Recent events—from strife in Tibet and the rapid growth of Christianity in China to the spectacular expansion of Chinese Buddhist organizations around the globe—vividly demonstrate that one cannot understand the modern Chinese world without attending closely to the question of religion. The Religious Question in Modern China highlights parallels and contrasts between historical events, political regimes, and cultural movements to explore how religion has challenged and responded to secular Chinese modernity, from 1898 to the present. Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer piece together the puzzle of religion in China not by looking separately at different religions in different contexts, but by writing a unified story of how religion has shaped, and in turn been shaped by, modern Chinese society. From Chinese medicine and the martial arts to communal temple cults and revivalist redemptive societies, the authors demonstrate that from the nineteenth century onward, as the Chinese state shifted, the religious landscape consistently resurfaced in a bewildering variety of old and new forms. The Religious Question in Modern China integrates historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives in a comprehensive overview of China’s religious history that is certain to become an indispensible reference for specialists and students alike.

The Religious Question in Modern China

History

Palmer, David A.

Goossaert, Vincent

Asia

University of Chicago Press

Recent events—from strife in Tibet and the rapid growth of Christianity in China to the spectacular expansion of Chinese Buddhist organizations around the globe—vividly demonstrate that one cannot understand the modern Chinese world without attending closely to the question of religion. The Religious Question in Modern China highlights parallels and contrasts between historical events, political regimes, and cultural movements to explore how religion has challenged and responded to secular Chinese modernity, from 1898 to the present.
Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer piece together the puzzle of religion in China not by looking separately at different religions in different contexts, but by writing a unified story of how religion has shaped, and in turn been shaped by, modern Chinese society. From Chinese medicine and the martial arts to communal temple cults and revivalist redemptive societies, the authors demonstrate that from the nineteenth century onward, as the Chinese state shifted, the religious landscape consistently resurfaced in a bewildering variety of old and new forms. The Religious Question in Modern China integrates historical, anthropological, and sociological perspectives in a comprehensive overview of China’s religious history that is certain to become an indispensible reference for specialists and students alike.

By looking at the activities of Taoist clerics in Peking, this book explores the workings of religion as a profession in one Chinese city during a period of dramatic modernization. The author focuses on ordinary religious professionals, most of whom remained obscure temple employees. Although almost forgotten, they were all major actors in urban religious and cultural life.
The clerics at the heart of this study spent their time training disciples, practicing and teaching self-cultivation, performing rituals, and managing temples. Vincent Goossaert shows that these Taoists were neither the socially despised illiterates dismissed in so many studies, nor otherworldly ascetics, but active participants in the religious economy of the city. In exploring exactly what their crucial role was, he addresses the day-to-day life of modern Chinese religion from the perspective of ordinary religious specialists. This approach highlights the social processes, institutions, and networks that transmit religious knowledge and mediate between prestigious religious traditions and the people in the street. In modern Chinese religion, the Taoists are such key actors. Without them, "Taoist ritual" and "Taoist self-cultivation" are just empty words.

The Taoists of Peking, 1800-1949: A Social History of Urban Clerics (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Harvard University Asia Center

Making the Gods Speak presents a comprehensive accounting for the processes of divine revelations. Focusing the bulk of his analysis on spirit-writing, Vincent Goossaert offers a ritual-centered framework to study revelation in Chinese cultural history and comparatively with the revelatory practices of other religious traditions.

Making the Gods Speak: The Ritual Production of Revelation in Chinese Religious History (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series)

The origins of modern Daoism can be traced to the Church of the Heavenly Master (Tianshidao), reputedly established by the formidable Zhang Daoling. In 142 CE, according to Daoist tradition, Zhang was visited by the Lord on High, who named him his vicar on Earth with the title Heavenly Master. The dispensation articulated an eschatological vision of saving initiates--the pure, those destined to become immortals--by enforcing a strict moral code. Under evolving forms, Tianshidao has remained central to Chinese society, and Daoist priests have upheld their spiritual allegiance to Zhang, their now divinized founder. This book tells the story of the longue durée evolution of the Heavenly Master leadership and institution. Later hagiography credits Zhang Daoling's great-grandson, putatively the fourth Heavenly Master, with settling the family at Longhushan (Dragon and Tiger Mountain); in time his descendants--down to the present contested sixty-fifth Heavenly Master living in Taiwan--made the extraordinary claim of being able to transmit hereditarily the function of the Heavenly Master and the power to grant salvation. Over the next twelve centuries, the Zhangs turned Longhushan into a major holy site and a household name in the Chinese world, and constructed a large administrative center for the bureaucratic management of Chinese society. They gradually built the Heavenly Master institution, which included a sacred site; a patriarchal line of successive Heavenly Masters wielding vast monopolistic powers to ordain humans and gods; a Zhang lineage that nurtured talent and accumulated wealth; and a bureaucratic apparatus comprised of temples, training centers, and a clerical hierarchy. So well-designed was this institution that it remained stable for more than a millennium, far outlasting the longest dynasties, and had ramifications for every city and village in imperial China. In this ambitious work, Vincent Goossaert traces the Heavenly Master bureaucracy from medieval times to the modern Chinese nation-state as well as its expansion. His in-depth portraits of influential Heavenly Masters are skillfully embedded in a large-scale analysis of the institution and its rules, ideology, and vision of society.

