This year's Forum on the Sociology of Religion was held virtually on September 20. The host published the schedule of the annual forum with the theme of "Study of the Cultural Psychology in the Domain of Sociology of Religion."
The forum was conducted on the Tencent Meeting, one of the most popular live-streaming platforms in China. Speeches were given addressing the following topics: the exploration of theology and practice of cultural psychology order, the study of folk religion, reflection on the study of Christianity and sociology of religion theory, and talks by young scholars. More than ten scholars addressed a speech, each taking about ten minutes. At the conclusion, a scholar commented for 15 minutes.
The speech themes included the reconstruction of mentality order and faith order during modernization, how anxiety about faith has changed and relationships between different generations based on an observation of fire funerals in Sanhe Village, and the relationship between mental health and religion according to a Japanese study. The topics talked about the governance of folk religion in 2019, the analysis of the relationship between rural temples and village society under urbanization, and the study of the approaches to solve the mentality order crisis of individuals in society. Among them, four speeches on Christianity were also given, such as the analysis of the statistics collected in CFPS 2018 (Chinese Christians were estimated to number less than 40 million), the possibility of receiving Christianity into China in the nineteenth century from the perspective of missionaries' cultural adoption, and the interpretation of religious films based on a Christian film about the Bimo culture of the Yi ethnic minority, Looking for the Holy Land.
- Translated by Karen Luo
