Chin-shing Huang. Confucianism and Sacred Space: The Confucian Temple from Imperial China to Today. Translated by Jonathan Chin with Chin-shing Huang. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020. xii, 352 pp. Hardcover $120.00, ISBN 9780231198967. Paperback $35.00, ISBN 9780231198974.

Abstract

Chin-shing Huang. Confucianism and Sacred Space: The Confucian Temple from Imperial China to Today. Translated by Jonathan Chin with Chin-shing Huang. New York: Columbia University Press, . xii,  pp. Hardcover $., ISBN . Paperback $., ISBN . Huang Chin-shing’s Confucianism and Sacred Space: The Confucian Temple from Imperial China to Today is an edited collection of Huang’s writings on the history of the Confucian temple from the early Han peroid to the present. This important volume makes Huang’s many years of research on the Confucian temple available to an English-language readership, and it adds greatly to our understanding of the temple’s history and political significance. Most of the book’s seven chapters, as well as its Introduction and Conclusion, were previously published in Chinese as articles between  and . All chapters were translated by Jonathan Chin, with the exception of chapter , “The Cultural Politics of Autocracy: The Confucius Temple and Ming Despotism, -,” which was previously translated by Curtis Dean Smith and Thomas A. Wilson and was published in Wilson’s edited volume On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius (Harvard University Asia Center, ). That essay is reprinted here with minor editorial changes. The expression “sacred space” in the title is somewhat misleading, for this is actually not a book about sacred space, at least as the term is used in the history of religions by such scholars as Mircea Eliade or Jonathan Z. Smith. An exploration of sacred space in temples to Confucius might well examine, for example, whether temple altars facilitate hierophanies of the sacred (following Eliade) or serve as focusing lenses of religious meaning (following Smith). But this book is not informed by history-of-religions perspectives, which Huang views with some suspicion. Nonetheless, half of the book’s chapters examine questions about religious subjects. In the Preface, subtitled “The Holy Grounds of Confucian Religion,” Huang proposes that there is something called Confucianism, and it is a religion founded by Confucius. Similar sentiments also appear in the Conclusion, “Reflections on My Study of Confucianism,” which might have served equally well as an introductory chapter. In chapter , “Confucianism as a Religion: A Comparative Study of Traditional Chinese Religions,” Huang asserts that Review©  by University of Hawai‘i Press Confucianism is a religion on a par with Chinese Buddhism and Daoism. Moving the comparative perspective beyond China, chapter , “Sages and Saints: A Comparative Study of Canonization in Confucianism and Christianity,” examines parallels between Confucianism and European traditions. Throughout these chapters, heavily freighted and problematic terms with complex histories such as “Confucianism,” “Confucian religion,” and “founder” beg for clarification, nuance, and more than a little deconstruction. Yet even though one might not always agree with Huang’s use of these terms, one could also argue that his detailed histories actually provide the reader a wealth of materials for exploring these concepts in greater depth. For example, the first part of chapter , “Confucianism as a Religion,” examines how twentieth-century thinkers as Kang Youwei and Chen Huanzhang viewed Confucius, and Huang uses this material to critically explore how the notion of religion was understood (and misunderstood) in modern times. That subject is examined in even greater depth in chapter , “The Disenchantment with Confucianism in Modern China.” On the one hand, Huang professes interest in religious issues; on the other hand, he is uncomfortable with religious-studies approaches to his subject matter—at least, approaches that explore the spiritual or the intangible. In the Preface, for example, he claims that he is “conceptualizing temples as the holy ground of Confucianism” (p. viii), and he states that he aims to “excavate the religious nature and character of Confucianism through the history of its temples” (p. viii). These would appear to be research questions that fall solidly within the purview of religious studies. But then Huang makes the rather puzzling statement that they actually belong to the discipline of history, not philosophy or religion. He states, “I argue that deciding whether Confucianism is a religion is a question of history, not of philosophy or theology” (p. ix). He moreover states that “to consider Confucius temples as arrangements of sacred space is to ground...