Introduction and historical background
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is today ruled
by a Marxist-Leninist party with both a policy of religious freedom
and a concern that religion may compromise the power of the state.
Article 70 of its constitution states: "The citizen shall
enjoy freedom of belief and of religion; he can follow any religion
or follow none¡.No one can violate freedom of belief
and of religion; nor can anyone misuse beliefs and religions to
contravene the law and State policies." (Constitution of
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, 1992.) The 20th century saw
a conspicuous and often fateful interweaving of politics and religion,
and there has been a religious revival in the past twenty years
which has sometimes led to tension and conflict between state
and church. But it must be emphasized that religion and politics
have been closely involved with each other in Vietnam and in neighboring
China for at least two thousand years, and that today's political
culture is very much the product of that long history.
There is currently much diversity and even confusion
within the religious realm, as religions compete not only with
the state but with each other. The majority of Vietnamese are
at least nominally and culturally Buddhist, but this is a unique
Buddhism which is historically informed by Confucianism and animism.
Further, the religious scene is animated by vigorous heterodox
Buddhist movements, as well as entirely new indigenous religions,
imported Christianity, and renascent spirit and hero worship-all
with complicated political and social implications beyond theology.
But given Vietnam's long history, the best basis
for understanding must start at the beginning-a long time ago.
Fortunately, an excellent essay by a major authority, Harvard
professor Hue-Tam Ho Tai, is available. "Religion in Vietnam: A World of Ghosts and Spirits"
The themes outlined by Tai continue to be the basis of Vietnamese
religion down to today. However, in the traditional period, while
a syncretic, Chinese influenced Buddhist-Confucianist-Daoist construct
clearly dominated society and history, there were serious strains
and contentions within it. The Confucian element was strengthened
by aboriginal popular commitment to ancestor worship, and while
the elite managerial aspect of Confucianism remained powerful,
the populist, moralist and transcendental aspects of Buddhism
and the magical claims of Daoism strengthened villagers' resistance
to Confucian orthodoxy and those who used it to gain and maintain
power. Vietnamese history, like that of China and other peasant
societies, was rife with peasant rebellions against a relentlessly
controlling upper class, and village life in the best of times
was more Buddhist and spiritist than Confucianist.
Today the polarization between the Communist state-heirs
of the Confucians-and the clergy of the various active religions
is clear and strong. But while the populace seems to want a larger
role for religion in their lives-bound to unnerve the state-they
also accept to one degree or another the legitimacy and authority
of the government in Hanoi.
The state versus Buddhism
The Buddhist establishment has received special
and unwelcome attention from Hanoi since the establishment of
the Socialist Republic in 1976. The prominence of the activist,
moralizing style of the bonzes who had much to do with the overthrow
of Ngo Dinh Diem (1963) and the indifference or hostility of the
Vietnamese masses to Saigon's and Washington's efforts to oppose
North Vietnam could hardly fail to be seen as threatening by the
Communist mandarins. And of course a regime based on a secular
ideology will certainly be hostile to any religious claim of a
higher power.
In the 1960s disparate Buddhist groups formed
the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV). In 1981 the government
banned this group and established a state-supported Buddhist organization
which was designed to be the focus of clergy and lay activity.
Since that time, "UBCV pagodas, schools, universities, hospitals
and orphanages have been seized by the state, [and] monks, nuns
and followers harassed, intimidated and imprisoned." In 2003
the government cracked down further, arresting senior bonzes and
placing pagodas under surveillance. (Statement by Penelope Faulkner
of the Transnational Radical Party to the 60th Session of the
United Nations Commission on Human Rights, March 23, 2004.)
Pressure on the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai
The Hoa Hao and Cao Dai have experienced similar
treatment from Hanoi. Both sects have a history of isolation from
the mainstream of Vietnamese society-partly the result of their
geographical isolation in frontier southwest areas-and of cooperation,
however reluctant, with the former Saigon regime. Hoa Hao believers
have been imprisoned, rites and sacred writings restricted, and
Communist Party loyalists have been introduced into the association's
ranks. Not so paradoxically, Hoa Hao's situation on the nation's
border seems to have encouraged the state to adopt an especially
assertive and penetrating role. (Taylor, Philip. Goddess on the
rise: pilgrimage and popular religion in Vietnam. Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 2004. p.24.)
The same goes for the Cao Dai. After 1975 the
government seized schools, clinics, and orphanages and stopped
all religious activity, including prayer. Between 1979 and 1996
the state took further measures to legalize its abolition of the
Cao Dai hierarchical structure, separate the previously dominant
central administration from provincial groups, and seize most
of the church's property (not including the famous main temple).
