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On State and Religion in China A Brief Historical Reflection Anthony C. Yu The following address was given at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley in the autumn of 2002 by Professor Anthony C. Yu of the University of Chicago. His talk was the third of the annual Venerable Master Hsüan Hua Memorial Lectures, cosponsored by the Institute for World Religions and the Graduate Theological Union. The lecture series, given in honor of the late Master Hsüan Hua, the eminent Buddhist monk and teacher, was established to explore the interaction between religion and the modern world. In his address, Professor Yu connects the repression of religious movements and traditions in contemporary China with the autocratic regulation of religion by the imperial dynasties of earlier centuries. Professor Yu explores the political and theocratic role of ancestor-worship from the Shang period onwards and shows how it has been used throughout Chinese history both to legitimize the imperial government and to exert control over other forms of religiosity.

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n the complex and thorny relations between Western nations and China, one contentious issue that has received persistent attention concerns religion and its treatment by the government of China. On the side of the People’s Republic, there is little ambiguity regarding its attitude toward religion and the role of the state in its control and governance. The Chinese constitution adopted in 1954 expressly guarantees all citizens the freedom of both religious belief and “unbelief.” The edited version of the famous “Document 19” published by the official Party journal, Red Flag, on June 16, 1982, provides a brief but illuminating account of the Party’s understanding of religion and also a succinct statement of government policy on religion. “Religion,” it tells us, “is a historical phenomenon pertaining to a definite period in the development of human society. It has its own cycle of emergence, development and demise.” Insofar as this phenomenon has existed in time, “the earliest mentality reflected the low level of production and the sense of awe toward natural phenomenon of primitive peoples.”1

issue 3, june 2003

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