Traditional Departure From The Interaction With Reality: Christianity In The Modern Situation In Hunan Research

The academic circles have inadequately studied the survival situation of Christian church in modern china in a way of expounding the role of foreign Missionaries as well as that of Chinese intellectuals. The author of this thesis undertakes such a study by taking Hunan province as the case. This thesis con-sists of four parts: the introduction, chapter one, chapter two and the conclu-sion.In the introduction, the author illustrated the current situation of modern Christianity research carried out by academic circles, the gist and overall ar-rangement of this thesis as well as other issues.In chapter one, the author inquires into the phenomena that both the for-eign and Chinese parties deviated from their traditions after foreign church and Missionary were introduced into China. The desire for survival is the essential course of such phenomena. However the consequence of deviation could not satisfy the initial desire. Then, there were religion cases and a kind of conser-vation and antiforeign atmosphere in the whole Hunan province.In chapter two, the author explicates that both the foreign and Chinese parties for the purpose of survival had made some timely accomodation to es-tablish a state of mutual motivation which includes the communication between Missionaries and local people, the establishment of Confucianism, and the pro-posal of some new political policies in 1898. Mutual motivation, as a better adaptative strategy for both parties, is helpful not only to the development of Chinese society,but also to provide a peaceful survival circumstance for foreign churches and Missionaries. In the fourth part of this chapter, the auther under-lines that in Min Guo period (1912 - 1949), foreign churches and Missionaries had a tendency to new variation and development which indicated that theirsurvival condition is peripheral in Chinese society, whereas this peripheral con-dition is the very beginning and feafure of Christianity when it first melted in China.In the conclusion, the auther delineates again the change of the survival situation of Christianity in Hunan province, and puts forward his analysis and reflection about the following four issues: the understanding of Wei Yuan, thebranches and boundaries of Modern HuXian Culture, the inheritance of tradi-tional culture and creation of new one, and the cognition of present Christian church.