The sacred in urban political protests in Hong Kong

Abstract

Political protests in Hong Kong have grown in number since 1997, when the territory returned to Chinese sovereignty. Such protests are generally viewed as secular, but many borrow the symbolism of religious rituals. They are not religious, but illustrate problems with the definition and concept of religion, which is essentially a folk concept. Protesters express strongly held values related to community values, to justice, and to the future of Hong Kong, so their symbols borrow from and overlap with religion. This article seeks to build on the critiques of the very concept of religion to better understand the protest marches and the Occupy Central activities in Hong Kong. Rather than seeing religion as a force of its own, it shows that symbols and rituals used and manipulated by protesters are part of general human behavior and not usefully segregated as ‘religious.’