A Study On Private Entrepreneurs’ Religious Conversion Behavior

Religion is an important research object of Sociology as a social fact. Compared with the value judgment of religious theological significance,Sociology pay more attention to that "who are religious? Why do they convert to religion?What is the social impact of religious conversion?" Since the reform and opening up, the "religion hot" has swept all over the country. More and more people are choosing to believe in religion, of these, the private entrepreneurs specially attract our attention. The theory that religion is the opium of the people think that religion is the oppressed people’s "sigh" and "protest" of the real suffering and is vulnerable groups’and marginalized people’s life-saving straw to escape the real suffering. If so, why did the private entrepreneurs who have a high social and economic status believe in th religion? How did their conversion behavior come about? What’s the impact of their conversion? Based on this consideration, this research attempts to take 20 "boss religious"in Jiang su province as the research objec. On the basis of field research, the author try to study on the private entrepreneurs’conversion behavior. So we can have a more objective and rational understanding to the group of religious faith.Based on the empirical investigation, the study shows that(1) The private entrepreneurs’conversion behavior is the result of interaction of multiple factors, including social environment factors, religious organization factors and individual crisis situation factors. The social environment factors provides the space and deep-seated social root for their conversion behavior. The religious organizations and religious products and services are pulling factors.The individual crisis situation is the trigger point and catalyst of the behavior.(2) The private entrepreneurs’conversion behavior is a dynamic process of sustained, including three stages:acquisition and choice of religious information, the continual interaction between the religious and the religious organizations and the final commitment. The private entrepreneurs’conversion behavior is not passive, but rather an active rationality, performance for the rational choice of consumption and religious products in the religious market, in the conversion process experienced from instrumental rationality to value rationality. The private entrepreneurs choose and consume the religious products on the religious market reasoningly. In the conversion process, the rationality experienced from instrumental rationality to value rationality. (3)The influence of private entrepreneurs’s conversion is many-sided. On one side, religion influence the private entrepreneurs’s daily life and economic life; On the other hand, the fact that the private entrepreneurs join in the religious has important influence on the spread and development of religion; In addition, the private entrepreneurs’s conversion has impacts on society including promote the diversity of social culture and enhance the social organizational resources.We should have a rational view of the influence of private entrepreneurs’s conversion, their conversion behavior reflects actually that there are some deficiencies in the management and development of the current secular society. We should speed up the construction of the socialist core value system as the leading spiritual value. At the same timen,we should strengthen the construction of social organizations to meet the private entrepreneurs’s needs of social participation and social support.