An Alternative Type of Christianity

On Saturday afternoon, I attended an interesting talk. It was organized by the UUHK. The speaker Chan Chi Chai 陳子齊 is a senior lecturer in philosophy and religion at the Baptist College. He is one of the contributors of a book entitled the Religious Right (宗教右派) edited by 羅永生 and 龔立人 He wrote an interesting article on the rise of the middle class in Hong Kong, their characteristics and how they may have affected the development of Christianity in Hong Kong called 香港中產階級的冒升. His talk will be first of a series of similar talks by various authors of the book.

He introduced himself to us as a member of the middle class himself. He said the middle class of Hong Kong shares a number of characteristics. To him, the middle class in Hong Kong first started to emerge under British rule. Initially they were comprised of senior Chinese civil servants, who read and write English, with quarters in prime luxury flat locations,with a liberal sprinkling of doctors, lawyers, teachers, all educated under the English education system. From the 1960s to the 1980s, education was the most direct stepping stone of the poor for rising up the ladder of social and economic status. It was then a "meritocracy". However, since the 1980s´s, with more and more children of the poorer classes being educated, the status of the traditional middle class was subjected to some severe challenges, challenges which the older middle class tried to resist. To Chan, it was definitely an elitist system which favoured students of the Christian or Catholic schools. What he finds most surprising is that the values of the elites were shared not only by the elites but by the non-elites amongst the middle class as well. Those who did not make it were hoping that one day they could rise too. 

To Chan, the middle class in Hong Kong do not really have what can properly be called "class consciousness", only certain "ways of thinking". To him, they are very different from the traditional educated class of China, because the Chinese "gentleman" places great emphasis on honour and integrity(氣節) and strong moral values like benevolence and justice whereas the middle class in Hong Kong values only the good form of the English gentleman, more than anything else.  This is shown in the restraint of their criticism of those who hold views which differ from those held by themselves. Thus they are very much against those who use abusive or vulgar language. But after 1997, a new kind of grass root politicians arose, speaking grass root language, like Wong Yuk Man. This has affected the style of politiking after 1997.

The second characteristics of the Hong Kong middle class according to Chan is that they have very strong professional views but such views tend to be conservative and insufficiently critical. They hold on very much to their own professional standards but there is often little communication between the members of different professions. Thus, he finds that, not only are they not self-critical enough about their own values, they are seldom able to effectively critique government policies on many of issues which really touch, concern and seriously affect the lives of the lower classes.

Whereas people in the PRC may pursue western products, the middle class in Hong Kong value more Western cultural taste. The traditional Hong Kong middle class are usually quite ignorant of traditional Chinese culture like The Tao of Tea, antique Chinese furniture, Chinese calligraphy and Chinese ink painting etc. When developers wish to promote high class residential development sales, they prefer to project the image of European lifestyle. However their understanding of such lifestyle tend to be completely superficial, concentrating more on form than content. They ape only the indices of European lifestyle like style of dressing, doing one's hair, wining and dining in mock Western architecture etc.

The middle classes in Hong Kong have certain requirements of life-style. They like to go to hotel restaurants or restaurants which have been classified as "excellent" by the media. Thus the media in Hong Kong has great influence in moulding their taste. Once a restaurant has been written about as good, it does not have to worry about the number of its customers because everybody will jump on to the band wagon. The middle class will simply flock to them. Again, form and image more than substance. They seldom go to the neighborhood restaurants like tai pai tong's, tea-restaurants (茶餐廳) except when they got written about.

To Chan, not only do the Hong Kong middle class lack social insight, many of them hold what he calls "snobbish" values. They do not dislike those who are rich and famous.(But here, I cannot see why that should be a cause of complaint. Do we have to hate or dislike anyone?) They worship them! Our social stratification is predominantly hierarchical even within the ranks of the middle class: thus teachers rank after doctors, lawyers and engineers. Previously doctors held the highest social status but recently senior counsels seem to have overtaken the status previously occupied by our doctors. Thus whenever senior counsels join in any social protests, the crowds will follow suit but when only teachers take the lead in social marches and protests, the crowd may not necessarily follow in such numbers. Thus middle class values are not based merely on money and wealth but on taste, education, and knowledge. 

