Laboring Under the Cross

Abstract

This study used Bakhtinean dialogism and contrapuntal analysis to examine how organizational identity in a Christian house church in China emerged through the interplay of competing discourses. I identified three sets of tensions: (a) religiosity versus secularity, (b) profit versus service, and (c) labor versus management. Church organizers and core members used many strategies to mitigate these tensions, including selection, separation, integration, and transcendence. Marginalized workers further complicated this discursive tension in resistance to a managerial monologue. The collective identity of the house church emerged from the interplay of competing discourses and was marked with complexity, contradictions, and dynamism. This research offers empirical evidence of how identity is constructed through interactions among diverse organizational members. It also contributes to the literature by focusing on the resistive voices of workers and subsequently expands the typology of tension management strategies beyond tension reduction and consent.

Keywords

discourse analysis organizational identity tension labor

Organizational tensions are a growing area of study in organizational communication, as scholars increasingly view discursive tensions as a routine, unavoidable and/or beneficial part of organizational life (Ashcraft & Trethewey, 2004; Tracy, 2004). One line of tension analysis stems from Bakhtinean dialogism, which focuses on the emergence of meaning through discursive struggles (Baxter, 2011; Baxter & Braithwaite, 2008; Baxter & Montgomery, 1996). This paper continues this line of research and interrogates how tension and tension management activities complicate the process of identity formation.

This study explores identity in the context of marginalization by focusing on (a) how organizational tensions emerge in a Chinese house church and (b) how church leaders and participants deal with such tensions. The Chinese house church movement is “a non-compromising but non-confronting religious movement . . . [that] is under close surveillance by local authorities and without legal status” (Cheng, 2003, p. 16). Located in an industrial district in South China, the house church¹ in question has a heterogeneous membership structure, with the church leadership largely consisting of high-level managers in local manufacturing industries, and the majority of participating members working on assembly lines. As such, the house church offers a unique space to observe organizational dynamics characterized by tensions—the interplay of distinctive (religious) values and interests espoused by the social elite and the marginalized, and the resultant contradictions in organizational priorities and policy preferences.

While there is a well-established relationship between marginalization and religion (Zuckerman, Kasl, & Ostfeld, 1984), this relationship is often viewed as layered, complex, and riddled with tensions (Hunt & Hunt, 1977; Marx, 1967; Sherkat & Ellison, 1999). Tensions exist between the contradicting roles that (organized) religion plays in forming and assisting (radical) resistance: While an earlier empirical study by Marx (1967) concluded that religion functioned as an “accommodative opiate” that prevented mobilization for radical social change, Hunt and Hunt (1977) used the same data to raise the opposing view that Black religious organizations also inspired civil rights militance [sic]. This study explores the discursive tensions inside the house church and their impact on organizational identity, especially concerning the role of the house church in enabling/hindering workers’ resistance.

Organizational Identity and Tension

Moving away from the traditional view of organizational identity as the central, enduring, and distinctive aspect of an organization (Albert & Whetten, 1985), recent trends locate organizational identity as diverse, fragmented, and emerging (Gioia, Schultz, & Corley, 2000; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). This approach to identity, often rooted in social constructivism, pays attention to the process of identity construction, especially as the result of struggles among competing discourses (Jack & Lorbiecki, 2007; Tracy, 2000). For example, Hatch and Schultz (2002) described organizational identity as the result of an interplay of multiple processes in the form of an “ongoing conversation or dance” (p. 991). Similarly, Brown and Humphreys (2006) defined individual and collective identities as “linguistic accomplishments constituted within discursive regimes,” and therefore argued that organizational identities are not “static and objectively existing entities,” but “extremely fluid discursive constructions constantly being made and re-made” (p. 233).

Viewing organizational identity as an emerging process is of particular importance for studying organizations where leaders/administrators and members hold diverse/opposing priorities on goals and policies. Introducing a structuration approach to understanding the mechanism of identity construction, Gilpin and Miller (2013) argued that organizations should be understood as complex systems whose identities are jointly shaped by the strategic identity management of the leadership and the negotiations among members in a collective, dynamic process. Although Gilpin and Miller emphasize “the need to explore in greater detail the mechanisms of identity construction and identification,” scant research has empirically observed that process. The house church offers a site to observe how identity is constructed through interactions among different organizational units with divided professional status (clergy, management, and labor). Specifically, this study captures and demonstrates the identity negotiation process through the lens of organizational tensions and tension management.

The emergent approach to organizational identity is consistent with the trend in communication studies to regard discursive tensions as a routine part of organizational life and to view the interplay of discourses in tension as the very process through which meanings arise (Baxter & Braithwaite, 2008; Ghemawat & Ricart Costa, 1993; Palmer & Dunford, 2002). In the context of the house church, tension emerges not only from the competing priorities among diverse members but also from the unsanctioned nature of the organization. As a largely “hidden organization” (Scott, 2015) striving to simultaneously evangelize and conceal its identity, church members face the constant need to “manage tensions related to concealment and revelation” (p.505) through their daily interactions.

One approach in communication scholarship that addresses discursive tensions is Relational Dialectics Theory (RDT; Baxter, 2011; Baxter & Braithwaite, 2008), which offers a heuristic framework of analyzing “dialogically expansive texts” to examine the interaction of competing discourses (Baxter, 2011). Identities, both individual and collective, can emerge as the result of discursive struggles. Baxter (2011) argued that “identities are constructed in the play of competing discourses, . . . [and therefore] cannot be finalized prior to communication” (p. 12). RDT has largely been used in studying interpersonal and family communication. It provides an example of how Bakhtinean dialogism can be applied to communication studies in general. Dialogism is used as an epistemological framework by scholars who view meaning as “socially situated,” and communication a process where meaning is derived through the interaction of multiple discourses (Krauss & Morsella, 2006). Bakhtinean dialogism therefore serves as a helpful framework, a sensitizing tool to look at how meanings arise from the struggle of competing, often contradicting discourses (Holquist, 2002).

