The Mandate of Heaven on earth: religious and secular conflict in China

Abstract

Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, there has been a resurgence of religion in China. Mainstream sociologists of religion have used this as evidence to refute the theory of secularization. Rather than having a longer historical overview, their refutation of the theory of secularization is based on a linear conception of it and they use 1979 as their baseline. While secularization has occurred in China, the pattern that it has followed has not been linear. To see this, this article goes back further and examines the historical reference points: the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, the Chinese Revolution/Civil War of 1911–1949 and the Cultural Revolution. In China, when secularization occurred, it was forced; it resulted not only in religious revival (the House Church Movement and Falun Gong) but also in the establishment of a secular religion (the Cult of Mao). This pattern of secularization is dialectical; it resembles a spiral and is the consequence of an ongoing conflict between secular movement and religious countermovement.