House Church: Investigating Chinese Urban Christians’ Choice of Religious Practicing Site in Wuhan, China.

In this paper, we discuss the reasons why urban Christians choose certain sites for religious activities and explain the rapid development of house churches in urban areas in China from the perspective of individual Christians, through survey data obtained by the Chinese Urban Research Center for Ethnic and Religious Affairs Management in the city of Wuhan. We found that Christians who attend religious activities in urban house churches are generally younger in age, higher in education level, and more likely to be working in independent, private, or foreign-invested enterprises. Further investigation reveals that “Three-Self churches” are few in number and poorly planned geographically, resulting in very limited service abilities, thus being far from satisfactory for all believers. Moreover, the activities of such churches are unvaried and lack attractiveness. On the other hand, in house churches, Christians are able to build tight-knit social networks and house churches are more competitively aware in the “religious market”, leading some urban Christians to choose house churches, thereby inciting the fast development of house churches in Chinese urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]