China's return to religion
npr.org
npr.org
The entire article sounds like a westerner applying their cultural values and their sense of righteousness to China. For example:
>"But I do think that it does create values that are higher than any government's values - ideas of righteousness and justice that people are inspired by and that will inspire them to action if they feel that they are unjustly treated by the government."
(I'm an american born chinese but was brought to China for about 6 years by my mother)
Edit: My grandmother is extremely Buddhist, and both my mother and I are nonreligious. Even so, my mother brought me to the Confucius temple to kowtow and light incense, not because it actually did anything, but because it was a move of ancestral respect and tradition.
The other annoying thing that Western authors on China do is attribute everything to "face" and try to use this point as a huge distinction between Chinese and Westerners.
Trump is working hard on changing that misconception.
Oh, it's also amazingly good science fiction. :)
Many other religions concentrate power in an institution via priests. (Historically even Buddhism and Taoism had power centralized in monks) "Modern" Chinese religion post cultural-revolution seems alnost suspicious in human intervention in beliefs. Nowadays the power is mostly non-secular (assuaging guilt, providing happiness, contentness)
So many people in China actually use religion purely for dealing with uncertainty. Other aspects are handled by culture, like morality and a sense of justice. And they DO have a very long and old culture they are proud of and would most likely resent being described as being sheep that have their sense of value controlled by the government.
Events like the cultural revolution and great leap forward created a lot of cynicism towards "soft" values and many families in China revolve around money more than anything else. I think this is inportant to note as religion, though increasing in activity, isn't some sort of desire to be free from opression but a side effect of more and more families and individuals becoming well off and seeking meaning from other areas. Money becomes a false god for them. (Usually children who grew up in wealthy conditions. Personal gods are difficult to switch once you "grow up")
And this is how religion everywhere works internally IMO. Being able to survive is the most important and religion comes after. In areas where religion is literally a matter of life and death, then it supercedes economics. The government in China isn't some God handing down meaning for your life, it's a begrudingky accepted part of life like Trump and Congress, or Comcast.
People aren't wallowing about with holes in their souls suddenly realizing that Christianity perfectly fits that hole and deciding to topple the existing government. Because religions may displace other religions as sources of belief and happiness but governments are now just sources of money and stability.
The interesting things about religion in China to me. (Which almost all western interpretations miss due to an obsession with folding in politics and promoting own worldviews)
1) How the Chinese react to rediscovering the value of soft values as latter generations become less "selfish" due to abundance. Older generations may have fought over bread, but latter generations are ashamed as being perceived as rude people who spit everywhere.
2) How diverse the coming landscape will be. Will more traditional religions grow in size or if more foreign ones will
3) Whether or not different religions will create soft or hard boundaries. I think the idea of being Chinese due to its long tradition will cause boundaries to be primarily soft. I will say that the non-existence of such boundaries currently cause a lot of irrational mob-like behavior like obsession with LV bags or buying all a supermakets salt due to some news story. Different seeds can cluster different crystals which may increase the life outlook diversity of people in China.
4) How much of life's agency will be ceded to them. Religion used to control everything down to money. In the middle east it controls life and death. In strong conservative areas it controls morality. In more liberal areas it allocates happiness and assuages guilt. As the Chinese realize they no longer have to work themselves to the bone while beating their kids to get a good education to get a good job, soft values are being rediscovered. How much will be indluenced by culture, religion, and individual desire for discovery. China is probably the largest body of people rediscovering soft values in the Internet era with all its connectivity.
5) some other stuff... most of my thinking around religion revolves around me just wishing my parents could be happy. They started off very poor and now own many houses but don't seem to be able to derive happiness from anything else. It's more than enough for both themselves and their kids, but as their kids have more gods than just Money, they are coming to tbe realization that the max value they can provide is limited. Becoming a god of money did not make them gods of life and this increasingly becomes apparent as their children accept new gods and problems emerge that Money cannot solve. (Health related, relationship related, emotion related, etc...)
So I think there is room in China for a few more Gods.
I know people who ordinarily one would consider agnostic, perhaps atheist, but have a kind of ingrained respect for various gods of different things.
Maybe there is something akin to the Easter bunny. Parents and kids know it does not exist, but they both keep up pretention in order to have a fun event (for both parents and children). But in this case it's individual/society.
At the time, I was struck by how many of the rituals and traditions had very pragmatic reasons behind them. For instance, after the 'open-casket' viewing and the 'service' (sorta), the casket and basically every material possession belonging to or associated with the deceased are removed from the house and the casket is carried in procession to the crematorium. I think the 'house stripping' and casket removal are more than just symbolic traditions; they serve the very practical purposes of (a) forcing everyone to confront the fact that this person is dead, and so grieve while surrounded by friends and family and (b) reduce the possibility of close family members (who might actually live in said house) from 'getting stuck in the past' once the whole ordeal is over (living in a house of memories, if that makes sense).
The other part that stands out in my memory was when we went to collect the ashes a day or two after the above. And the bone fragments. Again, the whole family (~40-50 people) is there. In order of closest kin (i.e. eldest son first), each one of you picks up one of the bone fragments and places it in the urn, amongst the ashes. Again, while one could view this as some sort of spiritual ritual, I think the real purpose behind it is, again, to really force you to acknowledge that the person is dead and is never coming back. And so you grieve intensely, but fortunately you do so with your entire family there, all sharing your grief. They really wring it out of you and it's exhausting, but I think it's also very healthy. Although it's difficult at the time, once the entire ordeal is over you're in a much better position to get on with your life.
