Chinese salvationist religions

Chinese salvationist religions or Chinese folk religious sects are a Chinese religious tradition characterised by a concern for salvation (moral fulfillment) of the person and the society. They are distinguished by egalitarianism, a founding charismatic person often informed by a divine revelation, a specific theology written in holy texts, a millenarian eschatology and a voluntary path of salvation, an embodied experience of the numinous through healing and self-cultivation, and an expansive orientation through evangelism and philanthropy.

Some scholars consider these religions a single phenomenon, and others consider them the fourth great Chinese religious category alongside the well-established Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Generally these religions focus on the worship of the universal God (Shangdi) and regard their holy patriarchs as embodiments of God.

Terminology and definition

① A church of Yiguandao in Batam, Indonesia.
② The Luanist Rebirth Church (重生堂; Chóngshēngtáng) in Taichung, Taiwan.
Two influential and competing folk sectarian currents: ① Yiguandao focusing on personal salvation through inner work, considers itself the most valid "Way of Heaven" (天道; Tiāndào) and its own a "Way of Former Heaven" (先天道; Xiāntiāndào), that is a cosmological definition of the state of things prior to creation, in unity with God; it regards ② Luanism, a cluster of churches which focus on social morality through refined (儒; rú) Confucian ritual to worship the gods, as the "Way of Later Heaven" (后天道; Hòutiāndào), that is the cosmological state of created things.

"Chinese salvationist religions" (救度宗教; jiùdù zōngjiào) is a contemporary neologism coined as a sociological category and gives prominence to folk religious sects' central pursuit that is the salvation of the individual and the society, in other words the moral fulfillment of individuals in reconstructed communities of sense. Chinese scholars traditionally describe them as "folk religious sects" (民間宗教; mínjiān zōngjiào, 民間教門; mínjiān jiàomén or 民間教派; mínjiān jiàopài) or "folk beliefs" (民間信仰; mínjiān xìnyǎng).

They are distinct from the Chinese folk religion consisting in the worship of gods and ancestors, although in English language there is a terminological confusion between the two. The 20th-century expression for these salvationist religious movements has been "redemptive societies" (救世團體; jiùshì tuántǐ), coined by scholar Prasenjit Duara.

A collective name that has been in use possibly since the latter part of the Qing dynasty is huìdàomén (會道門; "churches, ways and gates"), as their names interchangeably use the terms huì (會; "church, society, association, congregation"), dào (道; "way"), or mén (門; "gate[way], door") when referring to their corporate form.

Their congregations and points of worship are usually called táng (堂; "church, hall") or tán (坛; "altar"). Western scholars often treat them as a "Protestant" stream in Chinese religion.

The Vietnamese religions of Minh Đạo and Caodaism emerged from the same tradition of Chinese folk religious movements.

Secret religions

A category overlapping with that of the salvationist movements is that of the "secret societies" (秘密社會; mìmì shèhuì, or 秘密結社; mìmì jiéshè), religious communities of initiatory and secretive character, including rural militias and fraternal organisations which became very popular in the early republican period, and often labeled as "heretical doctrines" (宗教异端; zōngjiào yìduān).

Recent scholarship has begun to use the label "secret sects" (秘密教門; mìmì jiàomén) to distinguish the peasant "secret societies" with a positive dimension of the Yuan, Ming and Qing periods, from the negatively viewed "secret societies" of the early republic that became instruments of anti-revolutionary forces (the Guomindang or Japan).

New Religious Movements

Conceptual overlap exists with New religious movements. New religious movements have teachings and practices distinct from established religions and do not adhere to those religions' established authorities. In the Chinese context, Falun Gong is a typical example of a new religious movement.

Origin and history

Temple of the Founding Father (师祖殿; Shīzǔdiàn) of the principal holy see (圣地; shèngdì) of the Plum Flower sect, related to Baguadao, in Xingtai, Hebei.

Imperial China

Many of these religions are traced to the White Lotus tradition ("Chinese Maternism", as mentioned by Philip Clart) that was already active in the Song dynasty; others claim a Taoist legacy and are based on the recovery of ancient scriptures attributed to important immortals such as Lü Dongbin and Zhang Sanfeng, and have contributed to the popularisation of neidan; other ones are distinctively Confucian and advocate the realisation of a "great commonwealth" (大同; dàtóng) on a world scale, as dreamt of in the Book of Rites. Some scholars even find influences from Manichaeism, Mohism and shamanic traditions.

Ming dynasty (and later, Qing dynasty) authorities collectively characterized the new religious societies as "White Lotus teachings", although actual beliefs and practices of the groups varied substantially. Practices so characterized in these periods included Pure Land Buddhism, Luo teaching, Yellow Heaven teaching, Great Yang teaching, the inner alchemy of the Eight Trigrams tradition, and the Three-in-One teachings.