Several key arguments in Bakhtinean dialogism are relevant to studying discursive tension and (organizational) identity. First, an “utterance” is not regarded as a singular event, but a link on the utterance chain that encompasses the said and the unsaid, the history and future of language use. Therefore, as organizational identity emerges communicatively, the identity of the house church are not shaped by individual instances of speech within inside the organization, but in the broader discourses of religion, management, and labor reflected in the speech—the “specific point of view, worldview, value, or ideology constituted in the uttered word” (Baxter, 2011, p. 32).

Second, language should be viewed as dialogues among multiple competing discourses. Bakhtinean dialogism is a useful tool for addressing discursive tensions, treating them not as anomalous, but rather a routine part of social process. Bakhtin (2010) believed tension is central to the understanding of utterance, arguing that analysis of any utterance could be carried out “once having exposed it as a contradiction-ridden, tension-filled unity of two embattled tendencies in the life of language” (p. 272). Espousing a dissensus (as opposed to consensus) view of meaning-making, the dialogic perspective regards identity as constitutive of competing discourses, and therefore emergent and fragmented.

Third, Bakhtinean dialogism accentuates inequality in discursive struggles and uses the notion of centripetal–centrifugal forces—the tendency toward conformity to or resistance from the powerful mainstream discourses—to explain issues of power in the interplay of competing discourses. As such, it is important not only to delineate what discourses are in competition within an organization but the power dynamics among the discourses; not only to examine the voices that are present in the identity negotiation but those that are suppressed, erased, or foreclosed. These central arguments of Bakhtinean dialogism offer an understanding of organizational identity as an emergent process of dialogic struggle, which manifests as discursive tension between dominant or marginalized voices.

Epistemologically, the dialogist approach emphasizes a contrapuntal analysis of competing discourses, as opposed to observing the individual utterances as isolated instances (Thatcher, 2011). The term contrapuntal analysis originates from Bakhtin’s description of his textual analytical methods. Compared with the music term “contrapuntal,” which refers to a technique involving the interaction of multiple independent music lines, a contrapuntal analysis “focuses on the interplay of contrasting discourses in spoken or written texts” (Baxter, 2011, p. 152). Analysis of qualitative data for this study largely draws from Baxter’s (2011) adaptation of the contrapuntal analysis.

Many studies focus on delineating the typology of discursive tensions and tension management strategies (Seo, Putnam, & Bartunek, 2004; Tracy, 2004), often through examining organizational processes using discourse analysis tools (Fairhurst & Putnam, 2014). Organizational communication scholars generally define tensions as conditions where two or more competing forces interact in a push-pull fashion. There have been many attempts to capture the different manifestations of organizational tensions. For example, Tracy (2004) delineated three ways organizational tensions can be framed. Contradiction refers to the understanding of an either-or situation where the competing positions in a tension are mutually exclusive. A complimentary dialectic occurs when tensions are understood as interplay of interrelated, concurrent and even complimentary positions. Tensions can also be viewed as paradoxes or double binds, when a position is self-contradictory or self-negating. Such variations in tension typology translate into different ways tensions are managed in organizations. Seo et al. (2004) summarized four ways tensions are managed: selection, separation, integration, and transcendence. Selection involves choosing or favoring one side of the dichotomy over the other, sometime by denying the existence of the opposite side. Separation, on the contrary, attempts to recognize and follow both sides of the dichotomy by keeping them separated in different domains. Working through neutralization or forced merger, integration entails a combination of the competing sides, although the combination can be balanced or biased. Finally, transcendence reframes the opposing positions into a new, unified perspective that encompasses both sides of the dichotomy.

I build on Baxter’s (2011) concern about the tendency to overlook dialogic expansion, a state of uncertainty in which “silenced or marginalized discourses gain footholds in the negotiation of meaning” (p. 9). Similarly, the tension management literature displays a bias against uncertainty, by prioritizing a coherent, monologic voice over discursive tension; the latter is considered problematic and requiring management (read: reduction). This study contributes to the literature by focusing on the dialogically expansive interactions in the house church, especially workers’ voices as they contest dominant discourses of management and religion. In doing so, I expand the typology of tension management strategies beyond tension reduction and consent.

Chinese Christian House Churches and Industrial Labor

Despite their relatively recent prominence, house churches as social phenomena in China can be traced back to 1950s (Yu, 2009b), when the Chinese government announced that it would only recognize Christian organizations linked to the “Christian Three-Self² Patriotic Movement” (TSPM), as opposed to those affiliated with Christian organizations in the West. Churches unwilling to sever their international ties either disbanded or chose to operate underground in the form of house churches. The nomenclature “house church” comes from the fact that these organizations congregate in residential buildings—because they cannot register with local governmental Religious Affairs offices or operate in venues designated for religious uses. Most house churches do not exist in the public record, and many of them (including the one discussed in this article) do not have official names.

Initially, house churches were predominantly located in China’s vast countryside, and to this day, the rural population accounts for the majority of house church followers (Zhang, 2010). This situation is changing, however, as membership expands in urban China (Su, 2007; Xie, 2010), especially among migrant labor populations located at urban industrial centers and close suburbs (Xiong, 2012; Yu, 2009a). Several factors contribute to the pervasiveness of Christian house churches in industrial hubs in China. Concentrated clusters of industrial labor provide a stable captive audience for recruitment. Entrepreneurs with their burgeoning personal wealth fund these churches to fulfill the capitalist demand for workers’ associations that are not explicitly focused on labor issues. As a 1995 New York Times article put it, “The Chinese people are discovering what Max Weber theorized long ago: capitalism and Christianity can be self-reinforcing” (Kahn, 1995, p. A11).

