Taiwan Today

Religious studies are becoming more of a part of mainstream education in Taiwan.

On a cloudy and cool autumn afternoon, the atmosphere at Dharma Drum Buddhist College (DDBC) in Jinshan on the northern coast of Taiwan is especially serene. “You can feel that it’s a religious atmosphere here,” says DDBC student Xu Tian-zhi, comparing the school with National Yang Ming University in Taipei City, where she majored in nursing as an undergraduate. “Here, the college provides only vegetarian food and you’re asked not to bring meat on campus,” says Xu, who is in the third year of a master’s degree program in Buddhist studies at DDBC.

In Taiwan, formal education in religion takes place in divinity schools and universities, with the latter serving student needs through religious studies departments and graduate schools. While those studying the subject at universities learn about religions in general and tend to be more focused on earning accredited degrees than their peers in divinity schools, most divinity students pursue their chosen educational path with an eye to learning more about their faith or becoming lay religious workers, clergy, or monks or nuns.

As a divinity school offering courses in Buddhist practices and aiming to cultivate and educate Buddhist monks, nuns and lay practitioners, DDBC is actually quite different from most other institutions of higher education in Taiwan. Xu, for example, is working to accumulate the total of 44 credits needed to receive a master’s degree from DDBC, with eight of them coming from courses like morning chanting and nighttime meditation. Each semester, both undergraduate and graduate students at DDBC are required to attend a week of meditation classes, which start at 4:30 a.m. and last until 9:40 p.m. each day. Participants must eat, sleep and meditate in the DDBC meditation hall for seven consecutive days. They are not allowed to talk or doze off during the meditation sessions, either, although Xu notes that the instructors usually ignore minor violations. “In the meditation class, I felt so concentrated,” she says. “I wasn’t thinking of mundane concerns. It was great.”

This year, DDBC will recruit 20 students for its undergraduate department and another 20 for its graduate school. Slots in the graduate section are split evenly between lay practitioners and monks and nuns. “We don’t encourage or discourage the students to be monks or nuns. Whether laymen or not, they can make contributions to society,” says Huimin Bhiksu, president of DDBC.

The religious practices taught at DDBC are a relatively new phenomenon for an accredited school in Taiwan, as the Private School Act, which was promulgated in 1974, previously barred schools officially accredited by the Ministry of Education (MOE) from requiring students to participate in religious rites or take courses in which religious rites were performed. The original laws effectively barred divinity schools as official institutions of higher learning, thus preventing their accreditation. The Private School Act was amended in 2004 to exempt divinity schools from this restriction, and the changes have served to improve the once marginal status of divinity schools in Taiwan’s formal educational system.

Three years after the act was amended, DDBC, for example, was founded by the late Master Sheng Yen, a venerated monk and also the founder of Buddhist organization Dharma Drum Mountain. The opening of DDBC marked the first time in Taiwan that a non-university-based divinity school was free to teach religious practices while retaining its accreditation, which DDBC received from the MOE prior to accepting its first student.

Currently, Taiwan has four accredited divinity schools, with three affiliated with the Buddhist faith and one with Christianity—DDBC; Huafan University in Taipei County; Fo Guang University in Yilan, northern Taiwan; and Chang Jung Christian University in Tainan, southern Taiwan. Of these four divinity schools, Huafan, Fo Guang and Chang Jung’s are university-based, while DDBC is independent. Twelve other divinity schools have applied for accredited status, with two—Taiwan Baptist Theological Seminary (TBTS) in Taipei and the Chong-De School founded by I-Kuan Tao denomination Fa-Yi in Nantou County, central Taiwan—having already gained preliminary approval from the MOE.

Recent Phenomenon

While the quest for accreditation by local divinity schools is a relatively recent phenomenon, several of them actually have long histories on the island. Tainan Theological College and Seminary in southern Taiwan and Taiwan Theological College and Seminary in Taipei, both affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, were founded in the 1870s and 1880s during the period of Qing dynasty rule in Taiwan (1683−1895). TBTS first began to recruit students in 1955, and Chung Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies began accepting its first graduate students in 1981 while operating under Chinese Culture University in Taipei. Although it did not require students to take courses in religious practices, Chung Hwa was not an accredited school and operated as a quasi-divinity school until 2007. The institute now operates directly under Dharma Drum Mountain. Master Sheng Yen, who passed away early last year, began overseeing the institute’s operations in 1985, and Huimin Bhiksu, the current DDBC president, was enrolled at Chung Hwa in 1982 before going on to earn a Ph.D. in Buddhist research in the early 1990s from Tokyo University. The institute stopped recruiting students after DDBC was founded and now focuses exclusively on research.

