three essays on religion

Three Essays on Religion

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date:  September 1, 1948 to May 31, 1951 ?

Location:  Chester, Pa. ?

Genre:  Essay

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Education

In the following three essays, King wrestles with the role of religion in modern society. In the first assignment, he calls science and religion “different though converging truths” that both “spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.” King emphasizes an awareness of God’s presence in the second document, noting that religion’s purpose “is not to perpetuate a dogma or a theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.” In the final handwritten essay King acknowledges the life-affirming nature of Christianity, observing that its adherents have consistently “looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.”

"Science and Religion"

There is widespread belief in the minds of many that there is a conflict between science and religion. But there is no fundamental issue between the two. While the conflict has been waged long and furiously, it has been on issues utterly unrelated either to religion or to science. The conflict has been largely one of trespassing, and as soon as religion and science discover their legitimate spheres the conflict ceases.

Religion, of course, has been very slow and loath to surrender its claim to sovereignty in all departments of human life; and science overjoyed with recent victories, has been quick to lay claim to a similar sovereignty. Hence the conflict.

But there was never a conflict between religion and science as such. There cannot be. Their respective worlds are different. Their methods are dissimilar and their immediate objectives are not the same. The method of science is observation, that of religion contemplation. Science investigates. Religion interprets. One seeks causes, the other ends. Science thinks in terms of history, religion in terms of teleology. One is a survey, the other an outlook.

The conflict was always between superstition disguised as religion and materialism disguised as science, between pseudo-science and pseudo-religion.

Religion and science are two hemispheres of human thought. They are different though converging truths. Both science and religion spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.

Science is the response to the human need of knowledge and power. Religion is the response to the human need for hope and certitude. One is an outreaching for mastery, the other for perfection. Both are man-made, and like man himself, are hedged about with limitations. Neither science nor religion, by itself, is sufficient for man. Science is not civilization. Science is organized knowledge; but civilization which is the art of noble and progressive communal living requires much more than knowledge. It needs beauty which is art, and faith and moral aspiration which are religion. It needs artistic and spiritual values along with the intellectual.

Man cannot live by facts alone. What we know is little enough. What we are likely to know will always be little in comparison with what there is to know. But man has a wish-life which must build inverted pyramids upon the apexes of known facts. This is not logical. It is, however, psychological.

Science and religion are not rivals. It is only when one attempts to be the oracle at the others shrine that confusion arises. Whan the scientist from his laboratory, on the basis of alleged scientific knowledge presumes to issue pronouncements on God, on the origin and destiny of life, and on man's place in the scheme of things he is [ passing? ] out worthless checks. When the religionist delivers ultimatums to the scientist on the basis of certain cosomologies embedded in the sacred text then he is a sorry spectacle indeed.

When religion, however, on the strength of its own postulates, speaks to men of God and the moral order of the universe, when it utters its prophetic burden of justice and love and holiness and peace, then its voice is the voice of the eternal spiritual truth, irrefutable and invincible.,

"The Purpose of Religion"

What is the purpose of religion? 1  Is it to perpetuate an idea about God? Is it totally dependent upon revelation? What part does psychological experience play? Is religion synonymous with theology?

Harry Emerson Fosdick says that the most hopeful thing about any system of theology is that it will not last. 2  This statement will shock some. But is the purpose of religion the perpetuation of theological ideas? Religion is not validated by ideas, but by experience.

This automatically raises the question of salvation. Is the basis for salvation in creeds and dogmas or in experience. Catholics would have us believe the former. For them, the church, its creeds, its popes and bishops have recited the essence of religion and that is all there is to it. On the other hand we say that each soul must make its own reconciliation to God; that no creed can take the place of that personal experience. This was expressed by Paul Tillich when he said, “There is natural religion which belongs to man by nature. But there is also a revealed religion which man receives from a supernatural reality.” 3 Relevant religion therefore, comes through revelation from God, on the one hand; and through repentance and acceptance of salvation on the other hand. 4  Dogma as an agent in salvation has no essential place.

This is the secret of our religion. This is what makes the saints move on in spite of problems and perplexities of life that they must face. This religion of experience by which man is aware of God seeking him and saving him helps him to see the hands of God moving through history.

