Zhang Heng: From Deism to Militant Atheism
In the modern West, following the development of capitalism, the bourgeois revolution broke out in England in 1640. In this process, the bourgeoisie—in order to develop the economy, science, and technology—had to criticize religious theology to liberate thought; to seize political power, they had to criticize the doctrine of the "divine right of kings"; and to transform the whole of society, they had to criticize every aspect of religious belief. The development of atheism in Europe generally progressed from the Deism and Pantheism of the Enlightenment—which advocated for the replacement of divinity with reason—to the thoroughgoing, militant atheism of French materialism. As atheism developed further across European nations, it served two functions: on the one hand, it propagated bourgeois revolutionary thought, thereby promoting the progress of modern philosophy and natural science; on the other hand, it laid the foundation for Marxist atheism and became the source of its critique of religion.
I. Modern Western atheism first appeared in the form of Deism
Deism originally began in England, where the Reformation was carried out from the top down, and then quickly spread from England to the Netherlands, France, and other Western European countries. It eventually bore the fruit of rationalism and brought about the Enlightenment that swept across Europe.
First, Deism replaced the God of traditional religion with a "God of Reason." The practice of using the Bible as the criterion for judging truth, which had prevailed since the Middle Ages, began to be met with universal suspicion by scientists and philosophers in the 17th century. Although Deism acknowledged the existence of God, this God was by no means the one described by traditional religious theology—who was absolutely free and acted according to whim. Rather, this was a God very close to the laws of nature: a certain "Rational God" or a moral good that endowed nature with laws. This religious outlook aimed to establish religion on the foundation of reason. Reason was the authority they sought to uphold; all religious beliefs or revelations, like any other proposition, were to be judged by reason. The philosophical foundations of Deism were empiricism and universal skepticism. These were the basic principles of almost all philosophers and scientists in the 17th century, while the empirical method became their common starting point. In England, based on suspicion of the Aristotelian deductive logic that had been abused by medieval Scholasticism, Francis Bacon established the method of empirical induction, making it an important tool for modern experimental science and empirical philosophy. The 17th century thus became the era of the rise of European philosophy and science.
Second, Deism advocated for the establishment of a society based on reason. Enlightenment thinkers believed that the reasons for the lack of progress in society and the ignorance of the people were primarily the spiritual rule and constraints imposed by religious forces. To change this situation, they believed that only by following the model of natural science and establishing the authority of reason and science could they gain deeper insight into the spirit of law, society, politics, and even religion. On this basis, they proposed a complete set of philosophical theories, political programs, and social reform schemes, demanding the establishment of a society based on reason. The empirical principles pioneered by Bacon were pushed to an extreme in a mechanical manner by the English philosopher Hobbes, thereby reaching atheistic conclusions in his religious outlook. Hobbes applied this empiricism to his explanation of God. In politics, he opposed the Church's elevation above the State and used bourgeois humanism to focus a critique on the "divine right of kings." He argued that Christianity offered no legislative or political principles, and that one should not look to Christianity for such principles, but rather to nature. Sovereign power was not divinely granted, but humanly granted. He believed that secular power originated from the theory of "the people granting power to the sovereign" (social contract theory). In his magnum opus Leviathan, he advocated for the replacement of theology with law and science, arguing that an absolutist [1] state (i.e., the Leviathan) maintained by law to uphold reason, peace, property, and social interaction was a secularized "City of God." In epistemology, he also opposed the superiority of revealed truth over natural knowledge, insisting on experience as the sole basis for judging all knowledge. Starting from mechanical materialism, he regarded extension as the essential attribute of bodies; so-called knowledge was the recognition, through sensory experience, of the motion of extended bodies presented through displacement, and the search for laws therein. Since God has no extension and no motion, He is not among the category of bodies and is therefore not an object of our knowledge. In this way, Hobbes thoroughly purged God from epistemology. "He believed that God is completely irrelevant to true knowledge because if what the theologians say is true, and there is no change of motion in God, then it follows that there is no way for us to know God." Like an extreme nominalist, Hobbes believed that the so-called "God" was merely a name spread through hearsay, just as the "fire" in the mind of a blind person is merely the result of what they have heard others say.
