Local Practice Of Institutionalized Religions

With the arrival of the social transformation and the continuous decline of social cohesion in the rural areas, the country's dominant ideology, which used to provide deciphering and helping, for farmers in China, is gradually fading out from their spiritual world as well as their daily lives. The spiritual fountain is drying up, both the mainstream culture and traditional culture is losing power, at this moment, farmers in China are in desperate need of a spiritual home where their sense of identity can be satisfied.Christianity then appeared as a timely rain that they have long been expecting, but the impact of an external culture also brought certain contradiction and discomfort for the local farmers in their daily lives. Uncertainties and the pain from the reform started to worry the farmers and upset the whole society, the chaos caused by them are even threatening people's normal and stable living order.Facing the challenge of localization, Christianity rethought its relationship with local cultures through self reflection and correction. Now it has realized that to fulfill its mission of spreading the doctrine, it has to consciously throw itself to the integration with the local culture. That would not only require putting the need of localization as a basic doctrine but also permeating its own doctrines among various local cultures which can in turn help itself to achieve self-updating.The purpose of this paper is to analysis Christianity in GTZ village. By studying the formation and development of Christianity in this village, this paper also attempts to find out a survival strategy of a religion that combines local culture with doctrines of its own, and this strategy is exactly what the farmers'need during a time of the social vicissitude.When studying the social transformation period in China, we will find a distinctive character in Chinese society:the social transformation in China happened under the background of a Party continuity which gives no specific regulation of how to do things, so people are stepping stones when crossing the river. In this condition, paying attention to the farmers'daily practice when they are making tentative efforts gives more significance of this study.This paper aims just at making a systematic research of the Christianity in GTZ village against this background so as to better understand Chinese people's daily practice during social transformation period, at the same time, providing a vivid sample of the local practice of Christianity in China as well as revealing a small section of China's unique modernization path.