Chapter 1
The Fundamentally Pluralistic yet Harmonious Character of Religions in China
Mr. Kuhn:
Do the CPC and Chinese government need to “invent” a new concept to counter the universal value of religious freedom? Build up their own right to speak in response to censure from the West?
The Chinese government administration for religion is executive. Does this have a historical basis, or does the CPC want to “control” religion?
The Chinese civilization is an Eastern civilization distinct from that of the West, and places emphasis on the Confucian idea of supporting the growth of all things in tandem without mutual injury and allowing each to follow its own path in parallel without causing collision.(1) The modern expression of this historical heritage is “multiculturalism” or “peaceful co-existence.” China has evolved along this course into a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation. Its majority Han people are a polytheistic group with many creeds. The greater part of the ethnic minorities also espouses many faiths. The history of China’s religions reaches far into the past, arises from many sources, all interacting over time, continuously coalescing into one central strand, but also retaining an open tolerance toward each faith, harmoniously co-existing, changing only with reason, coordinating doctrine with human nature. Their emphasis on virtue was the most important factor in the formation of this diverse melting pot.
The perpetual history of China’s religions has all along interwoven with other cultural threads to form the magnificent tapestry of Chinese traditional culture. China’s religions came into being and evolved within the natural and social environment and cultural traditions peculiar to China and grew into a religious conception and methods of worship uniquely Chinese. Of course, in terms of their general circumstances, each sect and ethnic group will have their specific differences.
The initial phase in the development of China’s religions was polytheistic, and included worship of nature, totems, ancestors and spirits.
Nature worship: The “Discourses of the Lu” in the Discourses of the States, records the statement, “Add to this the gods of the soil and grain, mountains and rivers, they all labor for the populace...who revere the planets and stars of the heavens. The five elements give birth to the bounty of the earth. The known mountains, rivers and lakes of the nine states (China) derive their wealth from them.” This is a product of the development of mankind’s early agricultural societies.
Totem worship: The most classic example of totem worship is that of the dragon and phoenix, the culture surrounding which arose from traditional Chinese civilization. The prototype for the image of the dragon was a torso of pythons and lightning merged with many animal elements from the crocodilian Jiaolong, pigs, horses, deer, tigers, eagles and others, creating the artistic image of the sacred, graceful, colorful, vivacious, soaring, mutable dragon. The divine image of the dragon who dwells among the clouds and controls the rains. The Chinese often refer to themselves as the “descendants of the dragon” and the “Phoenix nirvana” is China’s exalted supreme realm.
Ancestor worship: Worship of ancestor gods at large, for example the Three Sovereigns (Suiren, Fuxi and Shennong) and the Five Emperors (the legendary Yellow Emperor, Zhuanxu, Emperor Ku, Emperor Yao, Emperor Yu) who represent the cultural reckoning of an acknowledged common ancestry and the ushering in of a shared “Chinese” cultural heritage.
Spirit worship: Offerings to the deceased, exorcistic practices.
China has an extensive history of political institutions and societal structure rooted in ancestral kinship, the Zongfa, sometimes called Clan Rule. The Chinese people’s basic view of the origin of all creatures is contained in a pithy ancient phrase, “The myriad things on earth are begotten by the heavens, mankind by his ancestors.” The underlying belief is one of “respect for the order of heaven and ancestral decrees” linked to making requital to one’s forefathers and fulfillment of their wishes through ritualized worship of ancestor gods. From these precepts evolved a system of governance and morality, which by the feudal period, began to take on the patriarchal character inherent in feudal hierarchy. Firstly, in the political sphere, a theocratic government which upheld feudalism. And secondly, in the cultural and moral spheres, a society dictated by ceremonious etiquette. John King Fairbank views the “durability of such cultural institutions was the impetus behind an insurmountable tide, steadfast on its predetermined course.”(2) Max Weber described China as “a country structured by kinship,” Confucian philosophy as a “clear-headed religion” and the Chinese themselves as a “sober people.” He believes the very essence of China’s religions is oriented toward the contemporaneous world.(3)
The religious outlook of Confucianism exerted an extremely important, even decisive influence on the relationships between religions in Chinese history, as evidenced by the following four maxims. Show spirits respect but keep your distance from them. Sublime truths reveal practical lessons. When a gift is bestowed honor your debt to the bestower. And, do unto the dead as when they were alive. The river of Chinese civilization flowed along a bedrock of Confucian morality, fed by Taoist and Buddhist tributaries, all intermixing freely into a stable mainstream that supported a cultural ecosystem open to the outside. Its pantheon swelled with the continual assimilation of new deities, and culminated in the Kingdom of Heaven, a polytheistic, cooperative world ruled by the God of the Sky, rooted in ancestor worship, and sustained by the state.
Under the massive gravity of Chinese culture, revolving around the axis of Confucianism, the three major religious bodies tugged at one other in their orbits. And all were left with craters by the meteors of respect for the order of heaven and ancestral decrees, the primacy of the common man, and the emphatic conservation of the existing world and the use of reason to adapt to it. A culture with such a genetic makeup cannot possibly father a monotheistic child, but it can, however, readily absorb alien religions and deities, a capability which set the China of manifold gods on a path toward manifold doctrines, gradually assuming its poly-religious, multi-layered character, tempered from within and without, digesting foreign cultures only that it may consume more, with an appetite exclusively for those that preached respect and accommodation.