A 1995 government-sponsored conference made it clear that the
aim was to "reintegrate" some three million Caodaiists
into the mainstream of those with absolute loyalty to the state.
The main temple came under government control in 1997. (Religious
Movements Home Page. Cao Daism. http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/caodaism.html.)
A spiritist cult
As pointed out above, the base of Vietnamese religion
and society centuries ago was a primeval animism or spiritism,
which "lived with" Buddhism and Confucianism throughout
history. Perhaps surprisingly, strong spiritist beliefs can readily
be identified as part of Vietnam's current enthusiasm for religion.
Philip Taylor writes,
At the base of a small mountain on Vietnam's
border with Cambodia stands a shrine
to a goddess known as Ba Chua Xu, the Lady of the Realm. This
spirit is a feminine
likeness in stone and rendered cement and is dressed in regal
costume. Legends
describe her as a local protector deity and relate her involvement
in key events
in local history. She is housed in a magnificent shrine flanked
by large halls that
display the offerings people have made to her¡. Each
year Vinh Te village, the rural
settlement that hosts [annual] festivities is transformed into
an instant metropolis.
Its canals are lined with passenger boats, the road into the
village is choked
with buses and minivans, and the road to the nearby township
of Chau Doc is
as busy as a major urban thoroughfare. The area surrounding
her shrine hums around
the clock with entertainments as diverse as cai luong (southern
Vietnamese opera),
all-singing, all-dancing drag beauty queen contests, a sideshow
alley, magic acts, a
house of horrors, karaoke, gambling, restaurants, cafes, bars,
and brothels. Inside the
shrine pilgrims jostle, sardinelike, bodies superheating the
air, incense tearing at their
eyes, an endless stream of opulent gifts pouring toward the
altar. This activity is
illustrative of the rich and burgeoning spiritual life of contemporary
Vietnam. (Taylor, 2004. p1.)
Taylor goes on to point out, as has Tai, that
"From the perspective of Vietnamese elite or intellectual
culture, popular religiosity has been marginalized or suppressed.
In precolonial and colonial times, the court and Confucianized
elite were often hostile to heterodoxy and localistic folk practice."
(Taylor, 2004. p.9.) But since the 1990s, "an extraordinary
number of books and popular introductory works have appeared about
folk beliefs and about religious philosophies, rites, customs,
and festivals." Taylor believes that phenomena such as the
Lady of the Realm worship can be at least to some extent rationalized
by the conservative state as a harmless or even propitious case
of local cultural survival in the face of the growing internationalization
of the now more open Vietnamese economy and society. Presumably,
then, this cult is not seen as as threatening as the more established
and organized potential counter-forces represented by the Buddhist
church, the Hoa Hao, or the Cao Dai. In any case, it can serve
as Taylor says, as evidence of a general revival of Vietnamese
religion in an era of rapid change and some social dislocation.
Catholics and Protestants
For Vietnamese (as well as many other Asians)
the two branches of Christianity are regarded as separate religions,
and indeed the two have had much different impacts on the nation.
French, Spanish, and Portuguese missionary priests appeared as
early as the 16th century, and two bishops were appointed to the
Far East in 1659. Some conversions were reported-even of members
of the royal family. The 17th and 18th centuries, however, saw
a nationalist reaction, with persecutions and the expelling of
missionaries. During the late 18th century the Tay-son Rebellion
led to the deposition of the reigning emperor, and, perhaps ironically,
a new Confucian emperor was to come to power (Gia Long, 1802)
with the assistance of a Catholic missionary bishop. Throughout
the 19th century, the association of Catholicism with French imperialism
made it alternatively respected and feared. The continuing nationalist
struggles of the 20th century came to a head when first the nation
was divided into North and South (1954), at which time most of
the anti-Communist, Catholic communities in the North moved en
masse to the South, and when the Catholic, French-educated Ngo
Dinh Diem was overthrown in Saigon (1963), with the encouragement
of a mobilized Buddhist community. Since the establishment of
the Socialist Republic in 1976, Catholics have been subjected
to close control by the state, but are considered essentially
a spent force and much less potentially dangerous than the Buddhists,
Hoa Hao, or Cao Dai.
