North China Rural Elders A Christian Life Case Studies

Since the Reform and Opening-up,Chinese people’s understanding towards Christianity has changed fundamentally along with the development of rural economy, and the implementation of China’s religious policy and free socio-cultural environment. Christianity in Chinese rural areas has gained a rapid spread and development in villages.Church organizations and churches also began to appear in the village. The Blue Book of Religious2010released a religious survey data showing that currently the total Chinese Christian population takes up about1.8%to the total population in the whole country, reaching to about23.05million. The populous rural Christians now have become a group which gains lots of social attentions.However,the life experiences of the central figure-the elders of the church are failed to be paid attention to. Exploring their life course thoroughly, pepole can have a deeper understanding of the rural Christians and the development of China’s rural Christianity.In this paper, through the case of priesthood Elder Lee, the author hopes to raise people’s attention to rural Christians, and tries to give some inspiration how to carry out the grass-roots religious work and merge different religions, especially inspired the construction of a harmonious society.As the research object-Elder Lee,through fieldwork and oral history with literature search, the paper reviews his life course continuously and dynamically, not only to show his school experience,occupational mobility, removal, construction of the church, a church elder, president and other life change, but also to discuss the social change which their daily life fit for. From the national, social, personal perspective to study the life course of Elder Lee.The research shows that Elder Lee’s life course is influenced greatly by the institutional arrangements and the social changes; individual initiative selection process led to significant changes in their lives; individual life course is also affected by others, not only in the same generation,but also in intergeneration.