Lee, Ho-jae.  “Chineses Popular Religoins: Past, Present, and Future.”  Journal of New Religions 15 (Oct. 2006): 211-240.

Abstract

Chinese popular religions (CPRs), opposite to official religions, those are Catholicism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Taoism in China, boomed at the Mid Dynasty and faded gradually after that. However, even during the Culture Revolution (1967-1976), when almost all of the religion as well as traditional cultures were destroyed totally by Red Guards (hong wei bing), CPRs, like flow under the ice cover, were rooted deeply in the popular belief, and have resurged in the period of reconstruction of tradition and ideology after the disaster. Falungong, which have attracted millions of devotees, including intellectuals and civil servants, is a persuasive demonstration of the resurgence. Without the government’s permission, CPRs nowadays have adopted flexible names and organizations actually. Instead of cities, most of the CPRs choose towns, suburbs and country sides as their bases  and offer popular beliefs and classics. The present situation will continue for good? What will be the religious futures of 1.3 billions of population, nearly 25% of the whole world? Research on CPRs will give an old and new answer probably.

In the first part, this paper provides a brief examination of the ways in which CPRs appeared, survived and resurged with several case’ study of bailianjiao, hongyangjiao and zhenshenjiao. The second part follows with the overview of present research and future prospect. The last part focuses on the possible communication between Korean and Chinese researchers and puts forward suggestions.