Religion has to be interpreted for each age; stated in terms that that age can understand. But the essential purpose of religion remains the same. It is not to perpetuate a dogma or theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.

[ signed ] M. L. King Jr. 5

"The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry"

Basically Christianity is a value philosophy. It insists that there are eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good. This value content is embodied in the life of Christ. So that Christian philosophy is first and foremost Christocentric. It begins and ends with the assumption that Christ is the revelation of God. 6

We might ask what are some of the specific values that Christianity seeks to conserve? First Christianity speaks of the value of the world. In its conception of the world, it is not negative; it stands over against the asceticisms, world denials, and world flights, for example, of the religions of India, and is world-affirming, life affirming, life creating. Gautama bids us flee from the world, but Jesus would have us use it, because God has made it for our sustenance, our discipline, and our happiness. 7  So that the Christian view of the world can be summed up by saying that it is a place in which God is fitting men and women for the Kingdom of God.

Christianity also insists on the value of persons. All human personality is supremely worthful. This is something of what Schweitzer has called “reverence for life.” 8  Hunan being must always be used as ends; never as means. I realize that there have been times that Christianity has short at this point. There have been periods in Christians history that persons have been dealt with as if they were means rather than ends. But Christianity at its highest and best has always insisted that persons are intrinsically valuable. And so it is the job of the Christian to love every man because God love love. We must not love men merely because of their social or economic position or because of their cultural contribution, but we are to love them because  God  they are of value to God.

Christianity is also concerned about the value of life itself. Christianity is concerned about the good life for every  child,  man,  and  woman and child. This concern for the good life and the value of life is no where better expressed than in the words of Jesus in the gospel of John: “I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.” 9  This emphasis has run throughout the Christian tradition. Christianity has always had a concern for the elimination of disease and pestilence. This is seen in the great interest that it has taken in the hospital movement.

Christianity is concerned about increasing value. The whole concept of the kingdom of God on earth expressing a concern for increasing value. We need not go into a dicussion of the nature and meaning of the Kingdom of God, only to say that Christians throughout the ages have held tenaciouly to this concept. They have looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.

In the light of all that we have said about Christianity as a value philosophy, where does the ministry come into the picture? 10

1.  King may have also considered the purpose of religion in a Morehouse paper that is no longer extant, as he began a third Morehouse paper, “Last week we attempted to discuss the purpose of religion” (King, “The Purpose of Education,” September 1946-February 1947, in  Papers  1:122).

2.  “Harry Emerson Fosdick” in  American Spiritual Autobiographies: Fifteen Self-Portraits,  ed. Louis Finkelstein (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 114: “The theology of any generation cannot be understood, apart from the conditioning social matrix in which it is formulated. All systems of theology are as transient as the cultures they are patterned from.”

3.  King further developed this theme in his dissertation: “[Tillich] finds a basis for God's transcendence in the conception of God as abyss. There is a basic inconsistency in Tillich's thought at this point. On the one hand he speaks as a religious naturalist making God wholly immanent in nature. On the other hand he speaks as an extreme supernaturalist making God almost comparable to the Barthian ‘wholly other’” (King, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” 15 April 1955, in  Papers  2:535).

4.  Commas were added after the words “religion” and “salvation.”

5.  King folded this assignment lengthwise and signed his name on the verso of the last page.

6.  King also penned a brief outline with this title (King, “The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry,” Outline, September 1948-May 1951). In the outline, King included the reference “see Enc. Of Religion p. 162.” This entry in  An Encyclopedia of Religion,  ed. Vergilius Ferm (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946) contains a definition of Christianity as “Christo-centric” and as consisting “of eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good.” King kept this book in his personal library.

7.  Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 563-ca. 483 BCE) was the historical Buddha.

8.  For an example of Schweitzer's use of the phrase “reverence for life,” see Albert Schweitzer, “The Ethics of Reverence for Life,”  Christendom  1 (1936): 225-239.

9.  John 10:10.

10.  In his outline for this paper, King elaborated: “The Ministry provides leadership in helping men to recognize and accept the eternal values in the Xty religion. a. The necessity of a call b. The necessity for disinterested love c. The [ necessity ] for moral uprightness” (King, “Philosophy of Life,” Outline, September 1948-May 1951).

