Page 19 - 01/2022 PULSE@FASS e-Bulletin

FACULTY OPINION PIECE Issue no. 1 | 2022
FACULTY OPINION PIECE

Chinese Religiosity Today keep these traditional ways of life alive outside of
China. The overseas Chinese communities, especially
Together, these disparate philosophical and religious those in Southeast Asia, played a key part in preserving
traditions work to meet the ‘this-worldly’ and ‘other- the precepts, values, ceremonies, and rituals of what is
worldly’ concerns of Chinese civilization. The commonly understood as Chinese religiosity.
Confucian focus is to sustain an ethical social-political
order. Daoists and others on the other hand serve as As we enter the second decade of the 21st century,
conduits to connect with the transcendental planes. there is growing admission on the part of mainland
leaders and scholars that modern China’s treatment of
These complementary roles can also be understood as its premodern past may have been an overreaction. A
a balancing act to manage the reason and sense, the rebalancing is underway, as religiosity regains a new
earthly and the heavenly, dialectic. When the milieu lease of life in the Chinese milieu, with temples and
becomes overly earthly and materialistic, the Daoist monasteries, shrines and pagodas, once more dotting
spiritual sensibilities provide a counterbalance. the landscape. The rehabilitation process remains
Conversely, the Confucian here-and-now ethos serves tentative and its final outcome unclear. Yet one thing is
to check against any obsessive preoccupation with the certain: China’s religious personality has been
hereafter. irreversibly transformed, for better or worse, by its
traumatic encounter with modernity and radical
This polytheistic belief system, peculiar to the Chinese secularism.
world, suffered a dismal fate during the 20th century. It
was blamed for Imperial China’s relative backwardness Conclusion
vis-à-vis the modern West. In the rush to embrace
modernity, the Chinese chose to discard their Chinese religion is an amalgamation of diverse
traditional religions in favour of science and Marxism. philosophical and religious traditions. Drawing from
As a result, the mainland turned wholly secularised, both native and foreign ancient wisdom, it has evolved
stripped of any traces and remnants of its sacred over time into an intricate set of belief systems that the
heritages. Chinese turn to in order to cope with the vicissitudes of
life, and with the ‘this-worldly’ as well as the ‘other-
The past century was by all accounts a dark era in the worldly’ dimension. Like most of the world religions,
long history of Sinic civilization. This period of self- Chinese religiosity suffered yet survived the tumultuous
inflicted harm culminated in the cultural revolution of 20th century. Across the mainland, there is a new
the 1960s, when modern China violently renounced its spring as seeds of spirituality sprout into life, marking
ancient philosophical and religious heritages. It fell the beginning of a new chapter in the long and
upon refugees, fleeing from the turmoil at home, to arduous history of Chinese religions.

19 | Pulse @ FASS