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Special Feature

Legitimacy, Organisational Capacity, and Church Growth in Rural China: 1978-2018

Jianghua Yang and Yujie Wang
p. 19-29

Abstract

The resurgence of rural Christianity in mainland China after reform and opening up has been a significant phenomenon. While previous studies have predominantly examined this revival through macro- or micro-level interpretations, this paper adopts a neo-institutionalist theoretical perspective to explore the growth of rural Christianity. Specifically, the study investigates the interaction between church organisation and the external environment, identifying religious legitimacy and organisational capacity as two central mechanisms that affect the divergent development of rural churches. By analysing the dynamics of these mechanisms, this study sheds light on the factors that have contributed to the differentiated growth of rural Christianity in mainland China.

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Editor’s notes

Manuscript received on 8 October 2022. Accepted on 20 April 2023.

Excerpt

Full text document will be published online on June 2024.

Outline

Introduction
Theoretical framework and research design
Religious legitimacy
Organisational capacity
Research method and empirical cases
Legitimacy and rural church growth
Institutional legitimacy
Social legitimacy
Institutional legitimacy and social legitimacy: Substitution vs. symbiosis
Organisational capacity and rural church growth
Church leadership
Resilience of organisational structure
Openness and learning ability
Strategy for handling church-state relations
Conclusion and discussion

First lines

Introduction

After reform and opening up, religions began to revitalise in the Chinese Mainland, with the rapid growth of Christianity as an important manifestation (Yu 2010; Yang 2012). Among them, rural churches have been the focus of academic research on the Christian revival in mainland China (Leung 1999; Bays 2003), because they are of unique significance in terms of either the evolution of Chinese churches or the spatial distribution of believers (Stark and Wang 2015; Yang 2018). The previous studies on the rapid growth of Christianity in China mainly follow three lines of thought: modernisation theory, the religious economic approach, and the institutional approach.

Inspired by Max Weber’s classical work on the relationship between religion and modernity, some scholars argue that rapid socioeconomic transformation brought about the loss of Chinese traditional moral values, and a crisis of professional ethics and intellectual identity, providing favourable conditions for the s...

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References

Bibliographical reference

Jianghua Yang and Yujie Wang, Legitimacy, Organisational Capacity, and Church Growth in Rural China: 1978-2018China Perspectives, 133 | -1, 19-29.

Electronic reference

Jianghua Yang and Yujie Wang, Legitimacy, Organisational Capacity, and Church Growth in Rural China: 1978-2018China Perspectives [Online], 133 | 2023, Online since 01 June 2024, connection on 02 October 2023. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/15364; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.15364

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About the authors

Jianghua Yang

Jianghua Yang is Professor of sociology at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No. 28, West Xianning Road, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, 710049, People’s Republic of China (yangjianghua@xjtu.edu.cn).

Yujie Wang

Yujie Wang is a PhD candidate in sociology at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No. 28, West Xianning Road, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, 710049, People’s Republic of China (wangyujie102021@163.com).

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Copyright

The text and other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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