Attitudes Toward Popular Religion in Ritual Texts of the Chinese State: The Collected Statutes of the Great Ming

1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 191-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. L. Overmyer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Chinese State

A History for Falun Gong: Popular Religion and the Chinese State Since the Ming Dynasty

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ownby
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Falun Gong ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
Ultimate Objective ◽  
Historical Antecedents

This article seeks to place Falun Gong - and the larger qigong movement from which it emerged - into the long-term context of the history of Chinese popular religion from the midMing (1368-1644) to the present. The argument developed is that Falun Gong and qigong are twentieth-century elaborations of a set of historical popular religious traditions generally labeled by scholars as "White Lotus Sectarianism." This article attempts both to look forward at the Falun Gong from a perspective informed by an understanding of its historical antecedents, and to look backward at the historical traditions on the basis of what we know about Falun Gong and qigong. The ultimate objective is to arrive at a recharacterization of a popular religious phenomenon which has been incompletely understood.

Ancestral Roots

2019 ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Russell M. Jeung ◽  
Seanan S. Fong ◽  
Helen Jin Kim
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Chinese American ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Confucian Thought ◽  
Symbolic Interpretation ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
State Modernization

Chapter 2 offers a genealogical exploration of how Chinese traditions have shaped Chinese American religious affiliations and familism. Chinese adopt a plurality of beliefs for utilitarian purposes through their religious repertoire based in Chinese Popular Religion. Given their mixture of beliefs and practices that have no names, Chinese tend to identify as “nothing in particular.” Another factor contributing to the high rates of Chinese American religious nones is Confucian thought, which oriented Chinese society toward religious skepticism and an agnostic, symbolic interpretation of religious rituals. These twin approaches toward religion are the roots of modern-day Chinese atheism and agnosticism. Both reinforce the primacy of familial relations. These two traditions have undergone changes through modernization, migration, and the religious context in which they take root. The chapter ends with a survey of how these traditions have been transformed by Chinese state modernization, acculturation to the American context, and racialization.

Flesh Searches in China

Asian Survey ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Gorman
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Contemporary China ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
The Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores the relationship between netizens and the Chinese Communist Party by investigating examples of “flesh searches” targeting corrupt officials. Case studies link the initiative of netizens and the reaction of the Chinese state to the pattern of management of social space in contemporary China.

Esotericism and the “Coded Word” in Mormonism

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Clyde Forsberg Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
Divine Inspiration ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Religion

In the history of American popular religion, the Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, have undergone a series of paradigmatic shifts in order to join the Christian mainstream, abandoning such controversial core doctrines and institutions as polygamy and the political kingdom of God. Mormon historians have played an important role in this metamorphosis, employing a version (if not perversion) of the Church-Sect Dichotomy to change the past in order to control the future, arguing, in effect, that founder Joseph Smith Jr’s erstwhile magical beliefs and practices gave way to a more “mature” and bible-based self-understanding which is then said to best describe the religion that he founded in 1830. However, an “esoteric approach” as Faivre and Hanegraaff understand the term has much to offer the study of Mormonism as an old, new religion and the basis for a more even methodological playing field and new interpretation of Mormonism as equally magical (Masonic) and biblical (Evangelical) despite appearances. This article will focus on early Mormonism’s fascination with and employment of ciphers, or “the coded word,” essential to such foundation texts as the Book of Mormon and “Book of Abraham,” as well as the somewhat contradictory, albeit colonial understanding of African character and destiny in these two hermetic works of divine inspiration and social commentary in the Latter-day Saint canonical tradition.

Aesthetics/Ascetics

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Jeremy Stolow
Keyword(s):  
Popular Religion ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
Prayer Books ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Jewish Intellectuals

This article focuses on the relationship of aesthetics and ascetics with regard to the publication and popular reception of Kosher By Design, a cookbook published by a major American Jewish Orthodox press, ArtScroll Publications. The article analyses the ideological, rhetorical, discursive, and iconographic modes of address embedded within this text, treating them as instances of popular religion, and also as elements of a project in and through which the Orthodox Jewish intellectuals associated with ArtScroll seek to assert new forms of religious authority, in the context of a broader culture of “kosher consumerism,” to which this text is directed. The article ends by highlighting the paradoxical character of this form of “post-scripture,” in which books like Kosher By Design, and by extension other ArtScroll texts—including their popular prayer-books—are caught between competing demands of popularity and authority, art and asceticism, and religious stringency and bourgeois living.

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