• DOI:10.1080/0048721X.2011.624691
• Corpus ID: 146463577

Modalities of doing religion and ritual polytropy: evaluating the religious market model from the perspective of Chinese religious history

@article{Chau2011ModalitiesOD,
  title={Modalities of doing religion and ritual polytropy: evaluating the religious market model from the perspective of Chinese religious history},
  author={Adam Yuet Chau},
  journal={Religion},
  year={2011},
  volume={41},
  pages={547 - 568}
}

• A. Chau
• Published 1 December 2011
• Philosophy
• Religion

This article examines the Chinese religious landscape through the lenses of ‘modalities of doing religion’ and ‘ritual polytropy’ and explores the implications such different conceptualisations might bring to the religious-market model. It argues that in Chinese religious culture one can identify five modalities of doing religion (the scriptural/discursive, the self-cultivational, the liturgical, the immediate-practical and the relational), each cutting across broader, conceptually aggregated religious traditions such as Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism. Instead of competition between membership-based churches, there is more typically competition within each modality, especially the liturgical modality. Religious pluralism in China is not manifested as the co-existence of, and competition between, confession- and membership-based denominations and churches, but rather as the co-existence of, and competition between, various ritual-service providers with different (though sometimes convergent) liturgical programmes.