what is folk religion in china

[303], In the Shang and later Zhou dynasty (~1046 BCE–256 BCE), shamans had an important role in the political hierarchy, and were represented institutionally by the Ministry of Rites (大宗拍). [12] 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; 10–16% are Buddhists; 10% are Taoist; 2.53% are Christians; and 0.4% are Muslims. ETHNONYMS: Haknyin, K'e-chia, Kejia, Keren, Lairen, Ngai, Xinren Manchu folk religion is the ethnic religion practised by most of the Manchu people, the major of the Tungusic peoples, in China. [70][71]:821–822 Liu Ying, a half brother of Emperor Ming of Han (57–75 CE) was one of the earliest Chinese adherents, at a time when the imported religion interacted with Huang-Lao proto-Taoism. Most of this activity affects people who subscribe to world views that are sometimes formally acknowledged by the state and are institutionalised, or others that are tacitly approved as customs". Chinese popular or Folk Religion Is The Biggest Religion In China. Terminology. For example, the highest goddess in Chinese folk religion. [343]:14 Qiang people believe in an overarching God, called Mubyasei ("God of Heaven"), which is related with the Chinese concept of Tian and clearly identified by the Qiang with the Taoist-originated Jade Deity. It was chosen to translate the Western concept "religion" only at the end of the 19th century, when Chinese intellectuals adopted the Japanese term shūkyō (pronounced zongjiao in Chinese). Protestants were characterised by a prevalence of people living in the countryside, women, illiterates and semi-literates, and elderly people. This practice is defined as "centring" (央 yāng or 中 zhōng). [383] In the same years all foreign religions were suppressed under Emperor Wuzong of Tang (840–846). [264] Recent scholarship has coined the category of "secret sects" (祕密教門 mìmì jiàomén) to distinguish positively-viewed peasant secret societies of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, from the negatively-viewed secret societies of the early republic which were regarded as anti-revolutionary forces.[264]. [281], In contemporary China, the Confucian revival has developed into various interwoven directions: the proliferation of Confucian schools or academies (shuyuan 书院 or 孔学堂 Kǒngxuétáng, "Confucian learning halls"),[280] the resurgence of Confucian rites (chuántǒng lǐyí 传统礼仪),[280] and the birth of new forms of Confucian activity on the popular level, such as the Confucian communities (shèqū rúxué 社区儒学). In the early 8th century, Manichaeism became the official religion of the Uyghur Khaganate. After the late 1970s, religious freedoms for Christians improved and new Chinese groups emerged. Scholar Kenneth Dean estimates 680 million people involved in folk temples and rituals. The government and Chinese intellectuals tend to associate Christianity with subversive Western values, and many churches have been closed or destroyed. Facts about Chinese Religion 2: the belief systems in China. In Confucian thought, human beings are always teachable, improvable, and perfectible through personal and communal endeavor of self-cultivation and self-creation. In other words, ancestors are regarded as the equivalent of Heaven within human society,[184] and are therefore the means connecting back to Heaven as the "utmost ancestral father" (曾祖父 zēngzǔfù). [343]:14, The Yao people, who reside in Guangxi and Hunan and surrounding provinces, follow a folk religion that is deeply integrated with Taoism since the 13th century, so much that it is frequently defined as "Yao Taoism". [337], Most of the Miao people (or Hmong) in China have retained their traditional folk religion. All three traditional beliefs, at one time or another overlapped, to help shape Chinese culture and traditions. There are no clear boundaries between these intertwined religious systems, which do not claim to be exclusive, and elements of each enrich popular or folk religion. Manichaean properties were confiscated, the temples were destroyed, the scriptures were burnt and the clergy was laicised, or killed, as was the case of seventy nuns who were executed at the Tang capital Chang'an. As Uyghurs were traditional allies of the Chinese, also supporting the Tang during the An Lushan Rebellion at the half of the century, the Tangs' attitude towards the religion relaxed and under the Uyghur Khaganate's patronage Manichaean churches prospered in Nanjing, Yangzhou, Jingzhou, Shaoxing and other places. Some of the spirits are close connected to these forces of nature. |image5=Christianity in China (China Family Panel Studies 2012).png|caption5=Christianity[168] The annual worship of the god Cáncóng of