Next, the middle class in Hong Kong are extremely concerned about the education of their children. They rely heavily on their old-boy old-girl network to perpetuate their social and economic status. But they seldom teach their own children. They send them to the "brand-name schools" to be educated. They pack their after school hours with private tuition and would force them to learn music, piano, violin, ballet, painting but little else. There is a very strong pragmatic element behind their enthusiasm for "culture". Everything is geared towards getting their children to be admitted to the "brand name schools" and colleges. They are not really concerned about the intrinsic value of art and culture. Thus Hong Kong is one of the biggest profit centres of the Royal Academy of Music. But the judges are often astounded by the complete lack any real interest in music of even those students who score the highest marks in all kinds of tests and examinations. Chan criticizes the Hong Kong middle class as superficial.

He says that although they worship western values, the middle class in Hong Kong seldom value the Western spirit of constant questioning of the values of their previous generation and their emphasis on such universal values as social justice, environmental protection, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake in short, the values of the western Enlightenment. In the West, political participation is taken for granted but in Hong Kong, very few middle class people are members of any political organizations. Their social participation and interaction with other members of society is confined to their interaction with other members of their own churches. But their social action is confined to matters of concern only to their own church organizations, much less on tackling structural problems associated with poverty. Even if they enter politics, they seldom fight for the rights of the poor.

To Chan, the middle class in Hong Kong lack the kind of class consciousness of the intellectual class in the west. All their thoughts are focused on making money and on the values of unbridled capitalism. The market is worshipped as a god. To Chan, this is a truly terrfiying kind of thinking style. He thinks that the Hong Kong middle class lacks critical thinking and lacks political organization. He does not agree that after "7.1", the middle class in Hong Kong has become a political  force to be reckoned with because they lack any political party to act as their spokesman. They remain largely unroganized.

Chan feels that government policies seem to favor sharing the governing of Hong Kong with the other existing social and political and religious organisations. This appear in the spheres of education, medicine, social welfare and care of the poor and the underprivileged. The government outsources various services required by society by giving subventions and grants to NGOs but in return, for the purposes of control, it wants the NGOs to write frequent reports and thus increase their adminstrative burdens so that they are forced to devote more and more of their resources to dealing with the required bureaucratic procedures like accounting, assessment reports important for getting continual financial support, instead of doing what they are supposed to be doing viz. to provide the necessary services to the public.

To Chan, Jesus treated the poor and the people at the margin of society e.g. widows, the poor, the sick, the outsiders as the principal objects of his mission but today, the church is largely a middle class church, not a working class church. The protestant churches in Hong Kong, heavily influenced by their American home churches simply import and translate their books into Chinese and thus such "imported" Christian values heavily influence the thinking of those in charge of the Hong Kong protestant churches and Chinese theologians seldom do any independent thinking of their own and reflect on how Christianity may flower on native Chinese soil and be a faith relevant to the lives of the poor. 

Chan asked: why it is that Chinese Christian churches have become a bulwark for family unity, marital stability, emphasis on obedience and the status quo. To him, what mattered to Jesus: care of the poor, criticism and redress of social injustice, being faithful to God instead of being faithful to earthly government, cherishing freedom and not mere moral conformity, seem of little concern to the middle class Christian churches in Hong Kong. Jesus was a revolutionary. What he finds most suprising is that to the Christian fundamentalists or the Christian right, reform is simply not on their agenda. To him, their values are a radical reversal of Christian values! Such reversal has everything to do with the class values of the middle classes. Chan wants a really Christian church, one which cares for social justice and one which helps those most in need of help: the poor people of Hong Kong.