If you search online about religion in Taiwan, you get some nice sounding BS about how Taiwan is X% Buddhist, Y% Taoist, and Z% Chinese Folk Religion.
But in my actual experience in Taiwan, none of these things are very clearly demarcated. Even among the people who pray in temples and follow religious practices, they don’t classify it that way. Their actual religion is some kind of syncreitc mix of all 3 of them. You ask them “is this a buddhist temple, or folk religion, or…?” and they have no idea. Or they get it wrong (I was told Guanyin was chinese folk religion like Mazu. Nope, Buddhist)
I mean I am sure there are some devoted “purists” of those 3 religions, but most people seem to take elements of all of them, and don’t see any sharp dividing lines themselves.
So is there anything I can read in English about this actual Taiwanese religion I’ve experienced? I want to know more about it, especially since attending a funeral where I had to wear the special coloured robes and at the front and follow the rituals (which no one Taiwanese or foreign saw fit to warn me about but that’s another story…)
I think in Chinese culture in general, religion isn’t super organized like Christianity or Islam or whatever. There’s no real “doctrine” or a final word/religious leader on theological issues.
There are various gods, that are worshipped by various people, but there’s also not a lot of intolerance against people who don’t worship the gods they worship. As in there’s not going to be any problem with someone worshipping mazu but not guanyin, or whatever number of land gods people worship.
The devotion is more towards ancestors. That’s probably more universal, and family ancestor icons or whatever they are called 主宗牌位 is probably far more sacred to a Taiwanese family than any theological following of any major gods or philosophers. That and some gods are historical people (鍾馗)
This is even evidenced in that Chinese has no word for “religion” per se, but rather what is called religion in Chinese is really teachings. Like nobody calls Confucius a religion even though in Chinese it sounds like a religion.
Hence I don’t really understand the lack of Chinese speaking Catholics in Taiwan as Catholicism doesn’t really go against Chinese way of life or their ancestral worship. The family icon can still be retained within the Catholic church whereas most Evangelical churches demands that you get rid of it as if it’s cursed.
In my view a positive thing in Taiwan that religion is not so strict, like people who identify themselves as Catholic’s still go to the Buddhist temple to pray for winning the lottery. Kind of a laid back view on religion
I own this book, but haven’t read it yet. However, I follow the author on the Taiwan Temple Lovers Facebook group and he seems to be very knowledgeable and passionate about this topic. This book and group could be good starting points for you to learn.
I agree that this topic is really a minefield to learn about, largely because even Taiwanese people are mostly ignorant about it. I don’t mean to sound disparaging, but most of them just do what they’ve been told to do since childhood and don’t really question any of it. I agree with @Taiwan_Luthiers that the focal point for most of them is the ancestor worship and not the “religion” per se.
To further muddy the waters, most Taiwanese people give the name “Taoism” to this hodgepodge of traditions and folk beliefs. There are, indeed, Taoist elements in Taiwanese folk religion, but it’s very different to the actual Taoist religions practiced in places like the Wudang Mountains in China. Ask a Taiwanese “Taoist” what relationship their religious and traditional practices have to do with the Tao Te Ching and they’ll give you a blank stare.
To complicate things even further, Taoism is in itself a very difficult religion to pin down and there aren’t many people who actually follow it “purely” in the way that somebody might follow Buddhism or Christianity. Most “pure Taoists”, as such, are either monks or Westerners - many of whom have gone to great lengths to study from Chinese masters and to keep the religion “pure” from the “contamination” of both Chinese/Taiwanese folk practices and Western “New Age” concepts. The following book helped me to make sense of the topic of Taoism as a distinct religion and how it’s practiced in the modern world:
Yea I think cradle Catholic go to Sunday school to learn the catechism. They also get confirmed when they’re older, at which time they are officially Catholic.
Could be, but as my prior post, religion in Taiwan seems lots of mixed and people mixes different beliefs on different days. I quite recently had the sad experience attending a funeral, the funeral rites were a mixture of Buddhist and Taoism, so had for example to run in the Buddhist temple which I understand is not normal for Buddhism. But I am basically an atheist so not any kind of expert on different religious things
A few years ago I visited one of the huge Buddhist temples up in the mountains. Armies of worshipers being bussed in and many if not most were doing Baibai. Praying for good luck, money, jobs…etc etc. Taiwan is really a mishmash of everything (for the most part). My only concern is that certain US evangelical style churches have made some inroads here and seem to be trying to contribute to causing a similar type of divide that has caused a mess in the US.
The evangelicals did do their best during the same sex marriage debates in Taiwan, helping to push the referendum result in their favour. The courts however didn’t care and told the government this needs to happen, you cannot exclude people like this. So it seems so far those evangelicals haven’t managed to meaningfully redirect public policy here . . .
