1) Confucianism is considered a religious belief system that is largely naturalistic and non-supernatural. It focuses on ethics and human relationships rather than supernatural beings or concepts. 2) Confucius saw himself as a social reformer rather than a religious leader, and his teachings centered around moral conduct and social harmony. He did not claim any divine inspiration. 3) Confucianism emphasizes virtues like benevolence, righteousness, loyalty, and propriety. It teaches that through self-cultivation, one can achieve a state of perfected humanity and goodness.

1. THE RELIGIOUS NATURALISM OF CONFUCIANISM
by Ian Ellis-Jones
A REVISED COPY OF AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SYDNEY UNITARIAN CHURCH
SUNDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2005
There exist a number of belief systems that are ordinarily regarded as being
religious which, when compared and contrasted with a religion such as what
is known as conventional Christianity, are wholly or substantially naturalistic
(non-supernaturalistic). Those belief systems include Buddhism,
Confucianism, religious naturalism, religious humanism, much of modern day
Judaism, New Thought, and modern day Unitarianism and Unitarian
Universalism. Even Shinto has been described as a “naturalistic religion that
grew out of the everday life of the Japanese people in primitive times”.1[1] The
adherents of these belief systems are men and women of faith, too. Their
faith is activated belief and trust in the nature of the cosmos.
Humanist philosopher Corliss Lamont (1965), referring to Buddha and
Confucius, has written that “it seems most unlikely that either of them believed
in supernaturalism in the sense of a personal God and personal
immortality”.2[2]
Insofar as Confucianism is concerned, the teachings of the Chinese sage and
philosopher Confucius, who saw himself as “a social reformer, rather than a
religious leader”,3[3] are “almost entirely concerned with man’s moral conduct
and his social relations”.4[4]
1[1]
See Nippon: The Land and Its People (Tokyo: Nippon Steel Corp, 1982), p 253.
2[2]
Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1965), p 48.
3[3]
Floyd H Ross and Tynette Hills, The Great Religions by Which Men Live (New York:
Fawcett, 1965), p 94.
4[4]
Norman Baker, in J N D Anderson [ed], The World’s Religions (London: Inter-Varsity
Fellowship, 1960), p 161. Luther Yung writes that Confucianism is essentially “an ethical
progamme for human relationships”: Yung, cited in Ernest H Vines, Gems of the East - Or
God in Every Nation: A Booklet on Comparative Religion with a Brief Introduction to Some
rd
Non-Christian Religions, 3 ed (Sydney: West Publishing Corp, 1970), p 58. However,
Confucius’s teachings also relate to the proper use of political power.

2. K'ung Fu Tzu (commonly pronounced Confucius in English, and also known
as Master Kung) was born in 551 BCE in the state of Lu (modern day
Shantung Province) and lived, for the most part in poverty, during the Chou
dynasty. He wandered through many states of China, giving advice to their
rulers, always aiming to bring about a solution (in terms of peace and order) to
the chaos that had engulfed his country for over 2 centuries. Confucius
opined that, for there to be peace and order in society, the individual must first
learn to lead a correct life. Further, as the family was the basic unity of
society, there could be no lasting peace or order in society unless and until
the family was content and happy. Also, there needed to be order in society;
everybody had specific, ordered roles from which there should be no
deviation. One still sees this in Chinese society today.
Lamont notes that Confucius was “much more concerned with political and
social life than Buddha and presented the idea of the noble man in the noble
state”.5[5] Further, Confucius’ teachings, which are “essentially practical”,6[6]
do not even amount to a philosophy in the Western sense of the word, let
alone a religion in any conventional sense. As Strathern (1999) has pointed
out:
Confucius’ teachings do contain references to epistemology, logic,
metaphysics, and aesthetics - the traditional categories of philosophy - but they
are only passing references and form no system.7[7]
As to whether Confucianism is a religion, Strathern writes:
Confucius may have founded a religion (Confucianism), but his teachings were
not religious per se. Nor, in fact, was his religion – and this Chinese puzzle has
certainly contributed to its longevity.8[8]
Assuming for the moment that Confucianism is a religion, it is, as Potter
(1954) points out, very much “the religion of self-help”9[9] - perhaps the first
5[5]
Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1965), p 49.
6[6]
Paul Strathern, The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin Books, 1999), p 32.
7[7]
Paul Strathern, The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin Books, 1999), pp 26-7.
8[8]
Paul Strathern, The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin Books, 1999), p 8.
9[9]
Charles Francis Potter, The Faiths Men Live By (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954;
Kingswood Surrey: World’s Work, 1955), p 51.

