In modern Chinese social science literature, issues vexing to the modern Chinese state-building project are often referred to as “questions” [wenti], or the same word translated another way, as “problems,” with the implication that the state must solve the riddles in order to move China forward into modernity and national power. Goossaert and Palmer play on this notion as they examine the “Religious Question” in modern China, showing how modernizing elites have tried, from the nineteenth century onward, to harness, control, and sometimes eliminate religion, but conversely how religious believers have steadfastly resisted or co-opted these efforts such that today religion remains a potent and expanding force in China as the country moves into the twenty-fist century.

The book is divided into two parts: the first part considers religion in light of the power of the rise of the secular nation-state in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China and the second part probes the status of religion vis-à-vis the state in China in the last three decades. The book engages with the experiences of all the usual suspects of Chinese religion, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism, but also with Islam, Christianity, popular Chinese beliefs and practices, and with contemporary permutations on the theme, such as Falungong. The work is thus impressively comprehensive in scope. To attain to such breadth, the authors necessarily rely heavily on existing secondary literature (though no small amount of it is their own), rather than on primary sources. Given the evident importance of religion in modern China and the increasing scholarly attention on the topic, Goossaert and Palmer's work of synthesis is very welcome addition.

After a chapter outlining the nineteenth century Chinese religious consensus, part 1 explores how that consensus was disrupted. Although there were internal contradictions (such as a strand of anti-clericalism among some Confucian scholars), the arrival of Christian missionaries and increasing amounts of information from the West in general played no small part in the disruption. For example, the late-Qing Dynasty reformer, Kang Youwei, was heavily influenced by late-nineteenth century Christianity, seeing in it a model for building a true Chinese national religion. Kang proposed severe restrictions on Buddhist temples, which he felt embarrassed the Chinese before foreigners with their glut of idols, and in their place a state-directed Confucian church with ministers, weekly gatherings and the like, which would make energetic, modern (yet Chinese) citizens. The authors describe Kang's project as a “wild hybridization of Confucian fundamentalism and Christianity” (46). Kang's vision never got off the ground, but his ideas on religious reform remained influential into the next century. After the Republican Revolution of 1911, the “Christian-secular normative model” came to dominate Chinese religious reformist discourse (73). Under the model, to count as a real religion, and not a superstition subject to persecution, the bodies of believers were expected to organize into church-like national associations that could be understood and influenced by the central government, and further, such newly organized religious groups were expected to provide social services recognized by the state as benefiting the national well-being, a well-being usually considered in secular terms. The Republican state thus worked toward implanting the notion in believers that what mattered most was the nation-state, often thought of in religious-like utopian terms, not the Dao, the Buddha, or Christ. The state and reformist activists never achieved complete control in these terms, and Goossaert and Palmer relate many examples of resistance, but they set a pattern of state control over religion that carried over into the post-1949 Communist era.

Part 2 picks up the story in the last years of the twentieth and first years of the twenty-first centuries, detailing the post-Mao religious revival which is now testing the limits of state control. Temples and churches—legal, illegal and many of unclear status—are sprouting up all over the country. The authors note that these days it is often easier to find religious works (the scriptures of many traditions and popular books such as the writings of authors as diverse as Nostradamus and Rick Warren) than it is to find Marx and Mao in small bookstores throughout the country (276). In such an environment, where religious expression is exploding beyond the bounds of what most could have imagined just a few years before, the Communist Party finds itself in an ambiguous position. On the one hand, in Marxist principle, religious fervor suggests some failure on the part of the Party's modernization efforts, but in practice, the Party finds it necessary make common cause with, or at least tread lightly with the growing numbers of religious believers. The ambiguity is well captured in a 1982 order regarding house churches: “as far as Protestants gathering in homes for worship services, this should not be allowed … [but,] this prohibition should not be too rigidly enforced” (382–83). Goossaert and Palmer show through many examples that, in general, the Party has settled on a policy of supporting the five legitimate religions organized into national bodies (Buddhist, Daoist, Islamic, Protestant and Catholic), while suppressing groups deemed a threat (Dalai Lama supporters, Uighur separatists, and Falungong, for example), and treating the vast middle ground (house churches, feng shui practitioners, Confucian moralists, among many others) as a grey area, handled on a case-by-case basis.

There is much, much more to The Religious Question in Modern China than can be captured in this short review. If anything there may be a bit too much. The present reviewer finds the occasional discussions of ethnic Chinese religious practices in Southeast Asia, while interesting cases, to be a distraction from “Modern China,” as it is usually and usefully understood. The Religious Question is probably too dense for use in most undergraduate classrooms. However, graduate courses on modern Chinese history, East Asian religions or, perhaps, Christian missionary activity in Asia will find much to discuss and use in these pages. Certainly for the foreseeable future, any scholars pursuing historical or anthropological studies of religion in modern China will have to (and will want to) engage with the fine work of Goossaert and Palmer.