중국 근대 신종교 道院의 종교성 변화 고찰 - 扶乩 중심에서 조상 숭배 중심으로의 변모 -

Abstract

The initial combination of the secular and the sacred through the spirit writing pracktice, fuji, seems to have been successful as the early history of Daoyuan illustrates. However, it is also true that this rapid and aggressive expansion created a certain tension between the religious specialists and the secularists within the new religious group. By the late 1920s, the whole Daoyuan group had divided roughly into two groups: one supported the religious specialists, while the other was more inclined to become engaged in non-religious relief works. The confrontation between the religious specialists and the secularists intensified when the Nationalist Government labeled spirit writing-upon which the Daoyuan group was based-a superstition and banned it in 1928. I demonstrate how the members of Daoyuan began to emphasize Confucian elements and ancestor worship in order to avoid the state’s suspicion of the religion being a superstition. Under the pressure of possible persecution by the government, the leaders of this new religion began to control its unique religious practice within the congregation. Consequently, the secularists gradually strengthened their position in the group, and took the initiative in handling sensitive issues related to state authorities. Nevertheless, it was hard for the religious group to completely stop performing spirit writing, since it worked well as a means to propagate the religion, especially in the countryside.