Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre

Research - Report on the China Project

For the past four years the main research of our Centre has been focused on a major project exploring religious experience in China.

With the help of Professors Keith Ward and John Hedley-Brooke of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford, Professors Xinzhong Yao and Paul Badham obtained a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation which made the research possible. Assisted by scholars from seven Chinese Universities and with the support of 110 trained interviewers they gathered information from ten representative sites across China. 3196 long questionnaires were completed. These provided a mass of data on Chinese religious belief and practice. The research attracted enormous interest and attention inside China, and Professor Yao was invited to present the research findings to universities across China and to the Central School of the Chinese Communist Party.

Among the more interesting findings were that though only 8.7% Chinese describe themselves as "religious", 28.6% feel comforted or empowered through prayer and worship and 56.7% have experienced the influence of "a kind of power that people cannot control or explain clearly". They identify this power with a religious being or force. 44% believe that life and death depend on the Will of Heaven and 41% agree with the statement that "we must do our best in life to glorify God/Lord of Heaven/the Buddha/Ancestors". The survey found that atheistic ideological indoctrination in the workplace has become rarer in recent years and only 0.7% of the religious believers said that they had felt under pressure because of their religious beliefs. Firm atheists reject by 46.6% to 33.4% the idea that "Religion is the opium of the people" and though 47.5% of firm atheists believe that "religion is cheating nonsense", 34% disagree and 31.3% think that "Religion contains profound truth". Religious believers understate their commitment. This is illustrated by the fact that only 4.4% claim to be Buddhist, and yet 27.4 % pray to a Buddha or bodhisattva and 18.2% acknowledge influence or control of the Buddha or a bodhisattva in their lives. Christianity is formally embraced by only 2.8% of the population, yet 11% seek to follow the way of the Christian God.

The project has also attracted attention in the UK. Members will recall that both our Directors have given progress reports at our Open Days in Oxford as well as at MA residentials at Lampeter and at our Annual conferences as well as speaking at a variety of other conferences and giving radio interviews. Distinguished scholars in Turkey, Japan, India, Russia, Brazil, the USA and Taiwan have asked permission to adapt the methodology and the questionnaire to their own countries and to engage in comparative studies with our Centre. Arising from this the British Association for the Study of Religions focused its 2007 conference on Religious experience in global contexts and we were delighted that our Chinese colleagues as well as scholars from the other interested countries came to Edinburgh to present papers.

The initial findings of the research are documented in a 274 page book from the University of Wales Press entitled Religious Experience in Contemporary China (2007)as well as in articles in the Journal Modern Believing (April 2006 and January 2008), the Journal of Contemporary Religion (July 2007) and the Chinese Journal of World Religions (Shijie Zongjiao, No.4, 2007). Dr. Wendy Dossett cited some of the findings in her Guide to the new A level in Religious Experience, and Marianne Rankin hopes to make use of the findings in her forthcoming textbook on religious experience. Further publications are being planned in both Chinese and English.

In the light of the success of the China project the Religious Experience Research Centre is working with the Ian Ramsey Centre to seek funding for a further project comparing religious experience across cultures and traditions. Our colleagues in Turkey, Japan, India, Russia, Brazil, and the USA have pledged their support but we will not know for several months whether or not the Centre can secure the necessary funding for this vast successor project.