Protestant incursion has taken an entirely different
road. Missionizing, chiefly by North Americans, began only after
1945, in the South. Having achieved little success among the majority
ethnic Vietnamese, missionaries turned soon to the minority hill
tribes ("Montagnards'), and many conversions were achieved,
partly by association with the massive American military incursion
from 1962-1975. But anything which even smelled of empowering
the Montagnards or increased their independence of the majority
government was anathema to Hanoi, and there have been sharp and
serious persecutions in recent years. A 2003 report by the United
States Commission on International Religious Freedom noted that
"¡the government has intensified its crackdown
on religious minorities in the northwestern provinces and the
Central Highlands." (United States Commission on International
Religious Freedom. Report on Vietnam. Washington: The Commission,
May 2003.)
Again, the hill tribes live along the Nation's borders, like the
Hoa Hao and Cao Dai, and must therefore inspire government concern
regardless of the religious questions involved.
Populations
It is impossible to find exact figures for the
religious populations of Vietnam, mostly because no one officially
counts them. If a majority are Buddhists, this means some tens
of millions of the country's 78 million population. Figures for
Hoa Hao and Cao Dai seem to have been in the low millions at their
height, but may be less today. About a million and a half Catholics
were enumerated in 1965.
Ideology-a note
As is clear from Vietnamese and Chinese history,
Confucianism has been at the center of all public affairs and
much private life. It is legitimate to a degree to treat Confucianism
as a religion and part of the syncretic religion described above.
But it is important also to describe Confucianism as an ideology-perhaps
a secular religion, in which it is not gods who matter but the
state and its relation to people's lives. In the simplest terms,
Confucianism is based on " the three relationships,"
which suggest that the relationship between the ruler and his
people, the man and his womenfolk, and the father and his children,
are all essentially the same relationship-one of absolute power
of the one over the other. Without expatiating further, one can
put the Vietnamese Communists in an analogous authoritarian framework,
and see the current regime as the heirs of the mandarins, as Tai
remarks.
Selected bibliography
Blagov, Sergei. Honest mistakes: the life and
death of Trinh Minh The, South Vietnam's alternative leader. Huntington,
NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2001.
--A former Soviet journalist recounts the rise of the Cao Dai
and its bid for national power in the 1950s.
Do, Thien. Vietnamese supernaturalism: views from
the southern region. Lodon & New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004.
--worship, cults, spirits, etc.
McHale, Shawn Frederick. Print and power: Confucianism,
communism, and Buddhism in the making of modern Vietnam. Hololulu:
University of Hawaii press, 2004.
--insists that religions have adapted well to the political challenges
of modern times.
Thich Nhat Hanh. Vietnam: the lotus in the sea
of fire. London: SCM Press, 1967.
--an leading activist monk described this politicized religion
in the context of the Indochina War and internal political struggle.
Tai, Hue-Tam Ho. "Religion in Vietnam: a
world of ghosts and spirits," in The Asia Society, Vietnam:
essays on history, culture, and society. New York, The Society,
1985.
--a sweeping view of the animist bases of Vietnamese syncretic
religion and its later development.
______________. Millenarianism and peasant politics in Vietnam.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.
--a monograph on the millenarian sect Buu Son Ky Huong, which
evolved into the Hoa Hao.
Taylor, Philip. Fragments of the present: searching
for modernity in Vietnam's South. Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 2000.
___________. Goddess on the rise: pilgrimage and
popular religion in Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
2004.
--the spritist cult of the Lady of the Realm in political and
social context.
Unger, Ann Helen and Walter Unger. Pagodas, gods
and spirits of Vietnam. London: Thames & Hudson, 1997.
United States Commission on International Religious
Freedom. Report on Vietnam. Washington: The Commission, May 2003.
www.uscirf.gov
Werner, Jayne Susan. Peasdant politics and religious
sectarianism: peasant and priest in the Cao Dai of Vietnam. New
Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1981.
--the theme of political religion in the context of the rise of
the Cao Dai.
Links
http://iias.leidenuniv.nl/wwwvl/southeast.html
Southeast Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library, from Leiden University.
Information and online resources on all aspects of Southeast Asian
nations.
http://www.radicalparty.org/vietnam/index.php
The Transnational Radical Party is interested on political persecution
around the world, and has much current information on Vietnam.
http://www.uwec.edu/greider/BMRB/culture/student.work/hicksr/
A brief account of the immolation of Thich Quang Duc in Saigon
in 1963 (illustrated).
http://www.religioustolerance.org/caodaism.htm
Exposition of Cao Dai tenets.
http://hoahao.org/default.asp?page=1&ThelosilD=20&IDNumber=450
Hoa Hao Buddhist Review.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Buddhism.
Encyclopedia entry on Buddhism.
http://disc.cba.uh.edu/~lienhoa/history.shtml
Brief chronological summary and discussion of Vietnamese history.
