Emerging Voices in the Study of Chinese Religions

Hosted by the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions

Sunday, November 23rd, 2025 | 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Marriott Copley Place, Maine (Fifth Floor)

Session ID: Session ID: P23-106

Anne Crosby, “Ritual and Innovation: Beigang Wude Temple, Taiwan”

Abstract: This presentation will provide an overview of my mixed methods (e.g., ethnography, textual analysis) dissertation on innovation in Chinese religions in the context of a twenty-first century Taiwanese spirit writing (fuluan 扶鸞) temple. In June 2025 I concluded a short term (two month) ethnographic study of Beigang’s Wude Gong (北港武德宮) in Taiwan. Wude Gong’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) for prognostication and in other contexts, as well as its adoption of other technologies in physical and virtual environments provides a unique case study in the context of Chinese religion. Wude Gong claims a status as the ancestral temple of Wu Caishen, the Chinese God of Wealth. Under the leadership of former financier and technology aficionado, Lin Anle, Wude Gong has sought to establish itself as a leader in technological innovation as well as the study and preservation of Chinese popular religions. Beigang’s Wude Gong temple combines historically-rooted practices and rituals with emerging technologies and maintains a position as a thriving twenty-first century religious institution of Chinese religion.

Chris Rowe, “Letters for the End of the World: Yinguang’s (1862–1940) Buddhist Readings of Modern Crises”

Abstract: Yinguang 印光 (1862-1940) discussed classics, Buddhist sutras, and morality books with hundreds of epistolary contacts, in part to make sense of an era of unintelligible loss. In his letters Yinguang often acted as religious interpreter, translating the Republican era’s compounding disasters for his readers. Yinguang’s letters targeted widespread anxieties and issues, and were published in bestselling collections during his lifetime. This dissertation analyzes Yinguang’s epistolary readings of social and climatic disasters, icons—texts and images, and unseen beings, situating them in a booming print culture of lively debate. In this brief talk I will examine two of Yinguang’s letters to Hongyi 弘一 (1880- 1942) on blood writing. This is a case from chapter three, which covers Yinguang’s discussions of ritual techniques of reading and writing. Yinguang objected to Hongyi and others’ use of cursive script, detecting in their unfettered calligraphy a lack of decorum he believed would obstruct religious attainments. He advised Hongyi to compose neater characters and to cultivate specific states of concentration and affect. Yinguang argued that relating to texts by means of disciplines of humility and reverence—“as if facing the spirits’ radiance” 若對神明—would be determinative of success for Hongyi and others.

Esmond Chuah Meng Soh, “Abjections in Transition: Ritual Form and Mythic Pluralism in the Nine Gods Festival”

Abstract: This presentation examines the Nine Emperor Gods Festival, a major religious observance among the overseas Chinese in postcolonial Southeast Asia. While the deities and their mother, the Dipper Matriarch, were historically venerated in China, it is in the diaspora that the festival acquired a distinctive ritual form—centered on the reception and departure of a concealed incense censer from a body of water. I argue that the festival’s ritual system, with its remarkable stability amid mythic pluralism, encodes a diasporic ethics of loss, loyalty, and belonging. Drawing on historical sources and ongoing fieldwork in Malaysia and Singapore, I explore how rituals of concealment, along with associated ceremonies of mourning and abstention, articulate a form of symbolic abjection. These practices reconfigure the community’s relationship to sacred authority and reflect tensions between an imagined Chinese center and the Southeast Asian periphery. Although the deities’ identities remain fluid—often reinterpreted through spirit mediums or local histories—they are frequently anchored to the chronotope of the Ming–Qing transition. Analyzing religious festivals allows us to theorize how diasporic communities negotiate legitimacy and identity through ritual performance, offering insight into how moral worlds are reproduced and sustained without reliance on doctrinal coherence.

Ziqi Xuan, “Incense Associations and Spirit Mediums: Expression of Contemporary Salvationist Religions at Mount Tai”

Abstract: This study is based on fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2025 around Mount Tai, with a particular focus on incense associations and spirit mediums, to examine the roles of contemporary religious groups in terms of practice, memory, and salvific functions. This study argues that the salvific functions of incense associations and spirit mediums closely resemble those of salvationist groups during the early period, and it has become an important way for contemporary individuals to deal with uncertainty under social change. Specifically, while Chinese salvationist religions have been widely studied, they are often seen as unique to the Republican and early PRC eras. This research argues that incense associations and spirit mediums continue to perform salvific functions akin to earlier groups, helping individuals navigate uncertainty amid social change. These groups offer spiritual solace and social support via ritual healing and community mutual aid. Furthermore, by reconstructing traditions and historical narratives, they reassert orthodoxy and legitimize their practices in contemporary society. Thus, they represent both a continuation of salvationist memory and a departure from their stigmatized past, illustrating the dynamic interplay of continuity and change in daily religious life under social transformation.

Christopher Yang, “A Vital Matter: Essence 精, Spirit 神, and Self-Cultivation in Early China”

Abstract: This dissertation turns to the “biospiritual” vocabulary for the self that emerged in late Warring States China. As recent studies have shown, its conception of a human organism animated by qi 氣of various kinds supplied the images and terms by which many in that milieu grappled with key issues—pathology and physiology, the relationship between the human and divine, etc. I follow talk of “essence” 精 and “spirit” 神—two kinds of refined qi said to secure the workings and highest possibilities of the human being—in early self-cultivation. I show that images like “spirit light” 神明 share roots in ritual sacrifice, medicine, and other technical arts and that teasing out these connections enables us to reconstruct not only some neglected ideas and practices of the self, but also their social background, setting the authors of hygienic texts (e.g., the Shiwen ⼗問), the authors of the Zhuangzi 莊⼦ and Huainanzi 淮南⼦, and even the “masters of esoterica” ⽅⼠ in relation. This study suggests some key revisions to our picture of early China and avenues for inquiry into the relationship between our early textual sources and later developments in Chinese religious cultures.

