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

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804758425 ISBN 13: 9780804758420

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2009

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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 activities (1999).

The chapters in this volume examine the processes of the making of "religion" and the "state" in China's modernity up to contemporary times. They share an historical awareness that "religion" is a category that came to China in the late nineteenth century as part of modern state formation. They focus on the processes of politics as seen in the negotiations and interactions of actors to control discourses, representations, and resources to fit situations and practices into the modern category of "religion." They illustrate this with ethnographic observations from fieldwork and other primary sources derived from specific locales and contexts. These issues are primarily discussed in the context of the five religions that are officially recognized as "religion" by the Party-Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism-as well as the Black Dragon King Temple and qigong.

Approaches to State and Religion in China

The issue of state and religion has been a growing topic among social scientists specializing in China (e.g., Dean 2003; Gladney 1991; Eng and Lin 2002; Fan 2003; Flower and Leonard 1997; Hillman 2005; Jing 1996; Lozada 2001; Madsen 1998). Many studies see state and religion in dichotomous frameworks of antagonism and conflict. Dichotomous frameworks are useful for elucidating a situation in order to highlight specific tendencies. But this very simplification often obscures complexities of the reality. In this section we contrast assumptions of extant dichotomous frameworks with our institutional framework of multiple actors and political processes. We claim that our framework is a closer approximation of the reality of state and religion in the space of the reviving religions in China.

One dichotomous framework emphasizes reoccurring patterns of state control over religion throughout Chinese history (Bays 2004; Hunter and Chan 1993; Overmyer 2003; Yu 2005). Daniel Bays writes that "one finds little new about today's pattern of relations between the state and religion in China. Government registration and monitoring of religious activities ... has been a constant reality of organized religious life in both traditional and modern times" (2004: 25). Oft noted similarities include: legitimating selective rituals by applying negative and positive dichotomies-"orthodoxy/heterodoxy" in the dynastic period and "religion/superstition" in the modern era; labeling proscribed religious activities as crimes of "disloyalty" then and "unpatriotic" now; controlling religions through dedicated state bureaucracies-the imperial Bureau of Rites and the communist State Administration for Religious Affairs (Guojia zongjiao shiwu ju). Historical similarities in state ideologies toward religion are noted by Anthony Yu. He argues that the Party's categorical definitions of legitimate and illegitimate beliefs are similar to the "imperial state ... mentality ... [of a] cultic obsession with state power and legitimacy propped up by a particular form of ideology" (2005: 145).

Another dichotomous framework emphasizes the Party's fight to maintain control over the rapidly expanding religious activities (Hunter and Chan 1993; Leung 1995; Overmyer 2003; Potter 2003). Jason Kindopp writes, "The government's external constraints and internal manipulations conflict with religious groups' own norms of operation, beliefs, and values.... Religious faith commands an allegiance that transcends political authority, whereas the Communist Party's enduring imperative is to eliminate social and ideological competition" (2004: 3, 5). The Party eliminates competition by such measures as: co-opting clergy and believers into state-approved religious associations; confining religious activities to such registered sites as churches and temples; recognizing only clergy trained in state-approved seminaries; vetting sermons and monitoring the foreign contacts of religions. Within these state constraints religions still manage to thrive. They forge new networks and activities outside of the state that are the seeds of a nascent civil society (Madsen 1998). Other believers reject state-controlled religious activities and, despite threats of violence, participate in "underground churches" that are unregistered by the state (Bays 2004; Hunter and Chan 1993: 66-71). These arguments constitute a key perspective within Western scholarship on religion in China. It is undeniable that parts of these arguments overlap with the neo-liberal activist agenda of foreign media, human rights groups, governments, and some scholars to "advance religious freedom in China" (Hamrin 2004). They criticize the Chinese state for persecuting religious believers and violating their human rights (Spiegel 2004) and are confident that religious freedom will grow because of the "collapse of communist ideology," the people's "spiritual hunger," and so on (e.g., Aikman 2003; Chan 2004). Unconsciously or otherwise, the influence of this tendency also directs some scholarly analysis toward certain questions and conclusions.

There are several differences between these state-control frameworks and the institutional framework of this volume. First, the state-control framework is a two-actor interaction of state and religion, whereas we emphasize multiple actors. These various actors include different levels and agencies within the state, religious associations, clergy, religious adherents, overseas Chinese, foreign religious groups, and such sectors as tourism, business, education, and philanthropy. Second, the state-control frameworks view the state-religion interaction as inherently antagonistic whereas we see multiple political processes, including competition, adaptation, and cooperation, as well as conflict. Third, the state-control frameworks have an essentialist definition of religion as "individual belief" and see the space of religion as distinct from the state, whereas we view "religion" as a constructed category and its definition as "individual belief" arising through modern state formation. Our analytic concern therefore is not the degree of freedom of religions or whether or not the state respects individual belief but how the various actors attempt to implement the modern category of "religion" and the consequences of this both within religions and in the state.

