Whether Confucianism is, or has ever been, a religion is a consideration that has been hotly debated for centuries, with evidence for and against its religious nature presented by those who answer either “Yes” or “No.” Anna Sun states that this is indeed a question “the West has never been able to answer, and China never able to ask.” She continues, however, that Confucianism is a civil religion.[1]
In this section, we shall present the findings of two outstanding American writers, Kenneth Scott Latourette and Charles E. Farhadian, both of whom identify Confucianism as a world religion.
Kenneth Scott Latourette (1884-1968)
After earning a PhD at Yale University in 1908 and working as a traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer Mission, Latourette served as a missionary in China from 1910 to 1912 as a teacher at the College of Yale in Changsha, China, until poor health forced him to return to the United States. He eventually joined the faculty of Yale Divinity School, where he served successively as Professor of Missions (1921–1927), Professor of Oriental History, D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity (1921–1949), Sterling Professor of Missions and Oriental History (1949–1953) and finally as Sterling Professor Emeritus from his retirement in 1953 until his death in 1968.
Latourette was an incredibly prolific scholar, publishing dozens of books on the history of Christianity and on Christian missions, including the authoritative History of Christian Missions in China. He also wrote The Chinese: Their History and Culture, the fourth revised edition of which appeared in 1964. The first half of the volume traces the history of China; the second part explores various aspects of Chinese Culture, including religion.
Latourette’s work exemplified three major commitments to Christianity, to Christian missions, and to Chinese history and culture. He writes as a devout Christian, a former missionary and lifelong student of missions, and a lover of China. He is, perhaps, the greatest non-Chinese Christian Sinologist of the twentieth century.
The Chinese: Their History and Culture (hereafter CHC) represents his mature reflections on a civilization that he greatly admired. The volume begins with his high assessment of the Chinese: “Here is an attempt to tell the story of a great people and a high civilization. That story is filled with aspiration, achievement, and tragedy” (ix). He admits that in writing about China, though he sought to “achieve an attitude of detachment,” his “warm sympathy with the Chinese may have betrayed him into seeming to be an apologist for them” (xi).
China’s Religion
Latourette writes that during the Shang Dynasty (1766?-1122 B.C.), “Religion consisted of the worship of ancestors and of heavenly and earthly gods. Above all the gods in heaven was Ti or Shang-ti, the Ruler Above, who presided over heaven much as the king governs his realm” (32). In addition, the Shang people worshipped lesser gods, including the gods of the earth, hills, rivers, and the four directions. Thus, ancestor worship predates Confucius.
By the Zhou (Chou) dynasty, religious rituals were highly developed, with many rituals for various occasions. Divination was widely practiced from the earliest times. During the Zhou period, the concept of Yin and Yang appeared, along with the literary work the Yi Jing (I-Ching). Tian (Tien) was believed to be the heavenly ruler, largely replacing Shang Di. The worship of ancestors and various lesser deities developed into a complex system of ceremonies and sacrifices.
The many philosophical schools that appeared during the later Zhou Dynasty were all heavily influenced by popular religion and all aimed at one goal: “the creation of an ideal human society” (54). For Westerners, the most important of these was Confucianism. Latourette gives a concise sketch of the life of Confucius, though he does not consider all components of the tradition reliable.
Then he describes Confucius according to the tradition: “Dignified, courteous, conscientious, high-minded, studious; modest but self-confident; a lover of antiquity, of books, of ceremonial, and of music; thoughtful, affable, but frank in rebuking what he deemed wrong in men in high and low position; calm, serenely trustful in an overruling Providence – all these are terms which immediately come to mind as descriptive of the man pictured in the discourses transmitted by his faithful disciples” (54).
Confucius bent his efforts toward the creation of an ideal society, which was to be obtained through “the maintenance of the proper ceremonies, including those of a religious nature, and the exhibition by the ruling classes of a good moral example” (55). Since society’s leaders would constitute the main force for good, Confucius concentrated his efforts on training a group of junzi (chun tzu), ideal men.
Latourette surveys the major teachings of Confucius and then other thinkers of that creative era: Mencius, Xunzi, Mozi, and the Legalists, including Han Feizi, and Wei Yang. These accounts are fair, concise, and clear. He does not compare any of them with Christianity.
