Dr. Jie Kang

Jie Kang is responsible for maintaining the MMG Alumni Network and organizing Alumni activities such as the Alumni Hour and Alumni meetings. She is studying contemporary Chinese Christian communities, religious networks, the interactive relationship between the secular state and religious groups, the inter-religious encounter between Christianity and Islam and the role of the Christian “Back to Jerusalem” missionary movement. Jie was awarded a PhD degree in 2014 in Sinology from the University of Leipzig. From 2013 to 2021 she worked as project coordinator for various research projects focusing on China and Asia in the MMG’s former Department of Religious Diversity. She is author of the book “House Church Christianity in China: From Rural Preachers to City Pastors” published by Palgrave in 2016, and co-edited with Irfan Ahmad “The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic Perspectives” in 2021.  Generally, she is interested in transnational Chinese religious networks, state-church relations, and on the relationship between religion, nationalism, secularism and globalization.

Research projects

• Converting Muslim – Missionary Movement of Chinese Protestant House Church
• Chinese Christian community and network in Germany
• Christian tourism and its global connectedness (completed)
• From peasant to pastor -- The rural-urban transformation of Protestant Christianity in Linyi, Shandong Province (completed)

Publications

Books and Collected Editions

Ahmad, I., & Kang, J. (Eds.). (2022). The nation form in the global age: Ethnographic perspectives. Cham: Springer International Publishing. Link

Kang, J. (2016). House Church Christianity in China: From Rural Preachers to City Pastors. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Link

Journal Articles

Kang, J. (2019). The Rise of Calvinist Christianity in Urbanising China. Religions, 10(8), 481. Link

Kang, J. (2015). The Concept of Social Network in Chinese Christianity / 中国基督教的社会网络 概念. Cultural Diversity in China, 1(2), 219-232. Link

Contributions to a Collected edition

Ahmad, I., & Kang, J. (2022). Introduction: Imagining alternatives to globalization of the nation form. In I. Ahmad, & J. Kang (Eds.), The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic Perspectives (pp. 3-44). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Link

Kang, J. (2022). Nationalism and chinese protestant christianity: From anti-imperialism to islamophobia. In I. Ahmad, & J. Kang (Eds.), The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic Perspectives (pp. 175-202). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Link

Kang, J. (2021). Chinese Christian community in Germany: Home-making and Chineseness. In N. Cao, G. Giordan, & F. Yang (Eds.), Chinese religions going global (pp. 97-114). Leiden: Brill. Link

Kang, J. (2020). Rural to Urban Protestant House Churches in China. In S. Feuchtwang (ed). Handbook on Religion in China. Edward Elgar Publisher. Page. 407-430.

Book Reviews

Kang, J. (2019). [Review of:] Li Ma and Jin Li “Surviving the State, Remaking the Church: A Sociological Portrait of Christians in Mainland China”. Journal of Church and State, 61(3), 497-499. Link