ABSTRACT With increasing discussions on political deification and the official references to traditional religions in the People's Republic of China (PRC), recent debates on the PRC's alleged infiltration over Taiwan elections through the goddess Mazu, and the post‐Handover government's emphasis on filiality to China in Hong Kong, it is high time to reassess the dynamic relationship between official politics and religions in places commonly dismissed as atheist or secular and the political significance of traditional Chinese religions. China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are juxtaposed in this article because they constitute what is often considered “Greater China” and share strong religious ties, while a decolonial perspective from Sinophone studies, which this article adopts, demonstrates how these religious ties can be instrumentalized by China's internal hegemony, which marginalizes Hong Kong and Taiwan in both “Greater China” and global power imaginaries, and how the same religious ties can contribute to democratization and help decentralize this internal hegemony and colonialism. Furthermore, as Han Chinese people comprise the racial majority in all three places, focusing on the role of religion in official politics can reveal the relevance of traditional Chinese religions to contemporary political life, while also revealing the religious diversity within Han‐majority societies. Due to the constraints of a single article, this review article does not claim to offer a comprehensive overview of all religions but mainly traditional Chinese religions or a full range of existing scholarship on all religions or religious‐political interactions, but focuses mainly on major monographs on this topic, complemented with recent journal articles, out of the consideration that monographs are more sustained and theoretically coherent interventions, reflecting broader analytical trajectories, historiographical shifts, and conceptual debates shaping the field.

The Song dynasty marked a pivotal period in the cultural, political, and economic development of ancient China, during which Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism coexisted and advanced in parallel. The Dazu rock carvings, begun in the late Tang and flourishing during the Northern and Southern Song, integrate Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist themes and serve as an important vehicle of historical and cultural development, standing out in Chinese cave temple art for their marked secularization. Situated in the Chongqing region, the Dazu rock carvings are closely intertwined with local customs and cultural practices, exhibiting distinctive regional characteristics that reflect the social life and local ethos of the time, and are of great scholarly and cultural significance. Drawing on previous scholarship and supported by field investigations in the Dazu rock carvings area, this study employs documentary analysis, iconographic methods, and fieldwork to examine the visual features of Bodhisattva images and narrative/allegorical scenes in the rock carvings. By analyzing the process of their secular transformation, the paper identifies the principal factors driving this shift and proposes a path of secularization and indigenization shaped by the interaction between foreign cultural elements and local traditions. The findings aim to offer new perspectives and points of reference for contemporary artistic practice.

This article delves into Chinese folk religion and the klenteng (Chinese temple) in the span of Chinese religious discourse throughout Indonesian history from the colonial period to post-reformation. This research uses a historical approach to explore the discourse surrounding Chinese religion from Chinese publications produced since the colonial period and an anthropological approach to present the contemporary reality of Chinese folk religion and klenteng within that trajectory of Chinese religious discourse. Historically and anthropologically, Chinese folk religion has been diffused in Chinese religious life. However, its relevance was increasingly eroded due to the growing discourse of Chinese religion with the interest of contending Christianisation during the colonial period and the hegemony of the politics of religion during the New Order era of Indonesia. This research takes Muntilan, Central Java, as a case study to present the uniqueness of the local historicity of Chinese folk religion and the klenteng community that is different from that of major cities in Indonesia.

This visual autoethnographic and interview-based folklore study asks how darkness and light relate to social, cultural, and religious meaning at a village temple in South China. The relationship between darkness and light is important in religious traditions in China and elsewhere. Over the course of a year, the researchers observed how a village temple in Dongguan, Guangdong Province underwent renovations that changed it from a dark space (in line with traditional Chinese village temple style) to a brighter, more colourful space. The autoethnography concerns how the temple’s shadows and light conditions affected one researcher’s personal connections with the temple’s main god Hou Wang and other deities. Autoethnographic photographs and reflections combine with interview data with ritual service providers (RSPs) to negotiate conflicting and possibly changing perceptions of the role of darkness in Chinese religion (combining elements of Daoism, Buddhism, and folk religion).

The relevance of this study arises from the need, within Russian historiography, to examine Buddhist cult architecture in order to identify the specific characteristics and distinctive features of temple complexes and the Buddhist pantheon. The history of research on Chinese Buddhism occupies a central place in the broader study of ancient Chinese religions and belief systems. The author investigates the ancient Buddhist pantheon as represented in Chinese temples. Based on fieldwork conducted in northeastern China, the study focuses on the ancient Buddhist temple Xinlong, identifying its principal deities — Guanyin, the Buddha, the arhats, and the warrior deities. The source base of the research consists of this Buddhist temple, built during the Qing dynasty, and the representations of the Buddhist pantheon within its complex. The study concludes that the artistic configuration of the Buddhist pantheon in China plays a central role in understanding the religious cult and its influence on both culture and society.

