Asia Research Institute

Working Paper Series No. 161

The Eternal Mother and the State:

Circumventing Religious Management in Singapore

Francis Lim Khek Gee

Division of Sociology,

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

fkglim@ntu.edu.sg

August 2011
ARI Working Paper No. 161 Asia Research Institute ● Singapore

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ARI Working Paper No. 161 Asia Research Institute ● Singapore

The Eternal Mother and the State:

Circumventing Religious Management in Singapore

INTRODUCTION

The event is touted as a “Vegetarian Food Carnival”, held on the ground floor public space of
a government flat in the northern part of Singapore. Scrumptious vegetarian dishes have been
prepared by members of the Hua Yuan Hui (a pseudonym), a large charitable organisation
which was set up to provide social welfare services to Singaporeans. It also runs regular
classes on various aspects of traditional Chinese culture, including sessions on the classic
texts of Confucianism, Daoism and Chinese Buddhism. The vegetarian food carnival is one
of the many outreach activities that the organisation periodically holds throughout different
parts of Singapore to attract new members. This particular event that I attend as part of my
research with the organisation has a contemporary theme: “Healthy People, Healthy Earth”.
On the leaflets to publicise the event, Paul McCartney, the ex-Beatles, is quoted for his view
on the importance of giving up meat to save the planet. On a more “scientific” note, reference
is also made to a Wall Street Journal report that “[i]t takes eight times as much water to
produce a pound of beef than it takes to produce a loaf of bread”. Why should the Hua Yuan
Hui be concerned with promoting vegetarianism? Nothing in its official constitution
registered with the Registrar of Society in Singapore and its social welfare projects show
promulgating the benefits of vegetarianism as one of its chief concerns. In fact, the question
concerning vegetarianism is precisely what the organisers of the food carnival would like
non-members to ask when they attend the event, so that members could explain the religious
reason for turning vegetarian. Hua Yuan Hui is actually an organisation established by the
transnational Chinese religious sect, the Yiguan Dao or Tian Dao, which advocates
vegetarianism as one of its key religious doctrines to avoid bad karma that aids followers on
the path to spiritual salvation. Many members of the Yiguan Dao in Singapore (and
especially Taiwan) run vegetarian hawker stores and restaurants and supply the catering for
the organisation’s events. Invitees to these food carnivals who express an interest or some
sympathy with the religious ideas of the Yiguan Dao are then encouraged to receive the
“secret teachings” by undergoing an initiation ceremony, usually held in an apartment of that
particular housing block which has been converted into a domestic temple, or “Buddha hall”
(fotang). The domestic temples of the Yiguan Dao are at the same time public places of
worship as they serve the communities of devotees who live in the neighbourhoods. Almost
two thousand such temples are dispersed across Singapore, and new ones are constantly being
established, inhabiting the interstices of modernist spaces of urban planning while escaping
the state’s grasp in the form of religious regulations.

Most modern states have policies for the management of religion. For those with diverse
religious communities, such as Singapore, the question of how to ensure the peaceful
coexistence of various religions becomes an important challenge for the governments
involved. This is more so under contemporary conditions of globalisation whereby the
movements of diverse peoples across nation-state boundaries could facilitate to the creation
of diasporas, and resulting from this, the challenge of assimilating these new groups into
existing social, cultural and political orders. For the management of religion, modern secular
states often actively delineate the “proper” domain for religion in society, and to harness
religious forces for nation-building purposes (Marty, 2000; Madsen and Strong, 2003). This
can be achieved by stipulating through legal or constitutional means the extent to which
religion can influence public policy and politics, or, in relation to this, through the guarantee

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of religious freedom for citizens as part of their social rights within the boundary of the
“private” sphere defined by the state. In the case of Singapore, the state actively constructs a
domain that in its view religion should operate (Sinha, 1999, 2005). The state’s active
involvement in regulating religious affairs is often rationalized in terms of maintaining
religious and ethnic harmony in this multi-religious and multi-ethnic country (Lai, 2010).
However, as I shall be discussing in this paper, the extent to which the state is able to regulate
religion is dependent upon two important considerations. The first relates to how the state
defines “religion”, and following from this, what groups are considered “religious” and
would hence constitute the targets of state policies. The second consideration is the active
responses of religious groups in terms of their adaptive strategies in negotiating,
accommodating or resisting the state’s effort in surveillance and regulation.