Evidence is mixed about house churches’ role on labor issues. Some studies focused on the business-serving side of these organizations (Bays, 2003; Cao, 2007), while others the labor-serving side (Huang, 2009; Ji, 2010). Despite a migrant worker member base, house churches located in industrial areas are often led by individuals at the other end of the socioeconomic ladder (Bays, 2003; Cao, 2007). In his ethnographic study in Wenzhou, China, Cao (2007) observed house churches that were initiated and operated by local entrepreneurs—a common practice in the area. Cao (2007) identified the convergence of faith and secular enterprise management, which “serves not only the economic ends, but also fulfills the evangelistic goal” (p. 58) for Christian entrepreneurs. An example of faith/management rhetoric can be found in the following excerpt from a sermon delivered by a young boss preacher to a group of uniformed workers:

There are many bosses in Wenzhou. This is God’s special blessing to them. Coming from other provinces, you may also have the urge to become a boss here in the future . . . It is not for your boss that you work hard. Instead, you should be grateful to your boss who has provided such a good work environment. The value of a person is to be someone who is needed. Our jobs are arranged by God. Everything we are do now should be God’s special calling . . . (p. 58)

Besides serving an evangelizing function, this statement also reified the capitalist logic of entrepreneurship and exploitation, and demonstrated a form of ideological control over the factory workers. Despite the overall unsanctioned status of Christian house churches, Cao (2007) pointed out that these religious organizations were tolerated by Chinese government because of their utility in “disciplining and motivating the work force” in a context where the “traditional moral teachings and political education have lost their effectiveness” (p. 59).

As the result of its complex (and profoundly divided) membership, house churches are caught in the tension between the management and industrial labor. The tension is further complicated by the house church’s broader social context, marked by competing discourses of religion, economic development, labor, and social justice. Taking a Bakhtinean dialogist view, I reject the impulse to suggest a particular aspect of the house church as its identity. As such, it is erroneous to suggest that the identity of the house churches is simply one (religious/managerial) assigned to it by their elitist organizers. Nor is it accurate to suggest that it is a labor organization simply because it is populated by industrial workers. Instead, as Bakhtinean dialogism suggests, the identity of a house church should be captured as the result of the interaction of multiple competing discourses. Therefore, this research attempts to answer the following questions:

Research Question 1 (RQ1): What discursive tensions can be identified in the house church?

Research Question 2 (RQ2): How do organizational actors manage these tensions?

Research Question 3 (RQ3): How does the identity of the house church emerge through these tension management practices?

Method

After obtaining human subject approval for my study, I lived in the guest room of the house church for about 6 weeks. During this period, I got to know church members, conducted in-depth interviews with some of them, and carried out participant observation. With regular follow-up telephone conversations with interview participants, I continued gathering data about the house church up to a year after my initial stay. In this section, I discuss the research site and participants, the data collection, and analysis methods, and explain my role as a participant observer.

Research Site and Participants

I gained access to this particular house church through its founder and biggest proponent, Cuifen.³ The house church was located in a medium-size industrial town in South China that was developed around Suteng,⁴ a sizable sports footwear subcontractor that employed more than 20,000 people. Almost everyone in the house church was related to Suteng in some way. Most were current employees of the manufacturer. Cuifen, who provided the venue and running expenses for the organization, used to be among the top management of Suteng.

During the time frame of this study, the house church had around 150 regular members—those who participated in weekly church activities. There were three distinct types of actors inside the house church. The two organizers were Cuifen and Xiaowen, the evangelists⁵ that ran the daily operations. Inside the house church, they were often referred to as “teachers” or “trainers.” Also in this category was Helen, a visiting evangelist from Taiwan. Core members included around a dozen frequent volunteers who took turns organizing or running logistics for church activities such as cooking for Sunday lunches and designing PowerPoint™ presentations for sermons. Core members were, for the most part, the original members of a bible study group and had a longer tenure with Suteng. Their ranks within Suteng varied from senior management to production supervisors, clerks, and line workers. In contrast to the hierarchical diversity among the core members, peripheral members (about 130 in number) were composed of almost all industrial workers or low-ranking clerks.

Data Collection

I used two data collection methods for the research project: Interviews were the primary mode, supplemented by participant observation.

Co-constructed interviews

My primary source of data is 21 in-depth interviews with church participants—slightly more than half (n = 11) with organizers and core members (which included two church organizers, two core members in senior management, three at the lower management level, and the rest manufacturing workers in Suteng) and 10 with peripheral members. The interviews were semistructured and comprised of predominantly open-ended questions. I started with an initial set of questions such as “What does the house church mean to you?” or “How do you describe your experience here?” As is typical of co-constructed interviews, new questions (e.g., “How do you deal with the unsanctioned nature of the house church?”) sometimes emerged from the interview process and were added to the protocol. Most of the interviews ranged between 45 and 90 min in length, with a mean length of around 60 min. The interviews were recorded and transcribed in Chinese. I then translated the transcribed interviews into English. The translated interviews, with notes on translation (often used to clarify translated terms that had specific cultural connotations, for example, from Jiating Jiaohui to house church) yielded 314 pages of single-spaced typewritten data.

Participant observation

Participant observation was another form of data collection. Sharing living quarters (which doubled as the venue for the church congregation) with participants granted me prolonged exposure and unique vantage point to the rhythms and rituals of this organization. I sat in on church activities and shadowed the organizers and core members for their home visits and meetings outside the church location. Participant observation involves recording both what is going on in the field as an observer and the experience of the researcher as a participant (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002). The field notes for the research study were a combination of scratch notes and headnotes, the former being notes that I took as events were taking place, while the latter involved note-taking immediately after the event based on memory. Field notes were taken during the process of participant observation, and amounted to around 190 pages of handwritten sheets. The notes were primarily in English—around 11 pages were in Chinese and later translated to English.

