Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing

The subject of crises has been a permanent issue in modern China. Within such debates the topic of religion has been addressed again and again. For example, in the early 1920s, not only the role of religions in “saving” (jiu 救) individuals as well as the country in the evolutionary struggle for survival was discussed, but also religion’s role for a future modern society in China in general became a topic. The article on the motif of ‘religion as means for reducing uncertainty in the context of crises’ is divided into two parts: In a first part it reconstructs important elements of the Western genealogy of this discursive pattern that was later introduced to China. In a second step the focus lies on a reconstruction of its reception in the 1920s. The main sources analyzed for this are the public lecture series initiated by the Young China Study Society (Shaonian Zhongguo xuehui) in 1920–21 and some early introductions to religion that followed in this period. Contributors of the lecture series included such prominent figures as Liang Shuming and Russell, but also representatives less well-known today such as the psychologist Lu Zhiwei, the philosopher Tu Xiaoshi, or the natural scientist Zhou Taixuan. The introductory works on religion that addressed similar problems serve as further sources. The article pursues a genealogical-discursive approach. The selected contributions of the 1920s are contextualized in the debates of the time and analyzed with regard to imports of Western concepts. One of the main concerns of the article is to show that this period was probably the first time that the concept of religion (zongjiao) was introduced not only as a possible answer to the concrete problems of future China, but – influenced by the religious psychological approaches of William James – in particular in its socio-psychological role of reducing uncertainty in individual crises.