Zhang Xinying: Some Insights into Atheism and the Sinicization of Religion from the Perspective of the "Second Integration"

[Editor’s Note] General Secretary Xi Jinping first proposed the important perspective of combining the basic tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and with China’s fine traditional culture at the ceremony marking the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. The Resolution of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee and the Report to the 20th CPC National Congress reiterated these “Two Combinations.” The most critical theoretical breakthrough of the “Two Combinations” lies in the “Second Combination.” On June 2, 2023, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out at the Symposium on Cultural Inheritance and Development: “The ‘Second Combination’ is another emancipation of the mind ^[1], allowing us to fully utilize the precious resources of China’s fine traditional culture within a broader cultural space to explore theoretical and institutional innovations oriented toward the future.” He emphasized that Chinese culture has a long history and Chinese civilization is extensive and profound. Only by comprehensively and deeply understanding the history of Chinese civilization can we more effectively promote the creative transformation and innovative development of China’s fine traditional culture, more vigorously advance the development of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics, and build a modern civilization for the Chinese nation. To study and implement the spirit of this important speech, the editorial department of Science and Atheism organized a special symposium on “The ‘Second Combination’ and Atheism” on July 9. Among the presentations was “Several Perceptions on Atheism and the Sinicization of Religion from the Perspective of the ‘Second Combination’” by Research Fellow Zhang Xinying, former Deputy Director of the Institute of World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). The main contents are as follows.

Today, as the entire Party deeply carries out the thematic education for studying and implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, it is an unshirkable responsibility for Chinese Marxist scholars of religious studies to earnestly study and grasp the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speech at the Symposium on Cultural Inheritance and Development, and to tangibly realize the profound meaning of “the ‘Second Combination’ as another emancipation of the mind.” This also provides a rare opportunity to further reflect upon and answer a series of theoretical questions. These questions concern how to achieve the unity between inheriting and promoting China’s fine traditional culture and the dissemination and popularization of Marxist atheism, and how to mutually reinforce this with the adherence to the direction of the Sinicization of religions in our country during the construction of a modern civilization for the Chinese nation. This possesses realistic significance for enriching and deepening the theoretical and practical innovations of the “Second Combination.” Key points include: given that Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism are generally regarded as the “three pillars” of traditional Chinese culture, can we consider that China’s fine traditional culture contains certain religious elements? How should we understand the role and significance of atheistic factors within China’s fine traditional culture? Can the concepts and forms of belief in traditional Chinese culture provide beneficial historical and cultural resources for the future Sinicization of religion in our country? And so forth.

Each of the above questions could be the subject of a long treatise; here, I can only offer some fragmentary perceptions in a superficial manner ^[2].

First, we should recognize that the representative concepts and iconic spirit of China’s fine traditional culture, frequently cited by General Secretary Xi Jinping, were almost all produced during the “Axial Age” by a group of pre-Qin thinkers, primarily Confucian. Many were the result of their distillation and summarization of the development path and historical experience of the Huaxia ^[3] nation since the Three Dynasties ^[4]. General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized the superior characteristics of over 5,000 years of Chinese civilization and attaches great importance to tracing the civilizational achievements of the Huaxia ancestors through archaeological discoveries. This is to demonstrate that the excellent connotations of traditional Chinese culture gradually took shape as early as the ancient period, proving that “China’s fine traditional culture has a long history and is extensive and profound; it is the crystallization of the wisdom of Chinese civilization.” In all fairness, most of the basic philosophical tenets of the core values that the Chinese nation still reveres and follows were determined and recognized two or three thousand years ago. At that time, neither Buddhism nor Taoism had yet appeared on the Chinese landscape in a complete religious form. Rather, it was Confucian thought that preset the political-ethical and socio-moral principles and norms for the future development of Buddhism and Taoism in China. (These principles and norms later solidified into “ritual teachings” ^[5]—dogmas and sacrificial systems with the character of a state religion—under the name of supernatural “Heaven” and a priori “Way of Heaven,” eventually becoming “theocratic” shackles constraining the people and moving toward their own opposite; but that is a separate issue.) It also prepared an open and inclusive potential for itself to absorb epistemological and methodological nourishment from Buddhism and Taoism. Therefore, saying that the “three teachings” of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism are the “three pillars” of traditional Chinese culture is actually conditional and predicated on certain premises; it cannot be understood simplistically across different times and spaces. We must not sever the roots of the history of thought, nor limit ourselves to discussing “traditional Chinese culture” based solely on the conditions of the middle and late periods of Chinese feudal society, or identify “fine traditional culture” within a partial historical scope. Still less should we uphold the cultural dross reflecting the backward and corrupt state of feudal society as “fine traditional culture”; that is not the inheritance and promotion of fine traditional culture, but merely a farce by a few individuals trying to fish in troubled waters for personal fame and gain.

