Religious Daoism In China Chapter 1 Summary

The author succeeds in making a strong case for the importance of serious consideration of the religious aspects of Chinese society—at both the elite and the popular levels—which is indispensible for properly understanding virtually all aspects of China’s past and present, including the Chinese state and the local society. In essence, he argues that Chinese society is essentially a religious society. Pointing to a dominant tradition that repeatedly brought church and state together, he also illuminates the close links between religion and politics. He conceives of China as a sacred space, infused with divine energies and populated by an array of spirits that elicit the attention and sacrifice of the human inhabitants. Consequently, the often prevalent tendency to ignore or gloss over the religious dimensions has serious ramifications for the various misunderstandings of China, including those prevalent in the West, many of which can be traced on interpretative distortions disseminated by official versions of Chinese history, which typically reflect Confucian biases and misinterpretations. As an alternative, Lagerwey calls for …show more content…
Here the author adopts a top-down view, primarily centering his discussion on the official religion that was sanctioned by the imperial state, although there is also some discussion of local gods. While there is lots of fascinating material, this is arguably the weakest chapter in the book. Often the author goes off-topic and the narrative tends to be somewhat episodic. For instance, the section that covers the Period of Division (220–589) hardly discuses the pantheon at all, but instead rehearses familiar themes about the dominant patterns of church-state relationships that were formed during this remarkable