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For more recent developments, the authors
mainly draw lists of important meetings
and documents underlying the policy of the
central authorities. Each study is divided into six
chapters: the history of the religion is narrated
in three of these for ancient, modern and contemporary
times; there follows one chapter on
the “life” of religion today, meaning the organisational
aspect of it; the cultural approach and
the contribution to society is positively acknowledged
in Chapter 5; the last chapter is devoted
to reflections and perspectives. The overall attitude
of the authors is sympathetic to religions
that they consider important, and obviously
real phenomena of China past and present.
The introduction, written by He Guanghu,
contains a few sparkling sentences. For example,
the first line says “Writing about the history of
China, the most difficult is about contemporary
history, modern history comes in second position,
relatively speaking, the easiest part seems
to be the ancient history.” (p. 1) This sounds like
a caveat when reading Chapters 3 to 6 of each
study! Prof. He is also aware that religious facts
in China cannot be limited to the five official
religions; he writes: “finally to refuse a question
is not a way to solve it.” (p. 9) He Guanghu regroups
all the other religious manifestations into
three groups: 1/ those linked with Confucianism, 2/ “folk religion” and 3/ ”new religions”. In
the postscript, Prof. He expresses a kind of satisfied
relief in the book, the result of a State-sponsored
research programme (211 gongcheng).
The final product was too voluminous; it had
to be slimmed down; the editing work was a
challenge. He mentions that the sixth chapters
of each study are a sign of different views held
by the authors. The honesty of Prof. He is commendable,
his humour refreshing; above all, he
and his collaborators know very well the history
of religions in China, which, they say, are still
very much alive today.
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Dominique Tyl, S.J., was a contributor to China News Analysis, Hong Kong, and later worked in China in various work units; he then taught at Fujen Catholic University, Taipei, where he was appointed Director of the Socio-Cultural Research Center, and Director of the Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation Studies. He is now a member of the Macau Ricci Institute and coordinator of the Programme of Social Work at Inter-University Institute of Macau. |
