Folk Religion and the Marxist View of Religion
Since the launch of Reform and Opening-up, folk beliefs in our country have seen a rapid recovery. With the smooth flow of cross-strait exchanges, the extensive influence of deities such as Mazu in Fujian and Taiwan has become increasingly well-known. In recent years, as local cultures have been promoted, questions concerning folk beliefs and folk religion have surfaced more frequently. While the classic Marxist writers seldom discussed folk religion, this subject should have its rightful place within the Marxist view of religion.
Folk Religion as Heterodox Religion
Guided by the principle that "the Master did not speak of the strange, the chaotic, or the supernatural" [1], research into our country’s folk beliefs and folk religion began relatively late. After the founding of New China, this issue was primarily addressed through the study of peasant uprisings. Following Reform and Opening-up, A History of Chinese Folk Religion by Ma Xisha and Han Bingfang served as a pioneering work. Ma Xisha argued: "Although a qualitative difference exists between folk religion and orthodox religion, the distinction is manifest more in the political sphere than in religion itself. The former is not recognized by the political order; it is slandered as heterodox [2], banditry, and repeatedly suppressed, often forced to operate clandestinely among the lower classes. The latter, as a whole, belongs to the ideology of the ruling class and is honored, believed, and protected. In terms of religious significance, no insurmountable trench separates folk religion from orthodox religion. Every world-renowned religion circulated among the lower strata of society at its inception, belonging to folk sects. By gradually adapting to the general needs of society and through continuous struggle, they leveraged their own strength to move toward orthodox or even dominant status..."
Although the classic Marxist writers did not directly state that "no insurmountable trench separates folk religion from orthodox religion," many of the discourses by Marx and Engels regarding the Protestant Reformation, the Peasant Wars, and the rise of early Christianity essentially validate the conclusion that "every world-renowned religion circulated among the lower strata of society at its inception... and leveraged its own strength to move toward orthodox or even dominant status."
The classic Marxist writers also affirmed the judgment that "while qualitative differences exist, the distinction is manifest more in the political sphere." In his early work, "Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction," Marx noted: "Every religion believes that its distinction from any other (special and imaginary) religion is precisely its special essence, and that it is a true religion exactly because it has this determinacy." That is to say, every religion will flaunt its unique possession of the truth and emphasize that it alone is the true religion. However, in the Prussia of that time, such claims lacked decisive significance. For a religion to gain recognition from the ruling class, the key was "to declare the unique content of religious dogmas as the decisive factor of the state—that is, to make the special essence of the religion the norm of the state." In other words, in a class society, the orthodoxy of a religion is actually judged by the state power. To a large extent, orthodoxy is indeed a political category.
Traditional Marxist views of religion were primarily directed at "orthodox religion." This raises the question: Are folk beliefs and folk religions, considered "heterodox" within the political sphere, also included in the Marxist definition of "religion"? If so, does folk religion possess the same characteristics as orthodox religion? Is folk religion also the "opium of the people," as Lenin posited? That is, as an object of ruling-class disdain or suppression, is folk religion equally an opiate that numbs the masses?
In a letter to Friedrich Sorge dated November 29, 1886, Engels wrote: "The Americans are worlds behind in all theoretical questions, for obvious historical reasons... they have not brought over any medieval institutions from Europe, but they have brought over masses of medieval traditions, religion, English common (feudal) law, superstition, spiritualism, in short, every kind of nonsense... which are very useful for stultifying the masses." Here, "superstition" and "spiritualism" are listed alongside "religion," clearly indicating they are not subordinate to it. Notably, in Engels' view, "superstition and spiritualism" can be utilized by the ruling class as tools to "stultify the masses." However, "stultifying the masses" is only one aspect. As Engels pointed out in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy: "The Middle Ages had attached all other forms of ideology—philosophy, politics, jurisprudence—to theology and made them subdivisions of theology. It therefore forced every social and political movement to take on a theological form; to the sentiments of the masses, which were fed exclusively on religion, it was necessary to put forward their own interests in a religious guise in order to produce a great storm. Just as the bourgeoisie from the beginning brought into being an appendage of propertyless urban plebeians... the precursors of the later-day proletariat, so, too, the religious heresies were early divided into a moderate middle-class party and a plebeian-revolutionary party, which was loathed even by the middle-class heretics." Religion, heresy, and superstition can be tools of stultification used by the "moderates," but they can also "put forward the masses' interests in a religious guise" for the "revolutionary party."
China's Folk Religion and Its Functions
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx once pointed out: "The small-holding peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with one other. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse... and every individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient... A small holding, a peasant and his family; alongside them another small holding, another peasant and another family." This discourse is of great significance in guiding our study of folk religion.
Geographic relations and blood ties are the two most important social relations for traditional peasants; in our country, both have, to varying degrees, donned the "guise" of folk religion.
In traditional society, the village was the main body of society, and land was the core issue of peasant concern. However, in ancient times, land was not static due to soil erosion or river sedimentation. How to assert sovereignty over land was a major problem. Although the advent of writing made this relatively easier, land deeds were written and kept as evidence for government taxation. Since every landlord undoubtedly wanted to under-report land, actual ownership was fiercely contested for every inch. The emergence of local deities helped solve this dilemma. When people arrived to reclaim land, they first secured strategic locations such as mountain passes or river mouths [3] and built a small temple or shrine (shezi [4]); this land then fell under the jurisdiction of that deity, and the person (or people) who worshiped that deity were undoubtedly the masters of the land. When the land changed hands, a new deity would often appear, accompanied by a myth about the two deities engaging in a magical contest where one was defeated, or a similar, more amicable legend of yielding. This worship of local deities and construction of myths was, in fact, the establishment of an "ideology" used to safeguard the rights of rowdy villagers.
