Study On The Christian Rural Church From The Perspective Of Ethics

Rural churches, a result with the development of Christianity in Chinese countryside, have dense local background. It not only contains the profound details of Chinese traditional culture, but also influenced by western Christianity culture. So, it is a special phenomenon which emerges through long-time impacting and communicating between Chinese culture and western culture.The development of rural churches is unbalanced in our country and each local church has its own characteristics. But in fact, we can find some common features and universal problems among them during the study: they have the similar spiritual characteristics, play the similar social ethical functions and face similar problems. The spiritual characteristics of rural churches is both transcendent and secular whether we study it from Christians'outlook on world, value and life, or their three main virtue——Doctrine of Faith,Hope,Love, or their system of value judgment between good and evil. On the one hand, Christians believe in that the God is the highest and supreme, so the purpose of all of their behaviors is to please and glorify the God. On the other hand, their behaviors are full of utility color under the guidance of these ethical ideas.The social ethical functions and value of rural church reflected by its'dual ethical spirit are very special. In summary, the rural church has five functions: moral cultivation, psychological adjustment, social integration, social control and cultural communication. At the same time, like other religions, the rural churches not only persuade people to act good and provide spiritual dependence for the Christians, but also possess their own passive value inevitably. It deeply plants root in the theological value system and serves for it, and it is based on idealism. So its'view, words and deeds are filled with thick mysticism.However, to play these social ethical functions is limited by rural church's problems such as the popularization of faith, scarcity of clergymen, religious intolerance, funds shortage, and absence of social service functions, etc. According to these problems, we must explore the developmental pattern and means basing on the reality of rural churches, so that we can fully develop the positive functions of them, and turn them into harmonious, stable organizations which can promote the construction of new socialist countryside and harmonious society.