Ancestor Worship reference

Redirect to:

• Ancestor veneration in China

Redirect to:

• Ancestor veneration in China

The term traditional Chinese patriarchal religion, or traditional Chinese native religion, refers to the whole system of State religion in ancient China, from the ancient divinely-authorized Son of Heaven to the religious rituals and norms of the folk sorcerers, and refers to the main religious beliefs of the Shang and Zhou dynasties. The main religious beliefs of the Shang and Zhou dynasties include the culture of witchcraft, worship of God, worship of ancestors, worship of ghosts and gods, and oracle bone divination. The Yin people's worship of gods and ghosts, and divination in all matters, and the rituals of the many symbols were centered on Tian.The cultic hierarchy that spans all aspects of nature, man and ghost, and forms the social sacrificial system is the source of Chinese spirituality; a religious scientistThe names defined in the study, interpretation, and application to the inherent religious traditions of China, because the religion itself has no name since the beginning, but there are relics such as Temple of Heaven, Temple of Earth, Temple of the Sun, Temple of the Moon, Imperial Ancestral Temple, Altar of Sheji.

Finally, it expands into the character traits and cultural characteristics of the Eastern peoples. Only by understanding this foundation can we have an objective position to evaluate the influence of the mixture of many foreign religions without the later bias of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Through this anthropological approach to religion, we will accurately describe the origin, analysis, comparison, and application of "Chinese religious thought".

Faith Characteristics

Religious power is not equal

The monarchy is the only one who can sacrifice to heaven

"The rites of the king are not ancestral. The king ancestors of his ancestors from the origin. The king's ancestors are the only ones who can be worshipped. The king and his ancestors. The king and his ancestors. The king's ancestors are not the king. The triennial and its high ancestors. The pastoral field. The great event of King Wu. After the event, he retired. The Lord's name is "Wuxia". Pray in the community." --Book of Rites"

Religion and politics in one

The Son of Heaven means the Chosen One, the sovereign power of Heaven. The ruling class structure (also the ruling class structure in Confucianism thought) is the metaphysical justification for this patriarchal religion, and the educational system formed is the imperial examination system to control humanistic thought.

Patriarchal system

The combination of this religion and the Chinese social system evolved into the "Patriarchal Law system", which was a male social, patriarchal, and legal system in which the Son of Heaven and below were bound by law.

Scholarly Commentary

"Han Confucians listened to the condemnation of God's will, while Song Confucians focused on the theory of mind."

"In Song scholarship, the superstition of prophecy seems to be gone, but the divinity of God still exists, only the specific method used in honoring God is no longer to listen to the condemnation of heavenly will, but to insist on the cultivation of the mind of the moral subject."

"The whole social community can then be regarded as a religiously integrated structure; speaking of it as the real world, it happens to be an object of indoctrination of Confucian and Mencian ethics, with the sage as the ultimate of its meaning and imperial power as their institutional dependence."

Professor Mou Zhongjian and others have argued that, in addition to Taoism and Buddhism, there is "a large religion that has been universally accepted by society as the authentic faith and has lasted for thousands of years.

Religion and Humanism

The contradiction and opposition between religion and humanism in Western history was resolved in China during the Zhou dynasty, after which there was no suppression of humanism by religion and no question of reviving ancient humanism.

Guo Yi, a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says, "It is not that religion suppressed the humanist tradition, but that the supremacy of science and reason suppressed the humanist tradition. This, too, is very different from the West.

Because of this neglect of traditional Chinese patriarchal religious structures, "many Western writings on Chinese religion also seem to ignore these relational features of Confucianism, often focusing only on widely held beliefs about "gods, ghosts, and ancestors. When occasional attention is paid to "elite religion," it is only to cosmology and its abstract philosophy, not to the inner spiritual life of Confucians engaged in self-cultivation."

See Also

• State religion
• Religious Confucianism

• Draft:Patriarchal Clan System
• Religion、Religious studies、Anthropology of religion
• Religion in China、History of religion in China、Chinese folk religion
• Chinese culture

• Tian
• Sacrifice to Heaven
• Temple of Heaven
• Unity of Mankind and Heaven
• Shangdi
• Tianzhu
• Tengri
• Tao
• Deity

External Links

Other articles of the topic Religion : Christian Church, Full communion, Shirk (Islam), God in Islam

Other articles of the topic China : Simplified Chinese characters, Traditional Chinese characters

Other articles of the topic History : 1 BC, Sprinkler (dance), Currency

• Varieties of Religious Experience, a Study in Human Nature by William James（页面存档备份，存于）

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