"Step Into" Church And "Out Of The Church

This article takes the religious rites as the starting point to conduct research on identity adaptation and social integration of Chinese Christians. In the present study, I am attempt to answer the question, how do Chinese Christians step into church for a religion of heterogeneous culture? What is their identity construction process like? How do they integrate into Chinese society again after the formation of the Christian identity? The whole paper is divided into three parts, introduction, main body and conclusion.The first section is the introduction, the first chapter introduces the origin of research questions and research significance; the second chapter is the literature review, which respectively conducts literature review on the relevant literatures in organizational sociology and relevant research literatures about integration of Chinese Christians; the third chapter is the research design, which mainly explains the theory support used by this research, theoretical assumption made and research method adopted.The second section is the main body, the fourth chapter mainly introduces Christian church in District B, including major religious rites and activities and the basic situation of the constitution of church believers.The fifth chapter walk into church is to make microscopic analysis of construction process of Christian identity by borrowing interaction ritual chain theory. The construction of Christian religious identity is the process of ritual stimulation bringing short-term emotion to various mechanisms to form long-term emotion. Interaction ritual (IR) plays a decisive role in this process. According to interaction ritual chain theory, this chapter focuses on analyzing the detailed pictures of transformation of religious emotion of believers in religious interaction ritual. The beginning of ritual is accompanied by emotional factors, faith begins to grow and form common excitement, that is, collective excitement called by Durkheim. This chapter takes two rites, Sunday worship and Holy Communion, as example, and analyzes the process and mechanism of transient excitement of participants brought by the Christian ritual from the microscopic perspective. After the transient excitement, transient emotion transforms into long-term emotion of committing to church, which is similar to the so-called moral solidarity proposed by Durkheim, through a series of continuous and long-term interaction rituals; this chapter attempts to analyze three main mechanisms (division of labor, fellowship, conversation), which lead to the unity. The mechanism of division of labor can increase emotional energy (EE) of believers, such as a sense of identity, a sense of responsibility and a sense of accomplishment; the fellowship can provide a platform for believers to establish acquaintance relationship, which makes the group steady, and believers obtain the strength to maintain faith in the group highly unified; the conversation is the internalized mechanism of faith symbols. The faith and enthusiasm of believers are highly motivated when telling or listening, and the conversation will make believers obtain the high strength from others to maintain faith.The sixth chapter walk out of church is about the issue of integrating into the society after forming the Christian identity. As for the conflict between Christian doctrine and traditional Chinese customs, this chapter still takes the rites as the starting point to inspect how Christians balance the identity of Christian and the identity of Chinese and how they persist in their own faith based on trying to maintain the human relations when facing with the traditional customs or rituals contrary to their own faith. The author observes that the ethics-centered thinking model of Chinese people makes two beliefs in specific religious practice, so that Christians can make certain concessions at the ritual aspect on the basis of not going against the basic doctrine. When non-Christians face with the faith of families and friends, they can understand and accept mostly. The relationalism mental pattern and middle containment of Chinese people provide the space for development of Christians. In behavioral pattern, the interaction practice between Christians and traditional faith shows a continuously transformed and integrated dynamic fit process, which fully embodies the characteristics of personality of moderation and tolerance of Chinese people and family-oriented and human-oriented social characteristics. This chapter summarizes and analyzes the approach for two categories of Christians gaming and integrating with the folk customs-new explanation of folk-custom compatibility and ritual significance. This integration can also be regarded as an important part in the localization of Christians.