‘religious culture’ (Zongjiao Wenhua), appearing in places ranging from
academic monographs to advertising posters, demonstrate how widely the idea
of ‘religion as culture’ is accepted and how large its influence is. Although
there is in this usage some confusion of religion itself with the ways it is
expressed, it is true that nearly all the contemporary Chinese scholars of
religion, consciously or not, agree with the idea to varying degrees. Among them
Lu Da-ji (1932– ) may be a representative thinker who made efforts to provide
a clearer and more detailed account of the idea than other scholars in this field.
Lu defines religion as a kind of (human-made) social and cultural system, and
argues that religion interacts with other forms of social culture (Lu 2002: 745).
But he rejects the idea that religion is the substance in culture (Tillich 1999:
412) as well as the idea that religion is the basis of the values which form the
core of culture (Toynbee 1990: 99). The latter ideas are spreading slowly but
steadily in China through the influence of Chinese translations of the works
of Paul Tillich and Christopher Dawson, among others. However, very few
Chinese scholars argue for such ideas today. One of the few is He Guanghu
(1999: 18–19, 2003: 462–464), who argues that culture is caused by the trans-
cending of nature and the self on the part of the human spirit, a transcending
that points to the subject object of religion at its height and is expressed
in religion at its best. He holds that such transcendent spirituality is the source
of the river of culture, and that religiosity is the root of the tree of culture. In
addition, He advanced the idea that religion is a special kind of symbol system,
hence a cultural system from the perspective of the visible, but at the same time,
from the perspective of the invisible religion represents the original spirit of
culture and hence its motivational power. This idea is in line not only with Paul
Tillich, Christopher Dawson, Arnold Toynbee and numerous other Western
thinkers, but also with He Ling (1995), Liang Shuming (1987), and other
representative thinkers of modern China.
(b) A very long and heated debate among Chinese academics has concerned
whether Confucianism is a religion. Starting in the early seventeenth century,
Western missionaries such as Matteo Ricci and other Jesuits argued that
Confucianism was not a religion. In that way they were able to justify their
position in the so-called ‘Chinese Rites Controversy’, a position that favored
the adaptation of Christians in China to Confucian rituals (Mungello [ed.]
1994). Starting in the early twentieth century, most Chinese intellectuals,
especially those who defended Confucianism and mainstream traditional
Chinese culture, also rejected the idea that Confucianism was a religion,
because they worried, consciously or not, that its classification as a religion
would result in the negation of Confucianism, inasmuch as since the 1920s,
and especially since the 1950s, religion of every kind was being rejected, as
mentioned above. The defenders of Confucianism argued that it was just a
variety of philosophy, ethics or social doctrine, or a system of the three and
more, but not at all a religion.
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
CONTINENTAL EAST ASIA
169
