The De teaching (

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

: 德教 ''Dejiao'', "teaching of virtue", the concept of De), whose corporate name is the Church of Virtue (德教会 ''Déjiàohuì''), is a sect rooted in

Taoism Taoism (, ) or Daoism () refers to either a school of Philosophy, philosophical thought (道家; ''daojia'') or to a religion (道教; ''daojiao''), both of which share ideas and concepts of China, Chinese origin and emphasize living in harmo ...

, that was founded in 1945 in

Chaozhou Chaozhou (), alternatively Chiuchow, Chaochow or Teochew, is a city in the eastern Guangdong province of China. It borders Shantou to the south, Jieyang to the southwest, Meizhou to the northwest, the province of Fujian to the east, and the Sou ...

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

. It is popular both in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

and amongst expatriate Chinese populations.Formoso 2010.

History

Originally a reaction of

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritu ...

s to the Japanese occupation of

, it blossomed in the wave of religious innovation after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

.Formoso 2007. After the communist takeover in

Mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...

in 1949 the De faith spread to

Overseas Chinese Overseas Chinese () refers to people of Chinese birth or ethnicity who reside outside Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. Terminology () or ''Hoan-kheh'' () in Hokkien, refe ...

communities in

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

. In recent decades, it has spread back to

and started a worldwide expansion effort.

References

Bibliography

* Bernard Formoso.
De Jiao - A Religious Movement in Contemporary China and Overseas: Purple Qi from the East
'. National University of Singapore, 2010. * Bernard Formoso
''A Wishful Thinking Claim to Global Expansion? The Case of De Jiao (德教)''
. Asia Research Institute Working Paper No. 96, Université Paris X Nanterre, Sept. 2007, 27 pp. * Kazuo Yoshihara.
Dejiao: A Chinese Religion in Southeast Asia
'. ''Japanese Journal of Religious Studies'', Vol. 15, No. 2/3, ''Folk Religion and Religious Organizations in Asia'' (Jun. - Sep., 1988), pp. 199–221. Published by: Nanzan University * Chee Beng Tan.
The Development and Distribution of Dejiao Associations in Malaysia and Singapore, A Study on a Religious Organization
'. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Occasional Paper n. 79. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1985.

External links

Main website
{{Authority control Chinese salvationist religions East Asian religions Religion in Taiwan