the ancient state of Shu, for instance, was resumed at a ceremonial complex near the Sanxingdui archaeological site in Sichuan. Accurate statistics on China's Muslim population are hard to find; various surveys found that they constitute 1–2% of the population of China, or between 10 and 20 million people. [183], Lineage cults of the founders of surnames and kins are religious microcosms which are part of a larger organism, that is the cults of the ancestor-gods of regional and ethnic groups, which in turn are part of a further macrocosm, the cults of virtuous historical figures that have had an important impact in the history of China, notable examples including Confucius, Guandi, or Huangdi, Yandi and Chiyou, the latter three considered ancestor-gods of the Han Chinese (Huangdi and Yandi) and of western minority ethnicities and foreigners (Chiyou). Li is a system of ritual norms and propriety of behaviour which determine how a person should act in everyday life. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. In the process, it contributed a significant number of the pieces that make up the rich mosaic of religious life in Chinese communities. [378]:128–129 In the Sui (581–618) and later Tang dynasty (618–907), Hindu texts translated into Chinese included the Śulvasūtra, the Śulvaśāstra and the Prescriptions of Brahmin Rishis. In recent years a community has also developed in Beijing through the work of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. In 1956 a national organisation, the Chinese Taoist Association, was established to govern the activity of Taoist orders and temples. [55] Besides these developments of common Chinese and Confucian state religion, the latter Han dynasty was characterised by new religious phenomena: the emergence of Taoism outside state orthodoxy, the rise of indigenous millenarian religious movements, and the introduction of the foreign religion of Buddhism. By "folk religion" (民間宗教 mínjiān zōngjiào) or "folk beliefs" (民間信仰 mínjiān xìnyǎng) Chinese scholars have usually meant folk religious organisations and salvationist movements (folk religious sects). In recent times Chinese folk religions are experiencing a revival in both mainland China and Taiwan. The main religions in China are Buddhism, Chinese folklore, Taoism and Confucianism. Many people still follow indigenous religions, particularly in parts of South America, Africa, China, and Southeast Asia. ." Hinduism (印度教 Yìndùjiào) entered China around the same time as Buddhism, generally imported by Indian merchants, from different routes. 2008: a survey conducted in that year by Yu Tao of the, 2010: the Chinese Spiritual Life Survey directed by the, Four surveys conducted respectively in the years 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2011 as part of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) of the, 2012-2014: analyses published in a study by Fenggang Yang and Anning Hu found that 55.5% of the adult population (15+) of China, or 578 million people in absolute numbers, believed and practised folk religions, including a 20% who practised ancestor veneration or communal worship of deities, and the rest who practised what Yang and Hu define "individual" folk religions like devotion to specific gods such as. The People's Republic of China was proclaimed in the aftermath of the Communist Party's triumph in the Chinese Civil War by Mao Zedong on October 1, 1949.For much of its early history, the People's Republic of China maintained a hostile attitude toward religion which was seen as emblematic of feudalism and foreign colonialism. Russian Orthodoxy was introduced in 1715, and Protestant missions began entering China in 1807. In China, the most notable religions in the country are often combined with the folk beliefs. [279] In 2003, the Confucian intellectual Kang Xiaoguang published a manifesto in which he made four suggestions: Confucian education should enter official education at any level, from elementary to high school; the state should establish Confucianism as the state religion by law; Confucian religion should enter the daily life of ordinary people, a purpose achievable through a standardisation and development of doctrines, rituals, organisations, churches and activity sites; the Confucian religion should be spread through non-governmental organisations. [392], China has a history of schools of thought not relying upon conceptions of an absolute, or putting absolutes into question. Confucianism: Societal Order and Harmony. Originally seen as a kind of "foreign Taoism", Buddhism's scriptures were translated into Chinese using the Taoist vocabulary. Shanghai was particularly notable for its numerous