The Ahmao (Miao) schism: the problem of spiritual agency in encounters between church and state in southwest China

The majority of Ahmao in southwest China have been Christian since a mass conversion movement took place in the 1900s. Throughout the century, Ahmao congregations have gone through several reforms and survived many political campaigns. After two decades of prosperity through China’s reform era, since the 2000s many Ahmao congregations in northern Yunnan have experienced schisms. This paper sets out to investigate a schism that took place in a medium-size Ahmao congregation between 2005 and 2015. Based upon several years of continuous fieldwork, I found that the alleged schism in this Ahmao congregation – rather than describing a long-standing fracture in the community – appears intermittently and should be considered as an effect of religious regulation that problematizes the agency of spiritual practice. Under the regime of religious regulation in contemporary China, Ahmao congregations have been delicately negotiating between different modes of agency as changes in Christian practice become necessary or inevitable.