When I began to study Chinese history in 1968, the standard understanding was that China had no native religion, that Confucianism was not a religion, and that Buddhism, a religion of foreign origin, had long since gone into terminal decline. Studies over the last half century have demonstrated that, on the contrary, there was a native religion, Daoism, Confucianism was a religion, and Buddhism has continued to thrive right down to the present. Together, these ‘three teachings’ (sanjiao) as they were called in Chinese received ongoing state support throughout imperial history (220 BCE–1911 CE). Often, moreover, they would band together to oppose a fourth form of religion, one founded on mediums (wu) who spoke for the gods enshrined in local temples. To be complete, a history of Chinese religion must therefore describe these four religions and their interactions. What such a description would lead us to discover is that the ultimate arbiter between these four religions was the state itself. Headed by a Son of Heaven who possessed the Mandate of Heaven to rule, the state in fact functioned like a church. That is, there is nothing really comparable in Chinese history to a conflict between church and state because the Chinese state was a church-state.

To explain what this affirmation means in concrete historical terms, we must begin with Confucianism, for it is chronologically speaking the first of the three teachings to emerge. Confucius (551–479 BCE) himself had no intention of founding a religion.