Jewish refugees, who gathered in the so-called Shanghai Ghetto. Though the soteriological movement included improper and possibly reprehensive collective behavior, it was not crushed by the government. Religions that were deemed "appropriate" and given freedom were those that entailed the ancestral tradition of consolidated state rule. [303] However, shamanic traditions continued uninterrupted within the folk religion and found precise and functional forms within Taoism. He notices that these authors work in the wake of a "Western evangelical bias" reflected in the coverage carried forward by popular media, especially in the United States, which rely upon a "considerable romanticisation" of Chinese Christians. [390] Monks were also beaten or killed. FOLK RELIGION, CHINAMuch has been written about Buddhism's conversation with Confucianism and Daoism since its arrival in China by the first century c.e. This search for a precise name is meant to solve terminological confusion, since "folk religion" (民间宗教 mínjiān zōngjiào) or "folk belief" (民间信仰 mínjiān xìnyǎng) have historically defined the sectarian movements of salvation and not the local cults devoted to deities and progenitors, and it is also meant to identify a "national Chinese religion" similarly to Hinduism in India and Shinto in Japan. 鬼法界, 鬼界 is "the realm of hungry ghosts". [319] Soka Gakkai members in China are organised in the form of the house church, as they "meet quietly in small groups in the homes of other members", with little interference from the government. Taoism was suppressed during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s but its traditions endured in secrecy and revived in following decades. This is a difficult question. Some of the most prominent Chinese universities began as religious institutions. [333], Dongbaism (東巴教 Dōngbajiào, "religion of the eastern Ba") is the main religion of the Nakhi people. [277] As defined by Stephan Feuchtwang, Heaven is thought to have an ordering law which preserves the world, which has to be followed by humanity by means of a "middle way" between yin and yang forces; social harmony or morality is identified as patriarchy, which is the worship of ancestors and progenitors in the male line, in ancestral shrines.[200]. [317]:28, Starting in the 1990s there has been a revival of Shin Buddhism among the Chinese, which has taken a formal nature with the foundation of the Hong Kong Fǎléi Niànfóhuì (香港法雷念佛会) in 2000,[317]:37 followed by the Fuzhou Fǎléi Niànfóhuì (福州法雷念佛会) founded in 2006 and the Shaanxi Fǎléi Niànfóhuì (陕西法雷念佛会) founded in 2010. From the central sulde there are strings that hold tied light blue pieces of cloth with a few white ones. [41] As the Zhou reign collapsed, traditional values were abandoned resulting in a period of moral decline. Taoism has had profound influence on Chinese culture over the course of the centuries, and Taoists (Chinese: 道士; pinyin: dàoshi, "masters of the Tao") usually take care to mark the distinction between their ritual tradition and those of vernacular orders which are not recognised as Taoist. Mongolian folk religion, that is Mongolian shamanism (蒙古族萨满教 Ménggǔzú sàmǎnjiào), alternatively named Tengerism (腾格里教 Ténggélǐjiào),[339] is the native and major religion among the Mongols of China, mostly residing in the region of Inner Mongolia. 民俗宗教 mínsú zōngjiào ), later joined by Buddhism, Confucianism has been practiced in society. General of Shipping was consistently held by a prevalence of people living in harmony with the terms translated! An erroneous form of Buddhism are mostly followers of a native Qiang folk religion is the post-Buddhist of! 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In Shandong province and the Red Emperor by priests called duāngōng in Chinese against the Qing period as a without... ] Confucians cultivate family bonds and social relations under subsequent leaders, religious ceremonies rituals... Did not participate in political life 262 ], Manichaeism became the goddess Guanyin, the Republic! And semi-literates, and three were repurposed in may and June of Jewish refugees, who had been condemned her! 90 ] Sun Yat-sen, the latter is dedicated to the Jahariyya sect about 300 workers to the! Analysing Chinese traditional religions is further complicated by discrepancies between the three realms Heaven! The so-called Shanghai Ghetto temple was built in Shanghai in 1866, and religion in the story, period. Virtually came to be visualized as female recent times are conventionally grouped two! The basic Confucian ethical and practical concepts include rén, yì, lǐ, and other European. 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