Third, Deism advocated for a rational "Natural Religion." The famous English Deist Matthew Tindal believed that true religion must be established according to eternal and unchanging natural laws. He sought to transform Christianity into a rational natural religion and mocked and criticized past "revealed religions," believing they were not true revelations. True revelation was found in nature itself and in the innate reason of humanity; the true God was the kind of God revealed by Newton. In Tindal’s eyes, true morality was a rational life in harmony with natural laws. The philosopher Locke, in a letter to his friend Philipp van Limborch (i.e., A Letter Concerning Toleration), emphasized: "No private person has any right in any manner to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church or religion. All the rights and franchises that belong to him as a man, or as a denizen, are inviolably to be preserved to him. These are not the business of religion. No violence nor injury is to be offered him, whether he be Christian or Pagan." Locke also believed that true faith must be established on the recognition of the "light of nature" and the foundation of natural reason.
For religion to be religion, its fundamental basis is a belief in supernatural existence. Deism launched an attack on this, placing natural reason above it. It viewed the things traditional religious theology called "supernatural" as either delusions or as natural existences governed by natural laws. In this way, the foundation of religion was severely shaken. This is precisely where the value of the Deist critique of religion lies. Marx and Engels believed that "Deism is at least for the materialist but a convenient and easy way of getting rid of religion." In his later years, in the "Introduction to the 1892 English Edition" of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels once again mentioned the role of Deism, believing that its widespread dissemination in France along with materialism provided the theoretical banner for the subsequent French Revolution.
II. The truly theoretical analysis and critique of religion began with 16th and 17th-century Pantheism
First, Pantheism holds that God is Nature. In Deism, although God nominally maintained the supreme position as the creator and ruler of the world, He had in fact been replaced by reason itself. Deism placed God outside of nature; it used nature to encroach upon God and reason to limit faith. Since the infinity of God was encroached upon by the finitude of experience, and the content of revelation was hollowed out by reason, we see two fates facing God after Deism: He is either completely equated with nature, which is Pantheism; or He is simply abolished altogether, which is atheism. Deism views God as outside of nature, while Pantheism views God as within nature. Deism describes God as the creator and designer of nature, while Pantheism equates God with the universe, believing that God exists coextensively with the world—that God is Nature. Pantheism was a roundabout way for Enlightenment thinkers to criticize orthodox religion. Although it did not deny the existence of God, it denied God’s transcendence and personality, causing the God who sat high above nature to dissolve into all things. The supernatural and suprahuman sacred attributes endowed to God by religious theologians gradually disappeared in Pantheism.
Second, "Substance" is the core concept of Pantheism. The highest theoretical achievement of Pantheism is undoubtedly the philosophy of the Dutch thinker Spinoza. At the end of the 16th century, the Netherlands established the first bourgeois republic in Europe. A greater degree of freedom in thought and religious belief ensured the prosperity of science and culture. However, the establishment of bourgeois rule did not mean that feudalism had reached its end. The Dutch bourgeois revolution was not yet thoroughly completed, and it faced the grim task of continuing the struggle against feudal and religious forces. Spinoza's pantheistic thought was the very product called for by this era. Ethics and the Theologico-Political Treatise are the representative works of Spinoza's philosophical system, systematically expounding his philosophical, social, and political ideas. "Substance" is the core concept of Spinoza's Pantheism and the foundation of his entire doctrine. He believed that substance is something that exists independently and is the source from which all things evolve. The infinite natural world is a harmonious system composed of countless material substances connected together and operating according to their own inherent laws. This harmonious system can also be directly called Nature, God, or Substance. "God or Substance" and "God or Nature" are essentially identical; both describe objective, material nature. Although Spinoza's theory did not abolish the name of God, it completely changed the divinity and essence endowed to God by religious theologians. God no longer possessed a sacred power transcending nature but was merely nature itself; the divinity of God became the natural attributes understood by natural scientists.
