从 20 世纪 40 年代末李世瑜调查黄天道以来，学界已经注意到，黄天道不仅是明中叶民间教派的代表，而且对众多明清华北民间教派以及江南的斋教，产生过重要的影响。笔者从多年调查所获口述资料、民间传说、乡村戏剧，以及大量珍贵黄天道文献入手，首次澄清黄天道在华北乡村社会 400 多年来的历史脉络。本文不仅是对李世瑜调查的再研究，而且从微观上考察了民间教派 “地方化”的历史状态。

Since Li Shiyu's path-breaking study in the late 1940s，scholars have gradually traced many folk religious sects，including the vegetarian sects in the Jiangnan area in the Ming-Qing Period，back to Huangtian Dao，or the Yellow Heaven Way in the rural North China． Based on oral histories，folk stories，rural operas and many internal documents of the Yellow Heaven Way that the author recently discovered，this paper unravels the four-hundred-years history of Huangtian Dao for the first time on the village level． It is not only a re-study of Li Shiyu's Wan-quan investigation，but also a localized case study of folk sect in the long term history．