A Study On Developing Features And Influential Factors Of Individual Religious Psychology Of Chinese Christian Children

The earliest development of Christianity in China started from the Tang Dynasty, it has a history of over1,300years in China. Christian believer groups in our country can not be neglected. However, whether foreign or domestic, the development of religious psychology has just begun, especially because of children’s defects in understanding and presentation skills, the researches on children’s religious psychology are really rare. So I designed the study of religious psychology experiments on Chinese Christian children and semi-structured interviews to explore the children’s religious developing features. So It’s very meaningful to understand the development of Christianity in our country, and the developing features of Chinese Christian Children.The study is based on Lv(2003), Shen (2007) and other previous religious experts’exposition of the structures, and based on the psychological measurements on the Christian, with the help of the clergy in church and the researchers of religious psychology, and the Christian Children’s parents. My experiment has religious cognition (5tasks), religious experience (6tasks), religious behavior (5tasks) and the pursuit of religious values, these four aspects. In my experiment, I used experimental stimuli and semi-structured interview to explore the Christian children’s religious mentality. From the Christian church in Luoyang and Sanmenxia, I adopted60Christian children in convenience sampling method. The experiment results shows that:(1) in religious awareness, children generally score in the awareness of creation of God higher than other tasks, and they have the low score in heaven and hell cognition; except the creation of God part, there are significant differences between the5year-old group and7year-old group; female children in religious cognitive development is better than male children.(2) In religious experience, children’s emotional experience on the crucifixion of Jesus and Scared Heart is more intense, and the emotional experience of the crucifixion of Jesus is more intense than the Jesus Sacred Heart, but the emotional experience of Bible is the most weakest; in the part of age, except the task of Bible, there are significant differences between3year-old group and5year-old group’s emotional experience development; in the part of gender, male children’s emotional experience is more intense on crucifixion of Jesus than other tasks, while on praying emotional experience is weak, female children’s emotional experience on the crucifixion of Jesus and the Sacred Heart of Jesus is more intense, and the emotional experience of the crucifixion of Jesus is more intense than on the Sacred Heart of Jesus task, male children on the prayer, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, crucifixion of Jesus tasks, their emotional experience is also significantly lower than female children’s emotional experience.(3) in religious behavior, Christian children going to church is more frequently than other behaviors, prayer frequency is high, and the frequency of religious activities is lowest; there are significant differences between5year-old group and7year-old group’s frequency of religious behaviors. Children in all age groups doesn’t differ in going to church; religious behavior frequency between male and female are significantly different, female children is higher than male children.(4) On the pursuit of religious values. In each age group, the majority of children tends to meet the needs of self-satisfaction, a few children pursue the religious activity, and ihe high level of spiritual pursuit, only few children in high age group can reach it.(5) The influential factors of Christian Children’s religious development are mainly family factors, Sunday school and church, companion and the social environmental factors.