Dr. Jie Kang

Jie Kang is responsible for maintaining the MMG Alumni Network and organizing alumni activities, including the Alumni Hour and Alumni meetings. Additionally, she serves as a member of the Ethics Committee at the MMG. Her research focuses on 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. In 2014, she earned her PhD in Sinology from the University of Leipzig. From 2013 to 2021, Jie Kang worked as a project coordinator for various research projects focusing on China and Asia in the MMG’s former Department of Religious Diversity. She authored the book “House Church Christianity in China: From Rural Preachers to City Pastors,” published by Palgrave in 2016. Furthermore, she co-edited "The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic Perspectives" with Irfan Ahmad in 2021. In general, Jie Kang is interested in transnational Chinese religious networks, state-church relations, and the intricate interplay 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

Monographs and Collected Editions

Ahmad, I., & Kang, J. (Eds.). (2022). The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic Perspectives. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85580-2

Kang, J. (2016). House Church Christianity in China: From Rural Preachers to City Pastors. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30490-8

Journal Articles

Kang, J. (2019). The Rise of Calvinist Christianity in Urbanising China. Religions, 10(8), 481. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10080481

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. https://doi.org/10.1515/cdc-2015-0010

Contributions to a Collected Edition

Kang, J. (2023). Theological transformation and the changing role of women in the Chinese House Church. In C. Starr (Ed.), Modern Chinese Theologies. Volume 2: Independent and Indigenous (Vol. 2, pp. 49–68). Minneapolis: Fortress Press. https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9781506487984/Modern-Chinese-Theologies

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. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85580-2_1

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. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85580-2_7

Kang, J. (2020). Chinese Christian Community in Germany: Home-Making and Chineseness. In N. Cao, G. Giordan, & F. Yang (Eds.), Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Volume 11 (2020) (pp. 97–114). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004443327_007

Kang, J. (2020). Rural to urban Protestant house churches in China. In S. Feuchtwang (Ed.), Handbook on Religion in China (pp. 407–430). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786437969.00027

Other Publications

Kang, J. (2019). Surviving the State, Remaking the Church: A Sociological Portrait of Christians in Mainland China. By Li Ma and Jin Li. Journal of Church and State, 61(3), 497–499. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/csz041