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209 Western paradigms of the political management of religion have been clearly and explicitly influential in China since the early twentieth century . These paradigms are quite varied, from the U.S. “wall of separation” to French laïcité and northern Europe’s national churches, but they all have in common a post-Enlightenment definition of religion as a churchlike institution separate from society, and processes of negotiation between church and state for privileges and uses of the public sphere. The effect on the Chinese world of these paradigms began at the turn of the twentieth century, when the Western categories that underpin these paradigms were first introduced in China and then used by the dying empire (–1911) and by the Republic of China (1912–) to elaborate new religious policies. The bottom line of these policies was the recognition and limited support for those “religions” that could prove they fit a certain definition of this alien category, along with active suppression of anything else, categorized as “superstition” (Goossaert 2003, 2006a). It is in this framework that the successive Chinese regimes have conducted a policy branded as secular, even though, as many of the chapters in this volume show, this secularism should be considered a claim rather than a fact. The new religious policies of the Republican regime entailed the abandonment by the state of the imperial regime’s religious prerogatives and the creation of a realm where “religions” could manage their own affairs within a framework of control and regulation set up by the “secular ” state. Creating such a realm proved to be more complex than initially imagined by Republican leaders. From an institutional perspective, one of the major aspects of state secularization worldwide has been the negotiation, or tension, between state and religion in defining their respective realms and the scope of their 8 Republican Church Engineering The National Religious Associations in 1912 China Vincent Goossaert 高萬桑 UC-Yang-rev.indd 209 UC-Yang-rev.indd 209 8/27/2008 1:01:58 PM 8/27/2008 1:01:58 PM 210 / Vincent Goossaert relationships. Such a process of negotiation was first experienced in the Christian West, where religion was equated with the church, which had authoritative representatives able to negotiate with the state. In places long Christianized, such as Latin America, this model of the state versus religion-as-church fit naturally. But China, like many other countries in Asia and elsewhere, did not fit such a model: to negotiate the institutional processes of secularization, the modern Chinese state first had to engineer, or help engineer, the building of church-like institutions so as to have a legitimate religious counterpart to deal with. This process was a top-down initiative in which both political and religious leaders saw the need for a new kind of religious institution for a variety of reasons, including aligning Chinese practice with the Christian model, playing the new game of political representation, exerting effective control from the center, unifying the nation, and reforming society. This is the context in which we can understand the sudden appearance, as early as the first months of 1912 (the Republic proclaimed by revolutionary insurgents having become the legitimate state with the emperor’s abdication on February 12), of nationwide associations claiming to represent the various traditions seeking state recognition and protection under the new category of “religions.” These associations were both rushed attempts to face immediate threats (temple confiscation, in particular) and attempts to reinvent traditional religions as Christian-like churches. By comparing the creation of national Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, and Muslim associations in 1912—we will see that Christians are a case apart— I would like to document and analyze the first stage of these church-building efforts, the effects of which have dominated the relationships between Chinese states (in the PRC and in Taiwan) and religions for almost a hundred years. In spite of disappointing early results, this church-building enterprise met with increasing success, notably during the Communist period. In Taiwan until 1986, and to a large extent in the PRC to this day, the national religious associations were the only legal and formal framework for practicing religion and for conducting negotiations between state agents and religious leaders.1 This situation is now being contested, both by groups at the margin of legality and by increasing formal possibilities of conducting religious activities outside of these associations. And even though these century-long efforts at reinventing Chinese religions in the framework of the national associations have mostly...

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