Prosperity, Luck, and Longevity

Predictions were already being made in the 1980s that religion would once again have a future in China. In his book, Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer provides evidence of how this prognosis in present-day China proved true.

He not only describes in detail the current religious climate and the specific relationship of society, religion and politics, but also the broad diversity of religious traditions and faiths. He brings to light the socio-spiritual and moral groundwork of the Chinese culture and its development up to the present.

In China, the notion of god and the forms religious rituals take are even today of fundamental significance to the way an individual sees him or herself as well as to the functioning of society. It is an unusual feature of a highly populated country that no teaching could attain an absolute influence. And so China quite early became a socio-political region with an astonishingly high level of tolerance for foreign cultures in international comparison. The dialogue among religions that began among the largest religions in China two thousand years ago, will most certainly intensify in the near future.

Helwig Schmit-Glintzer’s introduction to Chinese religion and philosophy describes the groundwork of religious development in China and the relationship of the most important teachings to each other. Only when Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism are presented side by side the unique features of individual teachings as well as the spiritual and religious wealth of China are made more understandable.