Third, Pantheism denies the doctrine of divine creation. Spinoza declared: "My opinion concerning God and Nature is very different from that which modern Christians are accustomed to uphold. I maintain that God is the immanent cause of all things, but not the transitive [2] cause." This is to say that the cause of natural evolution is within it, not outside it. The position of the mysterious creator was abolished; the creator and the created are one and the same; God is nature itself. Based on this view, he boldly endowed God with solid materiality. He said: "Extension is an attribute of God; or God is an extended thing." In this way, Spinoza explained the material unity of the world in his own unique way, fundamentally denying the existence of a supernatural spiritual substance (God). Furthermore, based on this, Spinoza criticized the doctrine of the "divine right of kings": "The monarchs of old, in order to seize the throne, often propagated the idea that they were the descendants of immortal gods, believing that if their subjects and the rest of humanity did not regard them as men like themselves, but believed them to be gods, they would willingly submit to their rule and obey their commands." "The master secret of despotism is to deceive the people and to cloak the fear by which they must be held down in the specious garb of religion, so that they may fight for showy servitude as though they were fighting for their own deliverance. They do not think it a shame, but rather the highest glory, to sacrifice their lives for the vain glory of a tyrant [3]." As a progressive thinker during the rising period of the bourgeoisie, Spinoza also proposed the view that knowledge should be separated from religion and that philosophy and theology should go their separate ways. His ultimate goal was to demonstrate the rationality of his political ideal—that is, to theoretically justify the rationality of the bourgeoisie rising to become the ruling class. This Pantheism, centered on the doctrine of substance, dealt a heavy blow to the religious theology still struggling at the time and ignited the blazing torch of atheism across European nations, laying the foundation for the emergence and development of 18th-century French Enlightenment thought and militant atheism.
III. French militant atheism was the highest achievement of 18th-century bourgeois Enlightenment thought
The 18th-century French atheists, represented by La Mettrie, Helvétius, Diderot, and Holbach, used militant materialism as an ideological weapon and aimed to oppose feudal autocratic rule. They carried out a fierce critique of religious theology and the feudal Church, creating a thoroughgoing atheism. By attacking the feudal autocratic system of the union of church and state in France, this atheism expressed the political demand of the bourgeoisie for the separation of church and state, thereby making the French bourgeois revolution the most thorough revolution in the history of European bourgeois revolutions.
First, the combination of militant materialism and anti-religious atheism was a salient feature of 18th-century French Enlightenment thought. A vital characteristic of this 18th-century French atheism was its conscious grounding upon a materialistic view of nature, creating an organic synthesis of materialism and atheism. Using the idea of the material unity of the world, these thinkers bitingly rejected the existence of God and the creation myth, thereby shaking the theoretical foundations of religious theology at a deeper level. La Mettrie openly and consciously maintained a position of materialistic monism. He pointed out: "There is but one substance in the whole universe, varying only in its forms." Diderot noted: "In the universe, in man, in the animal, there is but one substance." Holbach similarly believed: "The universe, that total collection of all existing beings, presents us everywhere only with matter and motion." Since the universe is the sum of all existing things, then "before this all-encompassing circle, nothing existed and nothing could be." Proceeding from the view that matter is the origin of the world, they thoroughly denied the existence of spiritual substance and God. They publicly declared that there is no God and that the divine creation of the world is a delusion.
French materialists also believed that matter and motion are inseparable, and that motion is an inherent attribute of matter. Diderot opposed the erroneous view that severed matter from motion, specifically writing the essay Philosophical Principles on Matter and Motion to criticize the lack of thoroughness in the materialism of his predecessors. He said: "Everything in the universe is either in displacement or in fermentation, or both in displacement and fermentation at the same time." He expressed this idea even more clearly in D'Alembert's Dream, saying: "Everything changes... the world begins and ends without ceasing; every moment it is beginning and ending; there has never been an exception, and there never will be." Holbach argued: "Motion is produced, increased, and accelerated within matter itself, requiring no assistance from any external cause." Their view of the self-motion of matter overcame the half-hearted anti-theology of 17th-century materialists and fundamentally negated the theological view of God as the "First Mover." Furthermore, Helvétius, proceeding from a materialistic view of nature, pointed out that theology is not science and that the two are in opposition. He believed that since the Middle Ages, Catholic theology had held supreme authority over all fields of cultural and intellectual activity, reducing science to a "handmaiden of theology." The Church and Scholasticism [4] promoted obscurantism, causing the human spirit to fall into a state of stagnation. Theology and the Church have always been shackles on the pursuit of truth and the development of science—heavy chains binding the human spirit. In his view, the Church historically persecuted progressive thinkers, scientists, and fighters for democracy and freedom with extreme cruelty. They frequently used the defense of "purity of religious dogma" as a pretext to declare any progressive thought threatening to religious or feudal rule as heresy, subjecting heretics to persecution and destruction. What the Church persecuted was science; what it strangled was human reason. Helvétius mocked theologians mercilessly, stating: "Those who are ignorant yet meddle in everything used to be the foppish youth, but today they are the theologians." He powerfully criticized theological obscurantism, which historically acted as a great catalyst for liberating human thought and developing scientific and cultural endeavors.
