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295 A remarkable religious renaissance has been taking place in Taiwan from the mid-1980s down to the present (Madsen 2007)—a time period that, not coincidentally, corresponds to Taiwan’s transition to economic prosperity and political democracy (Gold 1987; Rigger 1999).1 Taiwan has always been an island full of folk religion. The months of the lunar calendar are punctuated with many festivals. All phases of the life cycle are marked by colorful rituals. But until recently, popular Taiwanese religious practices have mostly represented the parochial, particularistic, habit-driven aspects of traditional Taiwanese life rather than the cosmopolitan, rationalized, reflexive aspirations of its modernizers (Weller 1987). The Daoist (and sometimes Buddhist—because Taiwanese folk religion is often syncretistic) deities, housed in spectacularly cluttered local temples, were local gods who took care of their own. Though the temples carried out works of charity, these were usually confined to their particular communities. Deeply embedded in the social and political life of their communities, such temples were a nexus of those informal, particularistic , clientalistic relationships that political reformers usually label “corruption .” To this day, such temples are not infrequently accused of being conduits for money laundering and political patronage. Popular religious activities have been focused on rituals for bringing personal good fortune and a happy afterlife, not on organized efforts to improve one’s moral life and change society (Weller 1987:84–88). The past two decades, however, have witnessed the rapid rise of new forms of religious practice with broad appeal to Taiwan’s emerging middle classes (H. Hsiao, ed. 1993). These are based on “this-worldly” (renjian) efforts to reconcile traditional beliefs with modern science and technology, to provide answers to the moral dilemmas presented by mobile, urban life11 Religious Renaissance and Taiwan’s Modern Middle Classes Richard Madsen 趙文詞 UC-Yang-rev.indd 295 UC-Yang-rev.indd 295 8/27/2008 1:02:07 PM 8/27/2008 1:02:07 PM 296 / Richard Madsen styles, and to provide solutions to the social problems faced by a dynamically industrializing society. These new forms of religious practice are propagated by sophisticated organizations, employing the latest advances in information technology and reaching out into the Taiwanese diaspora around the world. It has been a renaissance mostly of Buddhism and Daoism. Despite the considerable efforts of foreign missionaries, the combined presence of Catholics and Protestants in Taiwan never amounted to more than about 7 percent of the population; and although some denominations continue to grow, the aggregate numbers of practicing Christians have been declining (Qu 1998). This is an ironic development because many Protestants and Catholics in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s saw themselves, with some degree of accuracy, as Taiwan’s modernizers. When Taiwan was still largely a rural society, they established major universities (the Protestant Donghai [Tunghai] and the Catholic Furen [Fu Jen] universities), built hospitals, and organized a wide array of professionalized social services—all in contrast to Buddhism and Daoism, which were mostly identified with traditional, rural folk religious practice. However, by the time Taiwan really did become modernized, it was Buddhist temples, and some Daoist ones, that emerged as the major vehicles for the moral aspirations of the new urban middle classes. As we shall see, this has made important contributions to the development of a democratic state in Taiwan. That there has been such a religious renaissance in Taiwan is surprising and calls out for explanation. No less a sociologist than Max Weber deemed Buddhism and Daoism incapable of sustaining the rational, innerworldly asceticism necessary for the transition to modernity (Weber 1964). Moreover, until the late 1970s, Taiwan’s Guomindang (GMD) government did whatever it could to discourage the modernization of Taiwanese Buddhism and Daoism. While working to coopt local religious leaders and to use local temples as conduits for the “black gold” of corrupt politics, the GMD aimed to legitimize itself as a secular, modernizing government . While promoting classic Confucian moral virtues (interpreted so as to justify obedience to authoritarian government), the GMD’s public education attempted to make students critical of traditional “superstitions .” Meanwhile, the government made it difficult for religious leaders to develop more sophisticated understandings of their practices or to use modern forms of organization to expand their influence. A partial exception was the GMD’s policy toward Christian missionaries. Because of its need to maintain favor with the United States, the GMD government was somewhat more tolerant toward Protestant and Catholic missionaries than UC-Yang-rev.indd 296 UC-Yang-rev...

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