China’s Green Religion?

We Investigate Claims That a 2200 Year-Old Spiritual Tradition Could Help Overcome the Climate Crisis

A crash, like a tree breaking beneath the weight of some long-extinct megafauna, echoed through the forest. Tamzin and I looked up the moss-covered stone staircase to see an empty space where MoMo once stood. I clipped a lead to QiuQiu’s collar and ran up the steps, anxious to know where our other dog had got to. I came at last to a deep karst sinkhole beside the path, the limestone recess packed with years-worth of leaf litter. Inside the hole was MoMo, curled around a banana leaf the size of a canoe, chewing it deliriously. It occurred to me that the crash was her skydiving into the hole; as Tamzin climbed in to pull her out, I reminded myself not to let her off the lead again. 

We were hiking in 青城 Qīngchéng, an evergreen mountain range 60km northwest of Chengdu. Its name means ‘Green Wall,’ a reference to its circular shape, which is said to resemble the ramparts of an ancient city. It’s an important site in the ‘sacred geography’ of Daoism, China’s 2200 year-old indigenous religion, centred around reverence for the mystery of the 道Dào. It was here that the ‘Celestial Master’ 张道陵Zhāng Dàolíng formed the first widespread Daoist movement. We’d wanted to visit ever since hearing Daoism referred to as a 绿色宗教 lǜsè zōngjiào, ‘green religion,’ and the suggestion it might hold the answers to overcoming the climate and ecological crisis. Auspicious temples and commercialised tourist hotspots abound on Qīngchéng, but neither are dog-friendly, so we opted for a relatively hidden, undeveloped peak. 

Trouble was, the dogs were enjoying it a bit too much. As Tamzin hauled her out of the hole, MoMo stared back at the prized leaf with a glazed expression. I had to cut her some slack: after life in the city, a mountainside that offered a myriad of organic smells as well as giant banana leaves must have qualified for what our dog trainer refers to as a hyper-motivating environment.  

“At least she’s having fun,” said Tamzin with a roll of the eyes. 

MoMo had Daoism’s status as a green religion to thank for the pleasure of this experience. Ever since the Chinese Daoist Association published the Decleration of Chinese Daoist Religion on Ecology and Environmental Protection in 1995, the government has created nature reserves on sacred sites throughout the country. (Xia et al, 2013) While economic motivations and the CCP’s tight control over religion can’t be ignored, ongoing meetings on sustainability between Daoist leaders and government officials demonstrate a recent shift in the role of Chinese religion.

Long before I heard of its emergence around the world as a dynamic ecological force, I suspected that religion had a fundamental role to play in the ‘movement of movements’ needed to tackle the climate crisis. Despite being an atheist with agnostic tendencies myself, I appreciate that both religious leaders and sacred texts are revered sources of moral authority, with the power to facilite the exploration of existential questions. Religious ideas inform our deepest convictions about the natural world, and when partnered with up-to-date scientific knowledge, can enhance discussion of ecological questions. As Stephen Jay Gould has written:

Since evolution made us the only earthly creatures with advanced consciousness, what responsibilities are so entailed for our relations with other species? What do our genealogical ties with other organisms imply about the meaning of human life? (Gould, 1997)

In the current context, such questions need urgent answers. Scientists are clear that on our current trajectory, a total ecosystem collapse comparable to the Permian-Triassic extinction, or ‘Great Dying—’ in which 95% of living things on earth went extinct— is inevitable. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels today, enough heating has been locked-in to guarantee what environmentalist Naomi Klein recently described as a “staccato of climate disasters.” Therefore, I see that religion may have the potential to resist the collective slide into despair, nihilism and Mad Max-style barbarism; as well as the eco-fascism looming on the horizon. Faiths may also provide valuable space for grieving what’s been lost, as James Miller implies in his book China’s Green Religion:

How should human beings mourn the death of nature? How could this mourning promote a new collective identity and an ultimately sustainable form of shared belonging in the world?’ (Miller, 2017)

QiuQiu pulled on the lead, dragging me uphill as if frustrated by my bipedal slowness. A brown farm mongrel barked at us as we approached an old farmhouse, while two men smoking pipes ignored the intrusion. We passed vegetable lots, wooden beehives and an ancestral burial mound covered in red incense sticks— a common method for sending prayers to deities or ancestors. 

