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NEW RELIGIOUS
GROUPS
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today
• interpreting new religious groups & charismatic networks
• my interpretations
• applying a general framework to the material
• “facts” based on Ma Xisha 馬西沙 and Han Bingfang 韓秉方, Zhongguo minjian
zongjiaoshi 中國民間宗教史 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin, 1992)
• case study of the Non-Action Teachings (Yangzi region and northern
Fujian)
• based on my own recent research in the primary sources, and a wide body of
Taiwanese, Japanese and mainland scholarship
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CONCEPTS
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rethinking the White Lotus Teachings
• old label united variety of unrelated phenomena, difficult to let go
of this “unity”
• which criteria
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organizational form and degree of institutionalisation (sect……church)
contents (Eternal Venerable Mother, messianic ???)
history (essentially: age of a group)
how local people saw them (never applied)
being repressed & persecuted (de facto an important criterion)
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concepts
• labelling => White Lotus Teachings as proper name or name of class of all
heterodox religious phenomena=> incorrect (see 2 nd lecture)
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秘密結社
民間結社
民間宗教
民間信仰)
problem terms “secret”
(untrue) and “popular”
(false dichotomy)
• sutra recitation vs meditation sects (S. Naquin)
• inclusion on basis of stereotype
• where to place: Christianity, Islam, Judaism in China
• in essence still the same set of phenomena, despite different terms
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new religious groups 新興宗教
family networks 家族網絡
charismatic networks 魔力性的網絡
ritual services 儀式服務
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INTERPRETING OLD
DATA: NEW
RELIGIOUS GROUPS
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new religious groups
• new in two possible ways
• new compared to Buddhist and Daoist traditions, invariably late Ming and after
• new because persecution prevented proper institutionalisation (as in Western Europe)
• today’s examples (not at all exhaustive)
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Non-Action Teachings 無爲教 (Yangzi region/Fujian, spread mouth to mouth)
Broad Yang Teachings 弘陽教 (North China, mostly Hebei)
Three-in-One teachings 三一教 (Putian region)
Lord of Heaven Teachings (Roman Catholic Christianity) 天主教 (coastal northern Fujian,
Shanghai region, Sichuan a.o.<= missionaries travelled all across China) & “Christianity” 基督
教
• Unity Way 一貫道
• preliminary characteristics
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no autonomous tendency towards violent action
no active messianic message
regional (probably determined by local language variants, except Christianity)
textual and ritual core
intensive horizontal connections per group
successful long term transmission until 21st century (i.e. after 1949)
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Non-Action Teachings
• more detail later today
• “real” founders unclear, putative founders Ying Ji’nan 應繼南 (1527?-1582)
and Yao Wenyu 姚文宇 (1578-1646), did not reveal texts or big messages
• interpret 五部六冊 by 羅清
• iconoclastic message of practice without statues or ancestors
• worship of the Five Books in Six Volumes central
• Based on Buddhist canon, not personal experiences
• enactment Chan model of enlightenment
• Huineng as a model
• “Separate Transmission outside the Teachings”
• first three stages: two brief “sutras” and a 話頭
• flat organization
• religious affiliation character普for all
• ranks are initiation levels
• aim of selection for end-of-kalpa Dragon Flower Gathering or Pure Land
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Broad Yang Teachings
• Han Taihu 韓太湖/飄高 (1570-1598)
• Biography (hagiographical 聖徒傳 aspects): lay Buddhist, severe illness around 14,
religious quest, became travelling preacher, last few years of his life in the capital,
eunuch following
• supposed to be prolific writer, unlikely to have written/spoken all texts ascribed to him
(compare the Buddha and sutras)
• movement found across northern China (incl. southern Manchuria)
• basic mythology
• 無生老母 banishment story, Han Piaogao sent down as saviour, younger brother
Confucius, Laozi and Zhenwu
• three periods: 青陽 past, 白陽 present, 紅陽 future
• salvation available
• moral behaviour
• women after performance blood pond ritual
• activities by married members
• faith healing thru tea and sutra recitation
• funerary rituals
• some local groups got dragged into the Eight Trigrams rebellion (1813), where
Lin Qing had to TEACH them about his messianic message
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弘陽悟道明心經
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Three-in-One Teachings
• Lin Zhaoen (1517-1598) from Putian
• wealthy & educated family
• after prefectural examination much misfortune in personal life, he quit his studies in ca