In what was originally Volume II, Latourette includes a chapter on religion. In six brief pages, he provides the best summary of the chief characteristics of religion in the late Qing Dynasty that I have seen. With brilliant simplicity and succinctness, he delineates six features of Chinese religion, with qualifying comments along the way to avoid excessive simplification:
“First of all, religiously the Chinese have been very eclectic . . . The average Chinese was an animist, a polytheist, a Buddhist, a Confucianist, and a Taoist, with no sense of incongruity or inconsistency.” In “domestic rites [for the dead], animism, popular polytheism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism were almost inextricably mixed” (524).
Associated with this eclectic nature was a certain tolerance, “though religion often played a part in uprisings against the government and in persecution of various sects by rulers. After Confucianism became the state religion, “heterodox and philosophies were condemned, to be sure, not primarily because from the metaphysical point of view they were deemed false, but because they were believed to be injurious to the political and social structure of the Empire, organized as it was on Confucian principles” (524).
“Some of the bloodiest rebellions appealed to religious sanctions” – the Taiping Rebellion comes to mind here – “and the frequent sanguinary conflicts between Moslem and non-Muslim portions of the population have been notorious” (524). We may note here the stunning application of this statement to the situation in 2022, when the Communist state promotes Confucianism while waging a fierce campaign to control Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity.
Nevertheless, “the fact remains that in practice there was much of religious toleration in China” (524). Latourette speculates that perhaps “the practical-minded Chinese were eager to take advantage of every possible benefit from each of the systems that came to their attention. It may have been because of a fundamental religious uncertainty” about whether any religion was true (524).
A third mark of Chinese religious life was its optimism. In particular, Chinese religions, especially the dominant forms of Confucianism, held human nature to be fundamentally good, or at lease malleable and capable of reformation. Meanwhile, “orthodox Confucianism taught that moral law is part of the essence of things, that when men obey it, prosperity ensues and that evil-doing is a cause of calamities.”
“Allied with this optimistic attitude toward the universe was the strong ethical note in much of Chinese religion. Confucianism emphasized man’s duty to man and praised such virtues as sincerity, kindness, loyalty, filial piety, and not doing to another what one does not like to have done to oneself” (525).
Popular Buddhism reinforced this moralism with graphic depictions of the tortures of hell and the rewards in the next life given to those who do good.
Chinese also placed huge emphasis upon ritual, deeming the proper performance of rituals as almost as important as ethical conduct. Confucius himself insisted that moral behavior was more important than mere observance of prescribed rites. “It was, indeed, in this realm that he made his greatest contribution” (526).
Chinese religion has always been marked by this-worldliness. “The earliest religion of the Chinese that we know seems to have had as its primary object the material happiness and prosperity of men here and now.” The purpose of religion “was the achievement of an ideal human society. Confucianism possessed this attitude very strongly . . . Religion, from this standpoint, is a means of keeping the machinery of human society moving smoothly and successfully. In ethical teaching the social duties were stressed” (526).
“Utility was by no means the only motive in Chinese religion. There was much of reverence that had in it no element of self-seeking. Confucius, in extolling awe for Heaven’s decrees, touched a responsive chord in the hearts of many of his countrymen” (527).
Although Chinese religion has been marked by much “credulous superstition,” there have always been skeptics, including Confucius, whose sayings include statements that express a certain agnosticism about spiritual things and the afterlife.
Chinese religion had both the social and the individual emphasis. “According to Confucian tradition, religion is largely for the salvation of society, for cultivating those relations among men which make for a wholesome social order. Yet Confucianism had much to say about the cultivation of character” also (528).
Finally, Latourette observes that religion in China has always been under state control.
The State Religion and Confucianism
Latourette then turns to study the three major teachings separately, though he acknowledges, as we have seen, the eclecticism of the Chinese, and he realizes that later Confucianism shows the influence of both Daoism and Buddhism.
Since he is discussing Chinese religion, Latourette must first decide whether Confucianism can be considered a religion. “If one calls religion . . . ‘any system of faith and worship,’ then Confucianism may be said at least to contain some religious elements” (529). Even though it was primarily concerned with the organization of society and of human relationships, such matters inevitably raise questions usually addressed by religions, such as the nature of man and of the universe. Furthermore, Confucius steadfastly supported and promoted the religious rites handed down from previous generations, setting the course for later Confucianists, who have believed such rites to be essential for the proper ordering of humans to each other and to “Heaven,” however that is defined.
Various Confucian schools offered differing definitions of Tian – Heaven – but all agreed that ceremonies directed to Heaven were essential, as did the state, especially after it adopted Confucianism as the state religion.
