Where The Heart Feels At Ease,Where My Home Gonna To Be

In this paper,I select a house church in Shanghai(G church)and conduct a case study with a field survey of anthropology.By showing the thoughts and behaviors of immigrant individuals in the house church,the purpose is to reveal the house church in the city as a cultural tool for helping immigrants adapt to urban life.From the perspective of cultural anthropology,relying on the theoretical framework of instrumental theory,I mainly use a large number of materials,such as participation observation,in-depth interviews,and literature review.Based on this,my topic is deeply described and theoretically analyzed.My efforts focus on how individual believers enter the house church,their daily life practices,group communication mechanisms,and the transformation of believers in the church and integration into the city.After all the study,I found that the operation of the G church is representative of the urban house church.It is small in size,loosely organized,and people within are not fixed.The meeting points are dotted in the city.The church staff is selected among experienced believers and brings believers into the common emotions and discourses of the church by organizing various activities and ceremonies for the holidays.Immigrants who join the church usually have some kind of dissatisfaction in their lives,feel difficult to adapt to their current life,have a desire to talk and find a place to share;and some follow the past beliefs;a small number of members come out of curiosity or seek for entertainment.Through the analysis of these four types of people,I focus on the transformation of the first type of people before and after entering the church,and find that church culture as a tool has reduced the discomfort of secular life to a certain extent.The concrete manifestations are: collective sharing of daily difficulties and experience,interpersonal mutual assistance at the living level,personal practice of church teaching,and restrictions on church taboos,thus forming a relatively stable internal meaning value interpretation system.Of course,while we areseeing its cultural functions,we must also face up to its negative effects.The specific manifestations include: excessive enthusiasm for spreading the gospel,over-reliance on small groups,and blindness to the choice of real dilemmas.Focusing on the above points,I divided my thesis into six parts: The first chapter is the introduction,which briefly introduces the writing background and research methods of this paper,and sorts out related literatures at home and abroad.The second chapter is the introduction of the field points,aka the general situation of the G church as a case,including its establishment,organization,personnel structure,etc.;in the third chapter,I summarize the four ways of entering the house church,and analyze the internal psychological reasons through the appearance;the fourth chapter shows that the main activities of the house church are a key step for believers to enhance each other's feelings and strengthen internal identity.On the basis of the previous two chapters,in the fifth chapter I analyze the cultural function of the house church with typical individuals as examples.The sixth chapter is the summary of this article,mainly on the current possibility of the existence of house churches and the related thinking that they may be replaced by more robust groups in the future.