Religious Affairs Establishes Office to Administer "Folk Religions"

November 30, 2005

The State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA) has established a special office to administer "folk religions" [minjian zongjiao], according to a September 20 article in the Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao. The Chinese government recognizes only five official state religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism. The 2005 State Department International Religious Freedom Report section on China defined folk religions as "worship of local gods, heroes, and ancestors," and found that "hundreds of millions of citizens" practice folk religions.

The State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA) has established a special office to administer "folk religions" [minjian zongjiao], according to a September 20 article in the Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao. The Chinese government recognizes only five official state religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism. The 2005 State Department International Religious Freedom Report section on China defined folk religions as "worship of local gods, heroes, and ancestors," and found that "hundreds of millions of citizens" practice folk religions.

In February 2005, Jin Ze, Deputy Director of the Institute on World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, spoke of a need to regulate folk religions in a way that would promote social stability. Robert Weller, Professor of Anthropology at Boston University, testified at a CECC Roundtable, Unofficial Religion in China: Beyond the Party's Rules, in May 2005 and commented that making folk religions "official" could result in intrusive state controls on practitioners who until now have avoided the attention of the religion bureaucracy.

In March 2005, the State Council promulgated the Regulations on Religious Affairs (RRA), as noted in the CECC 2005 Annual Report section on Freedom of Religion. The RRA allow for the possibility of government recognition of other religious faiths besides the official five. Article 12 of the RRA says, "The collective religious activities of religious citizens shall generally be conducted on the premises of registered venues for religious activities (Buddhist temples, Taoist temples, mosques, churches, and other fixed places of religious activity)," permitting collective worship at sites other than temples, mosques, and churches of the five official faiths.