The religions of China

Every people has the religion that he inherits from the ancestors. This aphorism extensively widely used is in China more true than in other countries. The students say that the primitive religion of the Chinese, as of the peoples who were living close to them, it was the cult to the ancestors, and to the forces of the nature, whom they believed provided with proper spirits. Precisely these two primitive religions have impregnated with clear form the two most important philosophical and religious systems of the Chinese history, respectively the Confucianism and the Taoism.
Remains of these primitive beliefs are still nowadays in the religions of some of the minorities that they inhabit in the mountainous areas of the South and of the South-west. In fact, the Pangu myth, the creator of the universe and everything what this one contains, cornered by the Chinese in the field of the fable already many centuries ago, supports nowadays a living presence in the culture and religion of several peoples indigenous to the South of China.
When one speaks about the religion in China there is a permanent discussion between those who think that the Chinese are atheistic for nature, and those who assure the opposite. Perhaps help to understand better the relation of the Chinese with the religion, if we think that these primitive religions have been the base on which the subsequent national and imported religions have overlapped.

Confucianism

The first European missionaries who came to China thought that the confucianism was a religion. In fact they met the existence of temples dedicated to him, a priestly body separated from the rest of the population, entrusted to spread his ideas, that of the attorneys, and a complex liturgy that was put into practice so much before numerous events of the private life, as in the public festivities.
Later the wise persons have denied this impression, making sure that Confucio does not propose the belief in any god, but only it establishes a series of social norms. Without entering major discussions on the extract of the religions. The moral rules on which five relations must base the lives of the citizens, the calls: (Leader and subject, father and son, older and minor brother, husband and woman and between the friends), there are only a development of this cult to the ancestors of the primitive Chinese. Since it it is the emphasis that puts itself in fulfilling the funeral rites, in which the priests' presence Buddhists or taoístas it is only a varnish layer on the ceremony celebrated during thousands of years, in which the relatives of the dead person were leading his soul to the kingdom of the darkness. The universal presence before the Revolution in the Chinese houses of a child altarcito where there was venerated Buddha or to the ancestors, or to both, is only a heredity of these altars that were supported between the primitive Chinese if the soul of the ancestors was deciding to spend a period between the alive ones.
The need of a god, if it is that one day it has been necessary, was fulfilled of a somewhat ingenious form with the figure of the emperor, who, considered son of the sky, was placing himself in the summit of the human pyramid, with a semidivine category. Of such form we can see that the confucianism yes is a religion. The Empire is his god (represented by the shift emperor) and Confucio his prophet. His liturgy is millennial, and his basic beginning is so ancient as the proper Chinese people.

Taoism

The Taoism, say the Chinese that it is the only religion caused in its own country. And in fact it is not also true, the first why along the history there are numerous religions and cults, from that a good number of them has come until our days after an eventful history, and second why in his origin the Taoism was not a religion, but a philosophical system, the developed one between others for Lao Zi and his disciple Zhuang Zi. A somewhat esoteric philosophy that he was exploring and developing the second one of the primitive religions of China, the cult to the nature, supporting the integration of the man in the nature, and the alienation of the matters of government.
With the step of the centuries, the philosophy was not enough to satisfy the desires of the people to believe in a god, and gradually it was turning into a religion, of which there took advantage also wide-awake some of them, which after deifying Laozi, and to other legendary personages like the called Eight Immortal ones, they began to erect temples and offer religious services to the population.
The temples taoístas, in general, have not born this transformation of the Taoism from philosophy to religion. In fact, the authentic monks taoístas do not live in the temples, but doing hermits' life in the mountains that for them are sacred. What evokes this cult again to the nature of which they are hereditary.

Buddhism

It is the most important of the religions that are practised in China, and the one that is provided with major number of adherents. Since everybody knows the Buddhism it originated in the India, and although it is said that a few years after the death of Buddha came already the first news about the Buddhism to China, the religion was expanding very slowly, since the communications across the Himalayas were very scarce, and the detour for the call later Route of the Silk was not an easy way either.
The first strong push that receives the new religion happens in the year 68 of our age, when an emperor of the dynasty Is it sent some officials to the India to be informed about this religion, constructing to his return the Temple of the White Horse, close to his capital Luoyang, where from there began the study of the texts brought precisely to loins of an équido of the mentioned color. During the following centuries the Buddhism is receiving force in Chinese territory, although it is not until the Vth century up to which his real expansion takes place, reaching his diffusion to the most remote places of the country. Nevertheless, the Buddhism of these centuries is still a foreign religion, many of whose concepts, on not having had equivalence in Chinese, were translated following the concepts of the taoístas with which they were keeping some resemblances. It was not until the monk Xuanzang realized his big trip to the India in search of the writing Buddhists and the Big Pagoda of the Goose was founded in the year 652, in Xi'an, to preserve them, that initiates in China a systematical process of translation and reflection on the educations of this religion. It is the glorious epoch of the dynasty Tang and the prompt Buddhism impregnates all the Chinese aspects of the life, the culture and the art. Numerous thought schools Buddhist arise about Xi'an. Monks come from Korea and from Japan take the doctrines Buddhists to his respective countries. But as the secular philosophical doctrines turn into religion, the Buddhism acquires too much power, his monasteries control big ground extensions. The emperors take letters in the matter and limit his power, in such a way that for the dynasty Song, the splendor of the Buddhism has already been eclipsed, supporting his importance in the society like one of the religions that there practise a few Chinese who will govern his lives again for the educations of Confucio informed by the thinkers of the new school.

Islam

The Mahoma educations penetrated China across the Route of the Silk, of the hand of merchants and travelers who came to Xi'an from the Moslem countries. Simultaneously a penetration of the Islam takes place across the ports of the coast, like Canton and Quanzhou, where Moslem merchants settle also. In the above mentioned cities it is where the first mosques are constructed, some of them have supported the cult until our days. And although from these foci the religion of the Islam goes spreading over the different cities and regions of China, most of his followers will support them between the minorities of the West and of the South, as well as his progeny established in the big cities, without never going so far as to exercise an important influence on the life and Chinese culture.

Christianity

The first Christians who came to China were the nestorianos, once again across the Route of the Silk, and from Xi'an they tried to spread his religion to the rest of the empire. They were not very successful, and today only the stela called "Headstone of the spread of the nestorianismo of Daqing", in the Museum of the Stelas of Xi'an, he reminds his presence to us.

Less success they still had some missionaries who reached the Celestial Empire during the XIIth and XIIIth century. It will not be until the XVIth century, in which the Jesuits put all his determination in the evangelización of these grounds that the Christianity, and with him Occident, is announced in China, and the first news on China begins circulating along Europe. The Jesuits achieved some progresses during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries, insuring itself even the presence in the court, but not even the favor of the emperors and any important personages freed of suffering pursuits, not even the construction of any churches allowed them to become strong between the Chinese.

The Christianity pushed again strongly in China during last century, accompanied generally by the aggressive politics of France and England, obtaining a good implantation and realizing numerous works of social character. But his interests were too intimately connected in those of a few governments, those of his countries, which were colonizing China, by what after the foundation of the people's republic China most of the foreign missionaries were expelled from the country. The situation of the Catholicism in China, is at present very curious. Since the government makes sure that it allows and guarantees the freedom of beliefs and cult, but he thinks illegally that a religious organization should swear allegiance to another government that is not the Chinese, as in fact the Christians do with the Pope and the Vatican. As result of this gives itself the existence of two catholic churches. The small stone, legal, that goes on from the Vatican, and the one that there respects the authority of the Vatican, illegal.

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