关于湖北磨盘山神权社会的考察

关于明清之际欧洲传教士在华活动的研究,学人一般把目光投向学术层面,研究的对象多是在中西文化交流中做出过重要贡献的传教士。事实上,传教士作为一个群体来到中国,其最终目的是传播基督福音,他们不仅在中国的京城及重要城市建立了传教会,还把影响扩展到偏远的乡村,因而当中国政府用武力实行禁教的时候,乡村教会成为传教士和基督徒的避难所。明清全国乡村天主教的发展以鄂北的磨盘山最为典型,本文将此作为特殊的个案进行讨论,希望从中找出中国乡村天主教发展的若干特点。通过调查研究,作者发现,乡村天主教在清朝禁教期间并没有绝迹,而是一直延续到近代社会。因而,基督教来华历史的四个时期的划分对于天主教来说似乎不太客观。

An Investigation of a Divine Power Community in Mopanshan Mountain in Hubei Province

About the study of the activity of the European Missionaries in China during the Ming and the Qing Dynasties,scholars generally cast their eyes on the academic level,the most objects of the study were the missionaries who made important contribution to the cultural exchange between China and the West.In fact,as a group,the ultimate aim of the missionaries who came to China was to spread Christian Evangels. They not only established missions in the Capital and important cities of China, but also expanded their influence to the distant rural area, therefore as Chinese government implemented the policy of inhibiting Christianity by force,the rural churchs became the refuges of the missionaries and Christians. The most typical development of rural Catholicism of the whole country during the Ming and the Qing Dynasties was that of Mopanshan Mountain in the northern part of Hubei province,this paper discussed this issue as a particular case,hoping to find out some characteristics of the development of the rural Catholicism of China from it. Through the investigation,the author discovered that rural Catholicism was not extinguished during the period of prohibiting Christianity of the Qing Dynasty,but continued to exist into modern society. Therefore,the division of the four periods of the history of Christianity in China seems not too objective for Catholicism.