In the 16th to 17th century many folk religious movements were outlawed by the imperial authorities as "evil religions" or "heterodox sects" (邪教; xiéjiào). Imperial authorities regarded their teachings as inherently heretical because in teaching that existing human affairs were corrupt, those teachings amounted to denial of Confucian values of political order and social harmony.

Small, local new religious movements tended to be tolerated by the state during the Ming and Qing periods, in part because of the state's limited capacity to exercise effective control at the local levels. The Qing elite condemned salvationist groups as improper cults or heretical sects, but attempts to suppress the groups were only sporadic.: 28  Opposition from the state contributed to new religious movements engaging in rebellions (such as the White Lotus and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom) as did the sects' millenarian beliefs. Most of new religious movements did not actively seek to confront the state.

Republic of China

With the collapse of the Qing state in 1911 the sects enjoyed an unprecedented period of freedom and thrived, and many of them were officially recognised as religious groups by the early republican government. In the Beiyang period, political disunity and fragmentation resulted in the decline of old institutions. New religious movements found opportunities to register with the government as religious, philanthropic, or public interest associations. During this time, some new religious movements like Tongshanshe became modern organizations with national headquarters, local chapters, and the like.

By the Republic of China period, religious societies developed certain common aspects, though they continued to have major variation in ritual and belief. Common aspects included an emphasis on salvation, which distinguished the societies from traditional family temple based religious practice. Many societies expressed belief in a female deity, the Unborn Venerable Mother. The Unborn Venerable Mother was asserted to have given birth to a man and woman who in turn produced the human race; after being sent to live in the world, the human race fell into wrongdoing and confusion. The Unborn Venerable Mother had sent the Lamplighter Buddha, then the Sakyamuni Buddha, and was preparing to send the Maitreya Buddha, who would guide believers to a paradise on earth, the Homeland of True Emptiness.

The Republic of China viewed new religious movements less favorably over time. After the Northern Expedition, the Nationalist government banned several major new religious movements, deeming them superstitious and as presenting an infiltration risk. The popularity of new religious movements continued to grow during the Nationalist era despite the state's disfavor. Redemptive societies modeled their organizations on civic associations of the late Qing period, writing constitutions, bylaws, and publishing their precepts and doctrines.: 113  Their writings emphasized the moral and social value of the organization, including charitable projects.: 113  Sociologist Yanfei Sun attributes the success of new religious movements during this period their effective harnessing of nationalist sentiment, their ability to take advantage of diverse social networks, and their "eclectic blending of messages from various deep-seated religious traditions [which] resonated with the Chinese people."

The Nationalist government's efforts to constrain new religious movements was also limited in regions governed by local strongmen and in areas that Japanese forces occupied. Additionally, lobbying efforts on behalf of some new religious movements resulted in them being allowed to exist and develop in the form of charitable organizations.

In the 1920s and 1930s, economic insecurity contributed to the major growth of new religious movements. The largest groups in this period were Yiguandao, Society for the Common Good, Xiantiandao (the Way of Former Heaven), and Jiugongdao (the Nine Palaces Way).

In 1928, the ROC government banned the Daoyuan, the Wushanshe, and the Fellowship of Goodness.: 120 

From 1931 to 1945, Japan encouraged the growth of new religious movements in Manchuria and other occupied areas, believing that this would advance Japanese interests.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, both the Nationalists and the Communists sought to mobilize new religious movements to help achieve wartime objectives.

Yiguandao became the largest new religious movement of the era, in part because of its effective use of opportunities during the war. Its founder Zhang Guangbi developed a close relationship with the Japanese and Yiguandao included officials of the Wang Jingwei government in its membership. As a result, both the Nationalists and the Communists condemned Yiguandao; at the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Zhang was arrested and the society was banned. As the Communists came into power, some networks of Yiguandao engaged in armed conflict with the Communists, interpreting the Communist victory in the civil war as showing that the "three disasters and eight difficulties" as the beginning of the third kalpa.

People's Republic of China

The founding of the People's Republic in 1949 saw increased suppression of new religious movements. The PRC began a campaign to suppress the new religious movements that had developed during the Republic of China era, deeming them reactionary secret societies (fandong huidaomen) that may have been infiltrated by Nationalist elements and which could engage in sabotage. These efforts eliminated new religious movements from public practice.

The impacts of the Cultural Revolution on new religious movements varied. Especially because of the attack on the Four Olds, some disbanded or became covert. Others were able to take advantage of the fact that the Public Security Bureau apparatus was in disarray.

From 1983 to 1986 (and later in some areas), the government implemented a "strike hard" campaign against these movements.