The religious sect that I shall examine here, the Yiguan Dao, in some important contexts does
not identify itself publicly as a “religion”, but adopts a more “secular” identity in its official
dealings with the public and the state. By “secular”, and “secularisation”, I mean,
respectively, an orientation towards “worldly” affairs, and “conformity with this world where
religious group or religiously-informed society turns its attention from the supernatural and
becomes more and more interested in this world” (Shiner 1967, p. 211; also Fox, 2010; Stark
1985). Hence, in this paper, I do not use the term “secularisation” in the sense formulated by
Bryan Wilson and others as a process whereby religion in general loses its public significance
in modern societies (Hanson, 1997). As we shall see, one of the Yiguan Dao’s most important
proselytizing efforts is not conducted in the public “religious domain” as defined by the
Singaporean state, hence overcoming certain restrictions faced by the other public religions.
It also takes advantage of the restrictions that the state itself faces in civil society in the
structural distinction between the public and the private spheres of the modern nation-state. It
operates chiefly within the domain marked out by the state as “secular” and “non-religious”,
and engaged in a paradoxical effort of organisational secularisation and sacralisation of
secular spaces. Specifically, I examine how the Yiguan Dao has become increasingly “this­
worldly” to accommodate state agenda and as a means to operate in a perceived hostile
environment. Further, I utilise the concept of religious territoriality to show how the group
propagates through spatial practices that transform officially secular spaces into religious
ones, while avoiding some of the severe limitations faced by other religions operating in the
country.

I first got acquainted with the sect in 2006 when my uncle converted his government flat into
a domestic temple that functioned as a place of worship for devotees residing in the
neighbourhood. The significance of the presence of the sect in Singapore dawned on me as I
realised from interviews with my uncle and the worshippers that this temple was just one of
many others in residential properties, private or government-owned. Prior to this, I had not
been aware that Yiguan Dao had established its presence in Singapore despite my own
research interest on religion in Singapore. Since 2007 I have been conducting participation
observation among the Yiguan Dao, by becoming a member of one domestic temple and
participating in its religious activities, such as the worship of important deities on the 1st and
15th day of each month in the lunar calendar. I also regularly attend the many classes,
seminars and public talks held at either one of the three huge public temples. In addition to
participant observation, I have also conducted formal and semi-formal interviews with
ordinary members and leaders of the sect. In 2008 I visited the headquarters of one of the
Yiguan Dao divisions in Taichung, Taiwan, to learn more about the operation of the sect in
relation to its overseas activities.

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THE YIGUAN DAO AND ITS TRANSMISSION TO SINGAPORE1

There are various interpretations of the history of Yiguan Dao (“One-Thread Dao”; Unity
Way), a religious sect of popular Chinese religion that is often referred to as Tian Dao
(Celestial Way). To its adherents, the sect’s modern founders in the nineteenth century are
part of a lineage of prominent saints who have appeared throughout history to lead mankind
to salvation by teaching the correct paths to be re-united with the primordial creator of all, the
Dao. Duara (2003) has characterised groups like the Yiguan Dao as “redemptive societies”,
based on their focus on offering redemption from sins for members. Daniel Overmyer (1976,
p. 150) argues that sects like Yiguan Dao should be considered a form of “folk Buddhism”
due to its belief in the central role of Maitreya (Chin. mile fo) in human salvation, the
influence of important Buddhist scriptures such as the Diamond, Heart and Pure Land sutras,
and its theory of cyclic decay involving the three periods of dharma. Other scholars, while
acknowledging the Buddhist influence, have linked the Yiguan Dao to Chinese folk religion
whose beliefs and practices are the result of a history of syncretism of major Chinese
religious philosophical and religious traditions (Bosco, 1994; Lu and Graeme, 2006; see also
Wee 1997 [1976]). In Yiguan Dao’s theology one can also find strong elements of Daoist
millenarianism that can be traced to the ideals of the Taiping Dao in the form of the Dao
incarnate to save the world in the impending apocalypse (cf. Seidel 1984). Like many other
Chinese sects, the core essence of Yiguan Dao theological system is the syncretism of the
three major Chinese traditions of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism. In recent years, the
religious syncretism embraces Christianity and Islam as well, by rationalising that all
religions are derivatives of the ultimate principle, the Dao.

