“赞米亚”视角下的近代西南地区基督教的传播与国家适应

The Spread of Christianity and National Adaptation in Modern Southwest China from the Perspective of Zomia

詹姆斯·斯科特(James C.Scott)认为,基督教在赞米亚地区广泛传播的主要原因是与山地族群的先知主义和千禧年宇宙观契合,从而使基督教成为山地族群借用的意识形态与谷地国家对抗,逃避谷地的统治。然而民国时期,中国西南山地民族皈信基督教的例子则显示,基督教为这些民族带来符合现代社会秩序的价值理念和行为规范,促使山地民族进入现代性的社会化道路,这恰恰符合了国民政府对于山地民族长期以来的教化愿望,期望将山地民族真正纳入国家的治理体系之下。因而基督教进入“赞米亚”区域,虽然也有逃避统治与国家相对抗的一面,同样也有与国家意识形态相一致的一面,促使山地民族适应国家并进入国家。这可能是斯科特所忽略的一个重要方面。

James C.Scott pointed that the main reason why Christianity was widely spread in Zomia was that it was in accordance with the Prophetism and the millennial cosmology of the mountain ethnic groups,which made Christianity become an ideology borrowed by mountain groups to fight against the valley state and escape from its rule.As a religion in the Western modern world,Christianity is naturally related to modernity.While entering“Zomia”and similar regions,it arguably brought Western modernity for these marginal groups,and also push these groups into a great transformation process of Western modernity.Therefore,when Christianity endowed these mountain ethnic groups with modernity and cosmopolitanism,it also strengthened their nationalism.Christianity spread rapidly in the mountainous regions of Southwest China at the end of 19th and the beginning of 20th.And almost all these regions,as Scott said,had a story of taking a missionary as a prophet or a redeemer in the process of these ethnic groups converting to Christianity.Actually,as many researchers argued,the mountain people who converted to Christianity did not know much about the Christian doctrines,but they still regarded missionaries as prophets.In other words,it is the promise of salvation in Christianity that attracted the mountain people to Christianity.But there was no doubt that,along with their preaching activities,the missionaries created writing systems for the mountain ethnic groups,brought a series of changes in education,medical treatment,ideology,ethnic mobilization and even social organizations,improved the social,economic and cultural conditions in the frontier ethnic areas,and brought values and norms of behavior in line with the modern social order for these ethnic groups,bringing these ethnic groups to a socialized road of modernity.More importantly,after the mountain people converted to Christianity,they gradually changed their status from escaping from the state rule for they“don t know the doctrine of the king”to a status of adapting to the state,and finally they became“national citizens”.Although the mountain ethnic peoples conversion to Christianity caused a fracture of their traditional society,this fracture opened a channel for the mountain ethnic groups to the modern society,which was exactly conforms to the national government s long-term desire to enlighten the mountain ethnic groups,and bring them into the national governance system.That is to say,the southwest mountain peoples conversion to Christianity in the first half of the 20th century was consistent with what Scott said in the sense of the millennium movement and salvation,i.e.,they chose a different religion to evade the rule of the valley.However,there is also one side that is consistent with national ideology,that is,making the mountain ethnic groups adapt to and enter the state-this may be an important aspect that Scott ignored.