Daoism flourished in agricultural settings such as this. The language of Daoist religious practice is imbued with farming metaphors, such as ‘fields (田 tián), ‘roots’ (根本gēn,běn), ‘seeds’ (种zhòng), ‘sprouts’ (芽yá) and ‘tending’ (养yǎng).(Komjathy, 2013) Meanwhile, the Daoist worldview is said to be ‘dark green,’ meaning it sees nature as sacred, with intrinsic value and ‘therefore due reverent care.’ (Miller, 2017) In the道德经Dàodé Jīng, Lǎozi calls on humans ‘to be open and responsive to the specificities and interconnections of the world and environment to which they belong,’ (Nelson, 2009) and in 庄子Zhuāngzi, the author ascribes innate value and even sentience to trees: 

…if you have a big tree and are at a loss with what to do with it, why not plant it in the Village of Nowhere, in the great wilds … There it would be safe from the ax and from all other injury. For being of no use to others, what could worry its mind? (庄子,trans. Lin et al). 

As we followed our dogs up the mountain, I wondered what impact these profound teachings could feasibly have in modern China. After all, when it comes to the nation’s environmental trajectory, other ideologies have been far more dominant— a fact that rings as true during this century and during the last as it does for the past three millennia. (Elvin, 2004)

In the run up to this trip I reached out to Volker Olles, Associate Professor at the Research Institute for Daoism and Religious Culture Studies of Sichuan University, through WeChat. Originally from Germany and based in Chengdu, he first studied in Sichuan between 1992-94 and has a deep first-hand relationship with the Daoist community and religion. Through our conversations I learned that popular Daoist terms like 自然zìran (nature) and 无为wúwéi (non-action) have been widely misappropriated in the modern age, which makes cherry-picking eco-soundbites from Daoist texts deeply problematic. However, he maintains that an indigenous climate movement in China could be strengthened by embracing the core Daoist values of Respect, Compassion, Serenity and Openness.  

In his paper, On the Specific Contribution of Daoism to Environmental Protection Ethics, Volker urges readers to look beyond proto-Daoist philosophy towards more concrete examples of environmental practice, such as “precepts, sacred geography, rituals and monastic life.” (Olles, 2021) The most striking example of this has been the二十四治èrshísì zhì, ‘24 dioceses,’ a system of refuges set up on sacred mountains in Sichuan during the Eastern Han dynasty (206 bce-220 ce), in which ‘members of the early Daoist community gathered for regular assemblies and ritual activities.’ (Olles, 2009) They adhered to the老君说一百八十戒lǎo jūn shuō yì bǎi bā shí jiè: ‘180 precepts spoken by Lao Jun’:  described by Martin Palmer recently as ‘the oldest listing of environmental practices of any faith’. These included:

‘Do not wantonly cut down trees’ (不得妄伐树木); 

‘Do not throw poison into the rivers or seas’ (不得以毒药投渊池江海中);

‘Do not wantonly destroy mountains and rivers’ (不得妄凿地毁山川); 

‘Do not light fires in the plains’ (不得在平地然（燃）火); and

‘Do not startle birds and beasts’ (不得惊鸟兽) (Olles, 2021). 

This practice of ‘eremitism’ – withdrawal from society – was not a rejection of social norms as such. Rather, it was an opportunity for respected Daoist elders to model alternatives for the rest of society to learn from. In the current age of consumerism, such alternatives are needed more than ever.

