[Blog Assigment 1] WVS analysis — Important in life: Religion—Yang Ruixin（양서영)

 WVS analysis — Important in life: Religion（China、Japan、Korea）

As a Chinese, I once had this experience: Spread religion to me by Koreans. I have met Koreans who spread religion on campuses or shopping malls and even in Shanghai, China. They said hello friendly and ask me if I know Jesus. I am very surprised that these Christian preachers are not Europeans and Americans but Koreans. According to the WVS data, it is more powerful to show that South Korea attaches more importance to religion than China and Japan.

 At the beginning of 2020, Shincheonji Church set off the epidemic in South Korea, shocked the world, Yonshi University, as one of the three famous schools in South Korea, its idea is from the Gospel of John, and has a theology department. There are many Christian private theological universities in Korea. Thus, religion has brought great influence to Korean society.

 South Korea, in addition to a large number of sects, the number of Korean believers is nearly half the total. In a sense, South Korea has become a Christian nation. People flying over Seoul at night look like a huge cemetery. This is because the city is covered with countless red crosses. Even romantic Korean dramas about love often contain Christian beliefs, often with biblical, Virgin, cross, halo, and other elements.

 

                               

Although China and Japan also have a lot of Buddhist and Christian believers, the number of believers and religious size is far lower than South Korea, So why does South Korea attach so much importance to religion, while China and Japan, also in East Asia, do not?

The first may be the historical reason, South Korea was colonized by Japan, the whole society fell into despair, many Koreans faced a crisis of faith, in the case of faith vacuum, people urgently need new spiritual support. This provides an opportunity for the rise of Christianity in Korea and creates enough space for its popularity. Religion helped South Korea survive from despair, indirectly promoted South Korea's independence, and had a huge social impact on South Korea.

The second is probably because South Korea is influenced by the West, led by the United States, and Korean attitudes towards the modern western industry, education, and medicine are very open. , They prefer to use loanwords that have evolved from English than words evolved from Chinese characters，Young people generally believe that mastering many new loanwords from foreign is a trend. The westernization of society has made more and more young people interested in the mainstream religion in the West. Nearly 50% of college graduates are Christians.

Third，different from the western church. Korean churches are used to gathering, eating, and gathering very frequently, and many think joining the church can be a way to make friends.

Fourth, the pragmatism of religion has been quite prominent, the common people regard religion as a means to solve practical problems, and into their daily life and become their spiritual pillar. For these civilians, faith in Christ is not for eternal life in heaven, but for the pain of life and the happiness of earthly life.

For the Chinese, religion is obviously not that important. Here are a few reasons for my analysis:

First of all, China is a polytheistic country，Most people worship many gods at the same time，They don't believe in a single God (like God)， As long as you can "bless peace "," bless people ", no matter what species, the Chinese will respect it as a god. In fact, just as multicenter is no center, China does not have a fixed authority of God as the dominant, so in the end, is still atheistic, this is a very interesting phenomenon of Chinese religious culture.

The second is the historical reason, since ancient times, the in the fluence of Confucian philosophy, which began with Confucius, on China is too strong，Confucianism is neither materialistic nor idealistic，It is a kind of idea and thought of governing the country and governing the world，Religion is to a large extent helping the rulers govern and stabilize the country，but for thousands of years from the Zhou Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, China stabilized the whole society by a strong Confucian philosophy system. The core idea of Confucianism is benevolence, which keeps the Chinese simple, believing in mythology and believing in the beauty of the world, Confucianism has also been promoting and disseminating the Book of Changes，The concept of Yin and Yang (black and white) contained in the diagram，Convey that everything in the world is relative, there is no absolute right and wrong，Therefore, the Chinese have immunity to religion, But they have no resistance to mythology. They are willing to believe that the world always follows the law of good begets good, and evil leads to evil, but rationally believe that no one god is absolutely right, this idea has been deeply rooted, and other things are difficult to come in.

The third is political reasons. As we all know, China's ruling party is the Communist Party, and communism always adheres to Marxist materialism, so it is difficult for Idealism religion to spread in China on a large scale.

And Japan has been influenced and influenced by Chinese culture since ancient times，and to this day, Chinese characters are still widely used. And Japan remains more traditional ideas than South Korea，Christians in South Korea account for about 29 percent of the population, compared with 0.8 percent in Japan，In other words,99 percent of the Japanese do not believe in this religion，They did not take a critical attitude, but simply not interested. In order to prevent the infiltration of Western culture, Japan once had 260 years of a forbidden religion, strictly prohibited to believe in Christianity. Later, many other religions flowed into Japan, but these "Western religions" were again suppressed because of the influence of World War II."Freedom of religion" was truly guaranteed in Japan after the new post-war constitution began in 1947. In this way, the actual time for Japanese civilians to contact many foreign religions is at best about 150 years.