自強之路

summaries of adam y. chau's "modalities of doing religion" and michael szonyi's "secularization theories and the study of chinese religions"

103156005 christian chiou

modalities of doing religion

1. great texts modalities:

a. confucian, buddhist, daoist, and others

b. "tractate of the most high one on actions and consequences"

2. personal-cultivation modality

a. meditation

b. qiqong

c. group sutra chanting

d. karmic merit accumulating (morality-book printing and distribution; see 5.b.)

e. repeated mantra utterance

f. charismatic movement

g. spirit mediumism

3. liturgical modality

a. daoist ritual of offering for cosmic renewal: jiao (醮)

- preliminary

oil firing (dirt clearance)

drum

- day one

invocation

noon offering

lamp dividing

- day two

land of the way

offering

water lamp floating

invocation

altar sealing

- day three

invocation

orthodox offering

universal salvation

4. immediate-practical modality

a. divination bricks

b. beating the mean person

c. divination roller

5. relational modality

a. division of incense

b. morality-book printing and distributing

secularization theories and the study of chinese religions

1. secularization theories

intellectual and scientific developments have undermined the spiritual, supernatural, superstitious and paranormal ideas on which religion relies for its legitimacy.

2. sociology vs. chinese religion

a. dialogue in between

b. engaging in each other?

3. religions in china as four folds

a. religious marketplace in early modern china (10th to 19th centuries)

- flourishing of popular religions + neo-confucian revival + political control

- multiple religions = pluralism as chinese religion model?

b. differentiation in modern china (late 19th to 20th centuries)

- intersection: religion creation and secularization (impact from western industrialization)

- state as arbiter of religions: ration or superstition?

c. in the maoist period (1949~1976)

- 5 officially recognized religions? as national bodies

- cultural revolution: repressive, straightfoward

d. religious revival, individual religiosity, privatiztion in post-mao contemporary period (1980~)

- empirical challenge

- exceptional opposite: falungong

- privatization

- religions as "gray markets", not formally constructed, subject to state monopoly

4. conclusions

validity of secularization must account for china.