Study On The Weak Organization Of Young Family Church

Nowadays, churches in China are emerging as the coexistence of the Three-Self churches and house churches. In Shanghai, the international metropolis, it's not difficult to find traces of house churches, also named as underground churches, as long as you look around carefully. Focusing on the house churches which mainly consist of youth Christians which have a good education background, this thesis is trying to explore such an issue:why do these young Christian intellectuals prefer house churches? What is the underlying charm of these churches?Currently, the development of religions is undergoing a trend of deinstitutionalization in individual religious practices. Coincidently, the Chinese have a habitus of veiwing religious belief as their personal things, deeply influenced by the traditional Chinese culture. During the spread Christianity in China, these two tendencies reach a common ground:religious belief is a personal issue. One can practice in his own way while not necessarily sticking to the existing regulations.Following the rationale mentioned above, this thesis has studied the youth house churches which emerge as quasi-organizations from three aspects:(1) the social environment where they lie in and how did they come into being; (2) profile of these quasi-organizations, including membership, different roles of members, major activities and the regulations; (3) the process of the individual religious practices and the group activities.Through these analysis, we could reach the following conclusions:homogeneity in membership, flexibility of organizational activities, together with the concerns to individual members and the close relationship among members, which highly feature these Christian quasi-organizations, just cater to two tendencies emerging in China now, namely, the deinstitutionalization in individual religious life and the Chinese habitus which perceiving religious belief as a personal thing. This accordance is the very reason why these house churches could attract young intellectual Christians who have a strong sense of autonomy. This attraction, consequently, contributes a lot to the formation and development of the house church.