For the Yiguan Dao, salvation is found in the re-uniting with the Dao upon one’s death. The
Dao is personified by the Venerable Eternal Mother, or laomu2. Important means to achieve
salvation include participation in congregational rituals, attending teaching sessions, and
engaging in mutual aid. The Yiguan Dao also reverts the stages of eschatological progress
commonly found in orthodox Chinese religions by offering “attainment before cultivation”
(xiande er haoxiu ).

At present, the frequent occurrence of great calamities signals the decline and
destruction of the human race. This is because social morality has declined
and mankind has lost his belief and faith in God…However, under the grace of
our “Heavenly Mother” who could not bear the destruction of innocent people
along with the evil ones, the “Tao” is being disseminated to save those who
are virtuous and good (Elementary Class n.d.: 2).

The term “attainment” in Yiguan Dao refers to the acquiring of the knowledge of the “right
path or way” (Dao) to return to Heaven and be re-united with the Venerable Eternal Mother.
One’s “attainment” is assured when one is conferred the Three Treasures, namely, the
Heavenly Portal (xuanguan qiao), the Divine Mantra (koujüe ), and the Holy Symbolic Seal
(hetong) while undergoing the rite of initiation.

Yiguan Dao’s teachings on ethics draw mainly from Buddhist injunctions and Confucian
principles of proper human relationships, underpinned by the doctrine of karma (Overmyer
1981, p. 158). The Yiguan Dao utilises both the canonical texts of orthodox Buddhism and
Confucianism (such as the Heart Sutra, The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean,
Three Character Classics), as well as a body of literature known as the “precious volumes”
(baojuan), morality books written by spirit mediums under the possession of the various

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saints and deities worshipped by the sectarians. The Yiguan Dao, like many other Chinese
sectarian religions, conceptualises the cosmological temporal development in terms of the
three kalpas (sanqi), each of which is presided over by a Buddha. Thus, the Green Sun Era
was presided over by the Dipamkara Buddha, the Red Sun Era by Sakyamuni, and the current
era, the White Sun Era, will witness the coming of the Maitreya Buddha. This temporal
reckoning is intimately tied to the eschatological hope for the ultimate salvation of the human
kind. As evidence revealing the coming of Maitreya, Yiguan Dao members like to highlight
recent natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, as well as human conflicts such as
wars and terrorist attacks, as obvious signs that reflect the dire moral degeneration of
humanity. In a talk which I attended for new members, the speaker, who was also a hall
master (tangzhu), argued that the seemingly frequent occurrences of disasters and conflicts
“compared to the past” prognosticated the imminent end of the world (mojie), and proceeded
to reiterate the need for mankind to repent, to re-unite with the Venerable Eternal Mother,
and to turn vegetarian. While in the past some sectarian movements had staged uprisings to
overthrow governments to set up a “liberated area” for the arrival of Maitreya or the
enthronement of a sectarian king (Ovemyer 1981, p. 160), the Yiguan Dao these days
primarily emphasises the attainment of the Three Treasures and moral cultivation for the
purpose of individual salvation. Ms Huang, a Yiguan Dao member for around 5 years, has
this to say about the Dao:

In this White Sun period, the Dao is available to everyone, not just to those
monks and priests who have to go through difficult [spiritual] cultivation
(xiulian). Even if you are a Muslim or Christian, you can seek the Dao, no
problem. You don’t have to give up your own religion. Dao is a like a treasure,
a valuable thing, important for everyone to have to gain salvation (dejiu).
After you’ve obtained it, you can still believe in Jesus or God, go to your
church. Some of us often attend the religious services of other religions too.

