Abstract

Research has long demonstrated that parents who do not share the same religious tradition produce less religious children than parents who do. Therefore, religious heterogamy has been associated with the generational decline of religion in Western societies. How about China, where religion has been resurging in the last few decades? Existing studies suggest two opposing possibilities, the restrictive and repressive national context may diminish parental impact on religious socialization, or the family of religious minorities withstands contextual pressures. Using the 2007 Spiritual Life Survey of Chinese Residents, we applied logistic regression modeling to examine patterns of association between having one or two religious parents during childhood and current religious affiliation, beliefs, behavior, and salience of the respondents in China. Analyses reveal that despite China’s atheist education system and strict religion policies, having at least one religiously affiliated parent is associated with increased religiosity compared to having two nonreligious parents. As the number of interreligious marriages rises in Chinese society, religious heterogamy contributes to the growth of religion among younger generations. Whereas religious heterogamy in the West has a secularizing effect on the next generation and contributes to religion’s decline, religious heterogamy in secular nations such as China has a religionizing effect and contributes to religion’s rise.

Comments

This is the author-accepted manuscript version of McPhail, Brian L. and Fenggang Yang. 2020. “Religious Heterogamy and the Intergenerational Transmission of Religion in China.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 59(3):439–454. Copyright Wiley, the version of record is available at DOI: 10.1111/jssr.12667

Date of this Version

2020

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