Yesterday, I attended a conference. At the event, an elderly professor from a university in Beijing said with deep sorrow, “The discipline of religious studies at our university is about to disappear!” Upon hearing this, I felt a deep sense of empathy, and my emotions were a mix of sadness and frustration. For this professor, religious studies is an important discipline; however, for certain leaders, it is considered dispensable—they even suspect that researching religion is tantamount to spreading it. But aren’t we currently discussing the “building of the three teams”? If the teams themselves no longer exist, how can we build them? That is why we are currently facing such division and chaos. Given current trends, the discipline of religious studies may indeed disappear in three to five years.
The number of religious adherents is declining, the enthusiasm for religious activities is waning, and academic research on religions has come to a halt—is this a good thing? In the eyes of some leaders, it may seem so, but in reality, it merely passes the problem on to future generations. As religious activities go underground and become clandestine, and religious issues cannot be addressed and studied in a timely manner, the harm becomes even greater. Religion and culture are inseparable (though some leaders believe religion is not culture); if religion disappears, culture will inevitably decline. Without its own cultural traditions, the spiritual realm will inevitably become a vacuum, and the consequences will be terrifying.
I am not defending religion or religious studies; I simply want to point out that the amount of space a society grants to religion actually reflects that society’s level of tolerance and freedom.