Source:  CSKC-INP, Coretta Scott King Collection, In Private Hands, Sermon file.

©  Copyright Information

At present, of the three essays, we have here only the first two. Those were the two that were written in the ``vintage'' decade (the 1850's, see Helen Taylor's Introduction). The third essay on ``Theism'' may be added at some later date.

Three Essays on Religion

John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion , Louis J. Matz (ed.), Broadview Press, 2009, 302pp., $18.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551117683.

Reviewed by Julie C. Van Camp, California State University

This splendid volume brings together three intriguing essays on religion by John Stuart Mill, “Nature”, “Utility of Religion”, and “Theism”. First published by his stepdaughter Helen Taylor in 1874, the year after his death, they will be as surprising to many readers as they reportedly were to his contemporaries. His earlier works had led many to conclude that he was dismissive of religion, while the essays here confound those presumptions.

The three essays have been available in print for many years in other editions. The special value of this collection for both scholarship and teaching comes from the extensive supplementary material so helpful in carefully interpreting the essays today. This material includes sixteen earlier statements by Mill in other writings, both published essays and letters. Excerpts from three contemporary reviews of the three essays sharpen the issues. The volume also includes excerpts from Jeremy Bentham and Mill’s father, James Mill, who apparently exerted early influence on Mill on these matters. There are also excerpts from Charles Darwin and T. H. Huxley that address related issues in religion and science.

A detailed bibliography with suggestions for further reading enhances the volume, as does the chronology of Mill’s life, and numerous portraits of Mill, his wife Harriet Taylor, and other influential persons in his life. Although, regrettably, it has no index, this is an unusually comprehensive, worthwhile, and usable volume.

The volume’s editor, Louis J. Matz, argues convincingly in his invaluable introduction that the posthumous essays are at least consistent with views in Mill’s published and unpublished writings. The best known of those views is Mill’s observation that he did not need theistic beliefs, since he was brought up imbued with the importance of morality.

Matz also hints at a variety of motivations for Mill to keep quiet about his religious views during his lifetime. As a member of Parliament, he did not want people to be able to use his religious views, regardless of what they were, against him in his bid for election (p. 36). Private correspondence hints that Mill was also concerned that an appearance of sympathy for religion might interfere with his public reputation as a reformer based on moral principles independent of religion. Mill’s apparent conflicts between his public profile and private morality anticipates dilemmas of progressive politicians today. It is inconceivable that a politician who is openly atheist or even agnostic could get elected to high public office, at least in the U.S., but excessive commitment to a rigid theology can be equally damning in some quarters.

Mill lived in an era when rapidly developing scientific explanations for natural phenomena were increasingly challenging traditional religious explanations. Matz suspects Mill judged that religion might still be useful for promoting morality, even if the intellectual underpinnings of theism were increasingly implausible, a dilemma shared in heightened relief today, given the advancement of scientific explanation.

In the essay “Nature”, Mill meticulously presents detailed arguments against Natural Law as the basis for ethics. He concludes that either of the two main senses of “nature” (“the entire system of things” or “things as they would be, apart from human intervention”) result in models for action that are “irrational and immoral” (p. 103). He distinguishes religion in the traditional supernatural sense of theism from what he calls a Religion of Humanity (p. 130). The latter idealizes goods in this world, specifically, the promotion of happiness for all beings, consistently with his utilitarianism and also with what we might today call secular humanism.

In the second essay, “Utility of Religion”, Mill acknowledges one advantage of supernatural religion over his proposed Religion of Humanity, namely, the hope of “a life after death” (p. 135). Nevertheless Mill is suspicious of “legislators and moralists” exploiting this quest for an afterlife to coerce people to do certain things in this life. He hopes that as the quality of life in the here and now improves, this dream of an afterlife will become less important. As the editor points out, a contemporary critic of this essay anticipates William James’ “Will to Believe” (p. 46), arguing that religious experience can open up “new realities”, much as Mill’s ideas of personal love can open up such realities.

