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Zhongyongdao (中庸道 "Way of the Golden Mean") is a Chinese folk religious sect that as of the 1980s was a proscribed religion in China as testified by the arrest of one of its leaders, Tang Tianxu, in Sichuan in 1981. [1]
Tang Tianxu was a leader of Zhongyingdao who was arrested in the Kaijiang County of Sichuan in 1981. It is not known what sentence he received. [1] According to an official report, in June of that year Tang gathered a "Thunder Patriarch Assembly", a religious gathering, binding together over ten thousands sticks of incense to create one great "heavenly incense". [1] On that occasion he instructed the people about eschatology, proclaiming the end of the jiazi and a new emperor to come. [1]
Guizhou is a landlocked province in the southwest region of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the central part of the province. Guizhou borders the autonomous region of Guangxi to the south, Yunnan to the west, Sichuan to the northwest, the municipality of Chongqing to the north, and Hunan to the east. The population of Guizhou stands at 34 million, ranking 19th among the provinces in China.
Chinese Buddhism or Han Buddhism has shaped Chinese culture in a wide variety of areas including art, politics, literature, philosophy, medicine and material culture.
The government of China officially espouses state atheism, but in reality most of Chinese citizens practice some kind of Chinese folk religion, especially Confucianism. Chinese civilization has historically long been a cradle and host to a variety of the most enduring religio-philosophical traditions of the world. Confucianism and Taoism (Daoism), later joined by Buddhism, constitute the "three teachings" that have shaped Chinese culture. There are no clear boundaries between these intertwined religious systems, which do not claim to be exclusive, and elements of each enrich popular or folk religion. The emperors of China claimed the Mandate of Heaven and participated in Chinese religious practices. In the early 20th century, reform-minded officials and intellectuals attacked all religions as "superstitious", and since 1949, China has been governed by the Communist Party of China, an atheist institution that prohibits party members from practicing religion while in office. In the culmination of a series of atheistic and anti-religious campaigns already underway since the late 19th century, the Cultural Revolution against old habits, ideas, customs and culture, lasting from 1966 to 1976, destroyed or forced them underground. Under subsequent leaders, religious organisations were given more autonomy. The government formally recognizes five religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam. In the early twenty-first century there has been increasing official recognition of Confucianism and Chinese folk religion as part of China's cultural inheritance.
CESNUR, is a non-profit organization based in Turin, Italy that studies new religious movements and opposes the anti-cult movement. It was established in 1988 by Massimo Introvigne, Jean-François Mayer and Ernesto Zucchini. Its first president was Giuseppe Casale. Later, Luigi Berzano became CESNUR's president.
Yiguandao / I-Kuan Tao (traditional Chinese: 一貫道; simplified Chinese: 一贯道; pinyin: Yīguàn Dào; Wade–Giles: I1-Kuan4 Tao4), meaning the Consistent Way or Persistent Way, is a Chinese salvationist religious sect that emerged from the Xiantiandao ("Way of Former Heaven") tradition in the late 19th century, in Shandong, to become China's most important redemptive society in the 1930s and 1940s, especially during the Japanese invasion. In the 1930s Yiguandao spread rapidly throughout China led by Zhang Tianran, who is the eighteenth patriarch of the Xiantiandao lineage, among thousands of other movements that thrived since the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911.
Shengdao, best known by its corporate name Tongshanshe is a Confucian salvation sect part of the Xiantiandao lineage.
Guiyidao, better known as Precosmic Salvationism in contemporary Taiwan, and historically also known by the name of its institutions as Daodeshe (道德社), Guiyi Daoyuan (皈依道院) or later Daoyuan (道院)—respectively "Community of the Way and its Virtue", "School of the Way of the Return to the One" or simply "School of the Way"—is a Chinese folk religious movement of salvation belonging to the Xiantiandao tradition.
The White Lotus was a religious and political movement that appealed to many Han Chinese who found solace in worship of Wusheng Laomu, who was foretold to gather all her children at the millennium into one family.
