HE IMPACT OF THE WEST ON THE UNDERSTANDING OF CHINESE RELIGION
西方影響對中華教的理解
Jordan Paper (University of Victoria and York University)
and Li Chuang 莊麗 (University of Victoria)、、
This version is intended for oral presentation at the TARS conference in Taipei, mid-May, 2011.
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That same year, two articles were published by Chen Jingguo 陳進國, who is an associate research fellow at the Institute for World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 中国社会科学院世界宗教研究所副研究员and deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary Religions 当代宗教研究所副主任, which used, in our opinion, the most appropriate Chinese language term, zhonghua jiao, for “Chinese Religion” in two electronic publications. In 2010, Chen use zhonghua jiao in an article published in Chinese Ethnic News. Accordingly, it seems likely, that the stage is being set for the recognition of Chinese Religion on the Mainland.。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。
We have read the various articles you attached and also looked at some of the criticisms of your work available on the internet. I am so pleased with what you are trying to do. Your work, and that of your colleagues, has the potential to be as important in the development of contemporary Chinese civilization as the May 4th movement was a century ago. This is a crucial time in the resurgence of Chinese culture, and it is extremely important to get it right. There may not be another chance for another century. I am personally gratified, as what you are doing is what I was working towards and hoping would come about for exactly forty years.
There are some differences in our approaches, and I think this is because Chinese scholars of Chinese religion are more influenced by Western thought than are Western scholars of religion. Let me explain what I mean. Although I spent my first graduate year at the Divinity School (1960-61) of the University of Chicago, at that time (1960-61) it was virtually necessary to be a Christian to be comfortable there. I did very well in Church History, etc., but was not interested to go into Christian theology in depth, etc. I then began intensive study of Chinese literary language, history and thought. After two years, I went to the University of Wisconsin for their new program in Buddhist Studies. There I found the same problem from the standpoint of Buddhism, and after a year switched to a beginning program in Chinese language and literature. At that time, religious studies as a separate academic discipline from theology had not yet begun.
After teaching Chinese and Japanese intellectual history for five years at Indiana State University, I was hired in 1972 to teach East Asian religion in the newly forming religious studies program at the York University, where I remained until I retired in 2004. I quickly realized that, based on my experience of living in Taiwan from 1965-66 and 1973-74, almost everything written about Chinese religion was wrong. This was because almost everyone then in religious studies had a theological or western philosophical education, and was taking Christianity as a model for studying religion. Instead, I took Chinese religion as the norm and, of course, came up with a radically different understanding.
Fortunately, I was not alone, as Larry Thompson was taking the same position. His book, Chinese Religion (either the 1st or the last, 5th edition) [note the title] and my later book, The Spirits Are Drunk: Comparative Approaches to Chinese Religion, slowly changed the way Chinese religion is understood by scholars of Chinese religion. By now, virtually all such scholars, except those exclusively in the study of Chinese Buddhism or Daoism, understand Chinese religion in the singular. Hence, it is not Western scholars who do not generally have this understanding but scholars in China and Taiwan. I have attached a very recent review of an anthology of an article, highlighting two sentences, which refer to Thompson, Overmeyer and myself, as the pioneers in the study of the field for this reason. I only do so in order that you can see that my views are now central on this issue.
There seem to be, I am not certain, two differences in our approaches. First, your focus is on institutions. This is a Christian approach to Chinese religion, as Christianity is the most institutionalized of all religious traditions. But most religions in the world are but weakly institutional, and many, such as Chinese Religion, are not institutionalized at all. Secondly, there seem to be a use of Western dictionary definitions of religion. Virtually all of us in the comparative study of religion considers these definitions to be useless and misleading, as only in Christianity in belief a meaningful concept. This is because, due to the influence of Constantine back in the 4th century, Christianity became a creedal religion. The creed is so illogical (Tertullian [an early Church Father] :” I believe because it is absurd.”) belief became central in Christianity, and for many centuries, Christians killed each other over minuscule differences in belief statements. As an anthropologist of religion, I would assume that you understand that only behavior indicates religious orientation.
Chinese thinking has been dominated by the West for over a century. But China is now becoming strong from an global perspective and properly asserting itself both within and without China. Why should the Christian missionary agenda determine how Chinese think about their own religion? Why should not religion in China be understood from a Chinese perspective? After all, it is not the West that should tell China how to understand itself; it should be China that tells the West how China is to be understood.
Chinese Religion, I think, can best be understood from the traditional Chinese metaphor of the “root and branch.” Chinese Religion is the root: it can be traced back to the neolithic period, and the central features of the singular, central ritual have remained unchanged to the present day. Although Buddhism and the various Daoist churches started as independent institutions, over time, Buddhism became sinicized and both became branches (adjuncts) of normative Chinese Religion. In my work on the Chinese Jews, the same process occurred. Over time, the Chinese Jews adopted the central rituals of Chinese Religion, which are not inimical to Judaism, while keeping their own Mizrahi (Persian) Jewish practices. Thus, they became simultaneously practitioners of both Judaism and Chinese Religion. Matteo Ricci did the same for Christianity (different from the Dominican and Franciscan missionaries), and Vatican II now allows Chinese Catholics to practice both.
Thus, the list of five religions in China is unworkable. I assume the number five was chosen because that became the major number (early replacing the number six) in Chinese culture. Adding Chinese Religion as a sixth religion misses the centrality of Chinese Religion. Instead, I would suggest the root – Chinese Religion – and branch model – all other sinicized traditions – would be more useful. Moreover, the list itself in unworkable, many major global religions are not included, yet Christianity is counted twice (and Orthodox Christianity is ignored).