In “Theism”, Mill considers a range of arguments for the existence of God, using a methodology consistent with his lifelong insistence on evidence. He believes it to be “indispensable” that

religion should from time to time be reviewed as a strictly scientific question, and that its evidences should be tested by the same scientific methods, and on the same principles as those of any of the speculative conclusions drawn by physical science (p. 141).

Given that evidentiary emphasis, he concludes that monotheism is superior to polytheism, as the latter cannot be reconciled to any theory of governance of the universe, although this alone hardly proves the truth of monotheism (p. 143).

Mill acknowledges that he cannot disprove the existence of a sovereign will, and proceeds to examine a variety of arguments, both a priori and a posteriori , for such an existence. The argument for a first cause, he concludes, would be of no value for the proof of theism (p. 154). He then considers the argument “from the general consent of mankind”, viz ., that as all persons have recognized some form of god, there must be a god. Mill argues that the diverse conceptions of such a god and the universal need to address unknowns in life account for this universality, not necessarily the existence of any actual god. He also rejects arguments from consciousness and pure reason, appealing to Kant’s distinctions between speculative reason and a corresponding reality outside the mind (pp. 158-161).

Mill finds the argument from design far more significant, in part because it lends itself to testing by the scientific method he holds paramount (p. 161). Surprisingly perhaps, given his rejection of so many other claimed proofs of the existence of god, he admits that “the adaptations in Nature afford a large balance of probability in favour of creation of intelligence” (p. 166). Lest any contemporary proponents of Intelligent Design rush to cite Mill for support, however, note that he qualifies this conclusion by pointing to the limits of “the present state of our knowledge”. In other words, although he was familiar with Darwin’s The Origin of Species (1859), Mill acknowledged that, in the mid-nineteenth century, we did not yet know enough about the natural world to account for all the then-current conditions of the species. Concluding that he could not rule out the argument from design is a far cry from concluding that it proved the existence of a deity. Further, his critics at the time thought he had not sufficiently understood the power of Darwin’s work (p. 49).

Even granting the possibility of an Intelligent Designer, Mill wonders what sort of god that would be. He questions why human beings were not designed “to last longer, and not to get so easily and frequently out of order” (p. 170). Here he anticipates recent challenges to the contemporary intelligent design movement. If god is omnipotent, could he not have come up with a better design for our aching backs and fragile knees? Mill also notes that there is no evidence in the world we inhabit of divine benevolence or divine justice (p. 177).

In this final essay, he again considers the promise of an afterlife (p. 179ff). Mill concludes that there is no way to prove or disprove its existence, but he concedes that it might be of comfort to many people. He also dismisses claims that revelation received by persons proves anything about the existence of god or anything else.

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Religion and Spirituality in East Asian Societies

2. religion as a way of life, table of contents.

• Religious switching in the region
• Religious switching in East Asia compared with the rest of the world
• Common beliefs and practices
• How former Buddhists in East Asia compare with lifelong Buddhists
• Other key findings in this report
• Religious composition
• How religious identity differs by age
• Religious switching
• Which groups have the biggest shares of new entrants?
• Persuading others to switch
• Attending Christian and Buddhist schools
• Feeling connected to one or more religions or philosophies
• How many religions can be true?
• Personal importance of religion
• Importance of religion around the world
• What people say Buddhism is – and is not
• Belief in unseen beings
• Belief in god
• Belief in angels and demons
• Belief in spirits inhabiting the physical world
• Belief in fate
• Belief in karma
• Belief in miracles
• Venerating religious figures and deities
• Rates of prayer
• Daily prayer around the world
• Visiting spiritual and religious sites
• Home altars
• Reflecting on life and the universe
• Fortunetelling
• Ancestor veneration rituals
• Communicating with ancestors
• Family gravesites
• How important are traditional funerals?
• Cremation and burial
• Belief in rebirth and nirvana
• Belief in heaven and hell
• Religion's role in society
• Religious leaders in politics
• Free speech and social harmony
• Should societies be open to change?
• Acknowledgments
• Methodology
• Appendix A: Sources

Typically, East Asia is considered to encompass China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan. In geopolitical terms, Vietnam is often categorized as part of Southeast Asia. But we surveyed Vietnam along with East Asia for several reasons, including its historic ties to China and Confucian traditions . Moreover, Buddhists in Vietnam practice the same strain of Buddhism (Mahayana) found across East Asia.