Xiaoyu Zhang, “Fasting Calendars and Dietary Ethics in Republican Shanghai, 1912–1949”

Abstract: The debates surrounding vegetarianism and the prohibition of killing animals have persisted in China for over two millennia, with opponents constantly shifting. In Republican China (1912-1949), the adaptation of Western vegetarianism introduced new scientific perspectives to the discourse on proper diets. In the pursuit of building a modern nation, various groups strategically deployed nutritional and hygienic science either to advocate for or to attack vegetarian practices. The elites intended to detach religious connotations from vegetarianism, as part of broader modernization efforts. Nevertheless, ritual fasting practices—particularly the periodic type associated with specific deities—remained vibrantly active. Guided by widely circulated religious calendars that listed sacred days (such as birthdays and inspection days of different gods), individuals voluntarily observed these fasting periods to establish intimate divine connections and seek personal and national salvation. My research explores how periodic fasting—simultaneously an expression of piety and a vehicle for moral reform—conflicted and compromised with state-promoted “modern ethics,” as well as the factors contributing to its persistence nowadays. By situating moralized dietary practices within the critical phase of China’s modern state- building, this study reveals the spiritual dimension of individual dietary ethics, offering insight into how ordinary people perceived divine presence and communicated with it in the face of secularization processes.

Previous Participants and Presentations

2024

Kelly Carlton, “Children in Medieval Chinese Buddhism: Discourses on Ethics and Practice”
Duan Yuanyuan, “Unaligned Time: Temporality in the Transmission and Reception of Tang Chinese Esoteric Buddhism Beyond China”
Felix Erdt, “Duan Zhengyuan’s Theory of Cosmological Causality in the Context of a Global Critique of Modernity”
Tali Hershkovitz, “Between Home and Open Terrain: Women’s Religious Landscape in Song Dynasty China (960-1279)”
Yang Wang, “Symbolic Communication among Chinese Buddhist Volunteers: Bridging Multiple Meanings in Suixi-Huixiang Practices”
Hong (Promise) Xu, “‘Chinese Learning as Substance, Western Learning as Function’: Shen Yugui and the Religious Foundations of an Alternative Reform Movement in Late Qing China”

2023

Yongshan He, “Compassionate Buddha, Compassionate Ruler: Buddhist Image-making and State-Subjects Relationship in Early Medieval China (400-600 CE)”
Jiangnan Li, “The Making of Imperial Religion: State and the Three Teachings in Song China (960-1279 CE)”
Sherry Pan, “Forms of Practice: Religiosity of Eunuchs during the Late Ming (1527-1644)”
Huiqiao Yao, “Popularizing the Sage: Wang Yangming and Secular Hagiographies in Late Ming China”

2022

John Sampson, “Chinese Theology in Countercultural Perspective”
Richard Yu-Cheng Shih, “Fluid State: Riverine Environmental Changes and the Rise of Littoral Communities in Lake Tai”
Wang Xian, “Islamic Religiosity, Maoism, and State Violence”
Alia Goehr, “The Genius of Form: Jin Shengtan's Transformative Literary Program”
Sinae Kim, “Buddhist Preaching Culture in Medieval China”
Luo Yuqing, “The Descending Words: Cult and Culture of Spirit-Writing in Song China”

2021

Tyler Feezell, “The Daoist Sonic Imagination: Numinous Treasure (Lingbao 靈寶) Scriptures and the Emergence of Celestial Sounds in the World”
Lee Ya-chu, “Transformation and Tenacity of Women in Contemporary Chinese Dharmaguptaka Ordination”
Li Lan, “Stone Inscriptions and Buddhist Practices in the Tang Dynasty: A Case Study of the South Binyang Cave”
Jens Reinke, “Mapping Modern Mahayana: Chinese Buddhism and Migration in the Age of Global Modernity”
Eva Salerno, “Ancestor Worship in the Practice of Catholicism in Taiwan”
Wang Sisi, “Confucian Shrine on a Buddhist Sacred Peak, “Mountain Owners” in the Rise of Mt. Jiuhua from the late Ming to the Republic of China”

2020

Joel Daniels, “Does the Wind Bend or Break the Grass? A Comparative Study of Pentecostal Spirituality and Chinese Religious Thought”
Jue Liang, “Trading Western Suits for Monastic Robes: Remaking Tibetan Buddhism in the Chinese Religious Revival”
Jakub Otčenášek, “Tianshidao and the Problem of (Chinese) Millennialism”
Kai Shmushko, “Enchanted Commodities or Cultural Elements? Exploring Lay Tibetan Buddhism in China through the 'Living Hall' Model (Shenghuo guan 生活馆)”
Dessi Vendova, “Chinese Vinaya Texts in Aid to the Study of Early Buddhist Monuments and Image Practices”
Minhao Zhai, “Engaging with the Body: Paradigms of Utilizing Talismanic Objects in Medieval China”