dc.description.abstract | Over the past decade, because of the establishment of the Hakka Affairs Council, the Hakka associations, Hakka activities, Hakka people’s Hakka consciousness has increased gradually. Although, in the church, the concept of world missions is to preach the gospel to all corners of the world and Christianity was introduced into Taiwan more than a century ago, a number of preachers and the Missionary Society have made a lot of efforts in terms of expending the Hakka Mission. However, due to the Hakka people’s own culture and the environmental impact, the scale of the Taiwan Hakka ethnic beliefs in Christianity is only 0.3% of the entire religious group. For the last decade, the government and institutions in society have emphasized the importance of the Hakka ethnic group, pastors and believers in the church also have began to value the needs of the Hakka people, committed to the development of the ministry of the Hakka Mission.
Presbyterian Church in Taiwan was the first church introduced into the Hakka Mission, and the Hakka Mission’s organization and scale are the largest and the most well-organized one; the establishment of the Tsung Tsin Mission of Taiwan was based on the value of Hakka missionary vision, thus the church targeted at proselytizing to the Hakka people has been set up; China Holiness Church came to Taiwan to spread the gospel according to the spirit and principles of the headquarters of the Sweden Holiness Church Missionary and it has made tremendous efforts in missionary work in the most remote and rural areas across Taiwan, including the Hakka region during the era of 1953.The aforementioned three denominations across the country engaged in the Hakka Mission are the major churches in Taiwan and the starting point of this paper is that many church groups for Hakka missionaries have come up with different missionary work strategies, and I participated in a lot of gatherings in these denominations, which made me realize and appreciate the various missionary work strategies embedded in different religious groups for the Hakka Mission. Therefore, in this research I aim to explore the expansion of the Hakka missionary ministry.
In this paper, field research has been applied as the research methodology and interviews and participations of observation were involved; the theory of Theology of Mission and Theories of Ethnicity are utilized to form the theoretical framework of this paper. In addition, because of the respondents’ elaborative responses, the use of urbanization, social solidarity and rationalization selection of related concepts has been applied in order to do profound discussions. The arrangement of the chapters is divided into six chapters: the first chapter is the introduction, mainly for the description of this thesis, an overview of research methods, research objects; The second chapter is a literature review for the missionaries, Hakka Mission and ethnic group theory, respectively. In this paper the theories, concepts, and reviews done by the previous discussion are targeted at comparing with the research conducted by other scholars in hopes to obtain significant applications and enlightenment in this study; the third chapter is the comparison amid the three denominations as well as the local churches which belong to the above denominations; the fourth chapter is to explore the faith of believers; the fifth chapter distinguishes and discusses:1.the interpretation of ethnic culture and Christian culture; 2.the reason why people have difficulty believing in western God in the Hakka ethnic group ; the sixth chapter is the conclusion which depicts the comprehensive description of the inquiries in this research and reflects the results found via the study.
The study has found that the awareness of Hakka culture is different among the three denominations mentioned previously. Hence the development of the different Hakka missionary strategies has emerged. The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan focuses on the preservation of language so that using the Hakka language to show Hakka culture is a critical element and foundation in terms of its proselytizing strategies. As for Tsung Tsin Mission of Taiwan, the value of filial piety for the ancestors in the Hakka culture is the church’s fundamental principle. Accordingly, the ancestral worship ministry has been strongly promoted in this church. On the other hand, China Holiness Church does not specifically focus on the Hakka culture and its related ancestral worshipping tradition, but it still upholds the Sweden Holiness Church’’s missionary spirit in the aspect of the Hakka ethnic evangelism. In a nutshell, the awareness and understating of the Hakka culture expanded by the three denominations and their local churches has demonstrated a significant gap in comparison with what the traditional Hakka culture found among the Hakka ethnic group in Taiwan. Furthermore, the believers’ conception and interpretation of Hakka culture and Christianity in the church have shown some variances as well. More analysis will be provided by the author in this paper.
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