Regardless of how long they have been operating, many of Taiwan’s existing divinity schools have mixed feelings about entering the official education system by becoming accredited. Graduates of some of the unaccredited local schools who plan to venture abroad for further studies, for example, have been able to find overseas schools that recognize the diplomas they have acquired in Taiwan, irrespective of the MOE’s stamp of approval. For example, some graduates of TBTS, which is not yet formally accredited, have gone on to advanced studies in well-known schools like Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas of the United States.

Another reason that accreditation has not been seen as critical is that for students who are working toward the goal of becoming Buddhist monks or nuns or Christian clergy, diplomas, whether officially recognized by the government or not, are just not that important. TBTS again serves as a good example, as over the course of nearly 55 years, around 1,000 students have graduated without the benefit of diplomas accredited by Taiwan’s MOE, yet the vast majority has gone on to become pastors and missionaries at home and abroad.

Not all divinity schools, however, are able to meet the requirements for accreditation. Independent schools, for example, must own at least 2 hectares of developable land and have accumulated NT$50 million (US$1.5 million) in funding before they can become accredited.

Although divinity schools may not place the same importance on accreditation as Taiwan’s secular universities, they do realize that there are several clear benefits of taking that step. “With an accredited diploma, students can seek further study in Taiwan’s official education system,” Huimin Bhiksu says. “In addition, the selection of faculty is wider for an accredited school; more teachers are willing to come to DDBC because the promotions they receive here are officially recognized in other accredited schools as well.”

Good for the Image

“The change [in the Private School Act] is good for the image of Christianity and the image of religions in general,” says Tsai Rei-yi, president of TBTS, which later this year is expected to become the fifth officially accredited divinity school in Taiwan. “It reminds the public that Taiwan’s society is pluralistic when it comes to religion.” Tsai, who studied at TBTS from 1975 to 1978 despite strong opposition from his parents, also believes the change in the act will help recruiting, noting that some students who initially planned to enroll at TBTS last year decided to postpone their studies until this year, as their parents wanted them to wait until the school is officially accredited.

Without a doubt, as the Private School Act has loosened up, it has become easier for divinity schools to attract students and professors. On the other hand, Taiwan’s secular university departments and graduate schools, which emphasize imparting general knowledge about the world’s major religions, are seeing their ability to recruit new students affected by the rise of the divinity schools. “In the past, there were students who would have preferred to go to divinity schools, but ended up in university religious studies departments and graduate schools because they wanted an official diploma, which divinity schools couldn’t award back then,” says Tsai Yuan-lin, an assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of Religious Studies at National Chengchi University (NCCU) and concurrently the director of the Taiwan Association for Religious Studies, which was established in 1999.

“I don’t think you’ll see new religious studies sections established at universities now that the MOE has started to accredit divinity schools,” says Teresa Wong, director of the Department of Religion at Fu Jen Catholic University, which established the first sections of general studies in religion at a university in Taiwan. Fu Jen founded Taiwan’s first graduate school of general religious studies in 1988 before setting up the first department of general religious studies in 1992.

Emerging at a much later time than their counterparts in the West, Wong says these educational sections at universities treat religion as an academic research subject and offer a selection of courses covering different faiths. “Our department was established to boost dialogue and reduce misunderstandings between religions, echoing the reflections in the Catholic circle following the second Ecumenical Council in the Vatican [from 1962 to 1965] on the need to enhance mutual understanding between Catholicism and other faiths,” Wong says.

