The Research Of Transimission Of Christian In Rual China And The Integration Between Christian And Rural Society

Christian has been introduced to China since Zhenguan the Tang Dynasty. But due to all kinds of reasons, it had little intersection with Chinese culture before the 19th century. After the Opium War of the 19th century, China was forced to open doors to the Western powers. Accompanying this is the influx of the Christian missionaries. However, it hadn't developed quite well. The reform and opening up policy of China in 1970s provided a good opportunity for the development of Christian. The establishment of the policy toward the freedom of religious belief and the development of commodity economy promoted the renaissance of all kinds of religions. Christian was one of them and started to transmit widely in China. Research on this has also been conducted since then. Because of the economic and cultural difference between different regions in China, the Christian has presented in different levels of the Christian development, especially in the urban and rural areas.China is a large agricultural country. The Christian transmission, localization and integration in rural areas has attracted many scholars' attention. Thus there are much research and investigation on this. But due to the religious sensitivity in China, many arguments on the research of Christian have occurred. Besides, the closure of rural church makes it very difficult to conduct field investigation. All of these lead to the lack of valuable research results of Christian. But with the rapid development of Christian in China, related research has become one the hottest topics in the field of sociology and anthropology. Although there is a fast-growing literature on the Christian development in China, most of them focus on two directions. One is completely ethnography without any comments;the other emphasizes on the negative effect of Christian on the rural development. Both of them lack an overall and subject perspective. In addition, most of the studies lack wide and deeply field research. Few studies have revealed the Christian intersection and incorporation with Chinese society. This study will take Jiajingdian Township as an example, analyze both the positive and negative effect of Christian transmission on the local development and try to explore a social mechanism according to the local religious mechanism so as to make the Christian better promote the local development.With Jiangjiadian Town, Yu'an County, Lu'an city, Anhui Province as the investigation site, the local Christians as the research targets, this study adopts field research approach (participatory observation) to collect necessary research materials and information. Other investigation methods such as unstructured interviews, questionnaire investigation and literature survey will also be used. Christians from more than ten local churches and non-Christians have been interviewed. Based on the interview and questionnaire investigation, the author have profiled the Christian developing situation in Jiangjiadian and concluded 7 features:the large amount of Christians, the feature of local Christians, the rigorous structure of local churches, the closure of local churches, the local religious ritual and the relationship between the church and local government. Based on this, the author uses social integration as an analytical tool to clarify the Christian function. The theory of social integration was first offered by Durkheim, then the American sociologist, Parsons developed it and integrated it into his own theory structural functionalism. Parsons thinks that all the social systems have four basic needs, which is adaptation, goal attainment, integration, and pattern maintenance. The four sub-systems to manage the four needs are economic system, political system, social community system and cultural pattern trusteeship system. As for the religious function of social integration, the early sociologists hold different opinions. Durkheim attaches importance on the positive effect of religion. He hopes to use religion to solve some social problems and that all the people can take the pursuit of religious value as their ultimate goal. But other sociologists emphasize on the negative effect of religion. They take religion as the attack on freedom. Currently, the sociologists have come an agreement. They think that region has both positive and negative effects which mutual correspond. The author uses the above four sub-systems (economic system, political system, social community system and cultural pattern trusteeship system) as the analytical framework to explain the positive and negative function of Christian in Jiangjiadian. Based on this analysis, the author tries to explore a way in which the Christian can develop smoothly and benefit the local people as well.