The State Cult and Confucianism
Confucianism developed over the centuries. By the late 19th century, the period about which Latourette was writing in this section of his work, Confucianism was “a composite of many influences and movements, and a large portion of it would probably have seemed to Confucius and his immediate disciples very strange and quite out of keeping with their teachings” (530).
Latourette next describes the rites and rituals that the emperor, as the Son of Heaven, performed, either in person or by proxy, and that government officials at each level of jurisdiction carried out as part of their official duties. The emperor was commissioned to maintain harmony between Heaven and earth through these rites. Prayers and sacrifices were offered not only to Shang Di, the supreme deity, but also to a host of lesser deities, who were organized in descending order of rank and importance. The emperor could admit new gods into the pantheon, Confucius being one of them, who in the late Qing Dynasty was promoted to the first rank, along with Heaven and Earth, deceased emperors, and the gods of the ground and grain. Lower officials also presided over ceremonies to the gods of mountains and streams, for example, as well as to the spirits of the departed.
Latourette continues: “A few of the divinities honored by the official Confucian cult require special mention. One of these, naturally, was Confucius himself” (532). Note that he calls Confucius a divinity, or god. Temples to him were found in all cities where magistrates ruled over districts, including the xian (now translated as county), fu (which might include several counties), and province. Some of these temples contained images of Confucius. On either side of his shrine were other shrines honoring his disciples, notable Confucian scholars, and famous officials in that area.
“Twice a year in each temple formal official ceremonies were held, with an elaborate ritual believed to have come down from antiquity and with offering of food and burning of incense” (533).
Religion Without Morality?
To many modern observers the feature of the state cult that had to do with sacrifices and religious ritual may well seem uncritically superstitious. Alongside them, however, must be set the official ethical emphasis of Confucianism. Offices, from the Emperor down, exhorted those subject to them to observe the moral principles of the sages. Much of this, to be sure, was a platitudinous hypocrisy which deceived no one except the very simple. But the sincerity that Confucius stressed was by no means entirely lacking. Even though a minority, there were untold numbers, some of them among the educated and powerful, and some of them in the humble walks of life, who embodied to a remarkable extent the virtues which the Sage had emphasized. Throughout the land the Confucian virtues were lauded and set a standard of conduct that exercised a profound influence (536).
Honors to Ancestors
Though ceremonies in honor of the departed long antedated Confucius, his example and teaching and that of his followers were profoundly influential throughout society and across the centuries. “It is probably due more to Confucianism that [the cult of the dead] owed a large proportion of its ceremonies and characteristic concepts” (527). These ceremonies, including offerings of incense, food, and prayers, were observed for a variety of motives, one of which was to secure benefits for the living worshipers. In other words, departed ancestors were considered to be capable of responding to prayers and worship by rewarding the living.
Latourette describes these rituals in great detail, ending with the tablet to the ancestors. The ancestral tablet was central to these rites. Inscribed with the name(s) of the deceased relative(s), it was placed in a prominent position in the home, and incense and food were offered to it, that the dead might have something to eat in the other world.
He concludes: “As a factor in molding Chinese life and thought, [the cult of the dead] can hardly be exaggerated” (540).
History of Missions in China
Latourette’s presentation of Confucianism and its attendant rites seems consistent with his attitude toward attempts to combine or reconcile Christianity and China’s fundamental system of faith and action. In A History of Christian Missions in China, published in 1928, he comments upon controversial efforts at a strategy of “accommodationism” by Roman Catholics, especially the Jesuits, and then by Protestants in the nineteenth century. I shall close this section of the paper by quoting from this earlier work: Matteo Ricci took a moderate position on the rites to Confucius, “deciding that the rites in honor of Confucius and ancestors had only a civil significance and that Christians could engage in them in so far as the laws of the Empire required” (History, 134).
The Emperor K’ang Hsi issued a declaration in 1700 saying “that the honors were paid to Confucius only as a legislator, that those to ancestors were not for the purpose of asking protection but were merely a demonstration of love and a commemoration of the good the dead had done during their lives, and that the sacrifices to T’ien were not to the visible heavens but to the Supreme Lord, the creator and preserver of heaven and earth and all that is contained in them” (140).
Latourette agreed with the Dominicans that “for the great masses the prohibited rites had in them much of animism. It may not be feasible to lead a people all at once from animism to a pure Christian faith, but conscious compromise with what is avowedly lower and imperfect is dangerous.”
Finally, “it is conviction and the sense of values not to be found elsewhere which in the last analysis must give the Christ a permanent place in a community, and if the distinctiveness of its message or its loyalty to truth as it sees it be compromised, its vitality cannot but suffer. The papal decisions [against participating in ceremonies in honor of the dead] made the winning of nominal adherents more difficult, but they tended to keep the high standards of the Church. Numbers were sacrificed for vitality” (155).
