How should Taoist devotees practice their faith? By celebrating the birthday of the philosopher Lao Zi? What about burning joss paper for the dead?
The question has turned out to be a conundrum for some followers of Taoism—a term that first appeared as a religious category in Singapore in the 1980 census. At the time, the census defined Taoism to include “[t]hose believing in ancestor worship and in various Chinese deities.” That’s a bureaucratic choice with repercussions that religious studies scholar Vineeta Sinha considers significant in understanding the faithful today.
Amid a redefinition of religious affiliations, the share of Taoists plunged in Singapore’s Chinese population—from 30 per cent in the 1980 census to 8.5 per cent in the 2000 count—even as the share of Chinese who identified as Buddhists grew to more than half in the same period. Intriguingly, alarmed Taoist leaders responded to this trend by seeking to downplay the role of folk traditions in the religion, just as Buddhist organizations had previously done.
Sinha points out that the association of Taoism with “Chinese Traditional Beliefs” took hold by 1990, when Singapore saw a “strong wave of reform Buddhism” that sought to move away from practices such as ancestor worship, spirit worship, spirit-medium cults, and mysticism. Yet, a Taoist organization leader had also told the press in 1989 that faith practitioners needed to “restor[e] Taoism’s philosophical roots” by removing the “hodgepodge of folk beliefs.”
Subsequent Taoist leaders doubled down on the shift away from an emphasis on devotions such as fortune-telling and mediums.
“The dichotomy of ‘philosophical’ and ‘religious’ Taoism reveals the schisms between the two dimensions of Taoism in practice, the ‘religious’ variety often judged to be superstitious, being rooted in magic, sorcery and faith healing, lacking cohesion and centralisation,” Sinha explains. Promoters of “Official Taoism” found themselves stymied by two key problems: “weeding out unhealthy aspects of ‘religious Taoism’ and…separating ‘Buddhism’ from ‘Taoism.’”
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“It is interesting that from the available possibilities, ‘Taoism’ should have been the final choice to denote the traditional religious beliefs and practices of the Chinese,” Sinha reflects.
Sociologists in Singapore historically considered but ruled out terms like “ancestral worship,” “Confucianism,” “Chinese religion”—or even “Chinese spiritualism [bai shen],” a descriptor that Sinha notes was found to be “not specific enough to distinguish it from say, Chinese Christians,” who also used “Chinese spiritualism” when describing their belief system.
“[O]ne important manoeuvre has been the careful teasing out and separating of ‘Buddhist’ from ‘Taoist’ elements such that the two are now defined and perceived as ‘different’ religions,” she adds.
In fact, telling Taoism and Buddhism apart can be difficult, “given the long-term historical, convoluted and complex political relationship between these two religious traditions in China” and Taoist leaders’ acknowledgment that their beliefs allowed for the practice of other religions.
“[I]t is important to note that at the everyday-life level, many Chinese who would label themselves ‘Buddhists’ continued to engage in practices that would be defined as ‘Taoist’ as they would not see the two labels as mutually exclusive,” Sinha writes.
The puzzle of modernizing Taoism has parallels with how Hinduism is recognized as a formal religion in Singapore. “In practice, both ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Taoism’ in Singapore are contested categories and the right to define them is claimed by several groups,” Sinha explains. She calls attention to the public-facing role of the Hindu Endowments Board and the Hindu Advisory Board, which trace their history to “British colonial initiatives” from the early 1900s. Hindu associations like these “have the legitimacy and resources to construct and reproduce a version of local Hinduism that is officially sanctioned.”
Sinha writes that “ritual activities (animal sacrifices, spirit mediums and divination, self-mortification rituals, etc.) in this domain do not find support and legitimacy from reform-minded Hindus, who favour a more text-based, doctrinaire, philosophical approach to the Hindu religion.”
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While she notes the “strong associations being made between religious and ethnic/racial identities,” she ultimately attributes Taoist and Hindu leaders’ shared emphasis on rationalist reform to their anxiety about losing devotees through conversion to other faiths—like Christianity and Islam—that emphasize formal organizations and institutions.
“It is highly unlikely that adherents of these religions would disappear altogether, given the history and institutionalisation of their traditions here, but the discourse does reveal anxieties and apprehension felt by the community,” Sinha concludes.
So, in their efforts to better define their beliefs and stand out, the Taoist and Hindu communities in Singapore run the risk of “simplification and codification of the religions in question—problematic outcomes that carry their own dilemmas,” as she puts it.
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