Irreligion in China

Religion in China (CGSS's average 2012)[1]

  Not religious, Traditional worship, or Taoism (87.4%)
  Buddhism (6.2%)
  Christianity (2.3%)
  Islam (1.7%)
  Other faiths (0.2%)

The Chinese government is officially atheist;[2] however, there are a wide variety of religious practices among the Chinese population.[3] The Chinese government's attitude to religion is one of skepticism.[3][4][5][6] According to a 2012 Gallup poll, 47% of Chinese people were convinced atheists, and a further 30% were not religious. In comparison only 14% considered themselves to be religious.[7] More recently, a 2015 Gallup poll found the number of convinced atheists in China to be 61%, with a further 29% saying that they are not religious compared to just 7% who are religious.[8] Article 36 of the 1978 Constitution provides for religious freedom: “No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens because they do, or do not believe in religion.”[9] The Chinese state officially recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism.[10] In order to be a member of the Communist Party of China an individual must not have religious affiliation.[11]

History

Irreligion in various forms, especially rationalism, secularism, and antitheism, has had a long history in China dating back millennia. The Zhou Dynasty Classic of Poetry contains several catechistic poems in the Decade of Dang questioning the authority or existence of Shangdi. Later philosophers such as Xun Zi, Fan Zhen, Han Fei, Zhang Zai, Wang Tingxiang, Wang Fuzhi, Xiong Bolong, Wang Qingren also criticized the religious practices prevalent during their times. Buddhism flourished in China during the Southern and Northern Dynasties Period. It was during this period that Fan Zhen wrote Shen Mie Lun (Simplified Chinese 神灭论, Traditional Chinese 神滅論, "On the Annihilation of the Shen") in reaction to Buddhist concepts of body-soul dualism, samsara and karma. He wrote that the soul is merely an effect or function of the body, and that there is no soul without the body (i.e., after the destruction and death of the body).[12] Further, he considered that cause-and-effect relationships claimed to be evidence of karma were merely the result of coincidence and bias. For this, he was exiled by the Emperor.

Confucianism as a state-instituted philosophy has flourished in China since the Han Dynasty, and the opportunities it offered was another fundamental origin of atheism in China.

China is considered a nation with a long history of humanism, secularism, and this-worldly thought since the time of Confucius,[13][note 1] who stressed shisu (世俗 "being in the world"). Hu Shih stated in the 1920s that "China is a country without religion and the Chinese are a people who are not bound by religious superstitions."[15]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Some scholars consider Confucianism as humanist and secularist. Rather, Herbert Fingarette has described it as a religion that "sacralises the secular".[14]

References

  1. ↑ Chinese Family Panel Studies's survey of 2012. Published in The World Religious Cultures issue 2014: 卢云峰：当代中国宗教状况报告——基于CFPS（2012）调查数据. p. 13, reporting the results of the Renmin University's Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) for the years 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2011, and their average. Note: According to the researchers of CFPS, only 6.3% of the Chinese are not religious in the sense of atheism; the others are not religious in the sense that they do not belong to an organised religion, while they pray to or worship gods and ancestors in the manner of the traditional popular religion.
  2. ↑ Briggs, David (2011-01-22). "Study: Rising Religious Tide in China Overwhelms Atheist Doctrine". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 French, Howard (2007-03-03). "Religious surge in once-atheist China surprises leaders". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  4. ↑ "A surprising map of where the world’s atheists live". Washington Post. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  5. ↑ "Party's secret directives on how to eradicate religion and ensure the victory of atheism". Asian News. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  6. ↑ "China announces "civilizing" atheism drive in Tibet". BBC. 1999-01-12. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  7. ↑ "Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism" (PDF). Gallup. Retrieved 2012-11-28.
  8. ↑ "Losing our religion? Two thirds of people still claim to be religious" (PDF). Gallup. Retrieved 2015-04-17.
  9. ↑ "New 'atheist map' of the world dominated by China where half the country's population describes themselves as non-believers". London: Daily Mail. 2013-05-24. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  10. ↑ Rowan Callick. Party Time: Who Runs China and How. Black Inc, 2013. p. 112
  11. ↑ "Religion still has no role to play in communist politics". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 2013-07-16.
  12. ↑ Phil Zuckerman. Atheism and Secularity. ABC-CLIO, 2009. p. 213
  13. ↑ Mark Juergensmeyer. Religion in Global Civil Society. Oxford University Press, 2005. p. 70, quote: «[...] humanist philosophies such as Confucianism, which do not share a belief in divine law and do not exalt faithfulness to a higher law as a manifestation of divine will [...]».
  14. ↑ Herbert Fingarette. Confucius: The Secular As Sacred. Waveland, 1998. ISBN 1577660102
  15. ↑ Yong Chen, 2012. p. 127