Likewise, though Latourette obviously thought that Protestants should have made greater efforts to indigenize Christianity in China, he believed that they should insist upon fidelity to Scripture:
If the Church were ever to be a permanent and influential factor in Chinese life, a certain amount of intolerance of existing institutions and practices was necessary. The Church, after all, had a distinct message and wisely, especially in the days when Christian communities were young and feeble and made up of those newly and only partially emerged from non-Christian believers, avoided any risk of losing its justification for existence by an easy conformity to the culture around it (History, 429; all subsequent quotations are from this work).
After the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, and again, with greater force, after the revolution of 1911 and the inauguration of the Republic in 1912, the old order of Chinese Confucianism was such an integral part of society that it suffered attacks from those who wanted China to modernize and to accept new ideas. To be sure, proponents of Confucianism did not give up the fight quickly. Some proposed that Confucianism be adopted as the state religion, and Yuan Shikai even revived the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth at their respective altars on the borders of Beijing.
Increasingly, however, Confucianism seemed to be out of date and even an obstacle to China’s entry into the twentieth century and the modern world. Christianity, on the other hand, rapidly grew in popularity, especially among younger educated citizens. Latourette sagely assesses the risks of this new trend:
Popularity was not without its dangers. Some Chinese became adherents because they believed the Church to be a useful agency for social and political reform, and acquired only an imperfect knowledge of the real message of the Church. Missionaries were tempted to present Christianity as a panacea for China’s political, economic, and social woes – an approach especially attractive because the missionary himself felt the gravity of the troubles about him, because it was of social and political needs that the Chinese were most conscious, and because Confucianism had led the nation to look upon religion as a means of saving society. Some of the fundamentals of the Christian message might be minimized or ignored; however, hopes might be awakened which could not quickly be realized, and disillusion brings loss (History, 613).
Conclusion
From this brief survey, we can see from his detailed descriptions in The Chinese: Their History and Culture that Latourette had studied Confucius, Confucianism, and their relationships to other religions and to society very carefully. He writes objectively and with respect, highlighting the positive impact that Confucius and his followers and their teachings had upon promoting a harmonious society.
At the same time, Latourette’s earlier warnings in his History of Christian Missions in China about the risks associated with an accommodationist approach to the rituals in honor of Confucius and of one’s ancestors flowed naturally from his conviction that Confucianism was, in many respects, a religion, and that these rites, at least as far as the masses were concerned, entailed religious worship, however the educated elites may have regarded them.
We can find parallels to this situation in the rituals to the various pagan gods in the Roman Republic and Empire. Cicero and other skeptics did not believe in these gods, but participated in, and even conducted, ceremonies as officers of the state, in order to maintain social harmony and political stability.
The early Christians, however, considered all such religious ceremonies to be acts of idol worship and thus in direct conflict with a belief in the one true God and his command not to have or to worship any other “gods.”
Charles E. Farhadian (1964 - ): Introducing World Religions: A Christian Engagement
Charles E. Farhadian is Professor of World Religions and Christian Mission at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, USA. The author of a number of highly regarded volumes, he published Introducing World Religions: A Christian Engagement in 2015. This introduction has quickly become a standard textbook.
As the title indicates, this book is about world religions. He lists and describes eight characteristics of a religion, following Winston King’s Encyclopedia of Religion. These are:
· Traditionalism: the importance of the original creative act or words of the founder
· Myth and symbol: stories about origins carried in symbols, including language
· Ideas of salvation: saving people from something, to something (a better reality)
· Sacred objects and places: objects and places set apart from ordinary objects and places
· Sacred actions: ritual actions that communicate with the divine or reality
· Sacred writings: recorded words of the founder or early disciples
· Sacred community: sense of belonging that provides structure and place of worship
· Sacred experience: varieties of perceptions of transcendence or depth
We shall see why he includes Confucianism as a religion in his study. He admits that Taoism and Confucianism “do not posit the notion of a God or a personal force that directs the activities of the world and that must be placated or relied upon for salvation. As such, it is quite fair to see Taoism and Confucianism as philosophies rather than religions.”
He goes on, “Nevertheless, they can be viewed as religions as well, or at least as religio-philosophical systems, since they exhibit many of the characteristics of religions, such as possessing a symbol system, sacred texts, founders, community worship, myths and legends, and ritualized actions” (Farhadian, Introducing, 258; all subsequent quotations are from this work).