In talk given to more than 200 new recruits with their sponsors, a senior member of the
organisation called Mr. Chen tried to explain the difference between Yiguan Dao and other
religion:

People often ask me what’s the difference between Tian Dao [another name of
Yiguan Dao] and other religions such as Buddhism, Daoism, or Christianity. I
often tell them that we are not actually a religion (zongjiao), but more like a
faith (xinyang).

According to the interpretation offered by Mr. Chen, the different groups which have been
labelled “religion” are human elaborations of the revelations of the Dao. The term, “religion”
(jiao or zongjiao), in Yiguan Dao’s interpretation, refers to culturally and historically specific
ways in which the Dao has manifested itself to different human societies in different times.
On the other hand, “faith” (xinyang) refers to the belief in the ultimate reality and the means
of salvation revealed to the founders of Yiguan Dao by the Venerable Eternal Mother
throughout the ages. Furthermore, “religion” is a system of doctrines and practices which aid
people in their quest for moral perfection (xiuxing), while having “attained the Dao” (dedao),
entails the acquiring the true knowledge of the means toward salvation, interpreted as
escaping the cycle of birth and rebirth and re-uniting with the Venerable Eternal Mother in
heaven upon one’s earthly death. In practice, this means that new members, after having gone
through the initiation rite and having acquired the Three Treasures for salvation, would
ideally continue their moral cultivation through intensive study of the key texts from all the

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major religious traditions (interpreted through the Yiguan Dao’s theological frames) and as
well as the books on morality. (The Yiguan Dao considers all the major “non-Chinese”
religions such as Islam and Christianity as containing messages about the Dao that the Eternal
Mother had revealed to their founders.) In one such study session I attended, the ‘Masses
Class’ (dazhong ban), the lecturer led the audience through an excerpt from the Confucian
classic, The Doctrine of the Mean(Zhongyong), line by line, repeating several times, and
expounded the meaning of the text and the etymology of some difficult Chinese words. While
teachings of the various religions (and these teachings indeed are scrutinised in some study
sessions) are considered by Yiguan Dao members as valid and useful means for the
attainment of salvation, they are however mere derivatives of a superior Dao, as expressed in
the commonly used phrase, “the Dao is superior to religion” (dao gaoyu jiao).

Yiguan Dao’s “Secular Turn”

The Yiguan Dao was banned in Taiwan until 1987 and is still considered an illegal
organisation in mainland China. The group was suppressed partly due to its alleged close ties
with the Japanese puppet government at Manchukuo during the Sino-Japanese war, and
partly due to the hostile views towards it held by leaders of the more orthodox Buddhist
groups. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party
has branded the Yiguan Dao as a “reactionary secret society” (fandong huidaomen) and an
“evil cult” (Palmer 2008, pp. 113-134). Under repressive conditions, the Yiguan Dao has
developed adaptive doctrines and experienced institutional innovations in order to survive. Of
the latter, it experienced successive schisms into different “divisions” and “sub-divisions”,
each with loosely connected cells under the leadership of hall masters (Lu and Graeme, 2006;
Lu, 2008). While operating more or less covertly for many years in these two places, since
the 1970s the leaders of many Yiguan Dao divisions turned their attention abroad, especially
to countries in Southeast Asia where there were sizable ethnic Chinese populations. In
Malaysia, the Yiguan Dao has established many centres as venues for the dissemination of
Confucian teachings and as bastions of Chinese culture. In Surat Thani, southern Thailand,
the Fayi Chongde sub-division in 1992 built an impressive temple with the name “Temple of
Master Kong, the Former Teacher, and the Great Completer, Supreme Sage” (Soo, 1997). All
the major divisions have made efforts to establish presence in Singapore. Among them, the
Baoguang Jiande sub-division has been the most successful. In 1971, the senior master of
Baoguang Jiande, Lü Shugen initiated the first members of Yiguan Dao in Singapore while
on a mission trip to Indonesia. In November the same year, the first temple was established in
an unoccupied house owned by a Mr. Huang, which became known as the Huang Temple
(Baoguang Jiande 2004, pp. 42-43).Since then, Baoguang Jiande has become the largest
Yiguan Dao group in the country, and Singapore is now the base for its missionary activities
in Southeast Asia and India

