In the last chapter, we saw how Shengyan used the academic study of religion to place Buddhism at the apex of a religious hierarchy above Christianity. He gestured towards the notion that true Buddhism was misunderstood—and that if its truth was realized, modern intellectuals would be incapable of criticizing it. By the 1970s, though, the heated interfaith competition between Taixu's followers and Christians in Taiwan had cooled. As the number of Christians on the island plateaued, they no longer regarded it as such a serious religious contender. At the same time, as we shall see, a number of increasingly high-profile Buddhist groups emerged on the island; these carried out activities that formerly, Christian missionaries charged Buddhists with not doing—that is, establishing schools, universities and hospitals. They encouraged lay-people to study and practice the Dharma, asserting its relevance as a kind of philosophy for living rather than an object of religious belief.

But there was still one important matter to be dealt with. As we heard in the introduction, in the 1950s and 1960s, Buddhists continued to assert that their tradition accorded with the Three Principles of the People, just as Taixu had done. But as we know, Chiang Kai-shek was a Methodist, and Sun Yat-sen—the originator of the three principles—was a Unitarian. After he died in 1975, Dongchu redefined Chiang in Buddhist terms. And so, around the time Shengyan was finishing his PhD, his mentor, Dongchu, published a tract called President Chiang and Buddhism (Jiang zongtong yu Fojiao).