Farhadian discusses Confucianism along with Taoism in a single chapter, because he believes that though these two traditions are distinct, their foundational texts (the Tao Te Ching and the Analects of Confucius) share a common central concept, the Tao, or the Way.[2] “Followers of Taoism and Confucianism speak of a force that animates all reality. The force itself is nonpersonal but nevertheless profoundly affects all of life” (256).
The Tao
Farhadian explains that both Taoism and Confucianism believe in yin and yang, the two complementary forces, or moments, of cause and effect. These two are of the same essence, neither one being good or bad, unlike some Western dualisms that posit a good and an evil cause and effect system. “Balance between these two fundamental complementary forces guarantees long life and success of all kinds. Unbalance between the two brings heartache, disease, and all kinds of suffering. Everything in the world and the universe is a result of the balance between the forces of yin and yang” (266).
Thus, all of life is religious, since all of life is the result of balance or imbalance between yin and yang. “The unbounded Tao is the basis of all things, the supreme and ultimate source, and in particular the foundation of both Taoism and Confucianism. The Tao is described as impersonal and nonanthropomorphic . . . Most conceive of the Tao as an impersonal and unconscious force that is at once transcendent and immanent” (267).
Confucianism
Despite this fundamental similarly, significant differences distinguish Confucianism and Taoism.
After describing Taoism, Farhadian discusses Confucianism.
Confucius . . . presented another way to retrieve the lost sense of social harmony in China. Whereas Laozi’s analyses emphasized the yin side of the Tao, Confucius’s thoughts stressed the yang forces of the Tao. . . . Confucius was perturbed by the chaotic state of political and social life in China and constructed a religio-philosophical system that sought to regain harmony not by the use of physical force but by moral persuasion. Confucius paid much attention to rites and ceremonies, believing them to inculcate right behavior and loyal service, the kinds of attitudes and relationships that would secure the social harmony that had been lost (289).
Confucius seems to have been the first to admit students from poor families into his educational program. Rather than advocating a hereditary aristocracy, he sought to form a corps of men who excelled in nobility of character and virtue. To this end, he and his successors expected students to study and master the Six Confucian Classics[3] and the Confucian Canon.[4] Mastery of these was supposed to produce a “renaissance man,” with several skills, including archery, and charioteering, “knowledge of science, art, music, history and philosophy, and is interested not in self-serving ambition but in the betterment of society” (290). Thus equipped, the gentleman, or man of virtue (junzi), would be able to govern the society according to the Tao, in a harmonious fashion.
Farhadian describes the Six Classics and the Four Books, as well as the most important Confucian virtues, including “jen (fellow-feeling, love, benevolence), yi (righteousness), li (moral actions, propriety), chi [zhi] (wisdom) and xin (faithfulness). . . . It is striking that Confucius was the first to suggest the possibility of the refinement of an inner moral force (te, [de]) maintaining that each person possessed such an inherent moral force, but that this force needed to be cultivated” (293–294).
Confucius promoted a hierarchical society, but one that required responsibilities from both those in authority and their subordinates. The family was the center of society, and filial piety (xiao) the center virtue, one that exercises great influence in all Confucian societies to the present.
Confucianism has not been a static worldview, but has developed over the centuries. Farhadian discusses Neo-Confucianism, divided into the two schools of Principle and of Heart/Mind. The rituals forged by Neo-Confucianism, such as those for marriage, funerals, and the anniversaries of the death of loved ones, continue to play a significant role in China, Japan, Korea, and other Confucianized societies.
Conclusion
Like Latourette, Farhadian describes Confucianism objectively and fairly, bringing out the major features of this ancient and still-potent system of beliefs and practices.
And like Latourette, he seems to class the ceremonies mentioned above as religious rites, while stressing that they are a primary force for social harmony.
My guess is that Farhadian would agree with Latourette that those who opposed participation by Christians in rites honoring the dead were correct in considering these to be religious in nature.
G. Wright Doyle
[1] Sun, Anna. Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, 183.
[2] Farhadian employs the traditional Roman spelling of Laozi’s book; the current spelling is Dao De Jing. I shall follow his usage.
[3] The Classic of Poetry, the Classic of Changes (Yi Jing), the Classic of History, the Book of Rituals, the Spring and Autumn Annals, and the Classic of Music.
[4] The Lunyu (Analects of Confucius), Da Xue (Great Learning), Zhung Yung (Doctrine of the Mean), and Mengzi (Book of Mencius).