There's a bunch more stuff, but those are the two that stood out the most for me.
I don't know much about Buddhism. Does it have universal values?
And what about you, boabrain, do you believe there are values higher than the government?
That's why I wonder if the "oh no it's not religion because the government controls religion" arguments are the author jumping to conclusions.
This in fact seems like the patronizing form of Orientalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism In the sense that we are forcing our Western understanding of religion onto our understanding of Chinese "religion", and then drawing conclusions from there.
I question the validity of the author's claim that a Chinese person said: "oh no it's not religion because the government controls religion" because it's unlikely for a Chinese person to openly talk against the government like that, especially with a foreigner, especially with a stranger.
ie. Basically the entire notion of the article is bullshit. (Sorry to left-wing NPR-worshipping American friends, and "Pullitzer prize winning" Beijing-dwelling author trying to sell a book)
Quite often they are looked down upon by more heated Protestants.
I'd reckon this is a fairly common thing.
Almost everyone of my classmates were baptized and later confirmed. Everyone went to weddings and funerals in church. The school semester ending gatherings were held in church, we sung psalms, a priest read the christmas gospel if it was christmas, and something lighter if it was summer. Some would wear a cross necklace. If you asked people if they were christian, most would say "yes".
But noone was a believer. None of my classmates were christians. Almost none of their parents were. Yet to a casual observer, it would have appeared we were all good christian children. And since almost everyone was a member of the church, the official statistics backed it up. From the outside, you would have to poke pretty hard to figure out that no, none of these people are actually christian.
And it seems like the guy in the article isn't poking hard enough. He just sees religious activity, and immediately equates that with religious belief. Why would people go to church if they're not religious?
Why, indeed?
The concepts of belief in most other religions are very different. Nobody in Egypt will tell you that they have trust in Allah to heal them and keep them healthy, just that they live in muslim country, the way "you live in the USA", and that the laws are what matters. Ignoring the religion is borderline acceptable (IF you're male), going against it is like what I imagine being a dissident in China is like. While they're probably not going to kill you at the first sign, society and the state will attack you in small ways, and then build up. It is not out of the question that they'll eventually kill you for it. Nobody, and I mean nobody on this planet believes Allah will protect them from illnesses if they eat halal food. But there is a clear threat, at the forefront of everyone's mind, that is keeping muslims in Egypt islamic. They don't see this as a problem, after all, any other state is no different, right ?
My impression is that the sentiment is more typically one of concern and/or alarm. It's a concern that these "cultural" Christians are deceiving themselves about following Jesus, and are therefore at significant risk of not having eternal life.
I think what many of these evangelicals find particularly vexing is that they don't know how to reach out to these "cultural" Christians without so offending them as to make them permanently unreceptive to the discussion.
I've wondered sometimes if a big reason adherents of a particular religion feel threatened by encountering those of other religions, is that forces them to confront their own doubts about their own religion's veracity. If one's sense of eternal wellbeing is hinged on having chosen correctly, I would imagine that's a terrifying thought.
But I think there's also in a more positive sense that the government recognizes that there is a lack of values in society - that people don't believe in anything and there's a great uncertainty in society, a national malaise. And they also recognize that most people really don't believe in communism anymore. So they look at the traditional faiths as a way of instilling some kind of morality, basic principles for good living and that sort of thing.
- as opposed to supernatural beliefs. The discussion thread should likewise focus on the social role that religion fulfills in terms of culture and public morality, because that was the emphasis of the article. Commentators are too easily jumping to the lightning rod of the validity of religious claims, ignoring other aspects that organized religion plays.
Perhaps there's something I misunderstand. AFAIK Confucianism isn't a religion worshiping a supernatural being as much as a philosophy and culture which includes ancestor worship. But my understanding, based on a little reading and study of my own, is that it played a very similar role to religion in Western countries.
Generally speaking, it was the 'religion' of China from around 250 BCE until at least 1911.
China, from what I understand, has traditionally held that the Chinese people and state are superior to everyone else, and so deserve a superior status in the world.
It's easy to see why the CCP is against religion - the party is rooted with the cult of Mao, which is a de-facto religion. And like most other religions it does not tolerate the existence of competing religions.
Yea, I see what you are saying. But I also get the impression they think they are going to regain their status as "the center of the world"
>It's easy to see why the CCP is against religion - the party is rooted with the cult of Mao, which is a de-facto religion. And like most other religions it does not tolerate the existence of competing religions.
Most definitely.
I didn't know much about this till recently.
I thought the official communist stance of atheism helped them grow in multiples not possible for dogmatic societies.
Google's definition:
dogma: (noun) a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true
This isn't "wordsmithing", it's a dictionary-perfect example of what dogma is. I think a lot of folks recoil at the idea of atheist dogma because of the history of Christianity-as-law in Europe, especially medieval Europe. But this shouldn't be taken to mean that positive religious beliefs are the only possible beliefs that can be held as dogma.
In China there is not freedom, and you are forced to believe on it whenever you want it or not. This is dogma.
Not all believers in God believe in Concepcion without sperm. This only applies to puritan Christians that believe in literal interpretation of the Bible. Not all believers in God believe in the Bible, not all that believe in the Bible believe in its literal interpretation, in fact hundreds of millions of people do not.
And science tells us that is completely possible to have conception without sperm. There are animals that could reproduce either asexually or sexually and in the next 20-30 years it will be routine for us. We have already mixed the DNA of three parents.
Most of the people that made great contributions to empiricism knowledge of the world were in fact Christians. This is a false dilemma.