The Civicness and Civic Engagement of Religious groups: A Case Study of The Bread of ife Christian Church in Taipei
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Li, Fan-Syuan
Abstract
Many researches show that the main force constructing civil society in Taiwan is religious group. Therefore, the thesis would like to discuss the issue from social capital dimension. How the religious groups in Taiwan cultivate their participators’ civicness in attitude, and support resources to develop civic engagement in behavior, including serving others voluntarily and engaging social issues, etc. Moreover, the thesis would like to discuss how the attributes in participators influence both relations. For example, if the participators tend to be homogeneous, the religious group couldn’t tolerate the differences easily. The object we research is the The Bread of Life Christian Church in Taipei, the biggest independent church in Taiwan, who has many participators, branches and obvious achievements in social service. Except documents collecting and participating observing, we deeply interview eighteen participators in The Bread of Life Christian Church, including clergyman, fulltime participators, team leader and basic participators. We find that from the gathering and serving voluntarily hold by the church, the participators can construct their relationship with others and learn how to trust and help each other. Therefore, form serving the weak outside the church, they can learn as above: first, loving others through god, second, realizing others that live in different situations, third, reinforcing their belief, forth, caring and serving similar social issues. Nevertheless, form the exclusiveness in the civicness, they show limited openness and tolerance, especially the more deviant the object’s attribute is, the more they resist it. The civil engagement is relation to personal attribute. If a participator whose personal background, including experiences, family background, social and economic position, make him care about the weak and humanity in society more, it will reinforce their concern to social issue to develop civil participating more positively after serving others voluntarily.
Subjects
the religious groups in Taiwan
The Bread of Life Christian Church
The Civicness
Civic Engagement
civil society
Type
thesis
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