Secondly, militant atheism combined the critique of religion with the critique of reality to achieve the goal of negating feudal autocracy. Addressing the lies the clergy told—that religion is the foundation of morality and that without it society would lack virtue and fall into chaos—French materialists used the bourgeois theory of human nature to expose and criticize the hypocrisy and essence of feudal religious morality. From a bourgeois standpoint, La Mettrie argued that the Church's promotion of asceticism was merely a "sacred poison" used to toxify the "natural rights" and "nature" of the people. To this end, he pointed out that if society did not shake off the "sacred" ideological yoke of religion, capitalism would be unable to develop; this was the essence of the anti-religious question. Helvétius believed that to maintain their power, the clergy "disparage true honor and true virtue." The clergy preached "thou shalt not kill" while engaging in mass slaughter; they exhorted people "not to steal" while ruthlessly exploiting others; they taught people "not to commit adultery" while living lives of profligacy and debauchery. Religious morality was thus self-contradictory and deceitful. Therefore, religion "is the secret enemy of various humane virtues." Religion itself cannot raise the moral level of a nation: "It never makes people better; to resort to superstition, credulity, and fanaticism to encourage them to do good is like pouring oil on a fire to extinguish it." Reviewing human history, he showed that since Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, monarchs did not become more heroic or wise, nor did the people become more cultivated or humane; likewise, the number of patriots did not increase anywhere. Consequently, religion is of no use in cultivating morality, and "henceforth, it is only by destroying most religions that a foundation for sound morality can be laid in every empire." Diderot believed that behind the sermons of those ascetics, there was always hidden a greedy ambition. So-called asceticism was merely a demand for people to unconditionally endure the yoke of autocratic oppression. Morality should be established on the practical basis of actions beneficial to society, without requiring the will of a fictional supernatural entity as a premise. Holbach pointed out: "What makes men good are rational education, noble habits, wise systems, just laws, and appropriate rewards and punishments—not various abstruse and obscure speculations."
Thirdly, 18th-century French atheists profoundly pointed out that religion is a tool of feudal autocracy. They declared that the purpose of religion is to make autocratic tyranny [5] eternal, and that religious institutions had become an indispensable part of the feudal system. Helvétius believed that when feudal monarchs [6] committed acts harmful to the people and society, the Church, fearing popular resistance, worked hard to preach that "life is but a transition" and that only through patient endurance of suffering can one enter heaven after death and enjoy true happiness. Clerical propaganda "cooled the love for kin, honor, public welfare, and the fatherland. Thus heroes became scarce, and the hearts of monarchs were moved; seeking a great heavenly power, they sometimes agreed to transfer part of their earthly authority to the clergy." Helvétius further noted that religion is the cause of political corruption, poverty, and backwardness—even the decline and fall—of many nations. Wherever the Catholic Church plays a decisive role in state affairs, social progress is extremely slow, industry and trade are hindered, and the people fall into a state of ignorance; any country where the Catholic Church runs rampant will sooner or later decline and perish. The immense power held by the clergy once brought countries like Spain and Portugal to the brink of poverty and bankruptcy. Simultaneously, religion everywhere stirred up sectarian strife and religious wars, bringing immense disaster to the people. Religious history "tells us: religion has everywhere lit the torch of intolerance, leaving fields covered with corpses and rivers of blood, cities burned, and empires ruined, yet it has never once made people better." Holbach pointed out: "Christianity spread in the past only because autocracy sheltered it; like all religions, Christianity is the most reliable defender of autocracy." Diderot believed that religion merely requires people to unconditionally endure the rule of feudal autocracy; earthly royal power and heavenly divine power are close twin brothers, and the God of heaven and the Emperor of earth are two strands of rope tied around the people’s necks—if you do not untie one, you cannot untie the other.
