ABSTRACT
Since the beginnings of the reform era in China, there has been an explosion of religious belief and practice. According to the government’s own statistics, there are now 100 million religious believers in China, a number that is almost certainly underestimated and does not include “unregistered” or “underground” religious communities. (A survey published in January 2007 by scholars at East China Normal University estimates that there are 300 million believers.)1 And if one counts as religious any evocation of supernatural powers – like fortune telling, good luck charms, celebration of the folk rituals customary at seasonal festivals, ancestor veneration – then by one estimate, more than 90 percent of the population have some form of religious belief (Ng 2003). This increase in religious belief was unexpected by most social scientists and it has been difficult to explain in terms of mainstream sociological theory. When social scientists do attempt to explain it, they often resort to one-size-fits-all explanations: for example, the rise of religion is due to the opening of a marketplace for ideas; or it is the result of the anomie that comes with economic modernization. A more adequate explanation, I would argue, would be based on recognition of the multidimensionality of religion. Different forms of religion are developing for different reasons and along different paths.
