Highland Christianity: Modern Transformations of the China-Southeast Asia Borderlands

Christianity has become one of the most powerful markers of identity in the mountainous borderlands of China and Southeast Asia, also known as Zomia. This region is home to tens of millions of people--including the Ahmao, the Kachin, the Lisu, and many other highlanders--all living at a far remove from the population centers of the lowlands. This volume explores how their creative engagement with Christianity has transformed their communities and reshaped their relationships with nation-states and dominant cultures.

Highland Christianity brings together indigenous, in-group scholars and external researchers to examine Christianity’s complex entanglement with ethnicity and modernity across Zomia. Chapters investigate mass conversions, the creation of Bible orthographies, the indigenization of Christian practice, and the tensions Christianization generated with lowland states and majority populations. Contributors highlight the dramas and ambiguities of these changes while foregrounding the creative agency of highland peoples in reworking the faith to generate cohesion, cultural capital, and renewed forms of belonging. Moving beyond colonial frameworks, this interdisciplinary volume maps the profound and ongoing transformations of communities across this borderland region. It will be an essential resource for scholars and students of world Christianity, Asian studies, and anthropology.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Aminta Arrington, Chijui Hu, Jianxiong Ma, Pum Za Mang, Lagai Zau Nan, Anh-Minh Nguyen-Dang, Yoichi Nishimoto, and Zhu Jili.

Lian Xi is Professor of World Christianity at Duke University and an Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China, and Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China.

David Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University. He is the author of A Grammar of Lisu and coauthor of Language Endangerment.

Ralph A. Litzinger is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology and is affiliated with the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department and Duke Global Health Institute at Duke University. He is the author of Other Chinas: The Yao and the Politics of National Belonging and coeditor of Ghost Protocol: Development and Displacement in Global China.