Yiguan Dao

Abstract

Yīguàn Dào 一貫道(alternative spellings: Yīguàndào, I-kuan Tao; alternative appellation: Tiāndào 天道, Way of Heaven) is a new religious movement with deep roots in premodern Chinese popular sectarianism, but arising in its mod-ern form in the 1920s in the northeastern Chinese province of Shāndōng 山東.1 The name might be translated as Way of Unity, since the term Yīguàn is a reference to a phrase in the Analects (4:15) of Confucius (tr. 551-479 BCE), in which the Master’s way was characterised ‘by an all-pervading unity’ (wú dào yī yǐ guàn zhī 吾道一以貫之; literally, “There is one [thread] that runs through all of my Way”). Banned in the Chinese mainland after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it survives mainly in Chinese communities abroad, with Taiwan as its main base.

Biographical Note

Prof. Ph. D. Philip Clart (Leipzig University)

Philip Clart is Professor of Chinese Culture and History at Leipzig University, Germany. He received his Ph.D. in Asian Studies from the University of British Columbia, Canada, in 1997; prior to coming to Leipzig, he taught at the University of British Columbia (1996-1998) and at the University of Missouri-Columbia (USA, 1998-2008). He is the editor of the Journal of Chinese Religions and co-editor (with Elisabeth Kaske) of the monograph series Leipziger Sinologische Studien. His main research areas are popular religion and new religious movements in Taiwan, religious change and state/religion relations in China, as well as literature and religions of the late imperial period (10th-19th c.). His monographs include Han Xiangzi: The Alchemical Adventures of a Daoist Immortal (University of Washington Press, 2007) and Die Religionen Chinas (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). He has edited or co-edited eight books and collections (in 2003, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020).