The White Lotus Rebellion was a rebellion initiated by followers of the White Lotus movement during the Qing dynasty of China. Motivated by millenarian Buddhists who promised the immediate return of the Buddha, it was fueled erupted out of social and economic discontent in the impoverished provinces of Hubei, Shaanxi, and Sichuan. The rebellion began in 1794, when large groups of rebels claiming White Lotus affiliations rose up within the mountainous region that separated Sichuan province from Hubei and Shaanxi provinces. A smaller precursor to the main rebellion broke out in 1774, under the leadership of the martial-arts and herbal-healing expert Wang Lun in Shandong province of northern China.
Tiandiism is a group of Chinese folk religious sects, namely the Holy Church of the Heavenly Virtue and the Lord of Universe Church, which emerged respectively from the teachings of Xiao Changming and Li Yujie, disseminated in the early 20th century. The Lord of Universe Church is actually a later development of the former, established in the 1980s.
The main religion in Tibet has been Buddhism since its outspread in the 8th century AD. The historical region of Tibet is nowadays mostly comprised by the Tibet Autonomous Region of China and partly by the provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan. Before the arrival of Buddhism, the main religion among Tibetans was an indigenous shamanic and animistic religion, Bon, which now comprises a sizeable minority and which would later influence the formation of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Shouters, or more properly the Shouters sect (呼喊派), is a label attached by the People's Republic of China (PRC) to an amorphous group within China that was targeted by the government first as counterrevolutionaries and subsequently as a criminal cult after incidents in Dongyang and Yiwu counties in Zhejiang province in February 1982. "The Shouters sect" became the object of waves of arrests in 1983 and again in 1995. Several 1983 publications with ties to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) accused the late expatriate Chinese Christian teacher Witness Lee of being the leader of "the Shouters sect" and of instigating the disorders. In practice, however, the appellation "the Shouters sect" has been applied far more broadly to many groups that pray openly and audibly and/or do not register or otherwise cooperate with the TSPM. There is considerable reason to doubt the veracity of the reports which led to the condemnation of "the Shouters sect" and the association of them with Witness Lee or the local churches, and the local churches distance themselves from the Shouters.
Yaochidao, also known by the name of its corporate form the Holy Church of the Mother-of-Pearl Lake, or by the older name of Cihuitang, is a Chinese folk religious sect related to the Xiantiandao lineage, with a strong following in Taiwan and active as an underground church in the People's Republic of China, where it is theoretically a proscribed sect.
Robin Munro is a British legal scholar, author, and human rights advocate. He received his PhD from the Department of Law, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.
Chinese salvationist religions or Chinese folk religious sects are a Chinese religious tradition characterised by a concern for salvation of the person and the society. They are distinguished by egalitarianism, a founding charismatic person often informed by a divine revelation, a specific theology written in holy texts, a millenarian eschatology and a voluntary path of salvation, an embodied experience of the numinous through healing and self-cultivation, and an expansive orientation through evangelism and philanthropy.
Tianguangdao is a Chinese folk religious sect that as of the 1980s was a proscribed religion in China. Particularly active in Heilongjiang and Anhui, there are records of detentions of leaders and members easpecially from the former province.
Huangjidao or Huangjiism is a Chinese folk religious sect that as of the 1980s was a proscribed religion in China as testified by the arrest of various leaders and members in those years.
Huazhaidao is a Chinese folk religious sect of Henan that as of the 1980s was a proscribed religion in China as testified by the arrest of various Communist Party members who joined the sect in those years.
The Yellow Sand Society, also known as Yellow Way Society, and Yellow Gate Society, was a rural secret society and folk religious sect in northern China during the 19th and 20th century.
Li Guangchang, also known as Zheng Min, was a self-declared Chinese emperor and leader of a salvationist sect. He actually ruled a small territory in Cangnan County, called the "Zishen Nation" (子申国), from 1981 to 1986 in de facto independence from China. His reign was eventually brought to an end by Chinese security forces who captured him and dismantled his statelet as well as his sect. Li was tried in court, and probably sentenced to death for leading a counter-revolutionary movement.