1547
• took up practice of Daoist inner meditation and took on pupils from 1551 onwards
• during the local wokou raids of 1556- 1563, he emerged as a local leader & performed
large scale charitable works (providing food and shelter for the poor, burial or cremation
of those killed in raids or by diseases, and extensive rituals for anonymous dead)
• from 1563 until some years before his death, he wandered around Fujian and southern
China lecturing
• Lin Zhaoen hinted at being Maitreya Buddha, but not messianic movement
• enlightenment as a lengthy process of inner alchemical transformation,
formally Confucian values as his basis and against monasticism
• flourishing movement in Putian today
• practice of inner meditation in nine levels
• extensive ritual practice
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oldest academy of the movement, from 1595
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Lord of Heaven Teachings 天主教
• earlier Nestorian and Roman Catholic presences had not lasted
• Persians (Tang period Chang’an region)
• Turkish peoples (Mongol period northern “China”), Persian traders
(Quanzhou region)
• missionaries
• Jesuit
• Dominican & Franciscan friars
• sometimes perceived as magicians & persecuted
• continued (illegal) mission and presence
• 17th- 19th century, early groups often largely autonomous
• restart public mission mid-19th century to mid-20th century
• entanglement in local conflicts
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Christianity 基督教
• 基督教& 耶穌教 of course really Protestant movements
• 1st mission in Taiwan!
• followed by 19th century missions from different European countries (incl.
Australia!) and USA
• some characteristics
• direct contact through the Bible with God >much individual variation
• theoretically ritual autonomy, but until 20th century under Western
control/leadership
• entanglement in local conflicts
• sometimes missionaries perceived as magicians and persecuted
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Unity Way
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INTERPRETING OLD
DATA: FAMILY
NETWORKS
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teacher networks
• networks
• authority based on family tradition & special lore
• controlled transmission thru families
• fluctuating personal following
• today’s examples
• Wang family network
• Liu family network
• Dong family network
• messianic?
• belief in a saviour not yet messianic
• actually the Wang and Liu networks (below) mostly inner cultivation in Daoist tradition, but
with (partly) messianic inspired cosmology
• northern networks, reflecting power of Complete Perfection as a northern Daoist tradition
• more likely received as meditation traditions
• rebellious
• does involvement of group in rebellion mean that its lore is rebellious?
• my proposal: a Marxist model
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Wang family network
• Wang Sen 王森 (1542-1619) from Yongping, near N. border
• arrested as activist lay Buddhist leader, died in prison
• autonym Great Vehicle Teachings 大乘教, alternative name Burning Incense Teachings 焚
香教 , outsiders as Smelling the Fragrance Teachings 聞香教
• lore
• Wang Sen and descendants as incarnations Maitreya on earth
• built networks in which believer donated money (tribute) in exchange for religious lore,
easily mistaken for proper organizations
• main text “Precious Scroll of the August Ultimate‘s Golden Cinnabar and Nine-petaled
Lotus [Path of] True Reliance to Take Refuge in the Truth and Return to the Homeregion” 皇極金丹九蓮正信皈真還鄉寳卷, used as a legitimizing treasure rather for
distribution
• contents
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burning incense central devotional act
Three Refuges and Five Injunctions
messianic eschatology in three stages
Amitabha dispatched by Unborn Father and Mother 無生父母 to save all their lost souls
cultivation the Golden Pill (rather than a potable elixir) inside one's body to return to
one's original nature
• technique to make one‘s essence 精, stuff-energy 氣, and divinity 神 coagulate inside the
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body, to produce the Golden Pill
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Liu family network
• Liu Zuochen 劉左臣 (fl. 1678-circa 1700) and descendants until extinction
1817
• network
• unstable: autonym 收原教 and others
• branches named after Eight Trigrams, no horizontal integration
• transmission special lore & teacher’s charisma
• teachers possessed sacred text as legitimating treasure
• short text in less than 5000 characters
• cultivating the inner pill and attaining long life (confirmed by archival sources)
• similar to Nine-petalled Lotus Sutra, except for less elaborate messianic
cosmology and no references to Buddhist practices
• man was made up of the eight trigrams (=cosmos)
• important ritual was to worship the sun as a Saintly Emperor, kowtow three
times a day and sacrifice five times a year
• when practiced for a long time, one could “heal illnesses and place needles for
other people.”
