The Social Foundation And Consequences Of The Spreading Of Christianity

In the diversified religious market in China, Christianity, as a foreign religion, has already become the most competitive and influential religious sect in China. The rapid rising of Christianity is closely related to the social environment in today’s China who is currently experiencing a social transformation. With the converting path of Christianity as the clue, the paper analyzes how seven converting steps are carried out in the social background of China’s social transformation, namely they are environment, crisis, asking, encounter, interaction, devotion and result. As indicated by the study, the first four links constitute people’s desire for a belief in God:social environment change, failure of traditional belief and culture, and the change of community caused by social transformation provide the opportunity for Christianity to enter China’s religious market; crisis, risk, pressure and setback triggered by social transformation stimulate people stuck in predicament covert to religion to seek material help and spiritual consolation; Some common factors between Christian culture and the Chinese culture, added cultural force for the spread of Christianity; social network based on differential pattern has greatly increased the probability of missionary work among acquaintances, which has added closeness and acquaintance during the encounter process between Christianity and the people. The rest of three links are internalization of the Christian faith, which are the consquences of the continue spreading of the Christianite. On one hand, by participating in collective activities such as religious rites, the sense of belonging brought about by the deconstruction of traditional community has been regained in religious groups. On the other hand, the changes of the values and behaviors of Believers are result from belief in God. Not only has Christianity grasped the spreading opportunity brought about by the social transformation, it is also actively adopting the localization strategy to make itself more flexible so as to reduce the sense of distance between Christianity culture and Chinese secular thoughts and custom culture. In addition, the Christian belief system itself has unique advantages, e.g. the doctrine is relatively easy to understand, and its canon and torah are not strict and tedious either. In a word, while Christian belief prevails by taking advantage of the realistic environment of social transformation, it is also trying to be flexible by constantly adapting itself to the ever-changing circumstances, thereby has enlarged and deepened the breadth and depth of its spreading and diffusion.