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.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and