not under God

Chinafile hosted a brief roundtable last week in which people were asked to describe what is going right with China. Jeremy Goldkorn came up with this as part of his contribution

 -  State atheism, broad state support of science over superstition and religion.

The fact that China isn’t just secular but positively atheist is amazingly underanalysed in terms of Chinese state behaviour, though it’s difficult to put your finger on where exactly this makes a difference (scientific enthusiasm is after all a feature of both secular societies and ones with a state religion, like the UK). But it raises all sorts of interesting questions. Has the fact that the Communist Party successfully transitioned from tyranny to oligarchy anything to do with the fact that it has no belief in anything transcendent. Does a state that positively asserts that there is nothing after death behave in any identifiable way because of this?

Paradoxically, if you have a state religion in which few people actually believe, like the Chruch of England, it gives your society a kind of pseudo Confucian flavour. You have an Archbishop of Canterbury with a position near the top of the state’s ceremonial hierarchy, a learned and occasionally bearded and also at the head of a network of lesser sages, all performing the rites at the appointed times, entrusted with a significant amount of the country’s education, constantly issuing memoranda to the emperor and getting nowhere, though people by and large seem glad to have them around.

Comments

[Strategist]

if you have a state religion in which few people actually believe, like the Church of England, it gives your society a kind of pseudo Confucian flavour

learned and occasionally bearded... at the head of a network of lesser sages...constantly issuing memoranda to the emperor and getting nowhere, though people by and large seem glad to have them around.

I like this a lot - one of the absurd but vaguely reassuring (if not fully functioning) checks and balances of our crazy Ruritanian unwritten constitution... but I am completely ignorant: who are the Confucian equivalents to the CofE bishops in the Chinese set up? Who is China's Rowan Williams or indeed its Justin Oilwellby??

[godoggo]

Is there really a fundamental difference between C of E and various CCP-sponsored churches?

Anyways it seems to me that whether in Communist China or in Christian-friendly Taiwan most Chinese people tend toward an agglomeration of supernatural beliefs rather than organized religion.

[ajay]

I am completely ignorant: who are the Confucian equivalents to the CofE bishops in the Chinese set up?

As I read it, jamie's point is that there aren't any.

[chris y]

Anyways it seems to me that whether in Communist China or in Christian-friendly Taiwan most Chinese people tend toward an agglomeration of supernatural beliefs rather than organized religion.

The real European analogy seems to be antiquity. Greeks and Romans held an agglomeration of supernatural beliefs, and their cities adopted or invented some of them for state sponsored rituals, while leaving the rest to get on with it as best they could.

[JamesP]

There's considerably more government-sponsored backing of pseudo-science and "superstition" in China than in most Western countries
. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Administration_of_Traditional_Chinese_Medicine

Also, I find the tendency of some Western atheists to praise China's religion policy incredibly distasteful, given the way that policy is enforced.

[ajay]

Greeks and Romans held an agglomeration of supernatural beliefs, and their cities adopted or invented some of them for state sponsored rituals, while leaving the rest to get on with it as best they could.

"The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful."

[Strategist]

Good spot, Ajay. I guess what I meant to ask was, who had that role in the old Chinese Imperial system?

Doesn't matter - I'm now following the doctrine of the "two whatevers".

[ajay]

I guess what I meant to ask was, who had that role in the old Chinese Imperial system?

No idea. I don't think that Imperial China had a separate priestly command structure.