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A syncretistic and millenarian religious movement, the Yiguandao (Way of Pervading Unity) was one of the major redemptive societies of Republican China. It developed rapidly in the 1930s and the 1940s, attracting millions of members. Sébastien Billioud offers an in-depth anthropological and sociological study of the Yiguandao., Repressed and forbidden after 1949, the group is one of the most influential religious movements of the Chinese world and at the same time one of the least known and understood. Reclaiming the Wilderness delves into a Yiguandao community in Hong Kong that serves as a node of circulations between Taiwan, Macau, China and elsewhere. It explores the expansionary dynamics of a group that now now reestablishinges itself in China and elsewhere in Asia. In I, Sébastien Billioud offers the first in-depth anthropological and sociological study of the Yiguandao, focusing on a community in Hong Kong that now plays a central role in the circulation and growth of the movement.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- PART I - The Relationship of Missionary-Adepts to their Faith and the Issue of Faith Confirmation
- 1. The Production of Missionary-Adepts
- 2. Confirming One's Faith
- PART II - Charisma and Routinization
- 3. Production of Charisma Within the Yiguandao
- 4. Charisma and "Routinization of the Extraordinary": Structuring Leadership to Open the Wilderness
- PART III - Defusing Tension
- 5. The Role of Confucianism to Defuse Tension With the Social and Political Environment.
- 6. Yiguandao's Promotion of Confucianism-Related Activities in Hong Kong and Mainland China.
- PART IV - Organization and Strategy
- 7. Structuring and Organizing the Missionary Effort
- 8. A Well-Orchestrated Strategy Taking Politics and Cross-Straits Relations Into Account
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Sébastien Billioud is Professor of Chinese Studies at Université de Paris and a member of the French Research Institute on East Asia (IFRAE). His cross-disciplinary research explores the modern and contemporary fates of Confucianism. He is the author of Thinking Through Confucian Modernity, A Study of Mou Zongsan's Moral Metaphysics, The Sage and the People, The Confucian Revival in China, and other works.
Additional text
The greatest worth of this volume is arguably its very fundamental premise: studies pertaining to Yīguàndào - especially those built upon genuine access to practitioners - are desperately lacking, and this volume grants a much-needed window.