Of course, Buddhism and Taoism played a huge and far-reaching historical role in expanding and strengthening the structure of “one center, many diversities” ^[6] in Chinese thought and culture. Buddhism, in particular, provided a successful example of a “latecomer surpassing the predecessor,” as a foreign religion finally integrated into the religious appearance of traditional Chinese culture through its immersion. Fundamentally, the receptive existence obtained by Buddhism and Taoism during the long history of Confucian China since the Han Dynasty was primarily due to their use of “sacred” and “mysterious” qualities to assist and maintain the Confucian political and social ethical norms of the “resonance between Heaven and humanity” ^[7] and the “integration of family and state.” In the latter part of this same historical path, Chinese religions—from theory to practice—became increasingly and spontaneously oriented toward the “unity of the three teachings.” To some extent, this reflects the objective effect of Confucianism’s efforts to further maintain its status as the mainstream ideology in the late feudal society. Therefore, if we are to look for religious components within China’s fine traditional culture, while we might mention with reservation that the Confucian belief in Heaven established a conventional legitimacy and authority for the social norms of the Chinese people—practiced daily without conscious realization ^[8]—what should be discovered first is the active adaptation made by “rising stars” like Buddhism and Taoism. They sought to keep pace with the times to establish and improve belief forms that submit to and assist the national political system and mainstream ideology. This is the most practically valuable fine tradition of Chinese religions within the system of traditional Chinese culture. Inheriting and developing this tradition critically and creatively in the New Era of Chinese civilization, imbuing it with new content consistent with the direction of historical progress, and facilitating a new leap in the Sinicization of religion, will be a qualified answer that our country’s work in the religious field should submit to the state and the people under the guidance of the “Second Combination.”

Second, there is a viewpoint suggesting that the underlying color of traditional Chinese culture is humanistic rather than “theo-centric.” In this sense, traditional Chinese culture can be considered to have a “natural” atheistic inclination. As previously mentioned, the core values of China’s fine traditional culture were essentially established and promoted by a group of pre-Qin thinkers, mainly Confucian. At that time, institutionalized religions widely accepted by society had not yet emerged, and the religious consciousness of the pre-Qin masters—including their “view of the divine”—presented a state that relatively belongs to the “pre-man-made religion” ^[9]. Because the corresponding system of religious theism was not yet complete, if one must speak of so-called “atheistic” thought at this time, it could only manifest as a dissenting “theory of the divine.” The precious quality of this “view of the divine” or “theory of the divine” does not—and could not—lie in a thorough denial of the existence of supernatural “gods” and “divine power” beyond the historical stage of development. Rather, it lies in dissolving the boundary between “the divine” and “the human,” reducing the “relationship between gods and humans” to an ideal orientation of real social relations. It allows “humanity” and “divinity,” as well as “human desires” and “divine blessings,” to establish different forms of identity, ultimately fulfilling the function of serving human life in this world. “Establishing teachings through the way of the divine” ^[10] is the manifestation of this “view of the divine” in official policy. Moreover, these “views” and “theories” of the divine, accumulated since the “pre-man-made religion” period of Chinese civilization, were used by later Confucian scholar-officials in the era when Buddhism and Taoism rose to prominence as latent guidance for questioning and refuting certain religious theological theories and the secular superstitious behaviors attached to those religions, without any sense of incongruity. It is precisely in the formation, interpretation, and application of the unique Chinese “view of the divine” that traditional Chinese culture reveals its humanistic base in shaping the belief forms of the Chinese people.