Most university religious studies departments and graduate schools were established between 1998 and 2002, a phenomenon that Tsai thinks was strongly tied to the “spiritual reform” movement announced in 1996 by the then President Lee Teng-hui, who is known as a pious Christian. Currently 10 universities around Taiwan have established religious studies departments and graduate schools, with nine of them affiliated with either Buddhism or Christianity. “For the most part, only religious-affiliated schools have shown a willingness to open such sections,” Tsai explains. “Most other universities tend to think they are just a burden on their finances.”

NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Religious Studies, which started to recruit students in 2000, is the exception as it is the only national-level, non-religiously affiliated university graduate department of its type in Taiwan. It also stands out because its courses give equal attention to all of the world’s major religions, although the institute’s doctoral program began focusing on East Asian religions last year. “Private universities affiliated with a particular religion have a preference for their own faith,” Tsai says. “Half to two-thirds of the courses opened by these schools are about the religions they are affiliated with.”

Tsai Yen-zen, who was the main figure behind the founding of NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Religious Studies and is now its director, notes that the institute has also distinguished itself by conducting interdisciplinary research, thanks to the university’s strength in humanities. “We discuss the relationship between religion and other fields ranging from art and gender studies to law and politics. This is impossible in other universities,” the academic says.

A relatively new interdisciplinary course at the NCCU institute covers the relationship between religion and ecology. “Most religions are serious about living a frugal life and reducing demands for material possessions, which is good for our environment,” Tsai Yen-zen says. “But some religious practices can disturb the ecological system, such as the Buddhist practice of releasing captured animals out of pity into an alien environment.”

NCCU and its Graduate Institute of Religious Studies are also notable for devoting academic resources to Islamic studies via the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, the only department of its kind in Taiwan, as well as to the university’s Center for the Study of Islamic Civilization and Thoughts, which is also the only one of its kind on the island. Moreover, the establishment of the Taiwan Association of Islamic Studies in September 2009 came about largely through the joint effort of scholars from NCCU.

Educational Mainstream

Although religious studies are becoming more of a part of the educational mainstream, the field is still by no means a popular choice for students, since most believe it does not offer great job prospects. In fact, many students who major in religious studies at universities go on to pursue careers that have little to do with religion. A 2003 survey conducted by Fu Jen Catholic University’s Department of Religion of 253 graduates who had earned bachelor’s or master’s degrees from the department, for example, indicated that 29 percent opted for further study—both in religious and non-religious subjects—after graduation, followed by 18 percent who took teaching posts and just 8 percent who chose religion-related careers such as working as chaplains at hospitals.

Of course, for those who do not put a priority on pursuing worldly success, the risk of little financial gain after pursuing religious studies at university departments and graduate schools is not an issue. “I decided to get into Buddhist studies simply because I’m interested,” says Liu Sing-song, who returned to study as a full-time student for three years at Chung Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies after working for more than 20 years, despite the institute’s inability to confer an accredited diploma. “With advances in natural science and pluralism developing in society, people might see religions as playing a more minor role than before,” adds Liu, who is currently studying for a Ph.D. at NCCU’s Graduate Institute of Religious Studies. “But many problems still can’t be solved with science today. These are intrinsically religious issues.”

It is even less likely for students at divinity schools to have chosen their path in pursuit of material gain. One reason for this is that many of the divinity students have already achieved worldly success, both in their studies and at work. For example, of the total of 49 students now pursuing master’s degrees at DDBC’s graduate school, many have already earned undergraduate degrees from prestigious universities, including nine from National Taiwan University, the best-known university in Taiwan.

For Yang Liang-chu, who already holds a master’s degree in education from a university in the United States and formerly earned a stable income as a high school teacher in Taiwan, his present divinity studies at TBTS have little to do with the common preoccupations of seeking wealth and fame. “I just want to learn more about my faith so that I can do a better job of inspiring young people,” says Yang, a devout Christian.

While religious studies are deemed by some to be of marginal utility and possibly even useless, for others they assume a role of overarching importance. For scholars like Tsai Yen-zen, religious studies are essential for building harmonious relations among the world’s major faiths. For Yang, earning a diploma accredited by the government pales in comparison with the spiritual fulfillment that can be gained through further religious studies, as well as with the simple urge he feels to spread the word of God.

Write to Oscar Chung at oscar@mail.gio.gov.tw