative flows 5, 22, 173 translocative network 6, 170, 173, 180 transnationalism 1, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 23, 24, 26, 27, 109, 110, 125–127, 132, 210, 223, 301 transnational network 267, 274 transnational social field 16, 19, 21, 125 transnational social space 10, 124, 125 transnationalization 246–249, 261 transtemporal 15, 25, 180 Truc Lam Monastery 176 Trump, Donald 110, 119, 278 Tsing, Anna 15, 21 Tswana 44, 54, 55, 69 Tuệ Quang (benevolent light) 172, 174, 175, 176, 179, 181, 182 Turkey 10, 28, 32, 139, 140 Tweed, Thomas A. 1, 37, 39, 170, 173, 174 Tzu Chi (Ciji 慈濟) 210 Uganda 114 Ullambana Festival (Ghost Festival, Vu Lan) 5, 169–181 Ullambana Sutra 169, 174, 178 Union Générale des Vietnamiens de France 185, 192, 200, 205

321

United Arab Emirates 111 United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (Giáo Hội Phật Giáo Việt Nam Thống Nhất, UBCV) 196, 197, 201 United Kingdom 114, 116, 141, 171 United States of America (USA) 5, 22, 110, 115, 141, 186, 188, 195, 200, 204–206, 208, 230, 241, 264–266, 269, 271, 274, 279, 281, 290–292, 296, 299, 300 universities 170, 172, 173, 175, 189, 206, 285, 286, 290, 300, 301 Universities’ Mission to Central Africa 79 see also mission University of the West (Hsi Lai University) 290, 292, 296, 299–301 Vargas, Jose Antonio 205 Vásquez, Manuel A. 39 Vesak Festival 199 Vietnam 5, 111, 169, 172, 175–181, 184, 186, 188–191, 193, 194, 196–198, 201–207, 209, 291 – North 5, 175, 185, 188, 191, 197 – South 5, 171, 173, 175, 185, 188, 193, 194, 197, 200 Vietnam Buddhist Sangha (Phật Giáo Việt Nam, PGVN) 196, 197, 201 Vietnam, Socialist Republic of 5, 184 violence 28, 58, 79, 208, 227, 252 Virgin Mary 186, 200 Virginia 184, 188 Wanshou Temple Buddhist Seminary (Wanshousi foxueyuan 萬壽寺佛學 院) 219 Warsaw 191, 198 Washington State 188 Washington, DC 13 Wasserman, Stanley 17 Way of Pervading Unity see Yiguandao websites 114, 115, 117, 131, 263, 264, 268, 269, 270, 274–280 Welch, Holmes 211, 212, 214, 215, 220, 285 Wetjen, Karolin 53, 81 White Fathers 51, 55, 56, 69, 74, 77, 79, 80, 81 Willis, Justin 64 witchcraft 7, 49, 252, 253, 255, 262

322

Index

Woodbine, Onaje X. Offley 164 World War I 52, 58, 62, 82, 83 World War II 234, 235, 241, 287 World I-Kuan Tao Headquarters 268 Wright, Marcia 67, 74 Wuaku, Albert 232 Xiaoyun 曉雲 (1912–2004) 222 Yamba, C. Bawa 157 Yang Bizhen 楊碧珍 (1938–2011) 267 Yang Fenggang 294 Yang Huinan 294 Yang Wenhui 楊文會 (1837–1911) 212 Yao, Yu-Shuang 286 Ye Gongchuo 葉恭綽 (1881–1968) 214, 219 Yiguandao 一貫道 8, 263–281 Yingkou 營口 218, 219 Yongxing 永惺 (1926–2016) 221 Yoruba 56, 152, 155, 161–164, 167

Yoshikazu Okada 岡田良一 (1901–1974) 249 see Sukuinushisama 救い主様 Zaire 114 Zambia 114 Zhang Tianran 張天然 (1889–1947) 267, 279 Zhang Zongzai 張宗載 (1896–?) 219 Zhanshan Monastery (湛山寺) 219 Zhaoding 照定 (b. 1944) 176 Zhejiang 浙江 211, 213 Zhou, Min 195 Zhu Ziqiao 朱子橋 (1874–1941) 219 Zhuangzi 莊子 271, 272 zongo (Muslim quarter) 4, 150–156, 166–168 Zulu kingdom 2, 84, 85, 88, 92, 95, 106 Zulu kings 90, 91, 94, 95, 99 Zuma, Jacob 104 Zwelithini, Zulu king 104–106