Throughout this report, the term “East Asia” refers to Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

When discussing trends throughout the broader “region,” we include Vietnam.

For legal and logistical reasons, we did not survey several other places that are generally considered part of East Asia. At present, China does not allow non-Chinese organizations to conduct surveys on the mainland, and public opinion surveys are not possible in North Korea. Conducting nationally representative surveys in Mongolia is difficult due to the nomadic lifestyle of a large part of its people. We did not survey Macau because its population is relatively small.

While many people in East Asia and Vietnam do not formally identify with a religion , most say they feel a personal connection to the “way of life” of at least one religious tradition or spiritual philosophy.

Most commonly, people in the region – including the religiously unaffiliated – feel personal connections to Buddhism and local or Indigenous religions. In South Korea, a majority also feel connected to the Confucian way of life.

Moreover, adults in the region often express an affinity for multiple traditions. In Japan, for example, 55% of adults say they feel a personal connection to at least one religious or philosophical tradition besides their own .

To measure this, we posed a series of questions, asking separately about Buddhist, Christian, Confucian, Daoist (also spelled Taoist) and local/Indigenous religions’ ways of life. (In Japan, we also asked about the Shinto way of life.)

Except in the case of the local/Indigenous religions item, we avoided using words such as “religion” or “religious tradition,” in part because many people do not consider Confucianism to be a religion. Moreover, we chose phrases like “personal connection” and “way of life” to capture people who might not relate to the word “religion” or formally identify with an organized belief system but who, nonetheless, feel an affinity for the way of life that these traditions or philosophies represent.

This series of questions also helps to gauge the effect of religious switching, by showing the shares of people who have left their childhood religion but continue to feel a connection to it in adulthood .

In this chapter, we also discuss what adults in East Asia and Vietnam consider Buddhism to be – a culture, a set of ethical teachings, an ethnicity, a religion or a family tradition – as well as the behaviors and attitudes that Buddhists say would disqualify someone from being truly Buddhist .

Among the region’s large shares of religiously unaffiliated adults, a fair number express a personal connection to at least one religious or philosophical “way of life.”

At least a third of religiously unaffiliated adults in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan say they feel a personal connection to the Buddhist way of life, and roughly one-quarter or more feel connected to a local or Indigenous religion’s way of life.

In South Korea, 58% of the religiously unaffiliated express a personal connection to the Confucian way of life.

People who formally identify with a religion are even more likely to say they feel a personal connection to that tradition’s way of life.

Among Buddhists across the region, at least six-in-ten say they feel a personal connection to the Buddhist way of life, including 95% of Vietnamese Buddhists who say this. (The percentage of people inside a group who say they feel a personal connection to the group’s way of life may be an indicator of the intensity of their sense of belonging.)

Among Christians, about three-quarters or more feel a personal connection to the Christian way of life. (The attitudes of Christians in Japan are not broken out separately because the sample size is too small.)

Christians are less likely than Buddhists to feel a connection to local or Indigenous religions. In all places surveyed except Vietnam, at least four-in-ten Buddhists say they feel connected to an Indigenous or local religion’s way of life.

Affinity for traditions besides one’s own

Taiwanese and South Korean adults are somewhat more likely than people in other places to feel a personal connection to some other religion’s way of life. In Taiwan, 39% of Buddhists, 38% of the religiously unaffiliated and 25% of Christians say they feel connected to the Daoist way of life. In South Korea, majorities of Buddhists, Christians and the unaffiliated express a personal affinity for the Confucian way of life .

More broadly, over half of all adults in South Korea (70%), Taiwan (67%) and Japan (55%) say they feel connected to at least one tradition besides their own , compared with smaller shares in Hong Kong (39%) and Vietnam (31%) who express similar connections.

Respondents in Japan were also asked whether they feel a personal connection to the Shinto way of life. Shinto is a set of traditional Japanese beliefs that can include the worship of gods and spirits known as kami . Though only 4% of adults in Japan identify Shinto as their religion, fully 27% say they feel a personal connection to the Shinto way of life. (In answers to a separate question, 38% of Japanese adults say they pray or offer respects to kami. Read more on this in Chapter 4 .)

