Vietnam - Religion
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The state versus Buddhism |
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is today ruled by a Marxist-Leninist party with both a policy of religious freedom and a concern that religion may compromise the power of the state. Article 70 of its constitution states: "The citizen shall enjoy freedom of belief and of religion; he can follow any religion or follow none¡.No one can violate freedom of belief and of religion; nor can anyone misuse beliefs and religions to contravene the law and State policies." (Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 1992.) The 20th century saw a conspicuous and often fateful interweaving of politics and religion, and there has been a religious revival in the past twenty years which has sometimes led to tension and conflict between state and church. But it must be emphasized that religion and politics have been closely involved with each other in Vietnam and in neighboring China for at least two thousand years, and that today's political culture is very much the product of that long history.
There is currently much diversity and even confusion within the religious realm, as religions compete not only with the state but with each other. The majority of Vietnamese are at least nominally and culturally Buddhist, but this is a unique Buddhism which is historically informed by Confucianism and animism. Further, the religious scene is animated by vigorous heterodox Buddhist movements, as well as entirely new indigenous religions, imported Christianity, and renascent spirit and hero worship-all with complicated political and social implications beyond theology.
But given Vietnam's long history, the best basis for understanding must start at the beginning-a long time ago. Fortunately, an excellent essay by a major authority, Harvard professor Hue-Tam Ho Tai, is available. "Religion in Vietnam: A World of Ghosts and Spirits"
The themes outlined by Tai continue to be the basis of Vietnamese religion down to today. However, in the traditional period, while a syncretic, Chinese influenced Buddhist-Confucianist-Daoist construct clearly dominated society and history, there were serious strains and contentions within it. The Confucian element was strengthened by aboriginal popular commitment to ancestor worship, and while the elite managerial aspect of Confucianism remained powerful, the populist, moralist and transcendental aspects of Buddhism and the magical claims of Daoism strengthened villagers' resistance to Confucian orthodoxy and those who used it to gain and maintain power. Vietnamese history, like that of China and other peasant societies, was rife with peasant rebellions against a relentlessly controlling upper class, and village life in the best of times was more Buddhist and spiritist than Confucianist.
Today the polarization between the Communist state-heirs of the Confucians-and the clergy of the various active religions is clear and strong. But while the populace seems to want a larger role for religion in their lives-bound to unnerve the state-they also accept to one degree or another the legitimacy and authority of the government in Hanoi.
The Buddhist establishment has received special and unwelcome attention from Hanoi since the establishment of the Socialist Republic in 1976. The prominence of the activist, moralizing style of the bonzes who had much to do with the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem (1963) and the indifference or hostility of the Vietnamese masses to Saigon's and Washington's efforts to oppose North Vietnam could hardly fail to be seen as threatening by the Communist mandarins. And of course a regime based on a secular ideology will certainly be hostile to any religious claim of a higher power.
In the 1960s disparate Buddhist groups formed the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV). In 1981 the government banned this group and established a state-supported Buddhist organization which was designed to be the focus of clergy and lay activity. Since that time, "UBCV pagodas, schools, universities, hospitals and orphanages have been seized by the state, [and] monks, nuns and followers harassed, intimidated and imprisoned." In 2003 the government cracked down further, arresting senior bonzes and placing pagodas under surveillance. (Statement by Penelope Faulkner of the Transnational Radical Party to the 60th Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, March 23, 2004.).
Pressure on the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai
The Hoa Hao and Cao Dai have experienced similar treatment from Hanoi. Both sects have a history of isolation from the mainstream of Vietnamese society-partly the result of their geographical isolation in frontier southwest areas-and of cooperation, however reluctant, with the former Saigon regime. Hoa Hao believers have been imprisoned, rites and sacred writings restricted, and Communist Party loyalists have been introduced into the association's ranks. Not so paradoxically, Hoa Hao's situation on the nation's border seems to have encouraged the state to adopt an especially assertive and penetrating role. (Taylor, Philip. Goddess on the rise: pilgrimage and popular religion in Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. p.24.)
