Adaptation In The Local Context:A Study On The Indigenization Practice Of The Jingpo Christianity

At the moment,the idea that Christianity is growing rapidly in China,especially in the ethnic minority areas along the border,seems to have become the consensus of the political and academic circles and attracted unprecedented attention.Discussions about the indigenization,Sinicization,localization and nationalization of Christianity put in the context of each historical period of its spread and development in China have produced a lot of research achievements.The researches have shown a trend that transits from macro perspective to micro case analysis and from religious history and religion studies to social and cultural anthropology.Yunnan Province,given its large ethnic minority population and religion believers,in particular high proportion of Christians among the ethnic minority groups in border areas,has become a rich information source to study the indigenization(Sinicization,localization and nationalization)of Christianity.From the existing research achievements,most previous academic researches placed more attention on the collisions and conflicts at the level of faith,while the subjectivity of the faith followers in the process of embracing Christianity at the beginning and the later indigenization,as well as the changing trend from“Christianity in the ethnic minority” to “Christianity of the ethnic minority” was ignored.Taking the Jingpo people in Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture as the research object and selecting Dongbengwayang,a village on the China-Myanmar border as the field point,this study discusses,by using the research methods of literature analysis,participant observation,interviews and comparative analysis and on the basis of comparatively adequate and thorough fieldwork,the causes,process and influences of the spread and development of Jingpo Christianity,so as to clarify the history and realistic problems of the indigenization of Jingpo Christianity.Therefore,it not only supplements the research of the indigenization practice of minority Christianity at the micro level,but also tries to promote the discussion of Christian Sinicization at both the theoretical and practical level by using the case of Jingpo Christianity.Since its introduction into the Jingpo people in 1907,Christianity has experienced the three periods of “wall-breaking”,“being confined” and “being independent”.By systematically combing and analyzing,it’s found that Christianity was able to spread into the Jingpo people not only for general reasons of “medical work” and “literary work” under the background of the colonization of western powers,but also ethnic reasons of the experience of Christianity through the buffer zone of Kachin in Myanmar,the choice of Jingpo chiefs to initiatively accept Christianity to seek ethnic development,and the cross-border spread of religion brought by cross-border movement of people.Moreover,under the comprehensive action of many thrust and pull forces,such as ethnicity,religion,politics,economy and society,after more than a century’s spread and development,Christianity has become embedded in the production and living of the Jingpo People and has been exerting a non-negligible influence that Christianity has become an integral part of Jingpo research.The indigenization of religious consciousness,religious behavior and religious organization are the concrete embodiment of the indigenization of Jingpo Christianity.After the foreign missionaries “concept docking” and “concept replacement”,part of the believers made situational choice between “animism” and “the supreme heavenly father”,and has maintained very strong traditional religious ideas,making the idea that “Christianity and the primitive religion cannot coexist in the same situation” a paradox.At the level of religious belief,what drives the transition from “Christianity among the Jingpo people” to “Jingpo Christianity” is to meet the multi-level needs of the believers who seek the dual utility in “the Biggest Nat Jesus” which relies and resist “nats”(supernatural beings like spirits in Jingpo culture)at the same time.The situational choice of the Jingpo People in the rituals of “nats-go-by”(rites of spirits exorcism),marriages,funerals and prayers in the production and living etc.contains a kind of “pendulum wisdom” of the Jingpo believers in the face of multiple pressures and a variety of cultures,which further promotes the change and reconstruction of the Jingpo ethnic culture and the Christian culture.The generalization of the functions of the “Eucharist teacher” in the ecclesiastical hierarchy system,the lack and change of the role of female priests in the sacred domain,the evolution of the three generations of the Jingpo pastoral staff who have changed from the western Christianity’s agents to “Three Self” Patriotic Movement Committee’s pastoral staff,and the reconstructed“New Rice-Thanksgiving Day” are all examples of the fields to show as a whole,from the perspective of metaphors and continuation of traditions,the indigenization practice of the Jingpo Christian organizations and its characteristics in the comparative analysis.In general,the indigenization practice of the Jingpo Christianity and its consequent cultural reconstruction are actually the practice of Christianity’s“adaptation in the local context” of the Jingpo People,not only “adapt” itself into the big context of Chinese society and its people and culture,but also “adapt” itself into the small context of the small village dominated by the Jingpo people on the China-Myanmar border and its people,region,society and culture.Therefore,the indigenization of Jingpo Christianity embodies common characteristics of the indigenization of Christianity among ethnic minority groups in Yunnan and reflects the Sinicization of Christianity from a regional and ethnic perspective.As a result,“Western Christianity in China” has gradually become “Christianity of China’s border ethnic minorities”,which is exactly the meaning of the Sinicization of Christianity.