| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺南大學 === 台灣文化研究所碩士班 === 99 === The purpose of this study was to explore modern Western Protestant missionaries’ views of Taiwanese culture and society, the reasons for their coming to Taiwan, methods of their work, and the results they have accomplished, and to compare these aspects to the past experiences of the early missionaries to Taiwan. Another aim was to investigate the international missionary organizations and their effort, as most of the missionaries belong to some organizations, which appoint them to Taiwan. These organizations see the problem of working people as an essential field for missionary work. Accordingly, missionaries concentrate their effort on reaching workers. Consequently, one more goal was to explore why working people are less responsive to the Gospel than higher educated Taiwanese. The visit of one of the Christian organizations, Ray of Hope – crisis pregnancy center – motivated the further research and shaped the third part of the thesis, which is focused on the analysis of the issue of abortions in Taiwan. The study’s target was to examine views of Taiwanese society on induced abortions and to analyze the attitudes and behaviors of Taiwanese Protestant Christians concerning this issue.
The first part of the study is centered on the analysis of history of early missionaries from the seventeenth century to the year 1949. The second part of the thesis presents missionaries in the post-war Taiwan and examines a variety of organizations and missionaries personal experiences of Taiwanese culture. As a method of the research ten in-depth interviews were taken and several questionnaires were distributed to the missionaries in order to obtain the information about their views of Taiwanese society. The responses were received, analyzed, and presented in the discussion section. Lastly, the third part of the thesis made use of a variety of articles and statistical data about the population growth, family planning, teenager sex, and induced abortions. The predominant cultural and religious views on abortion in Taiwan – popular religion, Confucian, and Buddhist – were inspected and compared to the Christian perspectives.
The results of the study revealed that missionaries’ views toward the culture and religious practices in Taiwan have not significantly changed from the early missionaries, despite of the modernization of Taiwan and changing values in the society. The principal conclusion was that missionaries still view Taiwanese society as the “lost” and “superstitions,” and full of fears, and they come with the biased view of being from a superior culture. Another conclusion was that working people tend to avoid church because of their education, work type, strong family ties, and traditional beliefs. The final conclusion revealed that Taiwanese Protestants are more likely to object to abortions than traditional religion practitioners and secular groups, but the actual behavior did not show a radical difference between these groups.
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