3. such religion - with aa bare minimum of metaphysics.10[10] Potter describes
the belief system as the “simple humanistic ethical religion of Master
Kung”.11[11] In that regard, the ethical teachings of Confucianism relate for the
most part to morals and standards of right behavior towards others
encapsulating the following core values:
● Li: includes ritual, propriety, etiquette, decorum, etc
● Hsiao: love within the family: love of parents for their children and of children
for their parents
● Yi: righteousness
● Xin: honesty and trustworthiness
● Jen: benevolence, humaneness towards others; the highest Confucian virtue
● Chung: loyalty to the state, etc.12[12]
Confucius places great emphasis on ren (due consideration for humanity) and
li (ritual and decorum), which he saw as the two basic qualities and ideals.
Potter lists the cardinal ethical virtues of Confucius’ belief system as being the
following:
Wisdom is the virtue Confucius liked to emphasize. The other four of his Five
Cardinal Virtues are Humanity, Uprightness, Decorum, and Truth. He was the
first to make Humanism a religion.13[13]
Indeed, in a manner similar to much Humanist thought, there is an emphasis
on the innate goodness of every human being:
Confucianists often speak of “perfected humanity”. It can be achieved by a
person because of something the Confucianists believe to be present within
each person, even at birth. This is a native goodness or kindly love that can be
developed through feelings of helpfulness toward others.14[14]
Tu Wei-ming, an eminent professor of Chinese history and religion at Harvard,
has also written of the essential humanism of Confucius’ system of ethics:
10[10]
Strathern writes that Confucius nevertheless appears to have believed that the universe
contains a power for good”: The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin Books, 1999), p 9.
11[11]
Charles Francis Potter, The Faiths Men Live By (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954;
Kingswood Surrey: World’s Work, 1955), p 57.
12[12]
B A Robinson, “Confucianism: Founded by K'ung Fu Tzu”
http://www.religioustolerance.org/confuciu.htm [accessed 16/05/2005].
13[13]
Charles Francis Potter, The Faiths Men Live By (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954;
Kingswood Surrey: World’s Work, 1955), p 55.
14[14]
Floyd H Ross and Tynette Hills, The Great Religions by Which Men Live (New York:
Fawcett, 1965), p 91.

4. If we have to choose one word to characterize Confucian ethics, that word
would have to be humanity. The main concern of Confucian ethics is the whole
process of learning to be human. This process involves a total commitment, a
continuous effort of self-refinement or self-improvement and a holistic vision of
the entire project of moral education.15[15]
This is not surprising given that Confucius himself, who, unlike the founders of
most of the world’s religions, claimed no divine revelation from on high.16[16]
Voltaire wrote that Confucius was “the first man who did not receive divine
inspiration”.17[17] Although Confucius did not claim to be divine, he was given
the title “Duke Ni, All-complete and Illustrious” in 1 CE. Further, in 1906 he
was officially deified by imperial decree as the third God of China, the other
two being Heaven and Earth (although the latter were not believed to exert
any appreciable influence on humanity). Until the 1949 revolution,
Confucianism and the Chinese way of life were virtually synonymous. Despite
systematic attempts by the Chinese Communists to eliminate Confucianism
there remains “a “strong undercurrent of Confucianism in Chinese
thought”.18[18]
Not only did Confucius make no claim to being divine he was also “usually
reticent regarding the disciples’ enquiries about the supernatural and
whatever transcends earthly existence”19[19] and avoided speaking about
spirits, even going so far as to say, “While respecting spiritual beings, … keep
aloof from them.”20[20] He was evasive at times on the question of whether he
15[15]
Dr Tu Wei-ming, quoted in Paul Strathern, The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin
Books, 1999), p 45.
16[16]
Charles Francis Potter, The Faiths Men Live By (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954;
Kingswood Surrey: World’s Work, 1955), p 57.
17[17]
Strathern, The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin Books, 1999), p 44.
18[18]
Strathern, The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin Books, 1999), p 2.
19[19]
Norman Baker, in J N D Anderson [ed], The World’s Religions (London: Inter-Varsity
Fellowship, 1960), p 174. Vines writes of Confucius’ “[r]eserve as to spiritual beings [and] the
life after death” but also states that the “contention” that Confucius was an agnostic “seems to
be not proven”: Ernest H Vines, Gems of the East - Or God in Every Nation: A Booklet on
rd
Comparative Religion with a Brief Introduction to Some Non-Christian Religions, 3 ed
(Sydney: West Publishing Corp, 1970), p 56.
20[20]
Analects, Bk VI, 20. Luther Yung writes that Confucius “spoke little of the spiritual life”:
Yung, cited in Ernest H Vines, Gems of the East - Or God in Every Nation: A Booklet on
rd
Comparative Religion with a Brief Introduction to Some Non-Christian Religions, 3 ed
(Sydney: West Publishing Corp, 1970), p 58.

