A Faith Grounded in Nature and Custom

While China has been a land of many ethnic groups and religions since antiquity, they are not some scattered potpourri, but share a common foundation built on respect for the order of heaven and ancestral decrees, laid mainly by the China’s national ethnic religions – religions within the tradition of ancestral patriarchy – and which has been reinforced by the Confucian notions of indubitable loyalty to one’s country and parents. These tenets are able to furnish such a foundation due to one, their universality among the populace; two, their inviolate profundity; and three, their toleration of religious beliefs held concurrently.

Religions within this ancestral tradition retain their authenticity and continuity. Many of their devotional icons and ceremonies have their origins in primitive forms of nature, spirit, totem, and ancestor worship. After Chinese society stratified into classes, primeval veneration of the sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers, the earth...gradually evolved into a uniform worship of the Sky God, ultimately becoming a core component of Chinese religious faith. As reliably verified by oracle bone inscriptions found at the Ruins of the Yin, a supreme god, or Shangdi, who held dominion over the natural world and human life, had already been conceived of by the time of the Shang Dynasty. The Zhou rulers conflated the Sky God with Shangdi, and gradually codified rituals offerings made in his name. The rituals were major national events and a privilege to which only the Zhou emperor was entitled. Oblations were offered in three different ceremonies, outside the city gates, at the ancestral shrine, and upon Mt. Tai. Additional oblatory ceremonies were performed for the sun, moon, mountains, rivers, lakes and sea, and for Shennong, the god of agriculture. Such was the Kingdom of Heaven as mandated by Shangdi.

During the early Warring States Period, the title of King had been supplanted, various dukedoms vied for hegemony, the five-element school was in vogue, and Zou Yan of the Qi, a leading exponent of the Yin-Yang school divided up what had been the veneration unified of the Sky God among the emperors of the North, South, East, West and Center. In the closing years of the period, writings by the same school brought worship of these five emperors full circle, incorporating the five elements, five virtues, five directions, and five colors into a complete religion devoted to them, which would become the official religion of the Qin Dynasty. By the reign of Emperor Wu of the Western Han, China had been unified, authority had become more centralized, and those in power began to be wary of the conflict of interest implicit in fivefold worship, whereupon a plan was devised to elevate Tai Yi, a deity identified with the North Star, to supremacy, the five emperors were relegated to his underlings, and their influence gradually diminished. Regardless of whether worship was dedicated to the Sky God, the five emperors or Tai Yi, all of these were closely affiliated with the emperor and simply tools employed to lend credence to the idea that the source of the emperor’s authority was divine. It may be unambiguously noted that worship of the Sky God was the paramount rationale behind the sanctity and legitimacy of China’s monarchy, and as such it would become a fundamental belief of the general population, among whom rituals for the worship of heaven and earth, imperial figures, parents and teachers quickly spread.

Ancestor worship grew out of spirit worship, which espoused the idea that deceased ancestors could safeguard the welfare of their offspring and descendants. Ancestor worship is quintessentially reaping the fruits of their labors, commemorating the groundwork they laid. “It is virtuous of progeny to build upon the industry of their forefathers.” This primordial religion did not vanish with the advent of private property, rather it was recast and superimposed on the framework of its patriarchal institutions. When the Xia, China’s first hereditary dynasty, paid tribute to their progenitor Gun, they invoked his son Yu the Great. The Shang Dynasty rulers prescribed offerings outside the city to their ancestor Zi Ming when worshiping Emperor Ku, and during tribute to King Tang in his temple, King Xie was also honored as his descendant.(4) With the founding of the Zhou Dynasty a primogenitor inheritance was instituted tracing the bloodline through the first-born son of the first wife, establishing the original ancestral patriarchy based on kinship as the official political arrangement and law of the land.

The two precepts of the order of heaven and ancestral decrees had been an organic blend, and it was not until the Zhou Dynasty that was clearly so. The Zhou rulers claimed only their ancestors could be worthy of sharing in the tribute paid to Shangdi. So, making sacrificial offerings to ancestors and paying tribute to the heavens were turned into a direct substantiation and proclamation of the supremacy and sanctity of the dynasty’s sovereignty, and in this connection ancestor worship by generations of supreme dynastic rulers became a matter of course in ancient China.

This ancestral veneration had assimilated into the collective consciousness of the ancient Chinese in a major way. This was due in large part to the ancient patriarchal society, which served as the stepping stone that brought such religiosity and devotional practices to every corner of Chinese society: the nation with its Imperial Ancestral Temple, kinship groups with their Lineage Shrines, and family units with their Familial Altars. The greatest significance of ancestor worship is in its ethical role imparting the teachings of filial piety. In paying tribute to their ancestors, Chinese people fulfill their obligation as their offspring to care for them in the afterlife. This filial gratitude is also about being mindful in this life, as well as thinking back on past ones and forward to future ones. The final goal is to apply these sublime truths to practical ends. In fully valuing the lives of those who have completed them, we purify them, and thus ourselves, and thus society. The religious doctrine of ancestor worship, since it corresponds to China’s social doctrine of ancestral decree, has managed to endure in China and become dear to the people. No gods or dogmas can abate or replace ancestors as objects of worship. China’s other religions have in turn also been affected by it to different degrees.