Another dichotomous framework locates conflict between state and religion in the context of the state's "modern" hegemonic discourses of nation, science, and development (Anagnost 1994; Duara 1995; Feuchtwang 2000; Fulton 1999; Gillette 2000; Xu 1999; Yang 2004). Prasenjit Duara argues that an Enlightenment narrative of history came to China in the late nineteenth century that depicted a universal transition from tradition to modernity. Political, bureaucratic, and intellectual elites sought to build a nation-state to effect the transition. To do so, they marginalized or co-opted so-called bifurcated histories that had alternative representations of the people and history. Popular religion was one such bifurcated history that was suppressed as "superstition" by new laws. "By means of these laws, the nationalist state was able to proclaim its modern ideals, which included the freedom of religion, and simultaneously consolidate its political power in local society by defining legitimate believers in such a way as to exclude those whom it found difficult to bring under its political control" (Duara 1995: 110).

Despite the similar view of "religion" as an imported category of modernity, there are significant differences between this dichotomous hegemony framework and this volume's institutional framework. The key difference concerns agency in implementing "religion." The hegemony framework reduces implementation to the forceful exercise of state power that religions either resist or reactively conform to. In contrast, this volume also sees "religion" as enacted by the religions themselves. For many religious elites, the modern discourse of "religion" is meaningful because they, too, oppose "superstition," advocate the professional training of clergy, and so on. Therefore, we see institutionalization as proceeding not through an imposed state hegemony but rather through interactions among multiple actors in the state and religions. A second difference is the failure of the hegemony framework to question the category of "religion" itself. For example, Duara describes how new state regulations against "superstition" distinguished it from "proper religion." But he does not explain how a powerful modern concept of "proper religion" was defined, possessed, and propagated in the state and among officials and clerics. In contrast, this volume focuses on the institutionalization of "religion" in both the state and religions through processes that are mutually constitutive. A third difference is the portrayal of the state. Whereas the hegemony framework portrays the state as hegemonic discourses, we also consider its organizational aspects. And whereas the hegemony framework focuses on the violent coercive power of the state, especially through campaigns to smash superstition to implement "religion," we also consider the institutional effects of the routine operation of the state's bureaucratic-legal structures in implementing "religion."

Making Religion, Making the State: An Institutional Framework

Our starting point is Talal Asad's argument that the modern category of religion defined as individual belief emerged through the politics of modern state formation in Europe. In the seventeenth century, European rulers facing the chaos of the Reformation embraced the political philosophy of secularism. This philosophy defined the state as sovereign and delimited religion as individual belief, thereby supporting rulers' acquisition of political authority. However, to avoid appearing to attack Christianity, rulers made the state the protector of Christianity as individual belief. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries this protection took shape as the constitutional right of individual belief (Asad 2003). Also, during the nineteenth century a theory of religion was created by scholars of philosophy and emerging social sciences who were influenced by the universalism, rationalism, and positivism of scientific thinking. The theory maintained that religion is symbolic meanings expressed through rites and doctrines with generic functions and features distinct from any specific historical and cultural instances. Non-Western belief and religion first became objects of scientific study in the West, and this ultimately led to the scientific study of Christianity as one of the religions and as the ideal type of "religion" (Asad 1993). This modern concept of "religion" and its place in a modern "state" that had emerged through two centuries of tumultuous political change in Europe gradually came to be widely acknowledged and influential.

In the late nineteenth century, colonialism and capitalism spread the modern categories of "religion" and "state" to other parts of the world. To enlightened elites in Asian countries, these two categories appeared as necessary components of the doctrine of modernity. "Religion" was one of the categories that, alongside "market," "nation," "rational bureaucracy," "police," "education," "science," and so on, was considered necessary in a modern state. These categories were visible in aspects of modern towns and capital cities, such as Shanghai, Tokyo, and Delhi, as well as in such sites as city halls, banks, schools, post offices, railroad stations, police stations, clock towers, and churches. Both on large and small scales, these were the accoutrements that symbolized modernity. But for non-Western elites churches were ambiguous and had to be replaced by non-Christian "modern" sites such as temples, mosques, or shrines. This is because, while non-Western enlightened elites voluntarily accepted modernity, they rejected the idea, in their history and thought, of being conquered by Christianity. They also quickly realized that religions other than Christianity could support the essential ethos of their own non-Western ethnic and national identities that they were creating as the foundation of their modern states. While they wanted modern religion, it had to be neither Christianity nor "unscientific" and "irrational" "superstition" that could hinder their efforts and make them appear as backwards. Elites worked to define modern "religion" in scientific terms to exclude "superstition" and to delimit religion in secular terms as individual belief. This took institutional form in constitutions, laws, and policies that defined religion and its place in the centralizing state. Since the early twentieth century Chinese political,

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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0804758425
• ISBN 13: 9780804758420
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304
• Editor: Ashiwa Yoshiko, Wank David L.