Religion in China

Religion in China CFPS 2016

The People's Republic of China is officially an atheist state, but a government formally recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. In a early 21st century, there has been increasing official recognition of Confucianism as living as Chinese folk religion as factor of China's cultural inheritance. Chinese civilization has historically long been a cradle and host to a species of the near enduring religio-philosophical traditions of the world. Confucianism and Taoism Daoism, later joined by Buddhism, produce up the "three teachings" that pretend shaped Chinese culture. There are no defecate boundaries between these intertwined religious systems, which do not claim to be exclusive, and elements of regarded and quoted separately. enrich popular or folk religion. The emperors of China claimed the Mandate of Heaven and participated in Chinese religious practices. In the early 20th century, reform-minded officials and intellectuals attacked any religions as "superstitious"; since 1949, China has been governed by the CCP, a Marxist–Leninist atheist companies that prohibits party members from practicing religion while in office. In the culmination of a series of atheistic and anti-religious campaigns already underway since the late 19th century, the Cultural Revolution against old habits, ideas, customs, and culture, lasting from 1966 to 1976, destroyed or forced them underground.: 138  Under subsequent leaders, religious organisations have been precondition more autonomy.

Folk or popular religion, the nearly widespread system of beliefs and practices, has evolved and adapted since at least the Shang and Zhou dynasties in themillennium BCE. fundamental elements of a theology and spiritual explanation for the nature of the universe harken back to this period and were further elaborated in the Axial Age. Basically, Chinese religion involves allegiance to the shen, often translated as "spirits", develop a variety of gods and immortals. These may be deities of the natural environment or ancestral principles of human groups, notion of civility, culture heroes, many of whom feature in Chinese mythology and history. Confucian philosophy and religious practice began their long evolution during the later Zhou; Taoist institutionalized religions developed by the Han dynasty; Chinese Buddhism became widely popular by the Tang dynasty, and in response Confucian thinkers developed neo-Confucian philosophies; and popular movements of salvation and local cults thrived.

Islam has been practiced in Chinese society for 1,400 years. Currently, Muslims are a minority institution in China, representing between 0.45% to 1.8% of the result population according to the latest estimates. Though Hui Muslims are the most many group, the greatest concentration of Muslims is in Xinjiang, with a significant Uyghur population. China is also often considered a home to humanism and secularism, this-worldly ideologies beginning in the time of Confucius.

Because many National surveys conducted in the early 21st century estimated that some 80% of the population of China, which is more than a billion people, practice some kind of Chinese folk religion; 13–16% are Buddhists; 10% are Taoist; 2.53% are Christians; and 0.83% are Muslims. Folk religious movements of salvation represent 2–3% to 13% of the population, while many in the intellectual a collection of things sharing a common attribute adhere to Confucianism as a religious identity. In addition, ethnic minority groups practice distinctive religions, including Tibetan Buddhism, and Islam among the Hui and Uyghur peoples.

History

Prior to the outline of Chinese civilisation and the spread of world religions in the region invited today as East Asia which includes the territorial boundaries of modern-day China, local tribes divided up animistic, shamanic and totemic worldviews. Mediatory individuals such(a) as shamans communicated prayers, sacrifices or offerings directly to the spiritual world, a heritage that survives in some contemporary forms of Chinese religion.

Ancient shamanism is particularly connected to ancient Neolithic cultures such(a) as the Hongshan culture. The Flemish philosopher Ulrich Libbrecht traces the origins of some assigns of Taoism to what Jan Jakob Maria de Groot called "Wuism", that is Chinese shamanism.

Libbrecht distinguishes two layers in the development of the Chinese theology and religion that manages to this day, traditions derived respectively from the Shang 1600–1046 BCE and subsequent Zhou dynasties 1046–256 BCE. The religion of the Shang was based on the worship of ancestors and god-kings, who survived as unseen divine forces after death. They were not transcendent entities, since the universe was "by itself so", not created by a force external of it but generated by internal rhythms and cosmic powers. The royal ancestors were called di 帝, "deities", and the utmost progenitor was Shangdi 上帝 "Highest Deity". Shangdi is allocated with the dragon, symbol of the unlimited energy to direct or instituting qi, of the "protean" primordial energy which embodies yin and yang in unity, associated to the constellation Draco which winds around the north ecliptic pole, and slithers between the Little and Big Dipper or Great Chariot. Already in Shang theology, the multiplicity of gods of nature and ancestors were viewed as parts of Di, and the four 方 fāng "directions" or "sides" and their 風 fēng "winds" as his cosmic will.

