Charisma and Routinization of the Extraordinary

The Yiguandao is now a large cross-national religious organization with millions of adepts worldwide. The perpetuation of the personal charisma of dead leaders discussed in chapter 3 needs to be backed up—and perhaps gradually or partially replaced—by a charisma of function that increasingly belongs to religious specialists (initiators) at the forefront of the global missionary effort. The movement is progressively structured and routinized with a much more institutionalized leadership. However, routinization and institutionalization remain for the adepts the result of spirit or divine intervention to the extent that it is even possible to mention a routinization of the extraordinary.

Introduction

The introduction provides some background information about the Yiguandao, focusing on its historical roots, its ideology (spiritual lineages/daotong, syncretism, cosmology, millenarian eschatology), and its history across the twentieth century. The aim is to get a better understanding of what the Yiguandao has now become, that is to say, a transnational religious organization with a global footprint that currently attempts to reestablish itself in Mainland China where its expansion was strong before 1949. Mainland China, precisely, is the spiritual wilderness that the group ambitions to reclaim by promoting its Way of Heaven (Tiandao). The introduction also addresses the issue of fieldwork and more specifically participant observation and its difficulties in the context of new religions.

Yiguandao’s Promotion of Confucianism-Related Activities in Hong Kong and Mainland China

Chapter 6 continues to address the issue of tension, but the focus turns to today’s Hong Kong and the People’s Republic. In Hong Kong, the affirmation of a Confucian identity is useful both to attract people to Yiguandao’s places of worship (and convert some of them), and to establish links with the authorities. In the People’s Republic, Confucianism is at the core of Yiguandao’s strategy to smoothly re-establish itself and defuse tensions that remain important. Because of the current Confucian revival, the overall context is favorable and interactions are now many, especially in the educational realm, between the Yiguandao and popular Confucian groups. But even more striking is the fact that in some cases Chinese authorities go as far as to cooperate with the Yiguandao for the promotion of traditional (and especially Confucian) culture and values such as filial piety.

The Production of Missionary-Adepts

Chapter 1 introduces the notion or ideal-type of a missionary-adept in order to highlight the importance of proselytizing for Yiguandao adepts. The typical itinerary of the adept is detailed, with its different phases: initiation, participation to Dharma seminars (fahui), systematic training, and activities carried out in places of worship (fotang). These different elements illuminate the gradual process of increasing involvement of new adepts in the group up to the point where they ultimately become missionary-adepts. As an ideal-type, the missionary-adept points to an adept who embraces most of Yiguandao’s ideology, has turned vegetarian and has taken progressive commitments and responsibilities in the organization to the point where the religious perspective has become the prevailing driving force in his or her life. The latter is totally dedicated to the promotion of the Dao.

Epilogue

After presenting a brief summary of the main research results of this book, the epilogue broadens the scope of the discussion in several directions. First, it introduces the situation of a Yiguandao place of worship located in the suburbs of Paris. The objective of this side fieldwork is to test to which extents factors explaining Yiguandao’s expansionary dynamics in the Taiwan–Hong Kong–Macao–China area can (or cannot) constitute relevant explanatory factors in a completely different context. Second, the epilogue also emphasizes the contribution of the book to different disciplinary fields.

Structuring and Organizing the Missionary Effort

This chapter emphasizes the importance of two elements that are critical for the success of Yiguandao’s expansionary ambition: the training of talents able to efficiently proselytize and the sophisticated structuration of missionary strategies. Talents are trained in systematic sessions that all adepts have to follow on a weekly basis. The chapter delves into these sessions, showing how they combine solid spiritual training and the gradual development of useful proselytizing skills. This efficient management of human resources is backed by sophisticated strategies of development. The chapter introduces the multilayered environment in which a given place of worship operates and its adepts circulate. It also provides details about how missionary work is carefully and methodically devised and implemented, nevertheless leaving room for adaptation to local conditions.

Production of Charisma Within the Yiguandao

Yiguandao’s Patriarch Zhang Tianran (1889–1947) managed to turn a small sectarian movement into a mass organization with millions of adepts. Although he passed away in 1947, his charisma did not vanish and is still operating today within the group. It is this phenomenon that the current chapter attempts to explore: it first provides some insight into the figure of Zhang Tianran in history before discussing his deification, lasting influence, and charisma. Finally, the chapter shows that the way missionary-adepts relate to their dead Master also provides a model for further dissemination of charismatic authority within the group.

A Well-Orchestrated Strategy Taking Politics and Cross-Strait Relations Into Account

The Yiguandao has ambitions to re-establish itself firmly in Mainland China. The process is ongoing but, so far, it has primarily taken place in an underground way. However, the ultimate target for the group is to manage to be legalized in China in the same way as it was legalized in Taiwan at the end of the martial law period. In order to put things into context, this chapter introduces both the Yiguandao’s relationship to politics and the way Chinese authorities think about religion. For them, the expansionary dynamics of the Yiguandao is closely intertwined with the Taiwanese question. This explains why a new era started in the middle of the 2000s, marked by renewed contacts between Chinese authorities and the Yiguandao’s General Association located in Taiwan. Based on a number of very concrete examples, the chapter underlines both the progress and the limits of these exchanges, showing that the Yiguandao’s ability to navigate the troubled water of cross-straits politics certainly contributes to its overall expansionary dynamics.

The Role of Confucianism in Defusing Tension with the Social and Political Environment

In areas where most of the research for this book was carried out, a high amount of tension between Yiguandao and the state existed or still exists. This was the case in Taiwan during the martial law era and this is still the case in China, where the group has been banned by the Communist regime since 1949. The main argument defended in chapters 5 is that in contexts where the Yiguandao is in a situation of high tension with the authorities, Confucianism plays a pivotal role to defuse or decrease this tension. In so doing, it facilitates the group’s expansion. Chapter 5 proposes a brief retrospective on Yiguandao’s Confucianization and discusses the situation in Taiwan both before and after 1987, a date that marks both the end of martial law and the legalization of the group.

Confirming One’s Faith

Using a Weberian theoretical framework, chapter 2 focuses on the ways faith is confirmed. The issue of confirmation (Bewährung) is of the utmost importance since faith is hardly definitely acquired and, for most of the people, constantly needs to be reaffirmed. The chapter demonstrates that modes of inner confirmation of one’s faith (of one’s religious charisma, of one’s certainty to be saved, of one’s religious virtuosity) in the Yiguandao are tightly linked to proselytizing work and therefore directly beneficial to the group’s expansion. Additionally, it explores a number of features (e.g., spirit-writing) that do not come from the missionary-adept himself or herself, but from the outside and that reinforce the certitude of the adept that the faith he or she embraces is the true one.