5. 21[21]
was even religious, and “did not claim that what he was teaching was
religion”.22[22]
Accordingly, some scholars have queried whether Confucianism can properly
be regarded as a religion,23[23] as it contains “little speculation about the
meaning and ultimate nature of life”.24[24] Perhaps the most that can be said
on that matter is what follows:
If what [Confucius] taught was not religion, it was at least religious. Confucius
taught his beliefs because he believed they were backed by the nature of
things. His teaching was an attempt to get man in line with reality.25[25]
If that be religious, it is religious in the naturalistic sense - that much is certain.
However, the term Confucianism can also be considered to embrace not just
the actual teachings of Confucius and his leading disciples26[26] but also so
much of early Chinese religion as was adopted by Confucius or otherwise
became incorporated into his teaching as well as the accompanying ritual that
developed “around his name after his death”.27[27] That includes such
practices as ancestor reverence or worship and also the postulated existence
of various kinds of spiritual beings.28[28]
Thus, Charles F Aiken, writing in the 1912 edition of the Catholic
Encyclopedia, describes Confucianism in the following broad terms:
21[21]
See Paul Strathern, The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin Books, 1999), pp 8-9.
22[22]
Floyd H Ross and Tynette Hills, The Great Religions by Which Men Live (New York:
Fawcett, 1965), p 94.
23[23]
See Norman Baker, in J N D Anderson [ed], The World’s Religions (London: Inter-Varsity
Fellowship, 1960), p 161.
24[24]
Paul Strathern, The Essential Confucius (London: Virgin Books, 1999), p 32.
25[25]
Floyd H Ross and Tynette Hills, The Great Religions by Which Men Live (New York:
Fawcett, 1965), p 94.
26[26]
During his lifetime a small group of students came to be associated with Confucius.
27[27]
Norman Baker, in J N D Anderson [ed], The World’s Religions (London: Inter-Varsity
Fellowship, 1960), p 161.
28[28]
Vines writes that in the religious world of the ancient Chinese one Being is pre-eminent
under two names, Shang-ti and Thien (T’ien), with the former standing most pre-eminent as
“almost a monotheism”. “To call it polytheism is doing more than justice to the spirits of hills
and rivers which still fall within the natural system of things.” Ernest H Vines, Gems of the
East - Or God in Every Nation: A Booklet on Comparative Religion with a Brief Introduction to
rd
Some Non-Christian Religions, 3 ed (Sydney: West Publishing Corp, 1970), pp 54-5.

