The Conflicts And Interactions Between Confucianism And Christianity In Modern China From Mou Zongsan’s Religious View

Mou Zongsan is one of the representatives of contemporary Neo-Confucianism. Although having not systematical writings about Christianity, he has always referred to Christianity, while he explained the cultural problem between China and the West. The way he handled the relationship between Confucianism and Christianity in Modern China. This paper includes three parts:Mou Zongsan’s view on humanistic religion and judgment to religion, the conflicts and interactions between Confucianism and Christianity in modern China.In the first part, the paper clarifies the main content of Mou Zongsan’s views on humanism religion, In the situation that the Chinese traditional Confucianism met the challenge from the western culture, the opposition to Confucius, it is hard for the Confucianism to exist. Therefore, Mou Zongsan has committed himself to reviving the Confucianism and national culture. Mou Zongsan has awaked of the important of religion. He thought that religion was the power of a nation, which decided the uniqueness of the nation. Christianity is a driving force for the West, while Confucianism, for China. Mou Zongsan has pointed out that Chinese religion, being different from western religion, is human-centered. He has elaborated the two responsibilities of a religion:firstly, it can set order for the daily action; secondly, it can bring inspiration and guide the spiritual life of the people. Therefore, the religious connotation, which is divided into "reason" and "ceremony", has formed. Although Confucianism does not have normal religious ceremony, it has the religious significance when it comes to "reason". He named Confucianism after "normal religion" or"humanistic religion". Because in Confucianism, the human-concentration is emphasized. Through moral practice, human beings will synchronize with the universe. If the moral-orientation is set up, the humanities world will be created. Thus, Confucianism can be called "humanistic religion" or "moral religion". The paper discusses the function of "benevolence", which is able to connect human beings and the universe by two qualities:"enlightenment" and "movement".The second part of the paper keeps on the discussion. In the first part, I have discussed Mou Zongsan’s view on humanistic religion, implying that Confucianism is a harmony-centered religion. The second part contains more detailed elaboration on Mou Zongsan’s "judgment to religion". Mr. Mou has studied Buddhism deeply. His thought about "judgment to religion" is from Buddhism. However, two aspects are different,"judgment to religion" in the Buddhism is to solve the problem of Buddhist Scripture, while Mou Zongsan have used the thought to judge right or wrong of each religion. According to his own standard, Mou Zongsan has illustrated that Tiantai religion is the real all-round religion, achieving the utmost level of all-round religions. Also, he has used the thought about "all-round religion" to judge Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity. Through the concept "infinite mind"("prajna mind" in Buddhism;"dao cultivation" in Taoism;"intellectual intuition" in Confucianism,"god" in Christianity), Mou Zongsan has judged Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism as the "all-round religion", Christianity as "separated religion". Mou Zongsan thought that limited people can ultimately unclose their "infinite mind" by practice and achieve the state of complete enlightenment. But on the basis of moral consciousness’s manifestation of moral consciousness or not, Mou Zongsan has judged Confucianism as real perfect religion, Buddhism and Taoism as not enough perfect religion. Christianity was judged as "separated religion" as limited persons couldn’t connect with infinite God by practices. So, in the stand of the selfish departmentalism and Confucianism, Mou Zongsan thought that Christianity should learn from the humanity theory. So that, human can connect with God by practices. So, we can know clearly that Mou Zongsan’s theory of "judgment to religion" is not objective and neutral, reasonable. Because having borne the responsibility of reviving the Confucianism, Mou Zongsan’s theory of "judgment to religion" isn’t consistent. In short, the limitation of Mou Zongsan’s theory of "judgment to religion" is caused by his selfish departmentalism.Mou Zongsan’s viewpoint about religion has formed under the special history background, which has obvious selfish departmentalism and inconformity. Therefore, besides the sympathetic comprehension to the religious viewpoint, the third part of the paper puts forth effort to reflect the viewpoint. In this part, I claim to give up his stand of "judgment to religion" but to stand in the comparative religion research position to deal with the relationship between Confucianism and Christianity under the background of globalization and religious pluralism.As a kind of heterogeneous culture, it is inevitable for Christianity to interfere with Confucianism when it spreads in China. Not only in neoteric times, but also in modern China, the conflicts between Christianity and Confucianism have also occurred. However, in the background of globalization and religious pluralism, Chinese religious consciousness has enhanced. Scholars have tried to conduct interfaith dialogue constantly to seek for the interaction between Christianity and Confucianism. In the process of globalization, the religion has not been on the wane as expected and predicted by the religious secular theory but presented the tendency of diversification. In this paper, Rodney’s religious market theory is used to prove this point. Due to the conflicts between Christianity and Confucianism as well as the tendency towards religious prosperity, it is necessary to deal with the bilateral relationship correctly in modern China. Cai Renhou and some other scholars have used the "pattern of different status" to deal with the relationship. They think that Christianity is an alien culture, it must stand in the "guest" status. Cai Renhou suggests the bilateral communication in six aspects. However, these six questions touch the core of Christianity, so the way of making the existence of Christianity enables Christianity to lose its significance. Though some scholars are not for the change of the core factors of Christianity to facilitate interfaith communication, yet the proposal of "chinized Christianity" is still of the thought of "pattern of different sequence".Beyond the cultural parochialism position, the paper tries to argues for the realization of bilateral dialogue and communication in daily practice. Religious practice theory is put forward by Neat Paul. As he advocates, different religions are supposed to shelve the religious truth issues and confront human suffering and crisis jointly in order to realize interfaith dialogue. Such dialogues are more practical. Therefore, we choose this angle to realize dialogues. After determining the position and angle of dialogue, the paper finally discusses that the legal method used to deal with the religious affairs. Due to the prosperous development of the religious market, there will be many issues, such as the emergence of all kinds of heresies. The US uses the laws to realize effective management, which provides us with the experience. Also, Yang Fenggang’s theory of Chinese religious market of three kinds of colors shows that:that the government controlling religion will only make religious market more complicated. Therefore, the paper comes to the conclusion that only staying in the framework of religion and law can we deal with the existence of Christianity, a heterogeneous culture, in China in a right way as well as handle the communication between Confucianism and Christianity in daily practice.