This panel reframes the study of Confucian religiosity by shifting attention from the definitional question of whether Confucianism “is” a religion to the historical and social processes through which it becomes religious under modern conditions. We argue that contemporary Confucian revival should be understood not as the passive survival of a premodern tradition, but as a polycentric process of re-enchantment after disenchantment. Following modern secularization, revolutionary iconoclasm, and the recasting of Confucianism as philosophy, ethics, or cultural heritage, new religious forms emerge through ritual reconstruction, local practice, affective experience, and institutional experimentation. The four papers trace this process across Maoist China, contemporary rural Fujian, American divinity schools, and modern settings of filial practice and end-of-life care. Together, they contribute to broader discussions of lived religion, secularity, religion-making, and institutionalization, while offering a new methodological framework for studying Confucianism as a dynamic and adaptive religious tradition.
This paper focuses on a brief yet profoundly significant Confucian revival in Maoist China in 1962. Following the disastrous Great Leap Forward and widespread questioning of the Party’s political trajectory, the Chinese Communist Party moderately relaxed its ideological control, leading to a rapid resurgence of Confucian discourse and ritual traditions across official and popular domains. Crucially, rural society witnessed a nationwide grassroots fervor for recompiling genealogies, restoring ancestral halls, and resuming Confucius worship ceremonies. However, hardline aversion quickly halted this resurgence, triggering the Socialist Education Movement and foreshadowing the Cultural Revolution. Integrating elite political discourse with grassroots research, this study challenges the unilinear narrative of total cultural eradication during the Maoist era. It reconceptualizes Confucianism as a resilient tradition and symbolic shelter for communities, enriching Cultural Revolution historiography and providing an indispensable context for the CCP’s contemporary reappropriation of Confucian symbols.
This article explores the tension between the dual roles of Neo-Confucianism in contemporary China—as a state-sponsored cultural ideology and as a living religious tradition—through the revival of the Wang Yangming cult in Jiufeng, Fujian. In response to the nationwide promotion of Wang’s Neo-Confucianism, local residents reconstructed Wang’s shrine and revived his worship as a local deity in the fashion of popular religion. This contemporary practice departs from premodern conventions and stands in tension with the state’s framing of Wang as a secular symbol of cultural nationalism. This case study reveals the dynamic interplay between state power and local society in shaping religious life, while also highlighting the porous boundary between cultural heritage and popular religion in contemporary China. It argues that the secularization of a religious tradition may paradoxically facilitate its re-religionization, generating forms of religious practice that are unexpected from the perspective of the state.
Is Confucian filial piety (xiao) still relevant to contemporary society? Moving beyond the interpretation of filial piety as an interpersonal morality, this paper redefines xiao as a religious virtue that bridges humans, spirits, and Heaven. By juxtaposing classical ritual theories from the Liji and Neo-Confucian internal cultivation with contemporary cases, including the institutionalized Confucianism of Indonesia (MATAKIN), the internalized discipline of the Kongyang Academy, and spontaneous emotional eruptions in end-of-life care, this study reveals how filial piety functions as a prolific emotional root that could flourish in various cultivational paths. It argues that the religious efficacy of filial piety provides essential spiritual resilience against the anxieties of modernity and mortality.
| Anna Sun, Duke University | anna.x.sun@duke.edu | View |