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One Stick of Incense Teachings 一柱香教
• Dong Jisheng (1619-1650?), Dong Family Village in Shanghe (Shandong)
• family transmission at least until 1839, northern China, tradition as such into 20 th
century
• transmission and teaching took place by Taoist priests, but also non-ordained lay
people
• no core text, but consistent ritual practices
• stressed burning of incense as the most basic sacrifice and kowtowing to express respect as
the central devotional act
• main activity was healing
• diseases caused by moral faults healed through confession to one’s teacher, kowtowing and burning
incense, possibly also beatings with a ruler
• diseases described as punishment by the Five Great Households, healed through fines, such as
performing opera or telling stories (most likely at local festivals), sacrifices, or burning replacement
bodies
• people were exhorted to do good
• they might also perform rituals against low fees or hold collective sessions of reciting the name of the
Buddha Amitabha or sing songs
• basic value system completely orthodox
• why seen as heretic groups?
• active requirement of doing good by followers differentiates this network from regular ritual
services
• on local level (including magistrates) not seen as such
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• most arrests in aftermaths other incidents
INTERPRETING OLD
DATA: CHARISMATIC
NETWORKS
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charismatic networks
• bound together by individual preachers/teachers and based on
small texts derived from or shared with the Dragon Flower Sutra:
• the advent of the Dragon Flower Gathering, cosmic change and the fall of
the dynasty, preceded by violent times filled with war and the coming of
the apocalypse, the advent of divine armies capable of defeating evil
demonic creatures, and even the myth of the Eternal Mother and her
banished children (but not the Eight Character Mantra), the Cloud City, and
the three kalpas
• belonged to demonological messianic paradigm
• did not engender rebellion
• the teachers transmitted this lore in incomplete form to earn money
• served to heighten sense of threat and need for defence by means of this
lore
• link to rebellion 1796-1804 surprisingly tenuous
• networks usually very fleeting, no stable family traditions
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Book/Amulets of Five Lords 五公經/符
• transmitted in one form or another since late Tang until today (!)
• crucial contents
• revealed by Five Bodhisattva’s
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prediction end of times in yinmao 寅卯 year
apocalyptic disasters with demonic component
appearance of Luminous King (Prince), accompanied by Luo Ping
fight disasters with exorcist means, Five Amulets
• transmitted on ad hoc basis
• often by Buddhist monks or in Buddhist context
• analogous to Dragon Flower lore for self-protection in difficult times
• sometimes inspiration for concrete incidents (fall Tang itself!)
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printed and
copied in
scores of
different
versions
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A CASE STUDY
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Non-Action Teachings
• different autonyms: 無爲教, 大乘教, 龍華會 etc.
