three The Golden Age of Opportunity, 1645–1723

The friars’ opposition to ancestral cults and their promotion of women’s religious activities placed Fuan converts in a difficult social position during the 1630s and early 1640s. They encountered hostility and re- pression from both the state and the local elites. The Manchu invasion, however, turned the religious allegiance of Christian literati from a li- ability into a strength and offered them a means of gaining social stand- ing and receiving official sanction for their faith. The events of the Ming-Qing transition show the importance of historical contingency and of improvisation in the spread and establishment of Christianity in Fuan. The localization of the faith depended on long-held hopes and values that nurtured the religious longings of converts: a desire to ex- tinguish sin, hope for salvation after death, and a sense of community and personal fulfillment expressed in piety and spirituality. But fleeting events linked to historical junctures also carried great weight in creat- ing the most favorable environment for the implanting of Christian values and practices.1 The state of war and the political and military volatility between 1644 and the early 1650s were loyalty tests for local elites: Should they ————— 1. On the concepts of sin and salvation in the life of Chinese Christians, see Menegon 2006a. 92 The Golden Age of Opportunity, 1645–1723 93 side with the new power, the Manchus, or remain faithful to the old or- der of the Ming dynasty? Most southern literati and officials faced this dilemma. In Fuan, a large portion of the elite remained loyal to the de- feated dynasty, represented by short-lived and fractious regimes in Zhejiang and Fujian. As soon as it was clear that the Manchus were gaining the upper hand, however, ideals evaporated in favor of prag- matic grabs for power. Often split along lineage lines, old configurations of power adapted to the new order. The Chen of Shanghang chose the Qing. Many Christian literati on the other hand, inspired by the re- formist ideas of their youth and linked by blood ties to Liu Zhongzao 劉 中藻 (?–1649), the local military leader defending Mindong from the Manchu advance, sided with the Southern Ming. In spite of the final defeat of Liu and the deaths of the major Christian leaders in the ensu- ing carnage, however, the Christian community did not disappear from Fuan. The devastation of the war and the coastal evacuation ordered by the Manchus to obliterate military resistance and banditry, in fact, cre- ated a favorable environment for unchecked growth of the Christians. The lineages were in shambles and no longer threatened expulsion and persecution of their Christian members. Christianity also received protection from the new Qing regime of the Shunzhi and Kangxi emperors, and from Kangxi’s close associate Tong Guoqi 佟國器 (d. 1684), governor of Fujian in the 1650s–1660s. This new acceptance in local society began to affect lineage practice, the status of women, and matrimonial alliances, as explained in greater detail in Chapter 5. From the 1640s to the 1720s, political and military events offered favorable conditions for deep social and religious changes and allowed further entrenching of the new teachings and practices into local society.2

Opportunity Arises Following the suicide of the last Ming emperor in 1644, the capture of Beijing by Qing forces, and the collapse of the loyalist Hongguang 弘光 court in Hangzhou, Fujian became one of the last strongholds of the Southern Ming regimes. The Prince of Tang 唐, Zhu Youjian 朱由檢, known as the Longwu 隆武 emperor after the name chosen for his reign,

————— 2. Sections on the Ming-Qing transition in this chapter have been published in Menegon 2003.