Connections to one’s former religion

Given the high rate of religious switching in East Asia and Vietnam , we explored what happens to religious connections after people leave a formal identity behind. Specifically, we compared responses about personal connections among:

• Those who currently identify with a tradition;
• Those who were raised in that tradition but have since left; and
• Those who were not raised in that tradition nor identify with it now.

We consistently find a spectrum of attachments: People who no longer identify with a religion are less likely than those who do so currently to say they feel a personal connection to it. Still, people who were raised in a religion and have since left it are more likely to express a connection to that religion than are people who were not raised in it and who don’t identify it as their religion today.

For example, 72% of South Koreans who currently identify as Buddhist say they feel a personal connection to the Buddhist way of life. Among South Koreans who were raised Buddhist but no longer identify that way, 50% feel such a connection. And among all other South Korean adults, only 35% say they have a personal connection to Buddhism.

We know from past research that the five places included in this survey are very religiously diverse compared with other countries and territories around the world.

Given this diversity – and the extent to which people feel connected to traditions outside their own – it is perhaps unsurprising that respondents in this survey are more likely to say that “many religions can be true” than to say that “there is only one true religion.”

Among both Buddhists and the religiously unaffiliated, majorities in nearly all five places say that many religions can be true. But Christians are less likely to take this position.

In Taiwan, for example, roughly eight-in-ten Buddhists and unaffiliated adults – but only half of Christians – say that many religions can be true.

In general, younger adults and people with more education are more likely to say that many religions can be true. For example, the vast majority of Japanese adults under the age of 35 say that many religions can be true, compared with a slim majority of older Japanese adults (86% vs. 59%).

When asked how important religion is in their lives, people in the region tend to say religion is either not very or not at all important to them.

In Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan, half or more say religion is notvery or not at all important.

Only in Vietnam are adults more likely to say religion is important in their lives than to say it is not important (53% vs. 46%).

In no place surveyed do more than about a quarter of adults say religion is very important in their lives.

Christians are the most likely to consider religion to be very important to them. About a third of Christians or more across the region say this, including two-thirds of Vietnamese Christians.

Far fewer Buddhists say religion is very important to them. However, many Buddhists surveyed say that religion is at least somewhat important in their lives.

The religiously unaffiliated are the group least likely in this analysis to say religion is very important in their lives. Still, between 11% and 30% of the unaffiliated in each place surveyed say religion is at least somewhat important to them.

In all four East Asian societies surveyed, fewer than two-in-ten adults say religion is very important in their lives.

Only in Europe do similarly small percentages say this, according to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center in 102 countries and territories since 2008. 7 For instance, 11% of adults in Hong Kong and Taiwan say religion is very important in their lives – as do 11% of adults in Belgium, France and Germany.

Other parts of the world have much higher shares who say religion is very important. This includes majorities across Africa and much of Latin America .

In the United States , 42% of adults say religion is very important in their lives.

(For information on when we conducted surveys in various countries and territories, go to Appendix A .)

Given that large shares of East Asians and Vietnamese adults identify with Buddhism or feel connected to its way of life, we wanted to explore what people in the region understand Buddhism to be.

Do they view Buddhism as a set of ethical teachings to guide actions? A culture one is a part of? A religion one chooses to follow? A family tradition one must follow? An ethnicity one is born into?

Across the region, large shares of adults in all religious groups – including overwhelming majorities of Buddhists in Hong Kong and Vietnam – say that Buddhism is a set of ethical teachings, a culture and a religion.

Buddhists are more likely than people in other religious groups to say Buddhism fits each description on the list. For example, roughly four-in-ten Buddhists in South Korea say Buddhism is an ethnicity, compared with about a fifth of South Korean Christians who say this (43% vs. 18%).

In Vietnam, 48% of Buddhists say their religion can be described by all five statements – i.e., that Buddhism is a religion, a set of ethics, a culture, a family tradition and an ethnicity. Far fewer Buddhists in Taiwan (6%) and Japan (4%) say all five statements describe Buddhism; Taiwanese Buddhists are least likely to describe Buddhism as an ethnicity, and Japanese Buddhists are least likely to call it a family tradition.