The same goes for the Cao Dai. After 1975 the government seized schools, clinics, and orphanages and stopped all religious activity, including prayer. Between 1979 and 1996 the state took further measures to legalize its abolition of the Cao Dai hierarchical structure, separate the previously dominant central administration from provincial groups, and seize most of the church's property (not including the famous main temple). A 1995 government-sponsored conference made it clear that the aim was to "reintegrate" some three million Caodaiists into the mainstream of those with absolute loyalty to the state. The main temple came under government control in 1997.
As pointed out above, the base of Vietnamese religion and society centuries ago was a primeval animism or spiritism, which "lived with" Buddhism and Confucianism throughout history. Perhaps surprisingly, strong spiritist beliefs can readily be identified as part of Vietnam's current enthusiasm for religion. Philip Taylor writes,
At the base of a small mountain on Vietnam's border with Cambodia stands a shrine to a goddess known as Ba Chua Xu, the Lady of the Realm. This spirit is a feminine likeness in stone and rendered cement and is dressed in regal costume. Legends describe her as a local protector deity and relate her involvement in key events in local history. She is housed in a magnificent shrine flanked by large halls that display the offerings people have made to her¡. Each year Vinh Te village, the rural settlement that hosts [annual] festivities is transformed into an instant metropolis. Its canals are lined with passenger boats, the road into the village is choked with buses and minivans, and the road to the nearby township of Chau Doc is as busy as a major urban thoroughfare. The area surrounding her shrine hums around the clock with entertainments as diverse as cai luong (southern Vietnamese opera), all-singing, all-dancing drag beauty queen contests, a sideshow alley, magic acts, a house of horrors, karaoke, gambling, restaurants, cafes, bars, and brothels. Inside the shrine pilgrims jostle, sardinelike, bodies superheating the air, incense tearing at their eyes, an endless stream of opulent gifts pouring toward the altar. This activity is illustrative of the rich and burgeoning spiritual life of contemporary Vietnam. (Taylor, 2004. p1.)
Taylor goes on to point out, as has Tai, that "From the perspective of Vietnamese elite or intellectual culture, popular religiosity has been marginalized or suppressed. In precolonial and colonial times, the court and Confucianized elite were often hostile to heterodoxy and localistic folk practice." (Taylor, 2004. p.9.) But since the 1990s, "an extraordinary number of books and popular introductory works have appeared about folk beliefs and about religious philosophies, rites, customs, and festivals." Taylor believes that phenomena such as the Lady of the Realm worship can be at least to some extent rationalized by the conservative state as a harmless or even propitious case of local cultural survival in the face of the growing internationalization of the now more open Vietnamese economy and society. Presumably, then, this cult is not seen as as threatening as the more established and organized potential counter-forces represented by the Buddhist church, the Hoa Hao, or the Cao Dai. In any case, it can serve as Taylor says, as evidence of a general revival of Vietnamese religion in an era of rapid change and some social dislocation.
For Vietnamese (as well as many other Asians) the two branches of Christianity are regarded as separate religions, and indeed the two have had much different impacts on the nation.
French, Spanish, and Portuguese missionary priests appeared as early as the 16th century, and two bishops were appointed to the Far East in 1659. Some conversions were reported-even of members of the royal family. The 17th and 18th centuries, however, saw a nationalist reaction, with persecutions and the expelling of missionaries. During the late 18th century the Tay-son Rebellion led to the deposition of the reigning emperor, and, perhaps ironically, a new Confucian emperor was to come to power (Gia Long, 1802) with the assistance of a Catholic missionary bishop. Throughout the 19th century, the association of Catholicism with French imperialism made it alternatively respected and feared. The continuing nationalist struggles of the 20th century came to a head when first the nation was divided into North and South (1954), at which time most of the anti-Communist, Catholic communities in the North moved en masse to the South, and when the Catholic, French-educated Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown in Saigon (1963), with the encouragement of a mobilized Buddhist community. Since the establishment of the Socialist Republic in 1976, Catholics have been subjected to close control by the state, but are considered essentially a spent force and much less potentially dangerous than the Buddhists, Hoa Hao, or Cao Dai.
