Religion and its power dimensions: Perspective from transient migrants

The modern era witnessed a decline of religion, especially Christianity in the west, from its once dominance of the public order. While states tend to enforce a secular rationale in public space, religious organisations succeed in claiming a significance at places where public services are absent or ineffective. Nevertheless, varying power associated with a religion has meant that religions do not share an equal status to obtain resources and influence private lives. In terms of engaging migrants, power of a religion often expresses through the institutional dimension. This concerns not only power dynamics between individuals and institutions but also between individuals subject to interpersonal power dynamics mediated by racial, cultural, and national identifications. This paper adopts a perspective from transient migrants and attends to interactions between ethnic Chinese international students and evangelical Christians in Britain. It contends that without disentangling power dimensions at both institutional and interpersonal levels, we risk reproducing a Euro-American centrism that is biased. This bias manifests a significance of religion by demonstrating what draws people to religion but neglects what drives people away from religion. In the case of transient migrants, people with different trajectories have shared space and everyday encounters; nevertheless, their approaches to a religion are rooted in their understanding of power dimensions at institutional and interpersonal levels. Findings from this study suggest that civic nationalism enables religion to maximise its service in public engagement but ethnic disparities intensify religious privileges and disadvantages.