Tang Chun-yi's Views on Resolving Religious Conflicts

I attended another talk at the HKSHP Wednesday night. The talk was given by the chairman of the HKSHP and its vice-director of curriculum, Mr Fong Sai Ho 方世豪. He spoke on the topic of "Confucians and Religious Conflicts" (儒家與宗教衝突). It was largely based on chapter 18 of Tang Chun-yi's (唐君毅)  three volume work entitled "Chinese Civlization and the Contemporary World" ( 中華人文與當今世界 ) (1975) . There were not very many attendants. Just about 5. Amongst all the HKSHP talks that I attended, this must be a record! What does that say about interest in the subject amongst thinking Chinese people in Hong Kong?

To Tang, religion is one of the highest expressions of man's spiritual life and all religions are based on man's desire for transcendanc, usually including the aim of guiding man towards what is good:  loving and respecting others. But paradoxically throughout human history, religious conflicts have been most merciless and the gulf between religions unbridgeable: between Christianity and Judaism, Christianity and Zorostrianism, Christianity and Islam and within Christianity, between  Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Churches, Catholics and Protestants and also conflicts between different sects within the same non-Christian religions. Each would claim that they are orthodox and the others heretics. Despite the professed principles of religious toleration and freedom of religious worship, religious differences still persist. Even in China, competition for converts amongst different religions is keen. To him, such competition may be attributed to and forms part of the desires of European nations to expand their own political and economic influence. Tang asks, why it is that religions which ostensibly preaches loving and respect for others should nonetheless lead to conflicts and why it is that communism, based upon materialism should be most intolerable of religion of all? 

Tang rejects as "superficial" the explanation that conflict arose because the practitioners of different religioun fail to practice what they preach by failing to respect the principle of freedom of religion guaranteed by the relevant constitutions or by failing to practice toleration. Nor does he think it likely that once such failures cease, the relevant conflicts will also cease. He further speculates whether if the followers of a particular religion are in the political majority, they may or may not pass laws to establish their own religion as the national religion, persecute and prohibit all other religion because according to their principles, it would be "immoral" to encourage others to follow what they "truly" believe to be"heretical" beliefs on the ground that doing so would be  tantamout to permitting "evil". This was done during the Middle Ages, when "heretics" were persecuted and killed.

To Tang, to get an answer, we must examine the differential histories of the East and the West. He thinks that in general, religious conflict is less severe in the East than in the West, both in terms of extent and frequency but that even so, in India, Buddhists had been persecuted by Hindus and even in China, there were conflicts between the Buddhists and Taoists. However today, different religions still appear able to co-exist peacefully in India, China and Japan andin China, the same people are free to follow either Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist religions at the same time and to worship different gods without feeling odd. He asks whether plurality of beliefs is good and why? He thinks it preferable to have religious toleration and the reason why we can have this is that in the East, the people's faith and their desire for proselytization are not very strong or alternatively that in general, Easern people are by nature more peaceful and tolerant. Alternatively, he thinks that there are good geopolitical reasons for such differences in attitude to religious toleration: in the East, there is plenty of physical space for different religion to follow their own beliefs at the same time at different places and whereas in Middle East and in Europe, neighboring tribes and nations exist cheek by jowl and hence there are much more opportunities for religious conflict. Others would explain the difference by pointing to the "exclusiveness" and the "monotheistic" doctrine in the Abrahamic religions, something wholly absent in Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism which all accept the right of other people to follow their faiths. 

Tang thinks that the reason that we do not have large-scale religious conflict is that we are a country philosophically and culturally governed largely by Confucian thoughts , Confucian rites and customs. He speculates whether if China were governed by either Taoism or Buddhism, religious conflicts would or would not have been excerbated. He thinks not because even the Taoists think that Laotze could have transformed himself into a Buddha and Buddhists think that its leaders are the different personas of the Buddhas, none of them have claimed to be the original god, unlike Jesus whom Christians claim is God himself. Therefore in China, Buddhism and Taoism temples and ceremonies could co-exist peacefully and both their monks can say prayers for the dead. Some say that Confucianism is not a religion only some moral codes and and philosphical thoughts, analogous to rationalism, empiricism, idealism which affirms the principle of freedom of religious belief but Tang does not agree with this view.