In the mid-1990s, the Chinese state began to adopt Western anti-cult discourse and terminology, influenced by the global media coverage of groups like the Branch Davidians, Aum Shinrikyo, and the Order of the Solar Temple. It stopped using the Mao-era term "reactionary secret society" to refer to such groups, and instead began using the term "evil cult" (邪教 xiejiao) or "cultic organization". From 1995 to 1999, the Ministry of State Security, the State Council, and the CPC Central Committee designated 14 new religious movements as evil cults.

In 1999, the state engaged in an anti-Falun Gong campaign. As part of this effort, it created the Central Leading Group on Preventing and Dealing with Cults (the executive office of which is referred to as the 610 Office) and which in 2003 was expanded to cover other "cultic groups". On 30 October 1999, the National People's Congress passed the Resolution on Banning Cults, Preventing and Punishing Cultic Activities. The Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate promulgated instructions on how to apply existing criminal law to people involved in "evil cults," which it defined as "illegal groups that are founded by using religion, qigong, or other pretenses; deify their leaders; produce and spread superstitious ideas and heretical teachings to deceive and swindle people' recruit and control their members; and pose a danger to society." With some revisions, these continue to be the basic legal framework for new religious movements which the state deems as cults, as of 2026.

Since the 1990s and 2000s the climate was relaxed and some of these sects have received some form of official recognition. In Taiwan all the still existing restrictions were rescinded in the 1980s.

Folk religious movements began to rapidly revive in mainland China in the 1980s, and now if conceptualised as a single group they are said to have the same number of followers of the five state-sanctioned religions of China taken together. Scholars and government officials have been discussing to systematise and unify this large base of religious organisations; in 2004 the State Administration of Religious Affairs created a department for the management of folk religions. In the late 2015 a step was made at least for those of them with a Confucian identity, with the foundation of the Holy Confucian Church of China which aims to unite in a single body all Confucian religious groups.

In 2014, proselytizing members of a new religious movement murdered a woman named Wu Shuoyan at a McDonald's restaurant in Zhaoyuan when she refused to provide them her phone number. Different views of the murderers' affiliations exist: they were either members of Eastern Lightning (itself an offshoot of The Shouters), or a further offshoot of Eastern Lightning. The murder prompted a wave of government campaigns to crack down on what the state deems as "evil cults".

Many of the movements of salvation of the 20th and 21st century aspire to become the repository of the entirety of the Chinese tradition in the face of Western modernism and materialism, advocating an "Eastern solution to the problems of the modern world", or even interacting with the modern discourse of an Asian-centered universal civilisation.

Geography and diffusion

Geographic distribution of influence of China's popular religious sects.

The Chinese folk religious movements of salvation are mostly concentrated in northern and northeastern China, although with a significant influence reaching the Yangtze River Delta since the 16th century. The northern provinces have been a fertile ground for the movements of salvation for a number of reasons: firstly, popular religious movements were active in the region already in the Han dynasty, and they deeply penetrated local society; secondly, northern provinces are characterised by social mobility around the capital and weak traditional social structure, thus folk religious movements of salvation fulfill the demand of individual searching for new forms of community and social network.

According to the Chinese General Social Survey of 2012, approximately 2.2% of the population of China, which is around 30 million people, claim to be members of folk religious sects. The actual number of followers may be higher, about the same as the number of members of the five state-sanctioned religions of China if counted together. In Taiwan, recognised folk religious movements of salvation gather approximately 10% of the population as of the mid-2000s.

Chronological record of major sects

1277–1367

1367–1911

1911–1949

Late 20th century

21st century

The City of the Eight Symbols in Qi, Hebi, is the headquarters of the Weixinist Church in Henan.