This spiritual phenomenon reflects the objective fact that “gods are created by man” more directly and clearly than Western religions. It also prompted traditional Chinese religions to pay more attention to cultivating their own “secularity” and “humanity” to cater to the cultural psychology of the believers. Historical “theories of the divine” with Chinese characteristics were thus incorporated into the development process of ancient Chinese atheistic thought, influencing the theoretical and practical paradigms of traditional Chinese religions. They have maintained the vitality of participating in the construction of “non-theo-centric” religions with Chinese characteristics by sustaining the dynamism of the traditional “model of transformation between humans and gods.” Overall, even if the “view of the divine” in traditional Chinese culture is not examined from the perspective of atheism, one cannot deny its shimmering original humanistic light, which is quite different from the “theo-centrism” of monotheism in heterogeneous cultures. This is the unique character of belief that the Chinese nation possesses—while having no lack of religious historical and cultural components, just like other nations. This character determines that the standard for society to choose religious matters is to give priority to satisfying the actual needs of “humans,” rather than driving humans to serve as slaves to “gods.” Traditional Chinese religions that have continued from the depths of history to the present have been able to evolve into an organic structure of traditional Chinese culture because they can manifest and echo this unique character. If one believes that this character “possessed the prerequisites for development toward atheism” (as Engels put it) earlier than Western Protestantism, and if it confirms through the “non-theo-centrization” of traditional Chinese religion that “for thousands of years, the Chinese nation has followed a path of civilizational development different from that of other countries and nations,” then it is certainly qualified to enter the hall of “fine traditional culture.” With the invisible coverage of such a value belief where real life is more important than the world beyond, once Marxism—which calls on the masses to rely on their own strength to change their status of being exploited and oppressed—reached China, it was indeed more conducive to stimulating the resonance and pursuit of the ideal of social revolution among the worker-peasant masses, compared to some foreign national conditions burdened with heavy “theo-centric” historical baggage.

Although we cannot say that traditional culture with a humanistic base is directly equal to an ally of Marxism, without Chinese Communists relying on the support drawn from the spirit and wisdom of fine Chinese culture, Marxism could not have overthrown the “Three Great Mountains” ^[11] in just one generation through its combination with China’s specific realities. Even the American Christian theologian Paul Tillich noticed the affinity between Confucian thought and Communist belief. In his 1957 book Dynamics of Faith, he argued that Confucianism “is a positive condition for the victory of a secularist Communist faith.” Historical experience can be elevated into an incremental source of cultural self-confidence. By comprehensively evaluating the ability of China’s fine traditional culture to shape the humanistic “view of deities” and “view of religion” of the Chinese nation, and by dialectically viewing and making good use of the Chinese civilizational genes carried by its subsequent spiritual and cultural products, we will have more confidence in promoting the creative transformation and innovative development of fine traditional culture in the field of contemporary Chinese religion. We will also have more confidence in advancing the integration of Marxist religious studies on religious phenomena with Chinese characteristics and the publicity and education of Sinicized Marxist atheism, so that this grand project of the “Second Combination” in the New Era continues to expand into new realms.

Third, based on the above perceptions, a logically affirmative answer can be given to the question of “whether the concepts and forms of belief in traditional Chinese culture can provide beneficial historical and cultural resources for the future Sinicization of religion in our country.” Our current proposal to adhere to the direction of the Sinicization of religion is both a natural extension of the historical path and an elevation of the mission under the new conditions of the New Era. It requires that traditional religions, which have already become part of traditional Chinese culture, open a new chapter of “Sinicization” and keep pace with the development of the New Era in all aspects. It also requires that foreign religions that entered China later learn and gain from China’s fine traditional culture the way of survival in harmony with China’s mainstream politics and dominant ideology. This includes re-indexing the important position that the traditional Chinese value system once held in the history of the “contextualization” and “indigenization” of these religions—a position later weakened by various external factors—and smoothly connecting with Socialist Core Values. For these foreign religions, learning from traditional Chinese culture also includes drawing lessons from and emulating the path of instrumental rationality in the history of the transmission of traditional Chinese religions, consciously realizing and playing their social roles in the construction of a Chinese-path modernization. Doing so does not mean that these traditional Chinese religions have already met the new requirements of “Sinicization” in the New Era, or that the new tasks of “Sinicization” can be completed through superficial efforts. The focus is to inspire foreign “monotheistic” religions to actively seek the possibility of certain acculturation and co-construction with those traditional Chinese religions that have already carved out a space of “Sinicization” in history, regarding belief concepts and belief forms. The goal is to evolve into true “Chinese religions” in terms of cultural characteristics and social functions, until they together become a vivid part of the modern civilization of the Chinese nation. This represents the lofty goal that the Sinicization of religion in our country will achieve, as well as the historical and world-shaping result that the “Second Combination” is bound to attain.