This is a reply to this post from Palmerston.
Like Palmerston, I may not agree with the STL’s position. But I think his account overstates the influence of fundamentalist Christianity by misinterpreting the position it occupies in Hong Kong culture (as compared to, say, that of the United States). Broadly speaking, Hong Kong fundamentalism is a Christian variation on an essentially conservative mainstream local culture; it does not represent half of a red-state/blue-state divide. Christian voices are, for instance, not the only, or even the loudest, objecting to ”compensated dating” (援交) (or to the presence of soft porn in this year’s book exhibition).
Simply put: Hong Kong is not on the brink of an American-style culture war, because there is no one to go to war with, apart from a few expats and radical university students. On gay marriage, the fundamentalists and conservatives may be fighting a losing battle in the long run - but for now, too many Hong Kongers still tend to homophobia.
Palmerston purports to address 3 reasons why Christianity should find “unusually fertile ground” in Hong Kong, and comes up with only one that is actually specific to the territory - its colonial history. Apart from that, he mentions the “cell group” as organisational structure for evangelical churches: a phenomenon that is neither specific to Hong Kong nor as insidious as Palmerston suggests. (Only totalitarian governments need to be really paranoid about “people meeting in small groups” - after all, even some atheists - e.g. the British Humanist Association - are trying to get organized as a political force, and no one thinks there’s anything wrong with that.) Likewise, the high proportion of Christians in the city’s elite is no conspiracy, and easily explained: many are products of the church-run schools of the colonial era.
As a conservative voice in a largely conservative society, Hong Kong’s fundamentalist movement is in a very different position from that of its American counterpart; by failing to consider these contextual differences, Palmerston’s account presents an overly alarmist view. The rise of fundamentalist Christianity in Hong Kong is a trend worth watching; but no one who’s been watching both Chinese- and English-language media could consider the city to be on the brink of culture war.