Abstract This study analyses the rules of circulation of money (and wealth in general) in Qing-era (1644–1911) Chinese texts on the supernatural. It is based on the popular collections of stories by writers Pu Songling, Ji Yun and Yuan Mei. Ever since the 19th century, when sinologists started field studies on Chinese religions, there was much discussion about the extent to which literary texts can be used as sources on Chinese religions. Indeed, in each instance it is difficult to separate the product of the literary imagination from its possible folklore basis. However, as this study shows, literary texts were usually created within the framework of a certain system of ideas, which determines the nature of the characters and their modes of interaction with each other, including the financial aspects of these relations. Given the large scale of the Chinese pantheon, the object of study was limited to one class of supernatural being, fox spirits. It appears that in Qing texts on supernatural world and associated folk beliefs of that time, silver, which served as currency in China, as well as property, was found, lost, borrowed, stolen, sold and bought by fox-spirits according to a changing system of rules inherent in the worldview of the period. Objects (including silver) can have their own predetermined fate which can influence the fate of characters interacting with them. The boundaries of possibilities in such interaction are often set by cultural norms and can’t be broken even by supernatural beings. In many respects tales of the supernatural from the Qing period, despite the specifics of the subject, promote traditional ethics and social order.

Why C. K. Yang’s classic work Religion in Chinese Societyis considered a “biblical”-level sociological classic in the study of Chinese religion stems mainly from its three core contributions: First, a unique dynamic research perspective.Unlike previous studies that focused on historical textual criticism or philosophical speculation, C. K. Yang viewed religion as a dynamic, functional component within Chinese social life, vividly depicting the complex interactive relationships between religion and secular institutions such as the family, socio-economic groups, and state politics.Second, profound historical consciousness and methodological innovation.Yang's research is permeated with a clear historical awareness, treating tradition and modernity as interconnected wholes rather than ruptures. He creatively employed the conceptual pair of "institutional religion" and "diffused religion" to effectively explain the characteristic integration of Chinese religion into the secular social order, avoiding the barriers and misunderstandings inherent in models based on Western institutional religion.Third, academic practice that actively responds to issues of the era.Set against the historical backdrop of the “impact-response” model in Western Sinology, Yang’s research was not only a scholarly refutation of claims like Liang Qichao’s that “China has no religion”, but also embodied how that generation of intellectuals, amidst epochal changes, used academic research to explore the fundamental question of “Whither China?” It reflects a deep sense of “scholarly concern for the world”. In conclusion, Yang’s work transcends the mere study of religion; its ultimate goal is to use religion as a methodto profoundly understand Chinese society itself. This broad vision ensures the enduring relevance of his academic legacy.

Abstract Lin Yutang (1895–1976) is renowned for bridging the Chinese and Western worlds through his prolific writings, but the vital role of religion in his intercultural endeavors remains underappreciated. This article situates his seminal work of religious reflection, From Pagan to Christian (1959), within the context of World Christianity, defined as both movement and method. Lin’s departure from the Christianity of his youth into Chinese religions—and back again to the church in his later years—presents timely insights for the study of religious change and pluralism in global modernity. Analyzing the text’s decolonizing, dialogical, and polyphonic dimensions, this article brings Lin’s spiritual and intellectual evolution into a critical and constructive dialogue with three key themes in World Christianity: the historiographical embrace of non-Western and trans-institutional accounts of religiosity, the missiological prioritization of intercultural dialogue over proselytization, and the affirmation of interreligious learning as a veritable mode of theological exploration.

This paper is a study of ritual and profession at a temple in a demolished village in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, South China. The study focuses on two ritual service providers (RSPs) who 1) offer services within fortune-telling, divination and feng shui (geomancy) and 2) serve as intermediaries between worshippers and the deities from Daoism and folk religion who are enshrined in the temple. We take an occupational folklore approach to ask how these RSPs’ work, lives and religious practices have been affected by the massive social, economic, political and spatial changes that China has undergone over the past five decades. Bearing in mind the various roles accorded to money, the economy and the market in studies of Chinese religion, we use semi-structured interviews and participant observation to understand the RSPs’ own perceptions of and practices within their profession. We conclude that the RSPs’ professional status is important for continuity of ritual culture and religious life.