Several villages worshiping the same deity undoubtedly shared closer relations and were more likely to form alliances. This was a common method of alliance-building in areas like the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, where clan feuds were historically prevalent. The unifying role of local deity beliefs among villagers was often most prominent during extreme events like tax resistance riots. Before such riots, villagers would often gather before the temple of the local deity to perform divination. The temple served as a headquarters; if prisoners were caught, they would be detained within the temple. When government troops suppressed a riot, they would often level the temples where the "rebels" gathered or "arrest" the statues of local deities and escort them to official temples, such as the Temple of the City God [5], for several years of "detention," only "releasing" them when the situation stabilized. From this perspective, local deity worship was, in many cases, not a tool for the moral edification of the upper rulers, but a guardian god for commoners to protect their own interests.
In the countryside, blood ties were often expressed through folk religion just as geographic relations were. "Ancestor worship" is the most common way to sanctify blood relations, but this worship is not necessarily of the patriarchal Confucian type. For instance, in the Hakka regions of our country, "Great Grandmother Worship" exists, where the ancestor worshiped is female rather than male. They often explain this phenomenon with a tradition: a husband went away for many years, and the widowed mother and her orphan child traveled a thousand miles to find him; although she never found him, mother and son relied on each other to reclaim land and build a new home. The mother’s burial place eventually became the ancestral grave for that generation, receiving sacrifices from filial descendants for generations. In the Northeast, the objects of ancestor worship are sometimes not even humans but animals, namely the "Guardian Immortals" such as foxes or weasels. This is similarly "explained" by tradition: during the migration to "Braving the Journey to the Northeast" [6], the ancestors suffered immense hardships and were helped by a Fox Immortal; without this help, the ancestors would have perished. Consequently, descendants are more grateful to and worship the family's Guardian Immortal to maintain clan unity.
In the countryside, folk religion has the function of connecting and organizing the masses, but it also possesses a high degree of closure and exclusivity. Take the folk beliefs in Sun Yat-sen's hometown as an example. Sun Yat-sen was born in Cuiheng Village, Xiangshan County, Guangdong. It was a multi-surname village where the Yang and Lu clans were the most numerous, owned the most land, and held the greatest power. They built an ancestral temple, the "Palace of the North Pole," in Cuiheng Village to worship the Emperor of the Dark Heaven (Beidi), with the Queen of Heaven (Tianhou) and the Lady of the Golden Flower (Jinhua Furen) as subordinate deities. Every year on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, they organized "Idol Processions" and set off bamboo gunpowder firecrackers called "Cracker Assemblies." This temple owned over 100 mu [7] of land and held great authority; only by joining the village temple could one be considered a "Cuiheng person." Although the Sun family had lived in Cuiheng for several generations, they were not qualified to join the village temple and could not receive a portion of the roasted sacrificial pig during services. If a qualified family had a boy, they had to pay a "population silver" fee (two dollars) to register him before he was considered a member. Outsiders could apply to join, but the costs were prohibitive. Although the Suns were ineligible for membership, as residents of Cuiheng, they still had some contact with the temple. Sun Yat-sen’s grandmother gave him the name "Dixiaung" because village believers often had their children "bonded" to the North Emperor as godchildren, hence the prefix "Di" (Emperor) in their names—a reflection of the Sun family's efforts to integrate. However, when the young Sun Yat-sen returned home after studying in Hawaii, he was dissatisfied with the villagers' belief in the North Emperor. Along with Lu Haodong, he broke the fingers of the statue of the North Emperor and defaced the Lady of the Golden Flower. This enraged the villagers, and Sun’s father agreed to pay for the restoration. At the time, the villagers likely did not view Sun’s iconoclasm through the lens of modern anti-superstition, but rather as a provocation by a family of a minor surname against the power of the village's dominant clans.
In the countryside, blood and geographic relations are extremely complex. Reflected in folk religion, deities and ancestors, temples and ancestral halls frequently fuse or even transform into one another. These phenomena of folk religion are highly worthy of study. As Marx said in On the Jewish Question: "We do not turn secular questions into theological ones. We turn theological questions into secular ones. For a long period, history has been interpreted through superstition; we now interpret superstition through history."
Folk Religion Should Have its Place in the Marxist View of Religion
The classic Marxist writers touched upon issues like "Protestant heresy" and the "guise of peasant uprisings," which actually involve what we call folk religion today. However, these discourses primarily concern one type of folk religion: the secret sects actively suppressed by rulers. The more common form of folk religion is actually largely legal and routine. Yet, because folk religion is the belief of "ignorant men and women" [8], unless it leads to riots, official records and literati rarely document it, creating a textual impression of folk religion as secret and mysterious. In reality, folk religious belief manifests more often in its routine, folkloric aspect.
Many scholars have begun using the term "regional religion" to distinguish routine folk religion from secret sects, emphasizing "locality" as a key quality. Because classic Marxist writers said little about folk religion—especially routine folk religion not serving as a guise for uprisings—researchers of the Marxist view of religion in China have long had an insufficient understanding of it, even treating it as a theoretical taboo. However, the matter is not so simple; "folk religion" should have its rightful place within the Marxist view of religion.