“Dual Moral Authority”: Negotiating Christian Ethics Within Confucian Kinship Frameworks in Rural China

The relationship between rural Christianity and the Chinese ethical conception of interpersonal relationships has long been a central concern in scholarly research. Existing studies often frame the two as antagonistic or argue that the Christian configuration of interpersonal relationships is a mere continuation of the traditional differential mode of association (chaxu geju). However, these perspectives often neglect local Christians’ own ethno-theology and its praxis, rendering the cultural transformations brought about by conversion invisible. Focusing on the ordinary ethics of rural Christians and based on long-term fieldwork in Shui County (a pseudonym), a rural region at the junction of Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and Anhui provinces in China, this study reveals that Christianity instantiates a dual moral authority system within believers’ daily practices: “centripetal authority” and “centrifugal authority”. The former emphasizes inner sincerity, granting believers a degree of moral autonomy. The latter establishes a divine foundation for believers’ social relations. Employing anthropologist Marcel Mauss’s theory of gift to analyze the interaction between two types of authority in the ordinary ethics of believers, this study finds that rural Christianity both consolidates and expands pre-existing, local relational configurations. The extent of this cultural transformation is closely correlated with the depth of the divine–human relationship. Consequently, Christianity’s relationship with traditional Chinese ethics transcends binary oppositions between antagonism and continuity, instead enacting a creative reconfiguration.