In the West, America, for instance, tend to associate religion practices with their origin founders. Christianity is to Jesus Christ while Muslim is to Mohammed and on the other hand, Confucianism is related to Confucius Religion is a collection of beliefs and practices concerning a course that is always involving a religious and spiritual supernatural acceptance and is aimed at molding the conduct of humans. A focus on Chinese culture reveals that there is a thin line between religion and Confucianism system which was founded and taught by Confucius and assisted by his helps-men to instill education and knowledge, acceptable ethics and statesmanship, values of humanity, ancestor worship, respect for parents and general human conduct.
The theory of animatism constitutes believes that we are surrounded by supernatural powers that are neither an animal nor a person. The theory is one of the ancient practices and usually associated with primitive people who do not hold any recorded or written traditions. It believes that souls are possessed by natural phenomena and natural objects and the universe and try to explain events such as death (Herling 36). That death is when the spirit separates from the body and these spirits of the dead referred to as the ancestors which in Confucius’ Confucianism practice uses. Unlike Confucianism, which appears quite primitive in tackling and molding the human behavior, the Christian religion is very tactical and civilized in the manner by which it operates, organized in that they have written doctrines which guide the faithful ones to their way of life. They do not believe in ancestral worship as opposed to the Confucianism.
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"Is Confucianism a Religion?".
There were other religious traditional practices in China such as Buddhism and Daoism that complicated matters. However, Confucianism had a rich store of ritual norms which has made it represent the rest and has been considered by the Confucius and his disciples as essential. This brought about the importance of the personal worship of ancestral spirits which is a practice to date. They worship in a temple which happens to be more vibrant sites for ritual sacrifice. The degree of promotion of old as well as new rituals by the Temples has so much to do with the financial structure of the temple. Christian religious view is however different. They embrace Jesus Christ as their last sacrificial lamb and believe that they were all saved by the Savior’s act. Many scholars bring ancestral worship to the route of all religions (Nadeau, 12). However, the two ways are similar in that they both uphold moral standards of the society and they both believe in a supernatural power.
In conclusion, Confucianism can be said to be a diverse cultural, political and in situational processes that put to an understanding the debates and conflicts surrounding the Chinese community while religion in social life is fundamentally historical and is deep routed into beliefs and has a mitigated spiritual foundation. The practice also involves ritual practices such as Confucian worship and ancestral worship in China as well as Confucian spiritual exercise and ancestral worship. Sun (17) argues that there have been several critical stages in the recent endorsement of Confucianism by Chinese. The early practice of ancestral worship demonstrated a close relationship between sacrifice to the ancestors and the conception of the value of the ultimate. It is believed that the ancestors of the royal house were in Heaven sitting beside the Lord on High and that the best way to communicate to heaven was the sacrifice to the great ancestors. Even though it is not at 100 percent, religion and Confucianism are a lot more alike.
- Herling, Bradley L. A Beginner’s Guide to the Study of Religion. London: Continuum, 2007. Print.
- Nadeau, Randall L. Asian Religions: A Cultural Perspective. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2014. Print
- Sun, Anna X. D. Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities., 2013. Print.