I poured water into a collapsible bowl and put it on the ground for the dogs. They ignored it, apparently more interested in a pile of rapidly-melting snow. Having never encountered the white stuff before, they reacted by gulping large mouthfuls: probably not the best survival tactic, but I left them to it. 

We were resting beside a foot-tall stone土地神tǔdì Shén, ‘Earth God,’ which sat regally in its shrine beneath a corrugated iron roof. It was a rare fragment of true antiquity, its face worn away and body green with moss. Volker told me that in ancient times, earth gods depicted specific, respected local officials or ‘worthies,’ who had served the people well and gone through a process of ‘divinization.’ These ‘localised gods’ existed alongside cosmic divine beings, ancestors, immortals and ‘perfected,’ as well as malevolent ghosts and demons. (Komjathy, 2013)

‘Earth Gods’ Are Examples of the Blurred Human/God Distinction in Daoism

For the vast majority of Daoists past and present, gods are manifestations of the Dào and their worship integral to religious practice. Yet this fact is edited out of many western reimaginings of Daoism – along with the worshippers themselves – transforming it into a New Age lifestyle philosophy. Through my own research and conversations with Volker Olles, I am quickly becoming aware of the extent to which the Daoist tradition is inseparable from Chinese geography, lineage and identity, and that it should remain that way.

Meme Detailing Common Western Misconceptions on ‘Taoism’. Source: Unknown

Earth Gods were destroyed en masse during the Mao years, ‘thrown onto the garbage pile of history’ along with so much other traditional Chinese culture. (Schipper, 2015) Of the ones that survived, many were uprooted from their original locations, buried or smuggled out of China, often losing their identities in the process. There was nothing to explain this Earth God’s story, but the incense offerings and money wedged into the crook of its arm told me people still revered it – just in a way permanently altered by history. One task of an indigenous Daoist climate movement would be to reclaim the spirituality and sense of place of such divinities, and reassert it in the context of the climate and ecological emergency. As Chen Xia explains: 

Authentic wisdom never becomes outdated, but it has to be rediscovered and revived by each new generation on the strength of their experience and in their own usage. (Xia et al, 2013)

Lighting a stick of incense, I pondered the rapidly unfolding age of climate disasters, and saw it for what it is: a totally preventable tale of loss and suffering, visited on the poorest nations around the globe by the richest. However, in the face of an existential threat, communities everywhere are revisiting traditional wisdom to provide the spiritual backbone and offer guidance to their struggles.

Perhaps these communities will create the Earth Gods of tomorrow.

• Elvin, Mark (2004) The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China, Yale Books

• Goossaert, Vincent and Palmer, David A. (2011) The Religious Question in Modern China, University of Chigao Press

• Gould, Stephen Jay (1997) Nonoverlapping Magisteria

• Komjathy, Louis (2013) The Daoist Tradition: An Introduction, Bloomsbury

• Miller, James (2017) China’s Green Relgion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future, Columbia University Press

• Olles, Volker (2009) Lord Lao’s Mountain: From Celestial Master Daoism to Contemporary Daoist Practice, Journal of Daoist Studies

• Olles, Volker (2021) 试论道教对环保伦理的具体贡献 On the Specific Contribution of Daoism to Environmental Ethics, Sichuan University

• Ownby, David (2008) Falun Gong and the Future of China, Oxford University Press

• Schipper, Kristofer et al (2015) Daoism in the Twentieth Century: Between Eternity and Modernity,University of California Press

• Shapiro, Judith (2001) Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China, Cambridge University Press

• Wu, Charles Q. (2013) Thus Spoke Laozi: Dao De Jing, A New Translation With Commentaries, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press

• Xia, Chen and Schonfeld, Martin (2011) A Daoist Response to Climate Change, Beijing Academy of Social Sciences; University of South Florida

• Yang Der-Ruey (2013) New Agents and New Ethos of Daoism in China Today, Nanjing University

*Correction: In the original version of this post, I wrote that Volker Olles first visited China in 1997. This date was incorrect, and has since been updated.