Other sects

See also

In Vietnam
In Philippines
In Japan
In Korea

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 Palmer (2011), p. 19; passim
  2. ↑ Palmer (2011), p. 19
  3. ↑ Broy (2015), p. 146.
  4. ↑ Clart (1997), pp. 12-13 & passim.
  5. ↑ Palmer (2011), pp. 17–18
  6. ↑ Palmer (2011), p. 12: "Chinese sectarianism, millennialism and heterodoxy, called "popular religious sects" (民間宗教; minjian zongjiao, 民間教門; minjian jiaomen, 民間教派; minjian jiaopai) in the Chinese scholarship, often inextricable from debates on the exact nature of the so-called "White Lotus" tradition."; p. 14: "The local and anthropological focus of these studies, and their undermining of rigid distinctions between "sectarian" groups and other forms of local religiosity, tends to draw them into the category of "popular religion" 民間信仰."
  7. ↑ Clart (2014), p. 393. Quote: "[...] The problem started when the Taiwanese translator of my paper chose to render "popular religion" literally as minjian zongjiao (民間宗教). The immediate association this term caused in the minds of many Taiwanese and practically all mainland Chinese participants in the conference was of popular sects (民間教派; minjian jiaopai), rather than the local and communal religious life that was the main focus of my paper."
  8. ↑ Palmer (2011), pp. 19–20
  9. ↑ Palmer (2011), p. 17
  10. ↑ Ownby (2008). § 2: "Western scholars cast Chinese sects in the role of Protestant dissenters and celebrate (or occasionally condemn) their willingness to challenge the status quo."
  11. 1 2 Palmer (2011), p. 6
  12. ↑ Palmer (2011), pp. 12–13
  13. 1 2 Palmer (2011), p. 13
  14. ↑ Sun (2026), pp. 115–138.
  15. 1 2 Sun (2026), p. 115.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Palmer (2011), p. 12
  17. ↑ Clart (1997), p. 22.
  18. ↑ Broy (2015), p. 158.
  19. 1 2 Palmer (2011), p. 27
  20. ↑ Palmer (2011), p. 28
  21. ↑ Ma & Meng (2011)
  22. ↑ Lu, Yunfeng. The Influence of Mo-school on Chinese Popular Sects. Studies in World Religions (Shijie Zongjiao Yanjiu), 27 (2): 123-127.
  23. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Smith (2015), p. 341.
  24. ↑ Palmer (2011), p. 23
  25. ↑ Smith (2015), p. 446.
  26. 1 2 Sun (2026), p. 117.
  27. ↑ Wong, Stephanie M. (2025). Making Catholicism Chinese: the Catholic Church in a Modernizing China. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-762369-5.
  28. ↑ Palmer (2011), p. 3
  29. 1 2 Sun (2026), p. 118.
  30. ↑ Sun (2026), p. 112.
  31. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Sun (2026), p. 119.
  32. 1 2 3 Schumann, Matthias (2026). "Shifting Boundaries: Spirit Writing and Superstition in Republican China". In Baum, Emily; Wu, Albert (eds.). Uncanny Beliefs: Superstition in Modern Chinese History. Harvard Contemporary China series. Cambridge (Massachusetts) London: Harvard University Asia Center. ISBN 978-0-674-30340-9.
  33. 1 2 3 Smith (2015), p. 342.
  34. ↑ Smith (2015), p. 343.
  35. ↑ Sun (2026), p. 343.
  36. ↑ Palmer (2011), pp. 13, 23
  37. ↑ Sun (2026), pp. 38, 120.
  38. ↑ Sun (2026), p. 38.
  39. 1 2 3 Smith (2015), p. 348.
  40. ↑ Smith (2015), p. 363.
  41. 1 2 3 Sun (2026), p. 122.
  42. ↑ Sun (2026), p. 137.
  43. ↑ Sun (2026), pp. 134–135, 137.
  44. ↑ Sun (2026), pp. 137–138.
  45. 1 2 Sun (2026), p. 138.
  46. ↑ "Religions & Christianity in Today's China" (PDF). Religion & Christianity in Today's China. IV (1). China Zentrum. 2014. ISSN 2192-9289. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 April 2017. pp. 22–23.
  47. 1 2 3 大陆民间宗教管理变局 [Mainland folk religion management change]. Phoenix Weekly (500). Pu Shi Institute for Social Science. July 2014. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
  48. 1 2 3 Sun (2026), p. 188.
  49. 1 2 3 Palmer (2011), p. 29
  50. 1 2 Palmer (2011), p. 10
  51. 1 2 Seiwert (2003), p. 318
  52. ↑ China Family Panel Studies 2012. Reported and compared with Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2011 in Lu 卢, Yunfeng 云峰 (2014). 卢云峰：当代中国宗教状况报告——基于CFPS（2012）调查数据 [Report on Religions in Contemporary China – Based on CFPS (2012) Survey Data] (PDF). World Religious Cultures (1). Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 August 2014. p. 13.
  53. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Palmer (2011), p. 22
  54. ↑ Seiwert (2003), p. 20
  55. 1 2 Seiwert (2003), p. 270
  56. ↑ Seiwert (2003), p. 217
  57. ↑ Ma & Meng (2011), pp. 173–175
  58. 1 2 3 4 Palmer (2011), p. 4.
  59. ↑ Ownby (1995).
  60. ↑ Seiwert (2003), p. 343
  61. 1 2 3 4 5 Palmer (2011), p. 4
  62. ↑ Palmer (2011), pp. 4–5
  63. 1 2 3 4 5 Palmer (2011), p. 5
  64. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Munro & Spiegel (1994), p. 270.
  65. ↑ Smith (2015), p. 358.
  66. ↑ Palmer (2011), p. 7
  67. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 I (1995), p. 32.
  68. 1 2 Munro & Spiegel (1994), p. 269.
  69. ↑ Seiwert (2003), p. 380.
  70. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Munro & Spiegel (1994), p. 271.

Sources