Respecting our ancestors: Christianity & the Confucian tradition

Commonweal, Jan 14, 2005 by Wan-Li Ho

In the spring of 2002, I attended my first Passover Seder, sponsored by Emory University's Hillel Foundation. As a Christian, I learned much about the roots of the Last Supper. As a Chinese woman, I was particularly impressed by the arrangement of the Seder table with its cup of wine for Elijah, poured in expectation of the noble prophet's appearance. In a reassuring way, it reminded me of my childhood in Taiwan. There, for every major festival--such as New Year, the mid-autumn Moon Festival, and Tomb-Sweeping Day, when Chinese visit their ancestral tombs--we would celebrate family reunions. Like many Chinese, my parents, although first-generation Christians, were steeped in the Confucian tradition of ancestor veneration. So it was natural for us to observe these occasions as festivals of remembrance. Originally held at the ancestral tomb, they are now typically marked at home, with the family lighting candles and offering flowers, fruit, wine, and food at the household shrine.

We children helped arrange the dining table for these celebrations, and my father would always instruct us to leave two empty chairs for our male (Taigong) and female (Taipo) ancestors, and to set out two bowls of rice, two pairs of chopsticks, and two cups of fine wine. No one was to touch these place settings. Our parents would then initiate the gatherings by leading us children to the decorated ancestral shrine. On it were listed the names of our foremost ancestors, and to the side was a longer genealogical list tracing the full family line. From these we learned our roots, and also how our family had migrated from place to place. Reading these great rosters, I felt as if I were standing at the intersection of my family's past, present, and future. Suddenly, all that family history was vibrant and immediate, evoking in me a sense of community and belonging.

We would then all bow before the shrine, and my father would place incense on the altar. "I bring all my offspring here to pay their respects to you," he would say. "Although we are Christians now, we need to remember our ancestors, and hope you bless us all." Then we would repeat the same ritual at the shrine of my mother's ancestors.

As a young, second-generation Christian, I was sometimes ambivalent about these rituals. Protestants in Taiwan were encouraged to shun the practice of ancestral veneration. Conversion to Christianity frequently meant breaking ties not only with these traditions but with one's family. I heard many Christians describe how their families had rejected them for failing to perform the ancestral rites. My father, one of the first in his family to convert, must have experienced some sense of tension. Throughout his life, he seemed to be involved in his own form of multi-religious dialogue. For as a committed Christian, he continued to observe these Confucian family traditions, and he made sure his children understood why: "Without our ancestors, we would not be here, and therefore we should not stop paying our respects to them."

After the opening rituals, we would gather at a large round table in our home, bowing our heads, and my father would pray: "O Lord, thank you for bringing peace and safety to our family so far. We hope that you will continue to bless us." His point was that it was important both to talk to our ancestors and to pray to God. Then, as everyone sat down at the table, he would welcome the Taigong and Taipo. "Please enjoy a meal with us," he would say, and the family banquet would begin.

Another reason these rituals were an unforgettable part of my childhood was that my father would always recount how he became a Christian. In 1949, the year the People's Republic of China was established, he fled to Hong Kong with his first wife and children. He was so poor that when his wife died, soon after their arrival, he didn't have the money to bury her. His landlady, a devout Christian, bought the coffin to bury my father's wife, and even allowed him to live rent free for a period. My father was so deeply moved by these acts of kindness that he later converted to Christianity.

I was raised as a devout Christian, but as I have grown older, I have come to appreciate the importance my father placed on moral conduct (ren), and how in Chinese culture it is molded essentially by the family. At all times, the individual is related to the family--past and present. Similarly, Chinese even see the country or the nation as an extended family. In this complex kinship network, individuals are taught that filial piety is the highest moral value. The specific demands of kinship and family come first, and only then the more universal demands of legal regulations or religious principles. My father cultivated this moral sense in us. Thus, we were taught that Confucianism, as a dominant religion or value system of the Chinese people, had helped maintain order in the household and contributed to social stability and unity.

Besides these Confucian ideals, my father also practiced a Daoist lifestyle, based on the teachings of Lao Tzu. That system holds that one must follow nature's way in one's life. When I was young, my father taught me to observe the particular color of each leaf, and pointed out that the shape of every tree is unique, that the height of each mountain is distinct. He also fostered an aesthetic sense, one that appraised reality in light of how things harmonize with nature, and thus enhance one's inborn self. My siblings and I were encouraged to pursue whatever interested us, but whatever we were involved in had to be undertaken with the utmost attention and seriousness. My father taught us to enjoy the beauty of day-to-day life. When I eventually majored in Chinese literature at the university, he reminded me that if I were to be a great author, I must also be an artist of everyday living, harmonizing nature both inside and out.