• traced back to Patriarchs Ying Ji’nan 應繼南 (1527?-1582) and Yao
Wenyu 姚文宇 (1578-1646)
• present analysis
• most accounts stress involvement of the movement in several violent
incidents, in 1748 and 1895
• analyzed as a Maitreyist movement
• contextualized in relationship to groups traditionally labelled as White
Lotus Teachings
• sources used until now
• mostly archival materials from the 18th century
• one internal account Overall Record of the Circumstances under which the
Three Patriarchs On-high Traveled around and Taught 太上三祖行教因由總
錄
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new approach
• justification
• deconstructing label
• allows (and requires) different approach to available evidence
• different approach allows different selection sources
• increased availability of internal and external sources since 1995
• incorporating more data on (and from) Taiwan
• approach
• recontextualisation
• other forms of lay Buddhist culture
• taking serious internal perspective
• recognizing that all sources (internal & external) construct their own realities
• ideally (not yet possible) fieldwork
• no more teleology, thoroughly social-historical
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new and old sources
• internal accounts (unused: *)
• 七支因果*
• Putian lineage*
• Overall Record of the Circumstances under which the Three Patriarchs On-high Traveled
around and Taught 太上三祖行教因由總錄
• ritual writings*
• doctrinal writings (part*)
• external accounts
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Qing archives
local gazetteers (some *)
memorials (some *)
Late Qing persecution accounts 1895 (Chinese and Western)
Japanese occupiers Taiwan
1950s-1980s persecution accounts*
• Christian accounts
• Sections to Awaken from Delusions” 醒迷篇 (copied in 1658)*
• missionary accounts of 19th century conversions*
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founders and leaders
• Luo Qing 羅清 and the Five Books in Six Volumes五部六冊
• no direct link
• texts received by existing community of lay-believers and Chan interests
• Patriarchs Ying Ji’nan 應繼南 (1527?-1582) and Yao Wenyu 姚文宇
(1578-1646)
• Overall Record of the Circumstances under which the Three Patriarchs Onhigh Traveled around and Taught 太上三祖行教因由總錄: inner indications
• 七支因果 many teachers next to each other, Patriarchs Ying and Yao two
among many in the same regions
• family established itself as dominant source of charisma after 1646 until
1950s in some regions
• local non-Yao lineages
• Putian lineage separated from the ancestral lineage in early 1650s
• Recognition Yao charisma did not mean shared overall organisation
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beliefs and practices
• Three Refuges and Five Injunctions
• 3 or 4 large core rituals
• Initiation
• three groups of levels
three basic stages: initiation into lore
subsequent 7 stages: initiation into functions
overall leader: patriarch Yao family or high functionary
=> obtaining the transmission
• Vegetarian Fast => creating the community
• Lighting the Candles=> celebrating the scriptures
• Funerary ceremony (only documented in Changshu manual)
• other special characteristics
• interiorization of burning incense, worship, sacrifice etc.
• basic rejection ancestor worship, burning paper money
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recontextualisation
• Maitreyism?
• very few explicit indications of any link to Maitreya
• Maitreya mentioned only as Buddha future kalpa
• 3 Ages (mentioned only once in all texts)
• Dragon Flower Gathering
• two meanings
• gatherings Maitreya at the end of this kalpa: quite common all over southern China
• gatherings Maitreya in near future: always combined with specific dates for apocalypse
• function in NAT like Pure Land or Western Paradise
• one possible instance of actualization
• 1748
• instead: contextualise as lay Buddhist movement (next slide)
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lay Buddhist context
• every member took Three Refuges and Five Injunctions
• worship Amitabha in particular
• Chan model of wordless transmission
Do not set up written characters 不立文字
A separate transmission outside the teachings 教外别傳
Directly point to the human heart 直指人心
See your nature and become a Buddha 見性成佛
• lived in Buddhist halls
• Fuqing/Putian lineage
• descended directly from Yao Wenyu through Tang Kejun
• separate due to local early Qing persecution in Jianning
• Info on the lineage patriarchs indicates peaceful Buddhist practice and
discussions
• early PRC confusion with other lay Buddhists for good reason
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agency
• NAT myth of Patriarch Luo who rescues the nation
• “Proclamation to Protect the Way/Sutras” 護道經榜文
• claim of Kangxi’s edict providing right of practice
• cases of explicit use of the Proclamation to obtain rights
• preserved in NAT halls into late 20th century
• assertive action by local groups to free arrested members
• most groups were completely integrated locally (hence left alone
by local magistrates), some considered too assertive
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where do the NAT belong?
• in the history of Buddhism
• in the history of assertive social movements
• in the history of local agency
and where do other “new religious groups”, “teacher networks” and
“charismatic networks” belong?
• In the history of Daoism
• In the history of local ritual specialists & healers
• and so forth
but certainly not:
• the history of heretic movements (unless history of persecution)
• popular or elite (if anything in between, for moderately educated people
or people with access to literacy)
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ROUNDING UP
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selective conclusions
• one topic left out (too difficult): social background
• new religious groups had considerable access to literacy
• teacher networks: teacher-families literate, followers not necessarily,
admired literacy (analogous to people using classical Daoist specialists)
• charismatic networks: lore functioned largely orally, even though
ultimately (in the Qing at least) derived from written sources
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