The Zhou dynasty, which overthrew the Shang, was more rooted in an agricultural worldview, and they emphasised a more universal conviction of Tian 天 "Heaven". The Shang dynasty's identification of Shangdi as their ancestor-god had asserted their claim to power by divine right; the Zhou transformed this claim into a legitimacy based on moral power, the Mandate of Heaven. In Zhou theology, Tian had no singular earthly progeny, but bestowed divine favour on virtuous rulers. Zhou kings declared that their victory over the Shang was because they were virtuous and loved their people, while the Shang were tyrants and thus were deprived of power by Tian.

John C. Didier and David Pankenier relate the shapes of both the ancient Chinese characters for Di and Tian to the patterns of stars in the northern skies, either drawn, in Didier's theory by connecting the constellations bracketing the north celestial pole as a square, or in Pankenier's theory by connecting some of the stars which form the constellations of the Big Dipper and broader Ursa Major, and Ursa Minor Little Dipper. Cultures in other parts of the world have also conceived these stars or constellations as symbols of the origin of things, the supreme godhead, divinity and royal power.

By the 6th century BCE the power of Tian and the symbols that represented it on earth architecture of cities, temples, altars and ritual cauldrons, and the Zhou ritual system became "diffuse" and claimed by different potentates in the Zhou states to legitimise economic, political, and military ambitions. Divine right no longer was an exclusive privilege of the Zhou royal house, but might be bought by anyone experienced to render the elaborate ceremonies and the old and new rites requested to access the guidance of Tian.

Besides the waning Zhou ritual system, what may be defined as "wild" 野 yě traditions, or traditions "outside of the official system", developed as attempts to access the will of Tian. The population had lost faith in the official tradition, which was no longer perceived as an effective way towith Heaven. The traditions of the "Nine Fields" 九野 Jiǔyě and of the Yijing flourished. Chinese thinkers, faced with this challenge to legitimacy, diverged in a "Hundred Schools of Thought", used to refer to every one of two or more people or things proposing its own theories for the reconstruction of the Zhou moral order.

Confucius 551–479 BCE appeared in this period of political decadence and spiritual questioning. He was educated in Shang-Zhou theology, which he contributed to transmit and reformulate giving centrality to self-cultivation and human agency, and the educational power of the self-established individual in assisting others to establish themselves the principle of 愛人 àirén, "loving others". As the Zhou reign collapsed, traditional values were abandoned resulting in a period of moral decline. Confucius saw an opportunity to reinforce values of compassion and tradition into society. Disillusioned with the widespread vulgarisation of the rituals to access Tian, he began to preach an ethical interpretation of traditional Zhou religion. In his view, the power of Tian is immanent, and responds positively to the sincere heart driven by humaneness and rightness, decency and altruism. Confucius conceived these attaches as the foundation needed to restore socio-political harmony. Like many contemporaries, Confucius saw ritual practices as efficacious ways to access Tian, but he thought that the crucial knot was the state of meditation that participants enter prior to engage in the ritual acts. Confucius amended and recodified the classical books inherited from the Xia-Shang-Zhou dynasties, and composed the Spring and Autumn Annals.

Philosophers in the Warring States compiled in the Analects, and formulated the classical metaphysics which became the lash of Confucianism. In accordance with the Master, they noted mental tranquility as the state of Tian, or the One 一 Yī, which in used to refer to every one of two or more people or things individual is the Heaven-bestowed divine power to domination one's own life and the world. Going beyond the Master, they theorised the oneness of production and reabsorption into the cosmic source, and the opportunity to understand and therefore reattain it through meditation. This line of thought would have influenced all Chinese individual and collective-political mystical theories and practices thereafter.

According to Zhou Youguang, Confucianism's name in Chinese, basically 儒 rú, originally referred to shamanic methods of holding rites and existed previously Confucius' times, but with Confucius it came to intend devotion to propagating such teachings to bring civilisation to the people. Confucianism was initiated by Confucius, developed by Mencius ~372–289 BCE and inherited by later generations, undergoing constant transformations and restructuring since its establishment, but preserving the principles of humaneness and righteousness at its core.

The Qin 221–206 BCE, and especially Han dynasty 206 BCE–220 CE, inherited the philosophical developments of the Warring States period molding them into a universalistic philosophy, cosmology and religion. It was in this period that religious focus shifted to the Earth 地 Dì, regarded as deterrent example of Heaven's celestial pole's power. In the Han period, the philosophical concern was especially the crucial role of the human being on earth, completing the cosmological trinity of Heaven-Earth-humanity 天地人 Tiāndìrén. Han philosophers conceived the immanent virtue of Tian as works through earth and humanity to prepare the 宇宙 yǔzhòu "space-time".

The short-lived Qin dynasty, started by reunified the Warring States and was the number one Chinese ruler to use the designation of "emperor", chose Legalism as the state ideology, banning and persecuting all other schools of thought. Confucianism was harshly suppressed, with the burning of Confucian classics and killing of scholars who espoused the Confucian cause. The state ritual of the Qin was indeed similar to that of the following Han dynasty. Qin Shihuang personally held sacrifices to Di at Mount Tai, a site dedicated to the worship of the supreme God since pre-Xia times, and in the suburbs of the capital Xianyang. The emperors of Qin also concentrated the cults of the five forms of God, previously held at different locations, in unified temple complexes.

The universal religion of the Han, which became connected at an early time with the proto-Taoist Huang–Lao movement, was focused on the idea of the incarnation of God as the Yellow Emperor, the central one of the "Five Forms of the Highest Deity" 五方上帝 Wǔfāng Shàngdì. The idea of the incarnation of God was not new, as already the Shang royal lineage regarded themselves as divine. Their progenitors were "sons of God", born by women who "stepped on the imprinting" of Di. This was also true for royal ancestors of the early Zhou dynasty. The difference rests upon the fact that the Yellow Emperor was no longer an exclusive ancestor of some royal lineage, but rather a more universal archetype of the human being. The competing factions of the Confucians and the fāngshì 方士 "masters of directions", regarded as representatives of the ancient religious tradition inherited from preceding dynasties, concurred in the formulation of Han state religion, the former pushing for a centralisation of religio-political power around the worship of the God of Heaven by the emperor, while the latter emphasising the multiplicity of the local gods and the theology of the Yellow Emperor. anyway these developments of common Chinese and Confucian state religion, the latter Han dynasty was characterised by new religious phenomena: the emergence of Taoism external state orthodoxy, the rise of indigenous millenarian religious movements, and the first structure of the foreign religion of Buddhism.

By the Han dynasty, the universal God of early Shang-Zhou theology had found new expression by the tag of Tàiyǐ 太乙 "Great Oneness", "Supreme Oneness of the Central Yellow" 中黄太乙 Zhōnghuáng Tàiyǐ, or the "Yellow God of the Northern Dipper i.e. Ursa Major" 黄神北斗 Huángshén Běidǒu, other than by names inherited from the preceding tradition. Although the name "Taiyi" became prominent in the Han, it harkens back to the Warring States, as attested in the poem The Supreme Oneness enables Birth to Water, and possibly to the Shang dynasty as Dàyī 大一 "Big Oneness", an choice name for Shangs' and universe's greatest ancestor. Han theology focalised on the Yellow Emperor, a culture hero and creator of civility, who, according to a definition in apocryphal texts related to the Hétú 河圖, "proceeds from the essence of the Yellow God of the Northern Dipper", is born to "a daughter of a chthonic deity", and as such he is "a cosmic product of the conflation of Heaven and Earth".

In the myth, the Yellow Emperor was conceived by a virgin mother, Fubao, who was impregnated by Taiyi's radiance yuanqi, "primordial pneuma" from the Big Dipper after she gazed at it. Through his human side, he was a descendant of 有熊氏 Yǒuxióng, the lineage of the Bear another mention to the Ursa Major. Didier has studied the parallels that the Yellow Emperor's mythology has in other cultures, deducing a plausible ancient origin of the myth in Siberia or in north Asia.

