Shanrendao

Shanrendao (善人道 “Way of the Virtuous Man”) is a Confucian-Taoism religious movement in northeast China. Its name as a social body is the Universal Church of the Way and its Virtue (万国道德会 Wànguó Dàodéhuì) or simply the Church of the Way and its Virtue (道德会 Dàodéhuì), which is frequently translated as the Morality Church. Shanrendao can be viewed as one of the best examples of the jiàohuà (教化 “spiritual transformation”) movements.[2]

It is one of the most prominent religions of redemption of China,[3] and was formally established as the Universal Church of the Way and its Virtue in Shandong in 1921 by Jiang Shoufeng (1875–1926), a member of the Confucian Church (孔教会 Kǒngjiàohuì) of Kang Youwei.[4] Kang Youwei himself was the president of the church during the last year of his life.[4] The movement was concerned with a reconstitution of morality, at a time in which people no longer understood what morality means because of the decline of religion.[4] By the 1930s the religion had a strong presence in Manchuria,[5] where it persists to the present day.[6]:10[7][8]

A great contribution came from Jiang Shoufeng’s son, Jiang Xizhang (1907–2004), an intellectual prodigy who composed commentaries on the Confucian classics before the age of ten.[9] Father and son composed vernacular versions of the classics in order to disseminate Confucianism among the Chinese masses.[9] After the World War I, Xizhang wrote a leaflet, the Xizhanlun with anti-war teachings inspired by the content of the world religions.[9]

The strongest impetus in the social importance of the movement, however, came from Wang Fengyi (王凤仪 1864–1937), a charismatic healer and preacher of peasant origins who led the Universal Church of the Way and its Virtue in the 1930s.[10] He is celebrated as a peasant saint throughout northeast China, a shànrén (善人 “virtuous man”) with the epithet “Wang the Good”[11] or “Virtuous King” (王善人), a wordplay as his surname means “king” or “ruler”.[2]

Wang Fengyi elaborated a doctrine and practice based on self-knowledge, self-realisation, and self-reliance, based on traditional Chinese theology and cosmology, especially the five elements (五行 wǔxíng) and the yinyang cosmology. The five elements constitute everything and also characterise the five behaviours of the human being. The harmony of the person and the society depends on the proper cultivation of these characters according to the different contexts.[2]

Shanrendao is deeply influenced by the Taizhou school of Wang Yangming’s Neo-Confucianism, but the tradition synthesises the entirety of Chinese religion. Its goal is to find the roots of one’s life; return to the principles of the bond between Heaven, Earth and humanity according to one’s own experience.[2]

All kinds of human emotions are thought to arise from social interaction, from the family to the larger community. Wang Fengyi’s teachings emphasise the role of emotion in healing. Reconciliation, gathering for ritual and storytelling (parables are taken from the Chinese tradition and the life of Master Wang) able to “turn the heart of the participants”, are the primary practice of the movement. These methods are called “talking the disease away by appealing to one’s higher nature”.[6]:10–11