Adding either “folk” or “popular” to Chinese Religion is demeaning to Chinese culture, as well as being inaccurate. No other religion is formally described as being the religion of the uneducated; in other words, as superstition. Chinese Religion has been the religious basis of all classes, from the former Emperors to the peasantry. The rituals and understandings were identical; they but differed in elaboration. As will all cultures, the basis is religion. When the attempt was made to destroy Chinese Religion during the Cultural Revolution, the aftermath was the disappearance of Chinese culture in virtually every aspect. As early as 1983, when we first visited China, we began to see attempts to bring back at least aspects of this basis, as all elements of civility had disappeared. After thirty years, the government now seems ready to embrace Chinese Religion as it is. And that is where you come in.
There is a further aspect that may be relevant to what you are doing. My present research has determined that Chinese religion is but one example of a global phenomenon – what I term the second oldest religion in the world, which could be called “Familism.” I have found twelve essential characteristics to Chinese Religion, and these same characteristics are present in central West African and Polynesian religions, and seem to have been present in classical Greek, Roman, and Israelite religions, and many aspects are present in the Native American civilizations. I have traced it back to the inception of agricultural villages and think it starts with horticulture. Thus, it may be that Chinese religion is a continuing example of a religious complex found all over the world, and only the development of the interrelated monotheistic religions, as well as Buddhism, created different religious complexes.
In the paper I am delivering in Taiwan in May, it turns out that I have dealt with most if not all of the criticisms we have found that have been made of your work. I was planning to send it to you after the conference, but under the circumstances, I am attaching it with this e-mail. However, it is to remain confidential until after the conference. Indeed, when we came up with a translation for Chinese Religion as “Zhonghua jiao,” we searched the internet to see if anyone else had used the Chinese term, and this is where we came across your work! So obviously, we have been thinking along the same path.
I am so happy that we have met. The work you are doing has been a dream of mine for a long time. I would be happy to assist you in any way that I can. We are so looking forward to meeting you in a year’s time.
The People and The Tao: New Studies in Chinese Religions in Honour of Daniel L. Overmyer. Edited by Philip Clart and Paul Crowe. (Monumenta Serica Monograph Series, vol. LX) pp. 542. Sankt Augustin, Monumenta Serica Institute, Nettetal, Steyer Verlag, 2009. doi:10.1017/S1356186310000179
Here is a volume for which congratulations are due to all involved. First, in an age in which publishers all too often shun celebratory volumes, the series editor deserves our thanks and support for taking on a classic representative of this type of scholarship. Secondly, the volume editors must be commended for having dutifully observed the conventions of the format, not simply by reproducing the papers produced for the 2002 conference held at the University of British Columbia to mark Daniel Overmyer’s retirement but also by providing a helpful introduction, the responsibility of Philip Clart, and by commissioning the inclusion of a survey of Daniel Overmyer’s work, complete with a basic four page bibliography of his writings, by Randall L. Nadeau, to say nothing of a generous fifty five pages of glossary and index to round off the volume.
Thirdly, the sixteen contributors, from Asia, Europe and North America, are to be congratulated on the high standard of the essays they have provided. One of Daniel Overmyer’s fellow pioneers in the field of Chinese religions, Jordan Paper, exerts the privilege of a pioneer in scanning the broadest of horizons with his gaze, and provides an insightful overview of possession trance from the Neolithic to the present. But the other contributors work in different ways in some detail on more closely delineated topics, frequently on contemporary phenomena in the Chinese religious world in the Peoples’ Republic, Taiwan, and South-East Asia but also on aspects of Buddhism, Daoism and popular religion stretching back as far as the Song dynasty. Historical studies of Daoism and Buddhism – for example typically well wrought papers by Judith Boltz and Barend J. ter Haar – tend to cluster in the third and last section of the volume, entitled “The Religious Life of Clerics, Literati, and Emperors”, but the preceding sections, on “Popular Sects and Religious Movements” and on “Historical and Ethnographic Studies of Chinese Popular Religion”, combine observation togetherwith documentary research in a way that, while by no means unique, is quite distinctive.
For although the contribution of anthropologists to the opening up of the study of Chinese religion in the late twentieth century should not be ignored, it is the willingness of Daniel Overmyer to accept historical evidence together with the study of the still visible traces of religious practice today that has proved particularly fruitful for students and colleagues alike. And, quite appropriately, in the final analysis the deepest impression one receives from this wholly admirable publication is that of all those involved in this project it is he who should indeed be congratulated most of all for his role in promoting the serious scholarly study of religion in China and establishing its place in the Anglophone academic world. In this role of founding father his contribution, along with Jordan Paper and the late Laurence G. Thompson, has plainly been crucial. As Randall Nadeau’s bibliography attests, his main research contribution has been in the area of Buddhist-influenced sectarian religion. But the Reviews of Books 393 absence of reviews from this listing conceals, for example, his landmark assessment of D. Howard Smith’s Chinese Religions in History of Religions 9.2–3 (1970), which pointed the way forward from the era of missionary scholarship, represented by Smith, towards more analytical approaches. And not least of his achievements, surely, has been his building up of the bibliographical resources required to study Chinese religion and his donation of the results of his work to the University of British Columbia. Legacies such as these will long be remembered – and long may he be able to continue himself to pursue his own research into the rich and vibrant world of religious culture revealed by this volume.
T. H. Barrett School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 作者: jinguochen 时间: 2011-3-30 00:41 标题: 《宗教人类学》第一辑刘晓春兄的点评