Iam one of those former English majors who loved college but never really wanted to work, which may be why the prospect of graduate school was so appealing when I was ejected into the post-baccalaureate world of financial obligations and responsibilities in 1990.Four years later, as a graduate student at Yale (where, ironically, I found myself working all the time), I had the privilege of taking classes with the late Stanley Weinstein, a specialist in Japanese and Chinese religions who trained many of today's leading scholars of Buddhism.I am not one of them.At the time, I was already studying Japanese literature under the supervision of Edward Kamens in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures (though Ed was himself one of Stanley's students, finishing his PhD in 1982).Nevertheless, on Ed's advice, in the fall of 1994 I began auditing Stanley's three-semester undergraduate lecture course on Indian, Chinese, and Japanese Buddhism.I enjoyed it so much that in three years I audited it twice, much to Stanley's surprise.At the graduate level, I took Stanley's course on kanbun (Sino-Japanese), in which we read excerpts from Gynen's (1240-1321) thirteenth-century Hassh ky

This article explores Schipper’s scholarly contributions to the study of dongtian fudi (grotto heavens and blessed lands) and specifically situates this project in its broader intellectual context and Schipper’s own research. While Schipper was not the first to open discussions on this topic, his research in this direction still offers profound insights, such as the coinage of the concept of “Daoist Ecology” and his views on mountain politics. This article argues that Schipper’s work on dongtian fudi is a response to the school of Deep Ecology and its critics, and also a result of critical reflection on the modern dichotomy between nature and culture. In Schipper’s enquiry of dongtian fudi, the “mountain” stands as the central concept: it is not only the essential component of Daoist sacred geography, but a holistic site in which nature and society are interwoven, endowed with both material and sacred significance. Through his analysis of the Daoist practice of abstinence from grain (duangu), Schipper reveals how mountains serve as spaces for retreat from agrarian society and state control, and how they embody “shatter zones” where the reach of centralized power is relatively attenuated. The article also further links Schipper’s project of Beijing as a Holy City to his study of dongtian fudi. For Schipper, the former affirms the universality of the locality (i.e., the unofficial China, the country of people), while the latter envisages the vision of rewriting China from plural localities. Taken together, these efforts point toward a theoretical framework that moves beyond conventional sociological paradigms, one that embraces a total worldly perspective, in which the livelihoods of local societies and their daily lives are truly appreciated as a totality that encompasses both nature and culture. Schipper’s works related to dongtian fudi, though they are rather concise, still significantly broaden the scope of Daoist studies and, moreover, provide novel insights into the complexity of Chinese religion and society.

Western esotericism, Chinese religion, and the supernatural fiction of Gustav Meyrink: Buddhism and Daoism in The Golem and The White Dominican

:<i>In the Land of Tigers and Snakes: Living with Animals in Medieval Chinese Religions</i>

ABSTRACT Taoism is an ancient, indigenous Chinese religion, which has been rooted in Hong Kong for more than a century. The Taoist tradition undergoes constant revision to ensure its persistence and development. Inspired by Raymond Williams, this article examines how Taoism is represented and applied in a school curriculum in three ways: selection and organisation of materials by connecting Taoism with a broader scope of teenagers’ daily lives, such as the environment, mass media, sexuality, a healthy lifestyle and emotion management; selection of pedagogies by blending of Taoist doctrines with Western learning theories to echo the local official curriculum reform; and focusing on cultural nationalism and life education rather than religious preaching, and emphasising Taoism’s vital personal and social contributions, together with modern interpretations and elaborations. The article also discusses the factors that have contributed to the crafting of a living religious tradition for pedagogical uses. This example in Hong Kong highlights the possibility of Taoist religious education and demonstrates how agents of the tradition have re-positioned the learning of religion in a secular world in response to various social changes. It also points to life education and values education as viable options for developing religious education.