To Tang, Confucianism is not a philosophy in the Western sense because philosophy in the West emphasizes the establishment of theoretcal structures, analysis and critque, not beliefs whereas  Confucian thought emphasizes certain moral precepts and practices, including the worship of heaven and earth and spirits, posits the "ways" of Heaven and Destiny outside and advocates the cultivation of virtue inside. To him, it is in such senses a "religion". To Tang, in the West, philosophy, ethics and religion are three different spheres: philosophy being based on the Greek tradition, political and moral principles being based on the Roman tradition and religion on the Jewish tradition. But in China, Confucianism is an amalgam of philosophy, ethics and religion . However, if it is a religion, then it is a religion of philosophical wisdom and ethics and may thus be looked upon as a paritcular form of manifestation of the humanitarian spirit and in that sense a "religion". It may also be treated as a religion in a Chinese sense. To him, it is a "religion" (宗教) from the perspective of Chinese etymology: Confucian thought is based upon a certain "ancestral origin" (宗)  the worship of such ancestors which was fomerly done at the same time as the worship of Heaven and Earth (天地) and according to the thoughts of ChuangTzu, human beings and everything else are ultimately based upon Heaven (以天為宗) and the ways of Heaven (天道) and such thoughts are intended to teach (教) the world something and hence is a "religion" (教). In addition, to Tang, ChuangTzu's ultimate man (至人) or godman (神人) are the ultimate ideals.  Their followers worship their masters (宗師) the way children worship their ancestors. To him, therefore the word "宗" may be used to refer to ancestral origin, the basis of man and everything else and the ultimate aim of all scholarship. In China, all three are "worshipped" as the three bases of Confucian rites (儒禮之三本). However, to me, whilst he may have some grounds for taking this view of the meaning of "religion" (宗教) in the Chinese context, I don't think that this view will likely be accepted by the majority of religious scholars to whom a religion must possess at least four elements namely

1. a systemmatic theory of the origin of the universe or a cosmology and of man's relation to it and to each other;

2. a specially devised  sets of rites and ceremonies on important occasions of its faithfuls' social life, like birth, marriage, deaths and other special life events like the accession to power of their kings, chiefs or other political leaders, before important battles with its enemies whether animals (hunting) or other tribes or nations, or for the start or end of the calendar or agricultural or hunting year and for celebrating important dates in its religious history eg. the birth or death of its saints, heroes, prophets;

3. specially dedicated places where such rites and ceremonies are held and where their religious teachings are propagated like temples and churches, schools etc 

4. a specially trained and dedicated class of professionals or semi professionals who theoretically enjoy a special relationship with their God or gods and who devote themselves mainly or exclusively to the performance of the relevant religious and teaching functions of their organization like priests, monks, nuns, shamans, medicine man etc.

From this point of view, I think that whilst Chinese Taoism and Buddhism may qualify as "religions", it can hardly be persuasively argued that Confucianism can be so treated. At the talk, I pointed this out to the speaker but he did not have any arguments to justify why Tang's rather idiosyncratic definition should be adopted rather than the normally accepted definition of what constitutes a religion except to say that Tang's definition is a Chinese definition of 宗教! Tang said this western concept of religion has now been generally adopted even by Chinese but to him, this is something which ought to be reversed. He says that this definition is against the original meaning of 宗教 in China and has usurped its original meaning in China (不知宗教二字, 中國固有之名辭, 理應以其原義之引申, 以統攝譯名之義, 而不能反客為主, 忘已徇人). However, if he and his followers intend to do so, I don't think they will have an easy task because he has not put forward any good reasons why the entire world should depart from their normal practice and adopt his  peculiarly provincial definition of what constitutes a ""religion".