Heavenly Masters: Two Thousand Years of the Daoist State (New Daoist Studies)

University of Hawaii Press

The Beef Taboo in China: Agriculture, Ethics, Sacrifice

In recent years, both scholars and the general public have become increasingly fascinated by the role of religion in modern Chinese life. However, the bulk of attention has been devoted to changes caused by the repression of the Maoist era and subsequent religious revival. The Fifty Years That Changed Chinese Religion breaks new ground by systematically demonstrating that equally important transformative processes occurred during the period covering the last decade of the Qing dynasty and the entire Republican period. Focusing on Shanghai and Zhejiang, this book delves in depth into the real-life workings of social structures, religious practices and personal commitments as they evolved during this period of wrenching changes. At the same time, it goes further than the existing literature in terms of theoretical models and comparative perspectives, notably with other Asian countries such as Korea and Japan.

The Fifty Years That Changed Chinese Religion, 1898–1948 (Asia Past & Present)

Katz, Paul R.

Association for Asian Studies

Le Taoïsme: La révélation continue

Gyss, Caroline

Gallimard]

Les livres de morale, shanshu sont encore peu etudies et traduits en langues occidentales en depit de leur importance fondamentale dans la pratique sociale, ethique et religieuse de la Chine moderne, depuis le XIIe siecle jusqu'a nos jours. On peut les definir comme des ouvrages consacres a exhorter leurs lecteurs, par le raisonnement et l'exemple, a se conduire vertueusement. Ces exhortations se fondent sur la notion, commune a l'ensemble de la religion chinoise, de la retribution morale des actes (bao), notion que l'on trouve egalement exprimee, quoique sur des bases theologiques distinctes, dans les classiques des Trois enseignements (confucianisme, bouddhisme et taoisme). Par religion chinoise, il faut entendre l'ensemble des croyances et pratiques faisant appel aux ressources (textes, clerges, rites, symboles) des Trois enseignements tout en etant le plus souvent largement independants. Les livres de morale, en accord avec les trois religions, affirment que tout acte vertueux (shan) entraine, immediatement ou a terme, des consequences favorables--des benedictions, fu--, tandis que les actes vicieux (e) entrainent des consequences defavorables--des maledictions, huo. Ils mettent en garde le lecteur contre les punitions qu'entrainent les peches et les enjoignent a faire leur salut en detaillant de facon concrete un programme de vie pure menant a une bonne mort voire a la divinisation. Leurs themes principaux de reflexion sont le respect des dieux et des regles de purete rituelle qui leur sont associees, la libre circulation des etres et des biens ainsi que les Cinq normes sociales, tres marquees par le confucianisme, qui determinent les liens entre parents et enfants, mari et femme, freres aines et cadets, souverain et sujet, ami et ami.

Livres de morale révélés par les dieux (Bibliotheque Chinoise) (French Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Les Belles Lettres

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Books by Goossaert, Vincent

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Goossaert, Vincent. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Religious Question in Modern China

The Religious Question in Modern China

The Taoists of Peking, 1800-1949: A Social History of Urban Clerics (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Making the Gods Speak: The Ritual Production of Revelation in Chinese Religious History (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series)

Heavenly Masters: Two Thousand Years of the Daoist State (New Daoist Studies)

The Beef Taboo in China: Agriculture, Ethics, Sacrifice

The Fifty Years That Changed Chinese Religion, 1898–1948 (Asia Past & Present)

Le Taoïsme: La révélation continue

Livres de morale révélés par les dieux (Bibliotheque Chinoise) (French Edition)

The Beef Taboo in China: Agriculture, Ethics, Sacrifice