page_title: Chinese salvationist religions
section_title: Geography and diffusion
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese salvationist religions / Geography and diffusion
caption_attribution_description: Analysis of the diffusion of influence of the folk religious sects (民間宗教 mínjiān zōngjiào, 民间教门 mínjiān jiàomén or 民间教派 mínjiān jiàopài), and Confucian churches and jiaohua (transformative teachings) in China, according to different sources including: incomplete data on organised folk religions by province from the World Religion Database represented in a map by Harvard University; contemporary scholars' fieldwork describing the proliferation of Confucian churches in Shandong and other provinces; historical data of the membership of folk sects and Confucian churches in the Japanese-controlled state of Manchuria.
context_page_description: Chinese salvationist religions or Chinese folk religious sects are a Chinese religious tradition characterised by a concern for salvation of the person and the society. They are distinguished by egalitarianism, a founding charismatic person often informed by a divine revelation, a specific theology written in holy texts, a millenarian eschatology and a voluntary path of salvation, an embodied experience of the numinous through healing and self-cultivation, and an expansive orientation through evangelism and philanthropy.
  Some scholars consider these religions a single phenomenon, and others consider them the fourth great Chinese religious category alongside the well-established Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. Generally these religions focus on the worship of the universal God, represented as either male, female, or genderless, and regard their holy patriarchs as embodiments of God.
context_section_description: The Chinese folk religious movements of salvation are mostly concentrated in northern and northeastern China, although with a significant influence reaching the Yangtze River Delta since the 16th century. The northern provinces have been a fertile ground for the movements of salvation because of a number of reasons: ① firstly, popular religious movements were active in the region already in the Han dynasty, and they deeply penetrated local society; ② secondly, northern provinces are characterised by social mobility around the capital and weak traditional social structure, thus folk religious movements of salvation fulfill the demand of individual searching for new forms of community and social network.
  According to the Chinese General Social Survey of 2012, approximately 2.2% of the population of China, which is around 30 million people, claim to be members of folk religious sects. The actual number of followers may be higher, about the same as the number of members of the five state-sanctioned religions of China if counted together. In Taiwan, recognised folk religious movements of salvation gather approximately 10% of the population as of the mid-2000s.
caption: Geographic distribution of influence of China's popular religious sects.
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