Sing hallelujah to the Lord: secular Christianities on Hong Kong's Civic Square
I
was in Chicago on June 12, 2019 when my friend, a Christian theologian from
Hong Kong, sent me a Facebook Live video of Civic Square, the site outside
the government offices that got its name from a 2012 protest against a bill
to revise Hong Kong’s education curriculum to feature nationalistic Chinese
themes. Civic Square was also where the 2014 Umbrella Movement began. The
crowd that gathered there in June of last year was singing the evangelical
chorus "Sing Hallelujah to the Lord." The word on the street, my
friend said, was that Christians were trying to calm the police attired in
riot gear. A day of protests was expected against the second reading of a
bill to amend the extradition law to allow for any requesting foreign jurisdiction,
including the Chinese mainland, to request the return of "fugitive
offenders" to face legal repercussions for their crimes. The fear was
that it would be used to repress critics of Beijing. |