Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804758425 ISBN 13: 9780804758420

Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Making Religion, Making the State combines cutting-edge perspectives on religion with rich empirical data to offer a challenging new argument about the politics of religion in modern China. The volume goes beyond extant portrayals of the opposition of state and religion to emphasize their mutual constitution. It examines how the modern category of "religion" is enacted and implemented in specific locales and contexts by a variety of actors from the late nineteenth century until the present. With chapters written by experts on Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and more, this volume will appeal across the social sciences and humanities to those interested in politics, religion, and modernity in China.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Yoshiko Ashiwa is Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies, and Director of the Center for the Study of Peace and Reconciliation, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo. David L. Wank is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Graduate Program in Global Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo.

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Making Religion, Making the State

The Politics of Religion in Modern China

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2009 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-5842-0

Contents

Acknowledgments....................................................................................................................................................vii1. Making Religion, Making the State in Modern China: An Introductory Essay Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank......................................................12. The Politics of Religion: Late-Imperial Origins of the Regulatory State Timothy Brook..........................................................................223. Positioning Religion in Modernity: State and Buddhism in China Yoshiko Ashiwa..................................................................................434. The Catholic Pilgrimage to Sheshan Richard Madsen and Lizhu Fan................................................................................................745. Pathways to the Pulpit: Leadership Training in "Patriotic" and Unregistered Chinese Protestant Churches Carsten T. Vala........................................966. Institutionalizing Modern "Religion" in China's Buddhism: Political Phases of a Local Revival David L. Wank....................................................1267. Islam in China: State Policing and Identity Politics Dru C. Gladney............................................................................................1518. Further Partings of the Way: The Chinese State and Daoist Ritual Traditions in Contemporary China Kenneth Dean.................................................1799. Expanding the Space of Popular Religion: Local Temple Activism and the Politics of Legitimation in Contemporary Rural China Adam Yuet Chau.....................21110. The Creation and Reemergence of Qigong in China Utiraruto Otehode.............................................................................................241Character List.....................................................................................................................................................267Contributors.......................................................................................................................................................278Index..............................................................................................................................................................281

Chapter One

Making Religion, Making the State in Modern China: An Introductory Essay

YOSHIKO ASHIWA AND DAVID L. WANK

AN ASTOUNDING REVIVAL of religion has occurred in China since the late 1970s. China now has the world's largest Buddhist population, fast-growing Catholic and Protestant congregations, expanding Muslim communities, and active Daoist temples. According to state statistics there are 100 million religious believers, 85,000 religious sites (churches, mosques, temples), 300,000 clergy, and 3,000 religious organizations. Buddhism has more than 13,000 temples and monasteries and 200,000 monks and nuns, while, additionally, Tibetan Buddhism has over 3,000 monasteries, 120,000 lamas, and 1,700 living Buddhas. Daoism has 1,500 temples and 25,000 masters. In Islam there are 30,000 mosques, 40,000 imams, and 18 million believers. Catholicism has over 4,000 churches, 4,000 clergy, and 4 million believers. Protestantism has 12,000 churches, over 25,000 meeting places, 18,000 clerics, and 10 million believers (Information Office of the State Council 1997).

These statistics on the revival of religion in China, which is ruled by a communist party that is avowedly atheist, stimulate various interpretations. They could be seen as signifying the victory of religious believers over the state. Attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (Party) to eradicate religion during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) failed; belief can never be conquered by political ideologies such as communism. The statistics could also be seen as part of the Chinese state control of religion; they are inaccurate numbers based on officially registered religious sites. Many of these religious sites are fronts for tourism and museums and contain few "real" temples and churches, while the numerous unregistered churches that are thriving are not visible in the state's official statistics.

We see the statistics in a rather different way, which is the main theme of this volume. The statistics reflect the state representation of the extent of religion in China today in terms of the state's definition of "modern religion" as well as the efforts of believers, clergy, and worshippers to accommodate the modern definition of religion. Our point, therefore, is that the situation of religion in China is not simply a history of conflict between state and religion but rather processes of interactions among multiple actors that comprise the making of modern religion and the modern state over the course of the past century.

To understand these processes, it is fruitful to briefly leave the Chinese context and think about the state and religion in the broader context of modernity. Recently, some arguments have been raised about the concepts of modernity and religion. It has been argued that "religion" is a modern concept that is seen most sharply in colonial interactions from the late nineteenth century (Asad 1993; van der Veer 2001). Talal Asad's discussion is in the context of Christianity and Islam while Peter van der Veer focuses on India and England. In these interactions colonizers presented ideal images of themselves as modern because state power was separate from religion. The state was defined as the political authority and religion as individual belief. To enlightened elites in non-European countries, "being modern," therefore, required the simultaneous reform of indigenous practices to appear as "religion" and the institutionalization of religion as a category within the state's constitution and administration.

In this volume, we maintain that this happens not only in the context of colonized regions, but also in Asian countries that have struggled against colonization and to create their own modern state. In this struggle they have been pursuing an enlightened "modern" civilization of their own design by changing their frameworks of thought, ideology, and political systems. Thailand, Japan, and China have been on this historical track since the late nineteenth century. Stanley Tambiah has described how Thailand's King Chulalongkorn modernized the monarchical state and centralized the Buddhist temple and clergy system to support this new state power. He renewed the mutually supportive system of legitimation of the king and Buddhism as the central core of political authority and model of the modern Thai polity in the new, modern context (1977). Yoshio Yasumaru has described how Japan's new Meiji state system broke down the old religious social and cultural bases that were an historical amalgam of Buddhism and Shinto to create a new ideology of "state Shintoism," which led to the formation of new religious sects, such as Tenrikyo (1987, 2002). In China, Charles Brewer Jones traces the changing organization of Buddhism in Taiwan from community halls to national associations, a change that was both a response to pressures from the Japanese colonial and Chinese republican states, and a way for Buddhists to work with these centralizing state powers to secure recognition for Buddhist...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804758425
• ISBN 13: 9780804758420
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 294
• Herausgeber: Ashiwa Yoshiko, Wank David L.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande