Jessica Northcott
ERH 211X

To many Confucians, Confucianism is not viewed as a religion, but more as a lifestyle. With the evolution of Confucianism to Neo-Confucianism and New Confucianism, the religion has become more spiritual, but still remains the least spiritual of all the major world religions. In China, the government does not even recognize Confucianism as one of the five religions in the country. The government only recognizes Buddhism, Daoism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Islam.
Confucianism has no formal religious hierarchy such as a priest or a guru and there is not really a congregational life. The temples are dedicated to humans rather than Gods. However, Confucians do believe in a force they call Heaven, which watches over human life and legitimates the power of the rulers. (Similar to the Mandate of Heaven) The main focus of the religion is in societal roles, virtues, and education of what is proper.
In Confucius’ idea of the rectification of names, he essentially believed that one is given a role in society and you should fulfill that role and respect the relationship one’s role has with another’s connected role. The five main role relationships are ruler/subject, parent/child, husband/wife, elder brother/younger brother, and friend/friend. Each relationship is characterized by mutuality and reciprocity for the roles themselves to survive.
Confucius is considered to be the founder of Confucianism. He was the first private teacher in China where he focused on developing his student’s character and self-cultivation. He believed that the purpose of learning was to produce an exemplary junzi. A junzi is someone who exhibits the five virtues of Confucianism, knows his social role, and can perform the rituals in order to traverse into Heaven.
Through time, Confucianism has evolved and new, altered forms of the religion have emerged. Neo-Confucianism is essentially the same except followers practice spiritual rituals such as meditation and they learn from the Four Books instead of the Five Classics. Neo-Confucianism tends to show greater attention to meta-physical and spiritual questions that were typically avoided by the traditional Confucians. New Confucianism is different in that they stay loyal to the core teachings, but they present the teachings in a modern way that better fits with todays crowd. The followers try to apply the teachings to today’s issues in science, politics, feminism, etc. There is also Boston Confucianism who’s main thing is that they do not see why Confucianism is restricted to China and should spread throughout the world to other places, like Boston.