Book Reviews (PDF version)

Ernest P. Young, Ecclesiastical Colony: China’s Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate

Mormonism and the Chinese State: Becoming an official church in the People’s Republic of China?

ABSTRACT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the mainstream Mormon Church – has been seeking to establish itself in the People’s Republic of China since the 1980s. Unlike other religious movements of Christian and foreign origin, which have chosen to go underground, the LDS Church has adopted a strategy of complying with the law and negotiating with the state to obtain official authorisation to conduct its religious activities. The aim of this article is to describe and examine the basis, the form, and certain observable effects of such a strategy, both on an institutional level and in terms of the religious identities that are produced. KEYWORDS: Mormonism, China, the state, inculturation, religious market, regulation, distinction, identity.