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Secular State and Religious Society in Mainland China and Taiwan

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Secular State and Religious Society in Mainland China and Taiwan CHAPTER TWELVE SECULAR STATE AND RELIGIOUS SOCIETY IN MAINLAND CHINA AND TAIWAN Richard Madsen University of California, San Diego Charles Taylor distinguishes three meanings of secularism as it relates to the “North Atlantic societies” of Western Europe and North America.1 The first of these is political. In this sense, secularism refers to political arrangements that maintain the neutrality of the state with regard to religious belief. The legitimacy of the govern- ment is not dependent on religious belief, and the government does not privilege any particular religious community (or any community of non- believers). The second meaning of secularism can be termed sociological. It refers to a widespread decline of religious belief and practice among ordinary people. The third meaning is cultural and refers to a change in the conditions of belief, “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and fre- quently not the easiest to embrace.”2 In the North Atlantic world, all governments are (for all practical purposes) secular in the first sense, Western Europe (but not the United States) is secular in the second sense, and all societies (including the United States) are secular in the third sense. Taylor recounts the development and mutual influence of these three modes of secularism throughout the course of Western history. He is especially concerned with the third mode, the develop- ment of secular conditions of belief. To what extent might this same intellectual framework be applica- ble outside of the North Atlantic world, particularly to Asian societies? In this paper, these three modes of secularism will be applied to the modern societies of the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan. The author will argue that this framework is useful for deciphering many 1 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), Introduction, pp. 1–22. 2 Ibid., 3. 274 richard madsen of the contemporary developments in both of these parts of the Chi- nese cultural world. Even in those instances where the framework does not perfectly fit, this lack of fit is useful for highlighting particular dilemmas faced by the Taiwanese and Chinese governments in an era of political and religious transformation. I. A Secular Government While the governments of both the Communist-led People’s Repub- lic of China and the Nationalist-led Republic of China are secular, the forms of their secularism have changed over time. Heirs to the religious iconoclasm of the May Fourth Movement, they were com- mitted in the 1920s and 1930s to creating a unified “modern” China by destroying those local temples that supported the particularistic solidarities of families, lineages, and villages. Following its ascendancy to power in 1949, the Communist government of the PRC moved to suppress all religious practice—destroying temples, banning public religious rituals, eliminating religious leaders (through forced changes of profession, imprisonment, or sometimes execution)—and replaced it with a cult of the state and its leader. This religious repression reached a crescendo during the Cultural Revolution era. At the same time, the economic basis for ancestor worship and much other local reli- gious practice—the ownership of family property and the ownership of common income-producing property by temple associations—was destroyed through land reform and the collectivization of agriculture. Nonetheless, whether intentional or not, the Maoist social system largely maintained and even reinforced the corporate basis of Chinese social life—that is, the social basis for ancestor worship and local temple religion. The collectivized production teams and production brigades of the “people’s communes” corresponded to portions of family lin- eages and traditional villages, and the socialist system confined people to these communities—not only was it difficult during this period to move from the countryside to the city, but also from community to community within the countryside. Under these circumstances, the ties that submerged individuals into extended families actually thickened, and the social basis of local temple religion was preserved. When the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan after World War II, it brought with it a secular constitution and secularizing policies. In Taiwan, however, the Nationalist government confronted a particular .
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