Role as Participant Observer

Given my physical situatedness in the field, it was evident that my observations were, to some extent, from an insider’s vantage point. While my identity as a guest of the house church offered easy access to, and trust from, its members, it would be an oversimplification to consider the researcher as an “insider” to the organization, and more useful to understand “insiderness” and “outsiderness” as “points on a continuum” (Labaree, 2002, p. 100). The research design largely focused on setting up clear boundaries of participation. Boundary setting is an important part of creating the liminal space of participant observation where the researcher is located “close enough . . . to gain an understanding, yet . . . far enough to . . . [see] from an outsider’s standpoint” (Tracy, 2012, p. 76). Specifically, I decided to merely sit in on religious activities such as bible studies, church congregations and choir practices, while participating more actively in everyday activities in the house church that were not religious in nature (e.g., cooking, cleaning, group meals, etc.). Despite this rule of thumb, these boundaries could sometimes be blurred or ambiguous given the contingencies of fieldwork.

My role as a participant observer also had ethical implications, especially due to my connections to church leaders—who were often also superiors to church members in the factory hierarchy where they work. I took measures to ensure independence from the house church leadership, including (a) full disclosure of my researcher identity—with emphasis on my detachment from the church administration—when I first entered the field (and repeated a number of times during the research study); (b) completely independent interviewee recruitment, interview procedures, and data storage; and (c) detailed explanation of the purpose and process of the study at the beginning of each interview, especially concerning the way interview and observation data would be used. Given the religious nature of the organization, I also found it important, as an ethical imperative, to disclose my personal politics about organized religion (which is different from that held by house church leaders and members) during my interaction with participants.

Data Analysis

All interviews, field notes, and journals were transcribed, translated, and examined through contrapuntal analysis. Contrapuntal analysis is a tool developed from Bakhtin’s analysis of literary works. To adapt the analysis for communication research, Baxter (2011) suggested a six-step thematic analysis process that “relies on interpretive methods common to other qualitative analysis of texts” (p. 158). This six-step process includes becoming familiar with the data set, generating initial coding categories, generating themes (discourses), reviewing themes (discourses), defining and naming themes (discourses), and locating exemplars. I provide a detailed description of the process, including coding categories and principles below.

I guided my analysis through the pragmatic question, “How does this articulation construct the identity of the house church?” In so doing, I hoped to identify competing discourses and locate instances of interpenetration of discourses through which organizational identity emerged. My analysis used an iterative approach (Tracy, 2012) which allowed me to travel between “emic, or emergent, readings of the data” and an “etic use of existing models, explanations and theories” (p. 384). Specifically, I used the heuristic framework offered by the RDT, including markers identified in Baxter (2011) for identifying the existance and the interplay of competing discourses. The first stage of the analysis included a close reading of the texts, when I manually marked out snippets, paragraphs, and articulations that seemed relevant and/or interesting. This stage of analysis had a contrapuntal focus, which meant sensitivity toward markers of discursive tensions identified in Baxter (2011). These markers included instances of negating, countering, and entertaining. Specifically, Negating refers to the “acknowledgement of an alternative, competing discourse for the purpose of rejecting it” (Baxter, 2011, p. 167). Countering happens when a discourse element “replaces or supplants an alternative discursive position that would normally have been expected in its place” (Baxter, 2011, p. 167). Countering is often signaled linguistically by conjunctions and connectives such as but, however, although, even, and so on. Entertaining “functions to indicate that a given discursive position is but one possibility among alternative discursive positions” (Baxter, 2011, p. 168). Discourse markers for entertaining include lexical signals of modality or uncertainty, such as maybe, might, possibly, and so on.

The iterative analysis used a constant comparative method (Charmaz, 2006) to constantly visit and revisit relevant data with emerging codes, and to modify and replace codes to fit new data. After the initial coding was done, I arranged these discursive fragments into key discourses. Specifically, this stage of analysis focused on the way competing discourses collaboratively constructed different facets of the house church identity. In the next section, I elaborate on the key contrapuntal discourses present in my data.

Tension and House Church Identity

Contrapuntal analysis revealed three sets of tensions: (a) religiosity versus secularity, (b) business versus service, and (c) labor versus management. The opposing sides contradicted each other and were often interdependent in dialectic relationships. The interpenetration of these discourses shaped the identity of the house church. (See Table 1 for a list of tensions, tension management practices, and their impact on organizational identity.)

Table 1.

Tensions in the House Church.

Tensions	Ways tensions are handled	Impact on organizational identity
Religious vs. secular	Integration: By injecting/attaching religious activities/functions to a secular event/organization.	Creating an encapsulating element of identity that centers on “serving the workers.”
	Transcendence: By a synthesis of religious and secular discourses with an overarching discourse of “serving the workers.”
Profit vs. people	Separation: By keeping the profit-making side and member-serving side of the house church in different domains, with different modes of operation and access for different actors.	Maintaining two inconspicuous elements of identity (member service and profit-making business) that becomes overt/covert in different domains.
Labor vs. management	Integration: By bridging and compromising the management and the labor perspectives through overlapping membership and personal connections.	Avoiding the identity of a labor rights/activist group.Resisting top-down identity formation and keeping the organizational identity open and complex.
	Selection: By trivializing and denying workers’ grievances, and neutralizing management malpractice.
	Complicating: By intruding a third position to the opposition, in resistance to a dominant side.

Religiosity Versus Secularity

A central problem for this unsanctioned religious organization was the need to hide its religious identity and pose as a secular organization in public. The tension between religiosity and secularity is best described as a binary: While the polar positions were not mutually exclusive (it is not uncommon for religious organization to engage in activities of a secular nature), they competed with each other for time and resources. As a result, the advancement of one position was at the cost of the other. For example, church activities that were highly religious in nature might not appeal to a nonreligious crowd, resulting in less participation from them. The tension between religiosity and secularity originated from two central but competing imperatives of the house church organization. On one hand, religiosity was central to the assigned identity of the house church, and more aligned to the ideology and mission of the church organizers. On the other hand, a pragmatic concern pulled toward secularity: A secular identity allowed the house church to recruit in public, which was not otherwise possible for an unsanctioned religious organization. Thus, the tension between religiosity and secularity was interrelated with the public versus private dilemma in which church organizers and core members talked about needing to “let more people know about us,” and yet “keep a low profile”—two goals that seemed untenable simultaneously, and indeed worked against each other. To keep a low profile reduced the effectiveness of publicity, and more publicity increased the risk of attracting government surveillance.