Lagerwey, John, Paradigm Shifts in Early and Modern Chinese Religion: A History

Abstract: Social media is transforming "out of the way" – that is, socially, geographically and economically peripheral – places by providing platforms for digital place-making. As a form of territorialisation, in which people transform space into place by giving it specific meanings, placemaking becomes extended into the digital environment through the generation and circulation of representations on social media, which contribute to specific kinds of city-branding. Through engagements with social media, urban residents are making places known to themselves and to others, assigning new meanings and making them relevant beyond narrow geographical confines. In order to elaborate this phenomenon, this paper presents the case of the city of Singkawang, West Kalimantan, which is known throughout Indonesia as the kota seribu klenteng (city of a thousand temples) in recognition of its density of Chinese religion and culture. Focusing on the recent advent of social media accounts of Chinese associations, temples, and spirit-medium cults this paper considers how these representations and discourses on social media are helping to rebrand Singkawang as a harmonious multi-ethnic and multi-religious place, and yet one which is defined by its majority Chinese Indonesian identity. In this process, Singkawang, is shaped into a heritage city for religious tourism, and as the kota tertoleran (most tolerant city) in Indonesia, shifting its position within the national and local imaginary. These social media posts contribute to the ongoing politics of minority ethnic and religious identities in Indonesia, both pushing representational boundaries and reinforcing cultural sensitivity norms. One of the ways this takes place is through the circulating of sanitized, aspirational and celebratory images of the city which highlight positive aspects of the place while obscuring existing tensions, and controversies that arise in the multireligious urban context.

Abstract In October 1700, the Faculty of Theology of the Sorbonne issued a formal censure of statements concerning Confucius and ancient Chinese religion from recent publications by two French Jesuits. Despite Louis XIV’s desire for silence on this issue, an avalanche of polemics and pamphlets on both sides sought first to influence the Sorbonne’s proceedings, and later to justify or undermine the censure. This article uses three hitherto unknown street songs to examine these debates and open a new perspective on how the broader Parisian population interpreted the issues at stake in the Sorbonne censure and in the Chinese Rites Controversy of which it was a part. In so doing, the article makes the case that street songs were not just vectors for the transmission of news but could be actively used by elites to shape public opinion as part of wider propaganda campaigns.

The impact and influence that a religious tradition can have amongst culturally out-group populations can be quite unexpected and can even “boomerang” back home in equally unpredictable ways. This article explores one example of a Chinese religion’s unexpected cultural influence within the Western psychiatric community using religious Daoism and its appropriation by analytical psychologist Carl Jung. Although elements of religious Daoism, such as Daoist Internal Alchemy or the Yijing, integrated into a system of psychiatric practices, its influence was not straightforward. It will be argued that Jungian ideas such as active imagination, individuation, and synchronicity were directly influenced or inspired by Jung’s exposure to religious Daoism through Richard Wilhelm, Daoist texts, and his own adoption of Daoist Internal Alchemy techniques, an influence which would reverberate through both Western and Chinese popular culture.

Abstract Internet literature emerged in China in the 1990s and became commercialized in the early 2000s, with readers paying an access fee, which is split between literary platforms and their contracted writers, to access popular novels. While the most popular genre is fantasy, a type of imaginative literature devoted to invoking magic beyond the limits of empirical reality and scientific rationality, the primary source of magic for Chinese fantasy is traditional Chinese cosmology and its concrete applications in everyday practices. These ideas and practices, the onto-epistemic-practical foundation of Chinese religion before the twentieth century, were considered superstitious and targeted for elimination in modernizing and secularization processes. However, they have not only survived but taken up a new life in fantasy novels, which depict them as the antecedents of, alternatives to, or more advanced forms than modern scientific endeavors at engineering natural environments and enhancing human bodies. This is why I see online fantasy literature as a palimpsest bearing the traces of Chinese religion, Chinese secularism, and the social conditions of contemporary China. In bearing such traces, this literature exemplifies the postsecular.

[Objective] The purpose of this study is to examine how education on religion was practiced in Ch’ŏndogyo in the 1930s, focusing on the “Religion Course” in Home College Lecture. [Contents] In 1908, Ch’ŏndogyo began to organize a curriculum for catechetical and modern education in earnest. Initially in the form of “Training Center,” they are developed into schools called “Shi-il School” in the 1920s, and in the 1930s they organized a kind of “Home Schooling Curriculum” called “Jasu College”. The Jasu College compiled a textbook, Home College Lecture, and disseminated advanced knowledge on Chinese religion, Western philosophy, politics, economics, and art to the public. In particular, the “Religion Course” shows a Ch’ŏndogyo perspective, defining the concept of religion based on “Humans are Heaven”. [Conclusions] The conclusions of this study are as follows. First, the modern education system and curriculum of Ch’ŏndogyo during the Japanese occupation gradually systematized from “Training Center” to “Shi-il School” and finally to “Home College.” Second, “Religion Course” in Home College Lecture introduces Chinese religion in the form of a modern philosophy on the one hand, and Korean interpretations of Ch’ŏndogyo on the other.