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Abstract
How is community amid heterogeneity possible? Based on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork at a Christian church in Taiwan that houses and feeds homeless and low-income individuals, this dissertation explores this question by examining it as the moral project of forging a social order in a heterogeneous, quasi-religious community that blends Christians with non-Christians, and the marginalized with the mainstream. This moral project often involves attempts to resolve tensions and dilemmas, both subjectively and inter-subjectively. Christians in Taiwan are a minority, and although it has been indigenized, Christianity is widely considered to be a Western religion. Tensions thus result from contradictions between Christianity and traditional Chinese culture, and the imperatives for clarity regarding religious identity, motives and beliefs versus the necessity of inclusion. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of these fundamental tensions, and how they are resolved (or not resolved). For the core group of Christians, clarity is often paramount; yet for many of the homeless, it is the fuzziness of these elements that allows for both greater inclusion and identification with Christian culture. This is turn expands the number of individuals that feel a greater sense of obligation to uphold the moral order of the church. Fuzziness may thus, in some instances, resolve tensions and contradictions arising from cultural heterogeneity, and thereby support the moral order of a community.
