I know I mentioned this a few times on my blog before, but we got to talking about inclusive nature of Neo-Confucianism in my Neo-Confucianism class so I decided now is as good of a time as any to do a full blog post about inclusive religions. As I have mentioned once or twice before, the big three monotheistic religions that dominate the majority of Western and Islamic civilization (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) are what are called exclusive religions, basically they ban the faithful to practice another religion. For instance, Jew for Jesus aren’t Jews because you can’t be Jewish and integrate the Christian Jesus into your practice, it is simply un-Jewish. Many of the traditional religion like things (it’s complicated) of China, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, the ancestors, and various other gods, don’t actually forbid the practice of other religions. My Neo-Confucianism professor mentioned that ancient Chinese officials, who worked in the Confucian Imperial Court and were required to pass a civil-service test on Confucian thought, would often integrate more Buddhist and Taoist thinking into their personal life after retirement. Servant of G-d (yes that actually is his title, it is the first step towards becoming a Catholic saint) Matteo Ricci S.J., a Jesuit missionary in China during the late 1500s, actually got in trouble with the Church in Rome when he stated that ancestor worship and the Confucianism of Confucius (Ricci is the guy who coined the term Neo-Confucianism to describe the Confucianists of his day, whom he disagreed with, and separate them from the older Confucianists, who he liked) is compatible with Catholicism. When I was reading From Emperor to Citizen by former Emperor of China and Manchukuo Puyi, he mentioned off hand the religion of the Imperial Court eunuchs, a religion based on the traditional Chinese religions but still a distinct thing with a distinct style of worship, and how the eunuchs got offended when their Japanese attempted to enforce exclusive worship of Shinto gods on the Manchukian court. From my own personal observations of Buddhist temples, this religious inclusiveness has only gotten stronger as time passed. The Chinese Buddhist temples I have visited have not only included space to worship the Buddha, they also had space to pray to Caishen (财神) the god of wealth, Guan Yu (关羽) the god of war, and Confucius himself. The monks of these temples will serve all the deities who have space in their temple. Furthermore, being an atheist is still not a good reason why you can’t participate in modern Chinese religious life; many Chinese will tell you that they are both non-religious and occasionally attend temple.
1 Comment
Dad
3/3/2017 03:37:01 am
Very interesting. But how could nations throughout history justify all that warfare if Western religions were more inclusive?
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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