The need to stay out of the radar of government surveillance and the lack of a clearly demarcated physical space in the form of a church building posed a major challenge to the recruitment efforts of church leaders. Xiaowen was open about the risk involved in recruiting for an unsanctioned organization, explaining that although the local government was largely complicit about the church’s existence, they were advised against “rais[ing] a red flag, for instance, holding church activities in a public place . . .” As long as there were risks involved in the public identity as an unsanctioned religious organization, there was a push for alternative (read: secular) identities that allowed the church to hold activities in public. Secular identity was of particular importance to the house church in its earlier years when it needed publicity for recruitment. Helen was a visiting evangelist from a church in Taiwan that witnessed the earlier days of Cuifen’s house church. She recalled how Cuifen and her colleagues worked out a successful strategy of keeping their religious identity hidden, and posing as a worker’s club that hosted and sponsored cultural and entertainment activities:

. . . we felt that we were in a position to bring Jesus to more people. At that time, a lot of people in the factory already knew our existence but were too cautious to talk to us, because most of them had no experience with religious groups and didn’t know what to make of us . . . Our goal was to let the workers know that we are like a big family, with lots of brothers and sisters, who care about you, laugh with you, and cry with you . . . It was in November, so it was too late for anything for Thanksgiving, so we planned a Christmas party. (Emphases added)

In Helen’s excerpt, discursive tension was apparent between the religious mission of the organization (“bring Jesus to more people”), and the difficulty of putting the religious identity upfront (workers being “too cautious” about religious groups). While describing the Christmas party as a sensible and effective recruitment strategy, an opposing discursive position was revealed by Helen’s emphasis on the contextual details of the strategy, marked by a temporal signal “[a]t that time.” The contextual information served a subtle entertaining function (a discursive device to undermine a line of discourse by offering a competing discourse at the same time) that not only indicated other recruitment options (those emphasizing religious identity) were possible but that those options would be more appropriate in a different context.

The way house church leaders managed tensions between religiosity and secularity could be described as an integration of two opposing positions: injecting religious activities to an overtly secular event. For the Christmas party, Cuifen and her colleagues invited a local music troupe to stage a concert and opened it up to workers in the factory. Faith was not center stage at the event, which could probably be better described as popular entertainment or a cultural activity. The program included not only Christmas-specific verses but also numbers from popular music albums. As it was against government regulation to carry out religious proselytization in public (Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, 1982), such arrangement avoided legal implications by reframing proselytizing activity as “not religious,” at least in the more public part of the event. While the concert was held in Suteng Manufacturing’s employee activity center, participants were encouraged to join an after party in a private location, where the house church was introduced as a religious organization.

The Christmas party did not offer much opportunity for religious identity work, but it proved to be a successful recruitment event by making a significant public impression. After all, live performances were a rare treat for industrial workers who typically had few opportunities to attend commercial concerts for the lack of time, money, and access. Essentially, they were systematically excluded from most clubs of pastime and enrichment. For many workers who later became members of the house church, the Christmas party was a defining moment that shaped their understanding of the organization. This understanding inevitably carried over to their experience inside the house church when they become a member. Anguo, 24 years old, had vivid memories of the excitement that the concert brought about:

. . . my fellow workers told me that there were singing sessions in the activity center after the shift. I was like, “what sessions?” as I followed them [to the activity center]. From afar I could see that the doors to the center was ajar, and there were people gathering at the door trying to peep inside. I could hear music from loud speakers . . . I was like, “this is a new thing. Something is going on here.” . . . I have to admit that initially I was drawn to the group because we are a bunch of young, lively people.

The discursive tension surfaced at the end of the account when the speaker negated the earlier part of the statement. The rhetorical choice “I have to admit” that displayed some sort of embarrassed self-criticism signaled the disclamation of the social entertainment identity of the house church. The tension between the two discursive positions—religiosity and secularity—was dialectic, as they not only contradicted each other but also depended on each other. In this case, publicity in the form of entertainment shows served a practical function that made the religious activities possible. The means–end relationship was expressed in a temporal sequence: A member was initially drawn to the group for fun, and the identification to the religion took place later.

However, the tension between religiosity and publicity did not resolve after the initial recruitment phase. Part of the house church’s broad appeal for workers was the many cultural and recreational activities that it organized for its largely young membership. During my stay, members showed me photos taken during parties, hiking trips, and barbeques—Some of these activities did not reveal religious underpinnings. Instead, they fit a profile of a workers’ club that appealed to both Christians and non-Christians. It was not surprising, then, that both in-group and out-group members took part in some house church activities: friends and family, for the most part, but sometimes just people who heard about the event and wanted to join the fun.

While it is not uncommon for religious organizations to host both religious and secular activities, the tension about house church identity was apparent in the avoidance of religious markers in its public activities. Integration also worked when church organizers attached religious functions to a front organization with a secular public identity. Public activities were often officially affiliated to a group, which I have given the alias of the “Tender Loving Care (TLC) club.” The club was run by house church members, but otherwise not linked to it. Inside the house church, members talked about the two organizations synonymously. While the TLC club opened up a space for a hybrid (religious and secular) identity that allowed the house church to organize public events, it also led to tensions between two identities.

This tension was also managed through a transcendental discursive strategy: House church organizers often used the term “serving the workers” to describe the activities organized either by the house church or the TLC club. These included not only religious events and congregations but also social activities that are secular in nature. As a discursive strategy, the service frame transcended the difference between religious and secular identities. More importantly, it worked as a unifying element that set the house church apart from other groups and organizations that were relevant to workers population (e.g., Suteng Manufacturing or other religious groups that did not have a direct workers’ outreach structure). The identity of “serving the workers” emerged precisely through the interplay of competing discourses of religiosity and publicity.

Profits Versus Service

With “serving the workers” being an important part of church identity, tension existed between its service orientation and the need to compete for economic resources. Because a majority of the members represented a marginalized population, donations were generally inadequate to sustain house church operations. This made it inevitable for the church to maintain a business identity—It is not uncommon for service organizations to double as “commercial ventures whose profits are used to help nonprofits execute and fund their social mission” (Smith, Knapp, Barr, Stevens, & Cannatelli, 2010, p. 109). With one foot on the pulpit and the other on the factory floor, the house church was able to build a broad network with the workers’ population. This network enabled church leaders to generate profit from manufacturing business relying on knowledge about workers.

In 2010, Cuifen, the founder of the house church, left Suteng Manufacturing and started her own consulting company Workers’ Connection, which worked with clients on human resources, especially labor retention issues. Although the “official line” to the clients emphasized the mission to build trust and harmony between management and labor, Cuifen explained that her personal objective in starting the consultancy was to provide funding and broader outreach for the growing house church. This discursive position of negating business discourse was similar to the means–end logic on the issue of publicity, with one marked difference. In this case, tensions between the business discourse and service discourse were managed through separation: as house church organizers took on specific discursive positions for given audiences, keeping the profit-making side and member-serving side in different domains. The business discourse was used with clients of the consultancy and not the church members, and the reverse was true for the service discourse. I demonstrate this discursive separation—and the identity work implications—by comparing two presentations Cuifen made about industrial workers. One was made to a Christian church in the United States, and the other to a local business audience.

Cuifen had just returned from a trip to a Christian church in the United States at the time of my data collection, and the following weekend she showed the congregation a presentation she made in her trip. Titled “Who We Are,” the presentation started with pictures of young workers, some in their factory uniforms, with short bios. Cuifen chose three young workers as representatives of the house church membership and included a short story of each in the presentation. These stories, accompanied by images of them living or working, generally followed a structure of “troubled life as an industrial worker—journey of finding Jesus—development and growth—plan and aspiration.” I described this structure in one of my field notes, when discussing the case of a particular worker, Xiaoqiang:

Xiaoqiang started working in manufacturing when he was less than 18 years old. In an industrial accident, his face and upper body got severely burned and disfigured. Xiaoqiang’s image really tells the story of the group of people in China that need help, but are ignored or forgotten by everyone else but the house church. That’s my impression, and I think it’s the kind of image that Cuifen wanted to convey to the church elders (in New Jersey) about the urgency for her work.

As this case illustrates, the house church identity on labor-related issues was often constructed around their intimate knowledge and understanding of the needs and tribulations of industrial workers. Cuifen’s identity work thus highlighted the member-serving functions of the house church.

As could be expected, industrial workers were depicted and analyzed very differently to a business audience: owners of manufacturing facilities looking for solutions on labor-related issues—recruitment, management, and retention. I observed a meeting with one such client where a very different presentation about industrial workers was given. The emphasis was on identifying group characteristics of the new generation of workers no longer satisfied with being treated like machines: 71% of them worked “to broaden [their] horizons” rather than purely for money; only 41% willing to work more overtime to make more money; and 86% willing to “stand up against the factory if it infringes upon [their] rights.”

Drawn from this knowledge about industrial workers, the presentation made policy suggestions largely nestled within the confines of business operations: improving factory management and cultivating workers’ community. The suggestion about cultivating workers’ community represented an instance where religious/service agenda entered the business discourse, albeit inconspicuously. A photo taken in the house church gathering was shown next to the introduction of a “workers’ association” that carried the mission of “[b]eing cared for and care for others.” To build such a workers’ association, Workers’ Connection suggested activities, including social gatherings, personnel training, social support, and community service—clearly modeled after the house church and the TLC club model. In offering to assist these activities, Workers’ Connection also showed its intentions of evangelizing among the new group of workers.

Discursive tension was the most pronounced with the use of house church photo. For the presenter (and the researcher), the image was rooted in a set of cultural meanings specific to the religious/service identity, but was deliberately taken out from the cultural context and used ambiguously as a generic “workers’ community.” I argue that this was a special form of negating, where a discursive position (religious/service) was deemed irrelevant, but the disclaimer was made inconspicuously so that only those who were aware of the cultural context would appreciate the existence of competing discourses. The business client, who did not have intimate knowledge about the house church, was kept unaware of the religious/service discourse and its struggle with the business discourse.

In short, when tension arose between two conflicting discursive positions, house church organizers separated competing discourses in separate domains, allowing it to maintain two inconspicuous identity elements (member service and profit-making business) that became overt/covert in different domains. Separation allowed the church organizers to switch between conflicting organizational identities (serving the workers vs. using the knowledge about the workers to serve business interests) based on different contexts. Separation reduced instances of identifiable discursive tensions, and exemplified a diachronic separation of discourse, when “[o]ne domain centers one discourse; another domain privileges a competing discourse” (Baxter, 2011, p. 127). Thus, this separation were only discernible (a) when the competing discourses were united—as when a house church photo was used in a business presentation, and (b) to people who had access to both the business and religious culture of the house church. The arrangement that only part of the house church were informed about its dual identity ultimately defined its organizational structure, separating the organizers and core members from the peripheral members.

Labor Versus Management

The third type of tension arose between the church’s position in sympathy with industrial labor and one in line with management. As a place for industrial workers to gather and interact, the house church provided what Sherkat and Ellison (1999) called a “free social space” where grievances were shared and resistive actions coordinated. Workers were encouraged to share and discuss their experiences at work during church congregations and symbolic or pragmatic support was provided for those who encountered difficulties or injustices at work. Yanyan, a 24-year-old junior clerk at Suteng, related instance when a mistake she made almost cost the factory a big sum of money. She was not a member of the house church then and converted not long after the event:

I was petrified. I thought, “My life is over.” I will not be able to pay the company back. They will throw me out in the street, or worse, in jail. I was thinking about how to tell my parents that their daughter had just blown their life’s saving away in a stupid mistake. I was very, very scared. My supervisor, who I guess was also under a lot of heat, kept scolding me. I was thinking of killing myself. If it were not for sister Xiuying, who found me after work and talked to me, I probably would have. But she found me, and told me that in time all setbacks will eventually be history.

