The Dialogue Between God And Ancestor:Marriage, Ritual And Familism In A Chinese Christian Family

The spread of Christianity in China since Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasty opened an important stage in the history of China’s encounter with West. As a result, Christianity in China has been a long-ranging topic of academia home and abroad. However, Christianity in Chinese local context remains a relatively unexplored charted research terrain. Thus, the aim of the paper is set to investigate the encounter of Christianity and Confucianism in localized marriage practices from both historical and modem perspective.In order to understand the historic background of the research, a letter written by Jesuit Pastor B on September9th,1769about wedding ritual is discreetly analyzed to show East-West encounter in the past. And comparison between Pastor B’s perception of hunli and indigenous meanings embedded in Chinese classics such as Book of Rites and Yi Li is explored to reveal cultural disparity behind their different thinking and further to lay a foundation for the analysis of Christian modern marriage texts.The research is an empirical study of my Christian family in Dongxiang County, Jiangxi Province. By employing ethnography and oral history as research methodology, the author adopts the methods of participant observation and interview to collect data concerning marriage practices among Dongxiang Christians. Through analyzing Chinese Christians’wedding processes and ritual over three generations, the thesis tries to answer a basic research question: How does Christianity interact with Confucianism to influence marriage practices of local believers and the making of a new family?The thesis concludes that both Confucianism and Christianity value marriage as important ritual since the former emphasizes the continuity of family line while the latter stresses the inheritance and expansion of the belief through marriage. The two philosophies entangle with each other in contributing to the dynamism of Chinese Christian familism. Thus they entail processes of ritual to legitimate the making of a marriage in their own way. Besides, they have distinct philosophy of choosing a spouse which should be observed by a Chinese Christian.