Abstract
The relationship between religion and social movements is an important topic in the study of religion and society. This paper uses various textual and online sources to examine the role of Christianity in the anti-extradition bill movement that took place in Hong Kong from April to September 2019. The anti-extradition bill movement, which later evolved into a much wider movement against totalitarianism, has caused churches to grapple with church-state relations in the post-handover era. This paper employs the notion of “public religion” as an analytical framework to examine the process of the “deprivatization” of Christianity in Hong Kong. How does the ongoing contestation, both within and outside the church, reflect the challenges faced by Christianity when entering the public sphere? By answering the above questions, we will be able to explicate the religio-political significance of the protest movement in Hong Kong.
Abstract
This article addresses the problem of quantifying Han Buddhists who do not self-identify as Buddhists when responding to survey questions about religious belief and thus remain “hidden Buddhists.” Drawing on the results of various religious surveys and field observations, as well as taking into account the nonexclusive feature of Han Buddhists, the article develops a formula to quantify the hidden Han Buddhists. Data from one national survey and one regional survey are used to tune the parameters of the formula, while additional data from five religious surveys using different schemes are employed to establish the reliability and applicability of the formula. Compared to the five sets of survey data on hidden Han Buddhists, the results predicted by the formula range from less than 1% to 21% lower. This range of disagreement is considered adequate and reliable, given the uncertainty inherent in estimating religious phenomena in a spiritual world. Furthermore, the comparison also reveals that the number of hidden Buddhists may be much higher than that of self-identified Buddhists.