In this excerpt, the abusive management style of Suteng was illustrated in juxtaposition with the support that the house church offered to workers, highlighting the contrast between the two. In doing so, meanings about the house church were constructed in opposition to that of the corporate management of Suteng: The former was affiliated with labor and was different/antithetical from the latter.

It is important to note that the house church was linked to Suteng Manufacturing in many ways. Many organizers and core members had full-time jobs in Suteng management, and considered their position in the manufacturer a major mark of their personal identity. The hybrid identity of core members added legitimacy to an otherwise unsanctioned organization. It is worth noting that after the Chinese government cracked down Falungong, a “cult-like religious movement” (Chan, 2004) in China in 1999, practicing unsanctioned religion was often associated with vulnerability toward cults and scams, even an indication of mental problems. As Zhangyue, a congregation member, stated,

My colleague Lijuan talked to me very often about the faith. . . . I felt that she was of a lower rank than me in the factory, and not as capable as I am. When she kept talking to me about Jesus, I thought, was there any problem with her head? Later, she told me, Cuifen also believed in Jesus. I was puzzled. Lijuan might be out of her mind. But, is it possible that Cuifen . . . [someone in such a high position in the company . . . ] is also out of her mind? Just out of curiosity, I went to my first bible study meeting.

This excerpt illustrates two transposed sets of discourses in tension. In the first part of the statement, Zhangyue’s understanding of the house church (marked by rejection and dismissal) emerged from the clash between the religious discourse (represented by the reference to Lijuan’s articulations about faith) and a discourse based on corporate hierarchy (which discredited Lijuan for her low rank in the factory). In the later half, however, the original unfavorable understanding of the house church was challenged and eventually reversed by an opposing corporate discourse—this time legitimizing a member who had “a high position in the company.” In both cases, the corporate discourse was given a central, taken-for-granted status in the discursive struggle.

That workers were not inherent propagators of labor-oriented discourses is an important distinction to make when observing this discursive struggle. The hegemonic dominance of corporate discourse could be found in mundane, technical language used in the house church: Members were introduced with their job titles in Suteng and often addressed with corresponding levels of courtesy, church gatherings were arranged around long work hours and overtimes, and there were frequent references to “win–win” in church activities—win for the workers, and win for the company, although clearly the workers’ “win” was secondary to corporate managerial objectives. This tension management strategy characterized by trivialization and denial of workers’ grievances, and neutralizing management (mal)practice, is best described as selection.

Another tension management strategy is integration of labor and management perspectives, bridging and compromising the two through overlapping membership and personal connections. When workers expressed grievances about Suteng, a common topic of conversation, the TLC club often assumed the role of a mediator. The TLC club answered to both the human resources department of Suteng and the house church, but had much more personnel overlap with the latter. To congregation members, the TLC club was a channel for voicing their concerns and complaints to company management. For example, in one instance, a female worker who was going through a complicated pregnancy complained that her supervisor refused to grant her leave. Her problem was resolved when a TLC organizer used her personal connections to transfer the pregnant woman to a more flexible shift.

With one foot inside and one outside the official rank of Suteng, TLC club allowed the house church to assume an identity of a workers’ liaison entity. Consider the following excerpt from Xiaojuan, a core member of the house church and organizer of TLC:

I told them [aggrieved workers], “If we work together, no difficulties cannot be resolved, because there are a group of people in the factory that understand you, and can help and guide you” . . . Meanwhile, it is realized that high labor turnover is not to the advantage of the development of the company. When the workers leave, the productivity of a factory will drop. So, our work is also an answer to the call of the company as a whole, to provide some care to the workers.

Incorporating managerial objectives into the TLC club activities reveals internalized management logic. Xiaojuan directly linked her work to the managerial objective of labor retention. The “win–win” logic also reduced the tension between corporate and labor to a question of management style. In this articulation, there was no essential conflict between corporate management and labor. The tension between two parties would be resolved by the introduction of a more people-oriented management style—Labor turnover would decrease with “some care to the workers.”

Meanwhile, workers presented competing discourses, challenging the alliance between the house church and the corporation. I noted an example of this during one of the TLC meetings where workers gathered to share their experiences and feelings. During the conversation, someone brought up a controversial topic. When the general contractor of Suteng, a giant sports gear company in the United States, sent its brand ambassador for an official visit, Suteng top management decided to select a number of young women to “escort” the sports star during his trip. Unwilling to directly criticize a top executive decision, the organizer of the meeting was awkwardly trying to dismiss the topic as “not our business,” when a worker said, “whatever you say, I just think this [decision] is wrong, and the TLC club should say something about it. I don’t think Jesus will agree with the way they treat a sister.”

What the worker said here was significant as it suggested a distinct tension management strategy: Different from other strategies (integration or selection) that aimed at mitigating the tension between the labor and the management positions by combining or reducing competing side(s), the worker’s articulation further complicated the tension by introducing a third position—a religious discourse. This religious discourse (ethical standards upheld by Christianity) was used to challenge the advantageous management position that the TLC selects over a labor position. While TLC selected a management position, indicating strategic avoidance of labor rights and activism identities, the worker’s articulation contested the tension mitigation strategy and attempted to keep the identity open and complex. Resistive discourse did exist in the house church and took part in the discursive struggle in shaping the organizational identity.

