The Research On The Non-registered Churches And The Rural Social Order

In the whole sense, the Christianity, which took root in the land of China and heritaged till today, not only has collision and conflict with local culture as symbol and representative of western culture, but also rebuild the social order by its own presence.That is to say, the Christianity has a kind of relationship which is two-way interaction but not one-way construction with the society in which it presenses. At the same time, around the"registration"problem of the church, the Chinese Christianity community devides into two camps, called"registered church"and"non-registered church"with the obvious body boundary, and conflictes each other continually by the power and political factors'intervention. Moreover, for non-registered churches, the contradiction with the registered churches even becomes the major one in many cases.However, the study found that, in the existing research, there are two problems: First, in the research results on rural social order, even the concept"differential mode of association", proposed by Mr. Fei Xiaotong, was paid close attention and plused amendments repeatedly, however, religious factors were not be taken into account as an important dimension; Second, although most studies of non-registered right to see the tension and conflict between non-registered church and the social environment, they ignored the vast majority of non-registered churches had not experienced strongly resistance in the vast rural society.Basing on the above understanding, the author reinterpretates the"differential mode of association", classifying it ideal-typely to three styles, which are"traditional","instrumental"and"religious"categories. The author believes that the existing rural social strcture shows a change from"single"to"multi-dimensional", and all the non-registered churches'social actions happen in this multiple network. In the different specific situations, the importance of different types is different. At the same time, influenced by the thought of"the daily resistance in the form of farmers"of Scott, the author focuses on the vast majority of the rural non-registered church which are not playing fierce conflict with the government. Taking"the relationship with the registered church"as the standard, the author generally classified the non-registered churches into three types:"close","estranged"and"opposite", and selected the corresponding case to study.This paper includes seven chapters. Among them, the first chapter introduced the research background and From third to the sixth chapter is the main part of the paper.The second chapter provided a theoretical framework for the full text,and the following chapter introduced brief conditions of field work place.The fourth to the sixth chapter gave a thick description to the three categories of non-registered churches, gradually revealed the complex relationship among non-registered churches, registered churches and local religious-management department in the rural society. The last chapter includes the paper's conclusions and further discussion.The study found that: (a) following the traditional and the instrumental"differential mode of association", the religious one highlights its important position. It intertwines with the former ones to be a multi-dimensional network of"differential mode of association", which role together in the non-registered churches'specific social interaction process. (b)the reasons causing conflict between registered churches and non-registered churches are complex, but the most fundamental one is that between the two parties brought the registration of political identity and social identity in the profound differences. This makes the opposition will not melt or remove, so long as the binary classification rules such as"registration",or the similar ones continue to be exist. (c) Behind this binary classification is the"differential mode of association"formed under the unification policy of religious management,which treats different religions differently,or takes different management policy to the different groups in the same religion. This disparity in treatment becomes the important reasons that the faith groups at the edge situation get dissatisfied. So they would resist the current religious policy take it as the only way to prove the purity, legitimacy and legality of their own faith, so that to acquire important capital and support to take a root and development in society.