Monotheist China?

1) How can we get the worship of Shangdi to survive and

2) What likely/possible/plausible form would such a faith take if it survived to 2011? (however 2011 looks in this ATL)
 

scholar

Banned
Worshiping Shangdi survived readily until the fall of the monarchy, even after that its influence survived till this day.

Shangdi is a monotheistic faith used by Confucians and many others which regard heaven or 'Tian' as a deity. A common phrase regarding this is "man designs, heaven decides" or something along those lines. Ancestor worship and the belief in 'immortals' and 'creatures (such as dragons)' are tied into the faith, though Shangdi worship is separate.
 
Don't they still do that in taiwan? Not as a state cult, but AFAIR the whole idea of "Heaven" and the worship of the Masters from traditional Chinese religion is still current there among a large part of the population. You could take your cues from there.

Of course, it is only monotheistic by a very elastic definition of the term.
 

scholar

Banned
Not really, the original faith itself is quite monotheistic. What's not monotheistic is what its become through the centuries where influences from Buddhism and other religions have changed it. Yes, it does still technically have influences throughout much of Chinese culture and thought, but for the large part... its a dead faith. Its like saying a language continues to exist because a few words and grammatical structures exist in a different language. In order for it to survive you need an imperial structure and you need to make it survive independently from Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, etc. They will still heavily influence it, but not to the point where Taoism copies some of the basic principles behind it and lets the base function die off.
 
Well, from what I've been told by y'all so far, it does sound like it would have to be heavily refashioned and enforced by an interested State to become a "monotheism" in the sense that Abrahamic religions are.

However what it sounds like you are describing is the common assumption in Chinese culture, which I know a little better via Taoism, that there is an unknowable Divine in everything. More a pantheism than a monotheism--the point is, it isn't God who stands aside from Creation, it's people who delude themselves into thinking they stand aside from the Myriad Things, which are all manifestations of the Way.

So trying to translate that into terms western monotheists would be more comfortable with would be a wrenching effort and unlikely unless imposed by some monotheistic conqueror, who would of course try to impose their version rather than re-engineer Chinese ways.

The closest I am aware of anything like this happening in China is two different occasions--one, where Jesuit missionaries did attempt to reformulate the Chinese Classics in a sense that seemed more consistent with their Catholic Christianity, with an eye to winning over the Emperor and hence, they hoped, converting all of China en masse, top down. And the Taiping movement, whose theology has never been entirely clear to me, sounds like an indigenous attempt in the other direction, reformulating Christianity into more Chinese terms--such a movement might seize power (the Taiping came amazingly close!) and impose its new Chinese-style monotheism--if they hadn't already incorporated the Classics in a reformulated fashion, surely that process would go forward once they'd taken power.
 
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