From this, we can clearly see that the revolutionary significance of French militant atheism lay in its critique and exposure of religious theology to overthrow the feudal autocratic system and establish bourgeois rule. Engels once said: French materialism gave the French Revolution "a theoretical flag, and provided the basis for the Declaration of the Rights of Man." The French Revolution was the "first uprising that completely cast off the religious cloak and fought on an undisguised political front; it was also the first uprising that truly fought the struggle to the end until one side, the nobility, was completely destroyed and the other, the bourgeoisie, was completely victorious." Thus, "atheists can be respectable people; it is not atheism but superstition and idolatry that dishonor human dignity." 18th-century French materialistic atheism defended the rationality of the capitalist system and represented the direction of socio-historical development.
IV. The Influence of Modern Western Atheism on Marxist Atheism
The philosophical foundation of Marxist atheism is the highest stage of the development of materialistic philosophy—namely, dialectical and historical materialism. Obviously, it first inherited the materialistic tradition. Lenin clearly pointed out: "The philosophical basis of Marxism is dialectical materialism, which fully inherited the historical traditions of the materialism of 18th-century France and Feuerbach in the first half of 19th-century Germany—that is, the historical tradition of materialism that is absolutely atheistic and resolutely opposed to all religion." Lenin, in summarizing the "circular" law of philosophical development, also wrote: Modern times: Holbach — Hegel (passing through Berkeley, Hume, Kant) Hegel — Feuerbach — Marx. Evidently, 18th-century French militant atheism is an important intellectual source of Marxist atheism, and to a certain extent, it laid the foundation for the creation of Marxist atheism.
First, 18th-century French atheism was the first to openly raise the banner of materialism and atheism, becoming a thoroughgoing atheism. Since the dawn of the modern era, many philosophers who actually held materialistic ideas were unwilling to admit they were materialists. Bacon and Locke both possessed a theological lack of thoroughness; Spinoza was cloaked in pantheism; Hobbes admitted the existence of a Creator; and even the later Feuerbach rejected the label of "materialism." Only the 18th-century French atheists openly raised the banner of materialism for the first time, thereby drawing a clear line in the philosophical camp.
Similarly, in the history of Western thought, thoroughgoing atheism had never appeared. From the Renaissance to the 17th century, progressive bourgeois philosophers participated, either overtly or covertly, in theoretical arguments to reduce the jurisdiction of God. These included pantheism, which naturalized and secularized God; deism, which retained God's role in creation and the "first move" but denied His continued intervention in worldly affairs; and dualism, which used God to bridge the two parallel substances of mind and matter. French atheists not only denied orthodox religion but also overcame the lack of thoroughness in pantheism and deism. They argued for atheistic thought using modern natural science and a materialistic worldview, pointing out the "blood relationship" between theology and idealism, thereby becoming a thoroughgoing atheism.
Secondly, 18th-century French atheism reached a true materialistic monism in its view of nature. On the fundamental question of philosophy, from Descartes to Spinoza and even Locke, there was either dualism or a dualistic tendency. Only the 18th-century French materialistic atheists for the first time explicitly raised the issue of the material unity of the world. They unanimously answered the first aspect of the fundamental question of philosophy: that matter determines everything, and that sensation and thought are merely attributes of matter. In their conception of matter, the definition provided by French materialistic atheists approached the Marxist definition. Helvétius believed that matter is a collection of the properties of physical things, an abstraction. He said: "Matter is not a single thing; in nature, there are only individuals we call bodies; the term 'matter' can only be understood as the collection of properties inherent to all bodies."
Thirdly, the philosophy of 18th-century French atheists began to possess dialectical characteristics. They affirmed that all things in the universe exist through universal connections. Diderot said: "If phenomena were not linked to one another, there would be no philosophy at all." Holbach pointed out: "Everything in the universe is linked... no independent power, no isolated cause, no separate activity can possibly exist in nature, because all things in nature act upon one another constantly; nature herself is but an endless cycle of movements emitted or received according to necessary laws."
