Lunan Rural Christian Faith Investigation And Study

This thesis takes Baizhuang Village in south Shandong as a case which investigates on current religion status in rural areas in south Shandong on the angle of folklore. In the field work, considering "I" (the special identity as one of the local people) and local people's knowledge state, I give up questionnaire method, but mainly take participation observation and going down to interview instead. This thesis is aiming at offering a case of current development of Christianity to reveal localization of Protestantism and show how Protestantism co-exist, conflict and communicate with folk life in rural areas. What's more, it also reveals the source and trend of rural Protestantism development so as to open a window to learn rural spiritual and cultural life.Introduction discusses the reason and meaning of choosing this title. It searches and sorts out the related thesis and monographs that consider Protestantism as a social cultural phenomenon and defines this thesis within folk-religion to research.The first chapter accounts for the historical and social environment of investigation destination and points out that as an ordinary village for connecting cultures of the south and north, many religions mostly are ingrained in concrete folk life and are not influenced by orthodox religions.On base of sorting out the history of Protestantism religion in Baizhuang village, the second chapter mainly analyses current Protestantism religion in Baizhuang village. The investigation data shows the characters: large number of believers, old people and women, and high gathering frequency. Moreover, it analyses the trends of localization of Protestantism religion, random development of rituals, melting sermons with daily life and more and more amusing way of delivering sermons.The third chapter discusses the relations between Protestantism and folk life. First, it analyses the conflict between Protestantism and folk life and especially points out that Protestantism religion of loving good but ritual, loving recognizing God but fire ritual conflicts with Chinese traditional rituals of worshipping to the heaven, performing the kowtow in festival and funeral. Then it analyses integration between...