新生活运动与民国基督徒的新国家想象

The New Life Movement and the Christians’ Imagination of China’s Future in Republic of China

蒋介石夫妇通过为新生活运动打上基督教色彩,并以政治爱国主义和文化民族主义相号召,寻求教会的合作。而基督教会在新生活运动的蓝图中找到了现代国家的理想模型,并高度肯定它改造国民而建造现代国家的价值,同时认同其以传统道德为基础构建现代伦理及精神重建的意义。但仍有传教士和中国基督徒因其政治化和儒家化色彩而与其保持距离。此外,基督教会通过创造性的诠释,重构新生活运动的意义世界,合理化基督教会的新运参与,在改善政教关系的同时把广大基督徒纳入国家建设进程。更重要的是通过将本属于政治运动的新运宗教化,来扩展自身的宗教事业,不过其最终的目的还是在国家建设。基督教会与新生活运动的关系既体现了社会团体对接国家运动的复杂性,同时也暗示着新生活运动国民改造的困境。

Chiang Kai-shek and Song Meiling incorporated the Christian Church into the New Life Movement by marking it with Christianity, political patriotism and cultural nationalism. The Christian Church found an ideal model for a modern nation in the blueprint of the New Life Movement, recognizing the role of the New Life Movement in building a modern nation by reforming its people, and approved the significance of the Movement’s modern ethics construction and spiritual reconstruction based on traditional morality, despite the fact that some missionaries and Chinese Christians still chose to keep their distance from the New Life Movement because of its being politicized and Confucianized. It is true that the Christian Church reconstructed the meaning world of the New Life Movement with a creative interpretation. The purpose was to rationalize the Christian Church’s participation in the New Life Movement, to improve church-state relationship, and to bring the Chinese Christians into the nation-building process. More importantly, the Church expanded its own religious cause by religionizing the political movement, though its ultimate concern was national construction. The relationship between the Christian Church and the New Life Movement not only embodied the complexity of social groups docking with the National Movement, but also implied the plight of the New Life Movement in national transformation.