The Spread And Development Of Christianity In S County, Shandong Province (1980-2018)

Since the reform and opening up in 1978,the rapid spread of Christianity in China's urban and rural areas,especially in the vast rural areas,has aroused widespread concern and heated discussion among academic circles at home and abroad.However,the development of Christianity in Qufu and its surrounding areas,the birthplace of Confucianism,has never really entered the researcher's field of vision in the “Crowd”.This article takes S County around Qufu as an example to explore what kind of development pattern and situation Christianity has shown in this symbolic center of the Confucian world and the country's rural society since 1980.The history of Christian communication development in S County can be traced back to around 1912.At that time,the South American Baptist Convention,the Episcopal Church,and the Jesus family spread to the county.After the church in S County was “opened up”in 1980,the three sects finally achieved unity.After a short period of recovery from 1980-1983,the church in S County entered a rapid development phase from 1984-1996.After 1997,it showed a steady development.The development and spread of Christianity in S County since the 1980 s have shown the following obvious characteristics:First,the structural characteristics of the“three more”of the believer group,that is,“there are more women,more elderly people,and more people with lower cultural levels”have changed,but no fundamental changes have taken place,and the specific changes in the structure characteristics of the believer group in urban,suburban,and rural churches have significant differences;The second is that while the structural characteristics of the believer group have changed,the pastor group portraits have also shown that “more women,more middle-aged and young people,higher cultural level,and more diverse career sources”;Third,in the process of conversion of Christians to Christians,family influence or dilemma is the internal driving force for people to accept the Christian faith.The demonstration and guidance of social network is the intermediary for people to accept and convert to the Christian faith.The degree of conversion to Christianity has a deepening effect,and the conversion of doctrine is the key to gradually realizing the rationalization of the converts' beliefs;Fourth,in terms of religious activities,the churches in S County and the orthodox Christian churches in other countries have basically the same festivals and rituals,and their gathering mode is a combination of the Christian gathering tradition and the specific environment ofthe times;Fifth,the establishment of Christian activity venues has experienced a historical model and a national situation model,but it should be noted that Christian activity venues in S County are basically uniformly managed;Sixth,church organizations mainly include county Christian "two churches"(County Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee,county Christian Association)and church organizations.The operation of church organizations is mainly through the division of labor and cooperation of county Christian "two churches",the establishment of pastoral areas and The implementation of the Four Principles,while the management of church organizations and personnel mainly depends on the establishment,improvement and improvement of various systems.Although the Christianity of S County has been gradually standardized and ruled by law since the 1980 s,and it is developing in a benign direction,due to the constraints of subjective and objective conditions,the development of Christianity in the county still faces many practical problems,such as the generally low level of believers' education.The characteristics of the group of believers “old,weak,sick,and women”in rural gatherings are obvious,the church's ability to support itself is weak,the church has less social participation,and the effectiveness of church pastoral needs to be improved.Through participation in observations,in-depth interviews and quantitative analysis,it can be seen that the number of new Christian baptists in S County will basically not change in the short term,the degree of Christianization in China will be further deepened,and fellowship will be an important form of development of believers and detailed pastoralism.