RAS-1981 — Page 59

RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF 1-KUAN TAO 45

Intellectual conditions which are implied by the modernizing process in Taiwan should go hand in hand with significant changes in religion. The fact that there are connections between social and religious change is too obvious to be doubted. What is less obvious are the kinds of religious changes which are connected with modernization in Taiwan. To be sure, one tendency has long been observed, i.e., secularization. Yang has given an excellent analysis of secularizing tendencies in modern China which can also be applied to Taiwan. Moreover, it can easily be seen that the factors mentioned above do in fact undermine the social base of many traditional forms of religion. The socio-economic frame of many traditional religious activities has been the peasant village community. To the same degree that industrialization reduced the relative importance of agriculture, the religious rites and festivals which were strongly related to the cycle of the farming seasons lost their significance for the society as a whole. Urbanization, a seemingly inevitable concomitant of industrialization, brought many people to the fast-growing cities, which lack the intimate social contacts of the villages. While in the countryside residential community and religious community were nearly identical, symbolized in the village temple; in the modern cities, new social relationships are formed, which normally do not coincide with the residential neighbourhood. As a result, the traditional religious life which formed an integral part of the village community loses its social base and is weakened. Finally, cultural contact in Taiwan has taken place to a degree that it can properly be named 'westernization'.

Westernization in Taiwan has several aspects. On the one hand, there is the integration in the capitalist world economy, which resulted in a socio-economic readjustment after the model of the Western industrial nations. On the other hand, there is the strong impact of the Western intellectual tradition, above all of science, but also of philosophy, political thinking, and religion. The rationalistic and materialistic coloration of Western science and philosophy induces many well-educated people to disregard traditional forms of religion as superstitious. At the same time, the Chinese cultural heritage is no longer the sole repository of social and cultural values; people are turning more and more to Western ways of life, which are fashionable especially among the middle and upper classes in the cities.

There cannot be any doubt that industrialization, urbanization, and westernization affected many traditional forms of religion and diminished their structural as well as their functional position in Taiwan.