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The article highlights differing ways of viewing Chinese concept of Tian like as one god among many, as an indifferent creator, or as the approachable God of the Bible. Topics including the God's accessibility and how He reveals Himself to humanity; ways in which communist scholars take Tian as a god who is either superior or inferior to other gods; and the Christian scholars' believe of Tian as the approachable and accessible God revealed by the Bible.

The article discusses Chinese Concept of Tian, and reports the popularity of Tian as indifferent God among animists in China. Topics discussed include views of Chinese concept of Tian, like Tian is a god, indifferent Creator; and ways in which Tian is the Yahweh revealed by the Bible, who desires to have intimate relationship with all Chinese throughout Chinese history.

Contemporary scholars and tourism officials of the Bai nationality in the Dali region of Southwest China's Yunnan Province present their village god (benzhu) worship as part of Bai ethnic religion and use the goddess Baijie as a paradigmatic example. In recent years Baijie has become an increasingly prominent face of Bai culture and religion in the Dali region and in China. Baijie's public face is not only ethnic but also gendered, as she appears as a paragon of feminine virtues. My research in villages that worship Baijie as their benzhu shows that most people involved in her worship--primarily older women--discuss Baijie in gendered terms but not ethnic terms. Furthermore, male and female villagers participate in her worship in different ways and to different degrees. This reveals the danger of uncritically accepting official discourse on ethnic religion, as rhetorics of ethnicity mask diversity within officially designated ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on ethnographic and documentary research that concerns shantangs, Chinese charitable temples, in Southeast Asia and in the Chao-Shan region of Guangdong in China. Unlike the shantangs as benevolent societies in late Ming and Qing China, the shantangs described in this article not only emphasize charitable activities, they are also temples that honor Song Dafeng as a deity. I show that the religious nature of these shantangs account for their resilience, while the tradition of charity helps to promote their secular and benevolent image, especially when there is a need to emphasize their existence as non-superstitious organizations. I also describe the agency of the local elite--and especially merchants--in the development of shantangs in Southeast Asia and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarship on religion in Early China (pre-220 BCE) has been predominantly concerned with the issue of ritual and has tended to be more concerned with placing this within the framework of Chinese history than that of religious studies. As such, other topics, such as deities, have either been neglected or subject to untested claims—often that deities do not exist and that Early China represents an atheist society, an argument that makes little sense in light of contemporary scholarship on religion in the field of cognitive science. This paper addresses the issue of deities in Early China by looking at how the High Deities of Early Chinese societies are represented in pre-Qin (pre-221 BCE) texts through statistical analysis of the corpus of texts and close readings of selected passages featuring High Deities. This paper shows that in contrast to some earlier appraisals of an absence of such agents, these texts are rife with depictions of the High Deities, and that they are often represented as moralizing agents that punish vice and reward virtue in others, something that is argued to be expected in evolutionary psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the Lingbao Scripture on the Numinous Stanzas of the Cavern Heavens, one of the fundamental texts of the Lingbao corpus. The title of the scripture was listed in the Wondrous Scriptures in the Perfect Script of Lingbao in Ten Sections, and the present text corresponds to number 3 of the Lingbao corpus. This scripture of the canonical Lingbao corpus is not included in the Ming Daoist Canon, and the present work appears to be incomplete. Two versions have been found among the Dunhuang manuscripts. Most of the scripture is in Pelliot 2399, but the opening passages are missing. Stein 2915 also includes part of this scripture, and Wushang piyao contains the Numinous Stanzas of the thirty-two heavens, which forms the core of this scripture. The scripture includes the Numinous Stanzas of the thirty-two heavens and a legend of deities chanting these stanzas. The legend describes a gathering at the court of Celestial Worthy and the sovereigns of the Thirty-Two Heavens sings hymns extolling the blissful joy. These stanzas occupy the major part of the present scripture and are reproduced here in sacred words, corresponding to the esoteric sounds of the heavens. This paper analyses the content of the Numinous Stanzas of the Cavern Heavens from various perspectives: cosmology, philology, the concept of salvation, the structure of the scripture, the reciting tradition, etc. I investigate these issues in order to reveal the main ideas of the Lingbao scriptural tradition in the Six Dynasties Period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of god icons created by the Chinese villagers in Taiwan. The villagers believed that making god icons will maintain their relationships with the people and places as they symbolize the meeting ground of the human and the god-like agencies. They created these icons through figurines and statues. The villagers also conceived that spirit mediums mutually inflect and share their powers. Their belief is that gods inhabit icons, as well as talk to and through the villagers.

Presents several developments related to medical science. Construction of an outhouse; Celebration of the chinese god's birthday; Substitution of sorbitol and fructose for ordinary sugar.