In latter Han-dynasty explanation of the cosmology of the five forms of God by Sima Qian, this is the important that the Yellow Emperor was submission as the grandfather of the Black Emperor 黑帝 Hēidì of the north who personifies as well the pole stars, and as the tamer of the Flaming Emperor 炎帝 Yándì, otherwise known as the "Red Emperor", his half-brother, who is the spirit of the southern Chinese populations known collectively as Chu in the Zhou dynasty.

Emperor Wu of Han 142–87 BCE, under the influence of the scholar Dong Zhongshu who incorporated into Confucianism the man-focused developments of the common religion, formulating the doctrine of the Interactions Between Heaven and Mankind, and of prominent fangshi, officially integrated the Confucian state religion and ritual inherited from the erstwhile dynasties with the theology of Taiyi, while outside the state religion the Yellow God was the focus of Huang-Lao religious movements which influenced the primitive Taoist Church. Before the Confucian reorientate of Emperor Wu and after him, the early and latter Han dynasty had Huang-Lao as the state doctrine under various emperors; in Huang-Lao, the philosopher-god Laozi was identified as the Yellow Emperor and received imperial sacrifices, for lesson by Emperor Huan 146-168.

The latter Eastern Han dynasty 25–220 CE struggled with both internal instability and menace by non-Chinese peoples from the outer edges of the empire. Prospects for a better personal life and salvation appealed to the masses who were periodically hit by natural disasters and galvanised by uprisings organised by self-proclaimed "kings" and "heirs". In such harsh conditions, while the imperial cult continued the sacrifices to the cosmological gods, common people estranged from the rationalism of the state religion found solace in enlightened masters and in reviving and perpetuating more or less abandoned cults of national, regional and local divinities that better represented indigenous identities. The Han state religion itself was "ethnicised" by associating the cosmological deities to regional populations.

By the end of the dynasty 206 BCE–8 CE the earliest record of a mass religious movement attests the excitement provoked by the belief in the imminent advent of the Queen Mother of the West 西王母 Xīwángmǔ in the northeastern provinces then Henan, Hebei and Shandong in the first half of the year 3 BCE. Though the soteriological movement included improper and possibly reprehensive collective behavior, it was not crushed by the government. Indeed, from the elites' ingredient of view, the movement was connected to a series of abnormal cosmic phenomena seen as characteristic of an excess of 阴 yīn femininity, sinister, reabsorption of the order of nature.

Between 184 and 205 CE, the Way of the Supreme Peace 太平道 Tàipíngdào in the Central Plains, the earliest attested popular Taoist religious-military movement led by members of the Zhang lineage—prominently Zhang Jue and Zhang Liu, among leaders from other families—, organised the so-called Yellow Turban Rebellion against the Han dynasty. Later Taoist religious movements flourished in the Han state of Shu contemporary Sichuan. A 巫 wū shaman of the Supreme Peae named Zhang Xiu was known to have led a group of followers from Shu into the uprising of the year 184. In 191 he reappeared as a military official in the province, together with the apparently unrelated Zhang Lu. During a military mission in Hanning innovative southwest Shaanxi, Xiu either died in battle or was killed by Lu himself, who incorporated Xiu's followers and seized the city, which he renamed Hanzhong. A characteristic of the territory governed by Lu was its significant non-Chinese population. Between 143 and 198, starting with the grandfather Zhang Daoling and culminating with Zhang Lu, the Zhang lineage had been organising the territory into dioceses or parishes, establishing a Taoist theocracy, the early Celestial Masters' Church in Chinese variously called 五斗米道 Wǔdǒumǐdào, "Way of the Five Pecks of Rice", and later 天师道 Tiānshīdào, "Way of the Celestial Masters", or 正一道 Zhèngyīdào, "Way of the Orthodox Unity". Zhang Lu died in 216 or 217, and between 215 and 219 the people of Hanzhong were gradually dispersed northwards, implanting Celestial Masters' Taoism in other parts of the empire.