China is big, old, and fascinating. Its importance in the larger scheme of things is such that there should be what I call “The China Rule.” This rule would apply as follows. If a scholar claims that history unfolds directionally or according to general rules, s/he must specifically test the claim using China as datum. [...]
Tags:ancestors·canonization·China·Chinese religion·Confucian Cult·Confucius·Imperial Cult·ritual·ritual feasting·sacrifice·spirit feeding·Temple of Culture·The China Rule·Thomas Wilson
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
With this famous sentence, Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins his masterful critique of political power. Less well known is another sentence from The Social Contract (1762): “No State has ever been founded without Religion serving as its base.”
My reading of history is that Rousseau was right. State-formation [...]
Tags:China·civic religion·disciplina·divination·Dominique Briquel·Etruria·Etruscan·Etruscan books·haruspices·haruspicy·J.G. Frazer·Jean-Jacques Rousseau·magic·politics·power·prodigia·religion·Roman·Roman epistemology·Rome·Romulus·science·Shang Dynasty·state formation·Tages Against Jesus
The actor David Carradine may have led a troubled life but he experienced no such trouble as Kwai Chang Caine, a Buddhist monk on the move in the old American west. From 1972-1975, the Kung Fu series was must watch television for kids my age, even if we had no idea that Caine was a [...]
Tags:ancestor worship·axial age·Buddhism·China·Confucian·David Carradine·David Keightly·divination·Jamil Anderlini·kung fu·Kwai Chang Caine·legitimation·monastery·power·Shang Dynasty·Shaolin Temple·Shi Yongxin·Ti·Zen
As Cold War propaganda in the West would have it, communist states were to be despised because they were atheist and Godless. The reality, however, was quite different. In the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church never went away and popular belief was often at odds with official state doctrine. It is doubtful that the [...]
Tags:ancestor worship·atheism·China·Chinese religion·Confucian·cosmology·D. Howard Smith·dualism·evil·good·Manichean·monism·monotheism·naturalism·Russian Orthodox Church·shamanic·Shang Dynasty·Taoism·Trickster·yang·yin·yinyang
There are many ways in which China remains a cipher for Westerners, most of whom labor under the misapprehension that “modern civilization” originated in ancient Greece and spread slowly outward, eventually reaching “backwards” China and even then only in attenuated fashion. This of course ignores parallel and in some ways more spectacular developments in Neolithic [...]
Tags:ancestor worship·ancient China·Anne Underhill·burials·China·Chinese archaeology·Chinese Neolithic·Confucius·cult of ancestors·Donald Holzman·filial piety·KC Chang·lineages·macrocosm·microcosm·parents·stratification·transcendence
The story is a familiar one: a new religion is founded — or, as the sociologist Rodney Stark would say, a new sect is born from an older tradition — and over time it becomes successful. By success, I mean that it grows, becomes popular, and shows few signs of slowing down.
At some point during [...]
Tags:Beijing·Buddhist economy·China·Chinese Buddhism·Chinese government·Chinese state·Christianity·co-opt·co-optation·Confucius·Constantine·Cultural Revolution·Dalai Lama·domesticated religion·Foucault·new religions·official atheism·political power·power·profits·religion as commodity·resistance·Roman Empire·sects·state·suppression·surveillance·Tibetan Buddhism·Western Buddhism·World Buddhist Forum