What can a person do and still be ‘truly’ Buddhist?

In addition to asking all respondents what Buddhism is, the survey asked those who identify as Buddhist whether certain beliefs or practices would disqualify a person from being “truly” Buddhist.

There is general agreement among Buddhists that not respecting deities or spirits would disqualify one from being truly Buddhist. Majorities of Buddhists in every place surveyed, ranging from 59% in Japan to 80% in Taiwan, say this.

Buddhists in Vietnam and South Korea are more likely than those elsewhere to say that several other beliefs or practices are crucial to being Buddhist. For example, 64% of Buddhists in Vietnam and 56% of Buddhists in South Korea say a person cannot be truly Buddhist if they do not have a Buddhist funeral. Fewer Buddhists in Hong Kong (43%), Japan (40%) and Taiwan (27%) say the same.

Most Buddhists surveyed across the region say you cannot be truly Buddhist if you do not respect elders, including nearly nine-in-ten Vietnamese Buddhists who say this.

Fewer Buddhists say that you cannot be Buddhist if you drink alcohol. (Avoiding intoxicants such as alcohol is one of the Five Precepts , a set of Buddhist teachings on morality for laypeople.)

Buddhists in the region are more divided as to whether one must respect where one lives to be truly Buddhist. Majorities in Vietnam (85%) and South Korea (64%) say a person cannot be Buddhist if they do not respect Vietnam or South Korea, respectively. In Taiwan, far fewer Buddhists – 41% – say respecting Taiwan is necessary to be truly Buddhist.

By contrast, clear majorities of Buddhists in all of the South and Southeast Asian places we surveyed in 2022 said that respecting where one lives is key to being truly Buddhist.

Other than in South Korea, very few Buddhists in East Asia and Vietnam say that a person cannot be Buddhist if they make offerings to or worship ancestors. Even smaller shares of Cambodian and Thai Buddhists said this in our 2022 survey. (As discussed in Chapter 5 , ancestor veneration practices such as burning incense, offering flowers and lighting candles are very common among Buddhists in East Asia and Vietnam.)

Buddhists in the region are somewhat split about whether celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid is compatible with Buddhism. While six-in-ten Buddhists or more in Vietnam and South Korea say celebrating Eid would disqualify someone from being truly Buddhist, only about four-in-ten Taiwanese and Japanese Buddhists take that position.

Nowhere does a majority think Christmas celebrations stop someone from being truly Buddhist. However, Buddhists in South Korea – which has the largest share of Christians in its population among the places analyzed – are more likely than Buddhists elsewhere to say that celebrating Christmas would disqualify a person from being truly Buddhist.

• For the purposes of this analysis, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are included in Asia. These three Caucasus countries are located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in a border area between Europe and Asia. ↩

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• Japanese overview: 東アジア社会における宗教と精神性
• Korean main findings: 동아시아 사회에서의 종교와 영성(靈性)
• Korean overview: 동아시아 사회에서의 종교와 영성(靈性)
• Simplified Chinese main findings: 东亚社会的宗教与精神信仰
• Simplified Chinese overview: 东亚社会的宗教与精神信仰
• Traditional Chinese main findings: 東亞社會的宗教與精神信仰
• Traditional Chinese overview: 東亞社會的宗教與精神信仰
• Vietnamese main findings: Tôn giáo và tâm linh trong các xã hội Đông Á
• Vietnamese overview: Tôn giáo và tâm linh trong các xã hội Đông Á
• East Asian Societies Survey Dataset

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Three Essays on Religion: Nature, the Utility of Religion, Theism (Great Books in Philosophy) Paperback – May 1, 1998

• Part of series Great Books in Philosophy
• Print length 257 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Prometheus
• Publication date May 1, 1998
• Dimensions 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 1573922129
• ISBN-13 978-1573922128
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Prometheus; Revised edition (May 1, 1998)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 257 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1573922129
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1573922128
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.1 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
• #3,764 in Modern Western Philosophy
• #7,134 in Essays (Books)
• #14,059 in Christian Self Help

About the author

John stuart mill.

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Three essays on religion

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