6. By Confucianism is meant the complex system of moral, social, political, and
religious teaching built up by Confucius on the ancient Chinese traditions, and
perpetuated as the State religion down to the present day [sic]. Confucianism
aims at making not simply the man of virtue, but the man of learning and of
good manners. The perfect man must combine the qualities of saint, scholar,
and gentleman. Confucianism is a religion without positive revelation, with a
minimum of dogmatic teaching, whose popular worship is centered in offerings
to the dead, in which the notion of duty is extended beyond the sphere of
morals proper so as to embrace almost every detail of daily life.29[29]
If one has regard to the religious conceptions at the time of Confucius one will
certainly find, as Baker has pointed out, various forms of animism as well as
ancestor worship:
Religious conceptions prevailing at the time of Confucius, furnished by an
ancient native religion, were expressed both in the early writings and in the
popular superstition. His “religion” undoubtedly inculcates the worship of the
forces of nature, or perhaps the spirits which govern natural phenomena.
These spirits, however, are all subject to a personal, Supreme Ruler, who
governs creation. As Shang Ti, He is sacrificed to by the Emperor. As T’ien, or
Heaven, in the impersonal or less personal sense, all men are His generation
and may cry to Him. Filial piety demands also that the departed ancestors shall
not be forgotten, but be worshipped in sacrifice.’ [W E Soothill, The Three
Religions of China.] In other words, from oral and written tradition, four main
features emerge which were adopted by the Confucian system. These were,
first, the conception of Providence; second, the idea of Secondary Spirits; third,
the cult of Ancestor Worship; and fourth, the institution of the Imperial
Sacrifice.30[30]
However, even if Confucianism is understood in these wider more inclusive
terms, the fact remains that the religion in itself is highly rationalistic,
possessing “no supernatural concept of the sacred or ideas about salvation
and a future life” and “no doctrine of salvation”,31[31] certainly not as those
29[29]
Charles F Aiken, “Confucianism”, Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) [Online]
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04223b.htm [accessed 16/05/2005]. Confucianism is, of
course, no longer the “State religion” of China.
30[30]
Norman Baker, in J N D Anderson [ed], The World’s Religions (London: Inter-Varsity
Fellowship, 1960), p 165.
31[31]
Living Without Religion: Eupraxophy (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1994), p
66. It should be noted that the San Chiao (“Three Religions”) of Confucianism, Taoism and
Buddhism often intermingle and peacefully coexist. Confucianism provides the moral and
social ethics, Taoism contributes a sense of communion with nature with concomitant duties
and responsibilities, and Buddhism provides the notion of karma and the doctrine of rebirth.
All three religions are “not regarded by the Chinese as mutually exclusive systems, but are
recognized moods of China’s religious consciousness”: Norman Baker, in J N D Anderson
[ed], The World’s Religions (London: Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1960), p 161. However, Ross
points out that Confucianists often accuse both Buddhists and Taoists of turning their backs
on other human beings “seeking after what was best for them personally”: Floyd H Ross and
Tynette Hills, The Great Religions by Which Men Live (New York: Fawcett, 1965), p 96.
Taoism would appear to be predominant: “From the dawn of Chinese history it seems that the

7. terms are ordinarily understood in Western religion, and for the most part the
sheer down-to-earth practicality of Confucius’ teachings stands in objective
contradistinction to the “puerile and profitless superstitions into which, in his
day, the popular religion had sunk”.32[32] Chinese author Lin Yutang has
written that Confucius was a true Humanist and that Confucianism is “Chinese
Humanism”33[33] in which there is a total love of life and the things of this
world:
For the Chinese the end of life lies not in life after death, for the idea that we
live in order to die, as taught by Christianity, is incomprehensible; nor In
Nirvana, for that is too metaphysical; nor in the satisfaction of
accomplishment, for that is too vainglorious; nor yet in progress for progress’s
sake, for that is meaningless. The true end, the Chinese have decided in a
singularly clear manner, lies in the enjoyment of a simple life, especially the
family life, and in harmonious social relationships. … There is no doubt that
the Chinese are in love with life, in love with this earth, and will not forsake it
for an invisible heaven. They are in love with life, which is so sad and yet so
beautiful, and in which moments of happiness are so precious because they
are so transient.34[34]
What can we Unitarians learn from Confucianism? First and foremost, we can
learn that no system of morality or code of ethical behaviour is honourable or
of any practical utility unless it has, as its essence and motivation, the
cultivation of loving kindness, generosity, moral equanimity, honesty, self-
reliance and awareness of self and others. In addition, any system of morality
and code of ethics must have a principle-based context in the wider society of
which its adherents are members. Much the same sentiment was expressed
by the American Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Chinese have held but one reigion, that of the TAO. This religious concept has permeated all
Chinese culture, life and art and literature.” Luther Yung, cited in Ernest H Vines, Gems of
the East - Or God in Every Nation: A Booklet on Comparative Religion with a Brief
rd
Introduction to Some Non-Christian Religions, 3 ed (Sydney: West Publishing Corp, 1970), p
58.
32[32]
Norman Baker, in J N D Anderson [ed], The World’s Religions (London: Inter-Varsity
Fellowship, 1960), p 174.
33[33]
See Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1965), p
49.
34[34]
Lin Yutang, My Country and My People (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1935), pp
101, 103.

8. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but
the triumph of principles.35[35]
35[35]
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, in V Hanson and C Pedersen [comp], The Sage from Concord:
The Essence of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Wheaton IL: Theosophical Publishing House [Quest
Books], 1985), p 14.