Abstract: Civilized rural ethos refers to the sound moral and cultural practices formed in the inheritance and development of rural areas, which is of great significance for improving and innovating the construction of spiritual civilization across the whole society and realizing the modernization of agriculture and rural areas. Since the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the relevant policy expressions of rural cultural governance have shown a transformation from rural civilization to civilized rural ethos, reflecting the goal upgrading and practice deepening of rural cultural governance in the new era. Based on Marxist cultural theory and guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Culture, this paper systematically interprets this transformation and finds that: at the motivation level, it includes the transformation of the principal contradictions in rural society, the deepening of the Marxist view of mass history, and the systematic advancement of the rural revitalization strategy; at the level of inherent implication, it covers the coordinated innovation of the subject dimension, technical dimension and spatial dimension. To promote the construction of civilized rural ethos in the new era, efforts need to be made in three aspects: consolidating the foundation of ideological guidance based on Marxist cultural theory; upholding the Party’ s leadership to strengthen the organizational guarantee; and improving the institutional supply system with policy coordination as the guarantee.