Pat Chang’s (張承哲) father still pays his respects to his ancestors during the Lunar New Year holiday, but he does not burn incense. His father is a Christian, and while he wants to honor his ancestors in the way that they would appreciate, he also wants to acknowledge his own faith.
Chang, a third-year Chinese major at National Taiwan Normal University, comes from a family that is half Christian and half traditional Taiwanese Taoist and Buddhist. His father and his twin brothers are Christian, while his mother, his sister and he are not.
During the Lunar New Year holiday, his father leads the family in worshipping their deceased grandfather, but only his mother, he and his sister light incense.
No one in the family minds eating the offerings, he said, because most of them are fruit. His mother also occasionally does bed-time prayers with his father, he said.
Chang’s family might seem unusual to some, but Taiwan is eclectic in religious beliefs. Statistics show that 93 percent of the population practices a mixture of Buddhism and Taoism, while 4.5 percent are Christian.
Some observers estimate that Christians constitute about 4 percent of the total population, and about 80 percent of the population practices some mixture of traditional folk religion in conjunction with Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.
Tsai Yen-zen (蔡彥仁), director of the Graduate Institute of Religious Studies at National Chengchi University, said that a majority of Taiwan’s Christian population is Protestant rather than Roman Catholic.
Denominations represented, in order of population, include Presbyterians, local churches and the True Jesus Church. Mormons and Baptists each accounted for 10,000 to 20,000 people, he said.
The first Westerners to bring Christianity to Taiwan were the Dutch, he said. Christians were widely persecuted in 1662, but Christianity made a fresh start in 1860, when a missionary from Scotland came to Taiwan.
Presbyterian missionary George Mackay arrived in Tamsui (淡水) from Canada about 150 years ago. He set up churches, schools, clinics and trained native missionaries. The English Presbyterian Mission started its work in the southern part of Taiwan at about the same time.
Tsaid said that during the Japanese colonial era, the True Jesus mission came from China’s Fujian Province and spread Christianity to Aborigines, but it did so secretly to circumvent Japanese suppression.
When the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lost the war to the Chinese Communists in 1949, most of the Christian denominations fled China along with the KMT troops or shortly after, Tsai said. At that time, Catholicism attracted many Aborigine and Mainlander believers of with its ample resources. Local churches also spread fast among military families, Tsai said.
In the postwar period, Taiwanese Protestant leaders played a leading role in the movement for human rights and democracy. Tsai said it was mainly because of Christian principles such as protecting the poor and disadvantaged and Christian stories on taking a stand in the face of injustice. The election system for church leaders also demonstrated democratic values, he said.
Not all Taiwanese have come to Christianity the same way.
Torn between two religions, 24-year-old Sherry Chen (陳謙宜) said during the Lunar New Year her family visited her mother’s family, who are Christian, and then her father’s, who are traditional Hakka people who practice folk religion in Hualien.
Her mother’s family celebrated the Lunar New Year by saying prayers, singing hymns and having family meals. She received red envelopes with Bible verses written on the outside.
At her father’s family, they honored ancestors and gods and burned incense three times a day.
Being Christians, she and her parents did not burn incense. Her grandmother did not like it at all at first, Chen said, but added that now her grandmother is used to it.
When she was little, Chen said she once asked her mother why they did not burn incense to worship Jesus, and that was the first time she realized she had a religion that was very different from others.
She also ate the offerings when she was little, but now she rarely if ever does so.
“I told myself I don’t have to eat it if I don’t feel comfortable about it,” she said.
Gina Wang (王鈺婷), a second-year graduate student in the English Department at National Central University, is the only Christian in her family.
The 23-year-old Tainan native said it took her a long time to persuade her parents, especially her mother, to let her convert. Her mother was worried that she might later regret such a life-changing decision. One of her aunts, however, was very supportive of her and helped persuade her mother. Her aunt is not a Christian, Wang said, but she thought her niece was big enough to make her own decision.
The first challenge she faced after she became a Christian in November 2007 was whether to practice religious ceremonies during last year’s Lunar New Year.
Wang said she felt uncomfortable burning incense and worshiping ancestors, but her grandmother was sick at that time, so she did not want to upset her.
“It was a struggle,” she said. “I believe my religion does not want me to make everybody unhappy.”
Wang said that when she was burning incense, she did not talk to her ancestors, but rather she talked to God and asked him to forgive her. She also introduced her ancestors to God and asked him to take good care of them.
Nelson Chou (周興國), a preacher at Taipei Bible Baptist Tabernacle Church, said his advice for people like Wang would be to resolve problems peacefully.
“It takes time to find the common ground,” he said. “Religious belief is not something that can be rushed.”
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