Cao Dai is a highly syncretic monotheistic religion that seeks to establish a basis upon which major world religions can be united.
History is divided into three periods of revelation.
The first period was around 2500 BCE, a time when God inspired the establishment of Judaism, Hinduism and early Chinese religion. The second period coincided with the emergence of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. These divinely inspired religions became corrupted because they came to be associated with their founders rather than recognised as truly universal religions. The message of Cao Dai is that all religions are in fact one even though they have different names. Cao Dai venerates a host of different figures including Victor Hugo, Sun Yat Sen, and Trangh Trinh, a 16th century Vietnamese poet and philosopher.