Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim

In the heyday of the "dream of the Pacific Rim" before 2012, Cantonese Protestants became something of a surprise to liberal multicultural metropolises seeking to integrate Asians into their civil societies. There was talk of a shift of the “immigrant vote” to the Right, especially on sexuality issues, as Cantonese Protestants were said to be importing their "homeland politics" in their transpacific movements. In this talk, Dr. Justin Tse discusses his book Sheets of Scattered Sand (Notre Dame Press, 2024), where he writes about how Cantonese Protestants in the San Francisco Bay Area, Metro Vancouver, and Hong Kong involved themselves in political demonstrations, re-oriented their institutions to be businesses and charities, and participated in the electoral process. He argues that while Cantonese Protestants in fact described themselves as politically fragmented and ideologically disunited, they were also seeking to be legible as contributors to these Pacific Rim societies as participants in the secular democratic process. This talk should be of interest to those working in transpacific, Sinophone, and secular studies.