Dr. Jie Kang

Jie Kang coordinates the institute’s ethics approval process and serves as a liaison between researchers and the Ethics Committee. She also oversees the MMG Alumni Network and organizes alumni activities.

She is the author of House Church Christianity in China: From Rural Preachers to City Pastors (Palgrave, 2016) and co-editor, together with Irfan Ahmad, of The Nation Form in the Global Age: Ethnographic Perspectives (2021). Her broader research interests include transnational Chinese religious networks, state–church relations, and the intersections of 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