Discussion

This research contributes to the field of organizational communication by offering an empirical study of organizational tensions and identity using Bakhtinean dialogism. At the outset, the study demonstrates the emerging process of organizational identity, marked by the identity management of the church leadership and the negotiations among church members. Discursive tensions were a routine part of organizational process in the house church. Specifically, analyses revealed three sets of tensions: between religiosity and secularity, between profit and service, and between management and labor. Organizational players carried out negotiations in their identity work: Integrating and transcending the opposing religios and secular discourses, they created an encapsulating identity that centered on “serving the workers.” Analogously, the separation strategy was used to handle the tension between profit and member service, which enabled two inconspicuous elements of organizational identity (member service and profit-making business) that became overt/covert in different domains. By handling the tension between management and labor with integration and selection strategies (prioritizing management positions), house church leaders attempted to avoid the identity of a labor rights/activist group. Worker members in the church contested this identity work, however, and further complicated the management/labor tension by introducing a religious position. In so doing, they kept the organizational identity open and complex. The pervasiveness of organizational tension, combined with the dynamic processes of (strategic) tension management, contributed to the house church’s diverse, fragmented, and emerging identity.

The link between organizational tension and identity does not indicate, however, that diverse, emerging identity is only relevant to organizations where antagonistic struggles abound. Instead, my analysis reveals that discursive tensions do not only occur at the level of individual actors, but at the level of broader social discourses that populate individual episodes of speech. The clash between religiosity and secular discourses, for example, does not just take place during a dialogue between a religious and a nonreligious person, but often presents itself as internal conflict of a single speaker. Similarly, management discourses were routinely observed in the workers’ speech, which not only compete with but also frequently dominate and suppress discourses of labor. These observations provide empirical support for the dialogist understanding of discursive tension, which attaches more importance to social structure embedded in the utterance, rather than individual instances of speech.

A dialogist approach to organizational identity, therefore, requires more than capturing tensions and contradictions at the level of individual subjectivity, and calls for focus on broader discursive struggles. These discursive struggles manifest through speech acts at individual and organizational levels, albeit reflective of broader power dynamics. Indeed, it is impossible to fully understand the relationship among the three most prevalent discourses in the house church context—business, religious, and labor—without taking into consideration the power (with varying level of dominance) that resides in them. The centripetal–centrifugal forces of discourses are manifest in the present study in the ways certain voices were given more weight and legitimacy, while others were suppressed and hidden. Most evidently, discourse of labor was often negated and trivialized, and organizational identity associated with workers constructed as temporary (as in the case of the recruitment event) or hidden (as in the case with Workers’ Connection consultancy). Meanwhile, the business discourse was largely privileged and taken for granted. No question was asked, for example, when church activities had to be scheduled around long work hours and frequent overtime.

These observations help answer the question about the house church’s role in worker resistance. The answer is twofold: On one hand, a central part of the house church identity is service to the workers’ population—as a space for socializing, source of comfort and understanding, and provider of entertainment and enrichment facilities. This identity emerged as organizational players managed tensions between religiosity and secularity, and between profit and member service. It is important to note that the service identity transcended the religious discourse and the practical need of the house church to pose as a secular organization in public. It is the origin of its potential to enable labor resistance. On the other hand, the deeply entrenched management discourse espoused by house church leaders was in irreconcilable contradiction to the discourse of labor resistance, and resulted in selective denial of workers’ position. The house church was not a labor rights/activist group.

Finally, this research offers a lens to understand and critique the bias toward tension management (read: reduction). While the four management strategies summarized by Seo et al. (2004; selection, separation, integration, and transcendence) all point toward some kind of conflict reduction and avoidance, this study suggests that for organization members in weaker positions in a tension situation, it can sometimes be more advantageous to maintain the contradictions unresolved as a way to resist top-down identity formation. A central characteristic of Bakhtinean dialogism is interest in dialogues and suspicion toward monologues—single-voiced discourse. Monologues are often compared with the concept of discursive closure (Deetz, 1992), which are authoritative discourses that functions to deny or select (against) alternative discourses. In this study, for example, managerial discourses were often selected over labor ones, in a centripetal move toward managerial monologue. Therefore, it makes sense that the marginalized workers voice often moved to resist or disrupt the forming of unified unchallenged monologues. My analysis suggests the need to further explore the typology of tension management strategies, especially those associated with resistance to identity work of powerful organizational actors. A worker introducing a religious position to the management-labor opposition is an example of tension management by further complicating contradictions.

Limitations

The main limitation of this study, as is the case with studies using dialogist discourse analysis, is its descriptive nature and the consequent “inability to predict and causally explain communicative phenomena” (Baxter, 2011, p. 7). However, this does not imply that a study of the house church is not generalizable to other organizations. Membership complexity, voluntary participation, and hiddenness can be found in a wide array of organizations where discursive struggles and identity negotiations take place, but in less explicit forms and more difficult to capture. These range from support groups (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous and anorexia self-help groups) to hate groups (e.g., American Border Patrol and Parents Action League), and from edge service providers (e.g., birth centers for nonresident aliens) to radical social movement organizations and militias (a notable recent example is the Zapatista Movement). The house church serves as a metaphorical magnifying glass to observe tensions and complexity of identities in organizations—Observations made in the house church may not be indicative of the frequency or intensity of discursive tension in other types of organizations, but they can serve as sensitizing tools to examine tensions and struggles presented in less manifest forms.

Moreover, adding a layer of cultural interpretations could have potentially yielded a richer analysis of discursive tensions and tension management practices. The house church is situated at the intersection of many facets of historical and contemporary Chinese culture (history of Christianity in China, atheist propaganda during the Cultural Revolution, history of workers’ resistance, growing social divide and sweatshop culture, etc.), many of which have profound impact on the discourses around the house church and its identity. Yet, limited by the scope of this research, I was not able to add a specifically cultural lens to my analysis, which should be addressed in future research.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I thank my colleague Gail Fairhurst for her critical reading and helpful comments on an early draft of this article. I also thank the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Zhuo Ban (PhD, Purdue University) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at University of Cincinnati. Her research takes a global, critical perspective to contemporary issues in organizational communication and public relations, such as globalized supply chains, offshore labor politics, and corporate social responsibility discourses.

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