Introduction

In this book, we review the different methods that colleagues have employed in the study of religion in China in the last few decades. We have aimed to state what they have accomplished so far and in doing so, we seek to understand why we end up with the existing research trajectories and which new paths we can design in the future to improve the study of Chinese religions. To achieve these aims, we have divided this introductory chapter into three sections. Firstly, we look at the main questions that the existing scholarship has left unanswered and the obstacles that remain in trying to answer them. Then, we outline the themes and the arguments of the chapters in this book, before presenting how this book differs from the existing scholarship, and which new research it could inspire. A major challenge we face in the study of religion in China is to decidewhether one should look at it in the plural, and focus on different religious traditions, or like Lopez (1996) proposes, look beyond this diversity to find elemental forms of Chinese religion shared by all traditions