Diderot also proposed the idea of evolutionary development. He argued that primary material elements, through long periods of combination and separation, could transform into rational human beings. "The embryos formed by these elements, through countless organizations and developments, successively acquired motion, sensation, ideas, thought, reflection, consciousness, feelings, desires, signs, gestures, sounds, articulate sounds, language, laws, sciences, and arts; each of these stages of development passed through millions of years, and perhaps through other stages of development and expansion unknown to us." Here, he briefly outlined human development without any trace of God creating man or the shadow of mechanism; rather, it represents the development of matter itself and human progress.
Furthermore, the 18th-century French atheists put forward the idea of attaching equal importance to perceptual knowledge and rational knowledge. They believed that "experimental philosophy" one-sidedly exaggerated sensory experience, while "rational philosophy" one-sidedly exaggerated the role of rational thinking; therefore, the correct path to knowledge should be the integration of the perceptual and the rational. Diderot emphasized that the three methods of observation, reflection, and experimentation regarding nature are three organically linked stages of the entire cognitive process, closely connected to one another. Observation involves collecting factual data, as knowledge must be based on facts, and facts are "always the true wealth of the philosopher"; reflection combines the collected factual materials for rigorous analysis; and experimentation verifies the results of reflection to see if they correspond with external objects. The entirety of cognition is a process of "returning from reflection to sensation, and from sensation to reflection"—that is, a developmental process from the concrete to the abstract and then from the abstract back to the concrete, finally achieving a truthful understanding of objective things. Lenin believed that Diderot's emphasis on experiments (practice) was "very close to the view of modern materialism."
Finally, the 18th-century French atheists also proposed some rational ideas regarding the conception of history. Their "materialist doctrines concerning the natural goodness of man and the equality of human intellectual endowment, the omnipotence of experience, habit, and education, the influence of external circumstances on man, the great significance of industry, the justification of enjoyment, etc., have a necessary connection with communism and socialism." Helvétius proposed the proposition that "man is the product of his environment." He argued that "all men, provided their physical constitution is equally perfect, possess the physical power to acquire the highest ideas; the spiritual differences we see between people are due to the different environments in which they find themselves and the different educations they receive." Philosophically speaking, this proposition contains the sprouts of historical materialism. Since human emotions, thoughts, ideas, and even moral character are determined by the social environment, this approaches to a certain extent the basic viewpoint of the materialist conception of history that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." Although this proximity was unintentional, it provided precious intellectual material for the formation of the Marxist materialist conception of history.
Of course, Marx also pointed out that the French atheists' analysis of the causes of religion was not deep or thorough enough. For example, d'Holbach attributed the cause of religion to man's fear and wonder at nature, which led to the imagined appearance of some supra-human spiritual power; this view could not yet penetrate into the politics and economics of human society. They regarded human "reason" as the driving force of social development, believing that as long as they appealed to reason and utilized education, people could overcome religious delusions and drive history forward. This indicates that their conception of history was an idealist one based on an abstract theory of human nature [7]. Therefore, Marx said: "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo." This means that the French atheists' critique of religion was only the "embryo" of the critique of the real world. It was precisely on the basis of critically inheriting the fighting atheism of 18th-century France, and further through the critique and transformation of German classical philosophy (Hegel and Feuerbach), that Marx and Engels led atheism toward the proposition of communism as the ideal destination for humanity.
The history of the development of modern Western atheism also provides important insights for us today in adhering to and developing Marxist atheism and further improving religious work. First, the publicity and education of Marxist atheism must reflect the characteristics of the times. As a major principle, Marxist atheism needs to be reflected in all aspects of national work, organically integrating its development with the great practice of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, constructing an ideological discourse system for the major principles of Marxist atheism, innovating the forms, contents, and methods of atheist publicity, and continuously promoting the Sinicization, modernization, and popularization of Marxist atheism. Second, the publicity and education of Marxist atheism must absorb the excellent heritage of atheism throughout Chinese and foreign history, striving to provide the masses with various materials for atheist publicity and conducting vivid and effective publicity and education. Third, we must look at the existence of religion at the current stage dialectically from the perspective of the materialist conception of history. Starting from the "two overarching situations" [8]—namely, the strategic overall situation of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the world's once-in-a-century profound changes—we must actively guide religion to adapt to the New Era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, "guiding religions to strive to serve the promotion of economic development, social harmony, cultural prosperity, ethnic unity, and the reunification of the motherland."