Page 79 - A Study of Traditional Chinese Religions in Malaysia: The Decline and the Path Towards Revitalization

Chapter Five

Lee Jenn Yuan and Toh Chen Chun

Revitalizing Traditional Chinese Religions in Malaysia: Organizational Leaders’
Perspectives

5.1 Introduction

Religious movements play an important role in renewing and reviving religions. These

movements aim to cause or prevent changes within their religion or to the environments that
are surrounding their religion (Hadden n.d.). In Christianity, this movement has existed for
centuries. Western missions are the outcomes of this movement. The missions propagated

Christianity to non-Western societies and created new dimensions within Christianity.
Evangelical revivalism is a good example of such western missionary. Similarly in Islam,
there are movements to revive Islam. These movements seek to prevent changes by

promoting fundamentalism that is to return to the original teachings of the Koran and Hadith.
In Malaysia, the movement has successfully achieved their objective. Various Islamic

organizations, including political parties are actively pursuing this effort. As a result, since the
1970’s, changes have been felt. Islamic revival has impressed itself on the Muslim population
of Malaysia and become an integral part of the political, economic, ethnic, linguistic and

cultural scene (Nagata 1980).

Meanwhile, in recent times, such movements can be found among TCR too. The
Confucian Revival Movement was one of them. This movement was started by K’ang Yu-

Wei in 1895 and aimed to instate Confucianism as China’s state religion. The movement also

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