Protestant incursion has taken an entirely different road. Missionizing, chiefly by North Americans, began only after 1945, in the South. Having achieved little success among the majority ethnic Vietnamese, missionaries turned soon to the minority hill tribes ("Montagnards'), and many conversions were achieved, partly by association with the massive American military incursion from 1962-1975. But anything which even smelled of empowering the Montagnards or increased their independence of the majority government was anathema to Hanoi, and there have been sharp and serious persecutions in recent years. A 2003 report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom noted that "¡the government has intensified its crackdown on religious minorities in the northwestern provinces and the Central Highlands." (United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Report on Vietnam. Washington: The Commission, May 2003.)
Again, the hill tribes live along the Nation's borders, like the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai, and must therefore inspire government concern regardless of the religious questions involved.
It is impossible to find exact figures for the religious populations of Vietnam, mostly because no one officially counts them. If a majority are Buddhists, this means some tens of millions of the country's 78 million population. Figures for Hoa Hao and Cao Dai seem to have been in the low millions at their height, but may be less today. About a million and a half Catholics were enumerated in 1965.
As is clear from Vietnamese and Chinese history, Confucianism has been at the center of all public affairs and much private life. It is legitimate to a degree to treat Confucianism as a religion and part of the syncretic religion described above. But it is important also to describe Confucianism as an ideology-perhaps a secular religion, in which it is not gods who matter but the state and its relation to people's lives. In the simplest terms, Confucianism is based on " the three relationships," which suggest that the relationship between the ruler and his people, the man and his womenfolk, and the father and his children, are all essentially the same relationship-one of absolute power of the one over the other. Without expatiating further, one can put the Vietnamese Communists in an analogous authoritarian framework, and see the current regime as the heirs of the mandarins, as Tai remarks.
Blagov, Sergei. Honest mistakes: the life and death of Trinh Minh The, South Vietnam's alternative leader. Huntington, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2001.
--A former Soviet journalist recounts the rise of the Cao Dai and its bid for national power in the 1950s.
Do, Thien. Vietnamese supernaturalism: views from the southern region. Lodon & New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
--worship, cults, spirits, etc.
McHale, Shawn Frederick. Print and power: Confucianism, communism, and Buddhism in the making of modern Vietnam. Hololulu: University of Hawaii press, 2004.
--insists that religions have adapted well to the political challenges of modern times.
Thich Nhat Hanh. Vietnam: the lotus in the sea of fire. London: SCM Press, 1967.
--an leading activist monk described this politicized religion in the context of the Indochina War and internal political struggle.
Tai, Hue-Tam Ho. "Religion in Vietnam: a world of ghosts and spirits," in The Asia Society, Vietnam: essays on history, culture, and society. New York, The Society, 1985.
--a sweeping view of the animist bases of Vietnamese syncretic religion and its later development.
______________. Millenarianism and peasant politics in Vietnam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
--a monograph on the millenarian sect Buu Son Ky Huong, which evolved into the Hoa Hao.
Taylor, Philip. Fragments of the present: searching for modernity in Vietnam's South. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000.
___________. Goddess on the rise: pilgrimage and popular religion in Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004.
--the spritist cult of the Lady of the Realm in political and social context.
Unger, Ann Helen and Walter Unger. Pagodas, gods and spirits of Vietnam. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Report on Vietnam. Washington: The Commission, May 2003. www.uscirf.gov
Werner, Jayne Susan. Peasdant politics and religious sectarianism: peasant and priest in the Cao Dai of Vietnam. New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1981.
--the theme of political religion in the context of the rise of the Cao Dai.
