Ancestor veneration remains a major obstacle to conversion among the Chinese the world over. While the issue often comes to a head over funeral rites, ancestor veneration cannot be understood in isolation. Rather one must look at the broader issues of the cult of the family, a tenet propagated by Confucius, putting loyalty to the family above every other claim including that of the gods or the state. There was also the influence of Taoism which sees the universe as a living organism co-existing in interdependence. The family then is not just a sociological unit, but also a metaphysical unit with ancestral spirits helping to keep the fragile balance which their descendants have with the rest of the universe and with other spirits. Finally, we must not forget that death is a psychological trauma and that living relatives often need a rite of passage to remember and to grieve for the dead. Ancestor veneration then is not a simple act that can be abolished by deciding which rituals in a funeral are biblical and which are not. Rather it is part of a complex web that needs to be understood in its totality. This paper, written by a Chinese and first-generation Christian, attempts to do that.