Whatever may be the success of Tang in urging the acceptance of his own defintion of what constitutes religion, Tang thinks that Confucianism is superior to the other religions because first, there is no question of "faith" in the Western sense because the concepts forming the subject of "belief" in Confucianism is subjective, not objective. Confucians believe that there is within man a desire to do good and to avoid evil but this desire originates by itself inside the human heart by and forms part of his nature, unlike in Western religions, where the source of authority for leading a moral life is derived, given or imposed externally by an objective God having real existence. He complains that the moral precepts of Christian and other Western religion may not be based or related directly to any moral practice e.g Zoroastrians have a probition against eating beans, Hindus regard the cow as sacred, Jews observe the Sabbath, Muslims must fast on Fridays, Christian regard the bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ and they have certain beliefs like the theory that God created the universe in 7 days, that the first woman was made from a rib of the first man and that there are all kinds of miracles which are not related to any moral practice at all and that there are no grounds for their prohibition, obsevance and belief. I think that his view is based on his ignorance of what religion means in the life of its adherents. To him, Confucianism is better because beliefs in Confucian ideas of moral conduct is voluntary, not obligatory. I think again that his view is again specious. If we treat Confucianism as a religion, then certainly, the observance of certain rules of conduct thought to be right or moral conduct must be obligatory too. The only difference is that in Confucianism, there are no priest and monks to enforce them. But even if there were, such "enforcement" can only operate at the level of ideas, or argument. The priests and monks have no more authority to punish any infringers by imprisonment, flogging than a Confucian teacher. The most they can do is to expel a particular member of their religion who wilfully and repeated fail to observe certain rules of conducts regarded as important from their organization. The purported advantage of Confucianism over other religion namely its "tolerant" attitude which thus leads to less conflict, stems directly from the failure of Confucianism as a "religion" understood in the normal sense, or absence of any strict "legal" organization and a special class of professionals for the enforcement of their precepts.

Fong argues that Confucianism should be adopted by the rest of the religious world because it is less likely to lead to religious conflicts. He bases his argument on the fact that Confucianism is not inherently aggressive : it has no need for active proselytization like Islam and Christianity. But from a theoretical point of view, there is also nothing in Western Christianity or in Islam which obliges its adherents to conquer other people for religious purpose. They may think that it is a good thing to believe in their God and that the world may become a better world if more and more people were to do so. This is a perfectly natural extension of the thoughts of any one who thinks that he has something good to share with others. But if so, this is no more than a natural desire. The enthusiasm with which one follows through this idea is a matter of personality and the success of this propagation depends on other factors e.g whether one has the ability, intellectual, financial, military and political and organizational, to do so. No matter how eager a particular religious leader is in spreading his faith, it is unimaginable that he would be able to do so without support from a government, which most likely will have it own private agenda, likley to be totally un-related to any truly "religious" purposes. The crusades and the religious wars were fought in the West principally not for religious but for political and economic gains. But because the Christian church is organized along the principles of secular Roman army, it is historically far easier for the church to join in military compaigns fought for extraneous  political and economic reasons. That is all. It is not as if there is anything in Christian dogma which "compels" any of its faithfuls to fight religious wars on behalf of Christianity! If in fact there were what has been called "religious wars" in history, we must realize that "religion" is no more than a hypocritical but convenient "banner"  under which the engineers of such wars might seek to hide their real motives in starting the relevant wars (the extension of the political and economic powers of the local kings and nobles). We must not be misled by the relevant labels under which the so-called "religious" wars are fought and accept the morally more high sounding excuses under which they are fought at  their face value. To me, since all religions advocate love and compassion, any so-called "religious" wars fought in human history cannot be attributed to religious reasons but only to political and economic reasons. There is nothing in the Christian religion which forces or obliges Christians to win further converts by military force. Jesus said that the heaven Father has prepared a wonderful feast for its children. They are invited to join that feast. They are not compelled in any way to join that feast! In this way, it is no different from the Confucian position. I cannot see that Confucianism has any ideological advantage over Christianity in this respect. Hence there is no ground for holding that Confucianism is inherently superior to Christianity, or for that matter, superior any other religion say, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism etc, at least from an ideological point of view, as the latter are all doctrinally non-exclusive religions which all acknowledge and accept that there may well be other gods and other religions worth folllowing by others of a different personal or cultural persuasion.