基督徒進與退

Lida Nedilsky 是我在中大唸研究院時認識的同學，她一直研究基督徒的社會參與，博士論文也以此為題，近日她獲芝加哥大學的香港學生邀請與梁家𠎀、葉劉淑儀等出席論壇，討論香港的雨傘運動，以下是她對香港基督徒的觀察：

On Entries and Exits

Lida V. Nedilsky

12/3/14

 

Media attention has captured the literal movements involved in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement by carefully attending to demonstrators’ entries and exits.

In September residents of Hong Kong occupied streets, but soon clashed with police seeking their forcible removal in October and with bailiffs wielding court injunctions to dismantle their camps in November. In mid-November student leaders attempting to enter mainland China made a quick about-face at the airport when they learned their return home cards had been canceled and so were not authorized to travel. And just last week, British MPs were warned by the Chinese embassy they, too, would be denied entry if they went ahead with plans for a December visit to Hong Kong; while news of Joshua Wong’s recent arrest and release tell that both instances were marked by physical assault upon the teenager.

Such high stakes entries and exits have the potential to transform the individuals who take them. Their physical steps bring them in direct contact with law enforcement, border patrol, and other gate keepers. Likewise, their encounters with strangers and people of different viewpoints challenge and redefine identity, forging residents into citizens, possibly even activists. 

But in seventeen years spent learning about Christianity in Hong Kong, I’ve found that everyday acts of entry and exit transform ordinary people into advocates of democracy.

Why look at both entry and exit as formative acts? While entry typically carries a positive connotation –associated with the act of joining, participating, committing, putting in motion—exit might require some explanation. As in the current coverage, exit might suggest retreating, abandoning, surrendering, failing. Yet in exit also comes the decision to start anew, to leave behind one way of existence in order to find or even offer an alternative to what exists. And it’s this meaning that is essential to understanding how everyday acts transform ordinary people into advocates of democracy.

The problem and the promise of Christians as ordinary people in Hong Kong is that they are sinners. They regularly commit the sin of bourgeois individualism. Beckoned by the wealth of options in Hong Kong’s religious marketplace, converts to Christianity – typical of Hong Kong Christians— find themselves through groups they enter including churches, fellowships, NGOs, Bible study groups, courses, camps, and the like. And then, urged to demonstrate their faith and encouraged to learn about their chosen religion, Christians quickly outgrow their groups. 

When they have questions, their religious guides cannot answer them. When they appeal for compassion, reason or righteous anger, their brothers and sisters pull back. When they demand a moral stand on a serious issue, their church leaders are often silent. And with the discovery that the current group cannot fully satisfy, they realize that exiting a group can in fact be a demonstration of deep religious commitment. Switching churches, quitting jobs, forming fellowships, initiating volunteer teams, and founding NGOs each comes with exit. At the same time, each action of exit and entry maintains the individual’s association to religion, shores up or heightens belief. This activity is way under the media’s radar, but by enabling others to choose for themselves, this activity helps form a vibrant civil society in Hong Kong.

At Oxford in December of 2012 I met Matthew Torne, the filmmaker who documented Scholarism organizer Joshua Wong. He seemed perplexed that I could speak about Christians in civil society when Joshua Wong decried the indifference of Christians toward Hong Kong politics. It’s that very act of criticism –enabled by self-reflective religious commitment, marshalled against “the church”, and amplified in these momentous debates about equal protection under the law, national education, and universal suffrage—that underscores Christianity’s unintended imprint on individual Christians.

High stakes entries and exits have the potential to transform the individuals who take them. Last spring, Pussy Riot members Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina were released after 2 years’ incarceration in Russian penal colonies for staging inside Moscow's main Orthodox cathedral a protest against church-state collusion. In an April interview with Charlie Rose they explained why the loss of their physical freedom was worth the true freedom they sought for Russia. Through their incarceration, they realized how their government treats the weakest in society. But there is strength in weakness, elaborated Masha, as Christ’s example attests. Nadya and Masha now recognize it is for them to seek prison reform and an end to forced labor. It is for these two convicts to teach the government how it ought to treat the weak. 

Hong Kong people need not be involved in high stakes entries and exits to experience political awakening and preparedness. Everyday acts of entry and exit get them there. And they need not be placed in prisons to recognize limitations on their freedom. That, too, can be realized in the everyday.