When Yiguan Dao was first transmitted to Singapore and Malaysia, some local press
characterised it as an “evil cult” (xiejiao) managed by a group of transnational swindlers (Soo,
1997, p.157). The negative reception was partly stoked by the public pronouncements of
some leaders of local Buddhist associations who questioned the sect’s interpretations of
certain key Buddhist doctrines such as samsara and triratna (Three Jewels), and linked it
with the notorious White Lotus movement in imperial China. As Soo (1997, p.157) writes,

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The Buddhist associations disapproved of the Unity Sect’s teachings based on

the beliefs that organized time into three successive cycles, each “controlled”
by a Buddha. They also disagreed with the use of Buddhist terminology, and
the borrowing of Buddhist texts. The general public, on the other hand, were
against the members’ practice of vegetarian diet and the “evil oath” they swear
during the initiation ceremony.

In July 1981, the Singapore government expelled and blacklisted twelve Taiwanese preachers.
In a commemorative volume on the Baoguang Jiande sub-division’s missionary effort in
Singapore and the region (Baoguang Jiande 2004, pp. 71-72), this early period of perceived
state persecution and negative public opinion is interpreted as “severe test” (dakao) of the
movement’s resolve and resilience, an episode in a long history of such “tests” that the
Yiguan Dao has undergone from the imperial times to the present day. One direct
consequence of this early negative experience was the decision by Taiwan-based leadership
to establish a chemical factory in Singapore as a front for missionary activities and as a viable
source of funds for the expansion of the group in Singapore and the region. In 1981, the
group formally registered in Singapore as the Hua Yuan Hui, essentially identifying itself
publicly as a moral uplifting society and charitable organisation, and not as Yiguan Dao and
an explicitly religious organisation. In fact, the name of Hua Yuan Hui in Singapore
suggested both an orientation towards Chinese traditional culture that might appeal to the
Chinese population in the country, as well as to fit into the state’s effort to cultivate moral
citizens through the re-acquaintance of the “traditional culture” of one’s ethnicity. In other
words, the Baoguang Jiande seemed to wish to establish a presence in Singapore by
downplaying the more “religious” and more controversial aspect of its beliefs and practices,
by registering as an institution that focuses on more explicitly “secular” aims such as
providing social welfare services, activities that aid moral cultivation, and the promotion of
traditional Chinese culture3.

An examination of the constitution of Hua Yuan Hui reveals that it does not include any
matter that is usually considered “religious”. Here is the core passage of the organisation’s
constitution:

Constitution of Hua Yuan Hui

The objects of the Association are as follows:

A
1) To promote moral values, righteousness and virtues based on the moralistic teachings
of:
a. ‘The Great Learning’
b. ‘The Doctrine of the Mean’
c. ‘Confucian Analects’
d. ‘The Work of Mencius’

2. To inculcate a sense of humility, courtesy, responsibility, loyalty and respect, and care
for the Elders.

3. To provide assistance, aid and whatever relief possible to the less fortunate such as
the orphaned, aged, homeless, widowed and distressed through free medical care and
treatment and any other charitable means.

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4) To induce members towards the quest for moral enlightenment and perfection.

B
To achieve the above objectives, the Association may do all such things as are incidental
or conductive to the attainment of the above objects; it may provide a place for members
to have physical and mental relaxation.

One of the reasons the Yiguan Dao has been successful in increasing its membership in
Singapore is that it has been able to able to transcend the dialect and native place boundaries
of Chinese Singaporeans (Song, 2002). During the colonial days, Chinese immigrants were
divided and formed communities such as clan associations and temples based on their
respective places of origin and dialect groups. The Yiguan Dao has been able to transcend the
internal differences of the Chinese Singaporeans based on lineage and language to appeal to
the Chinese population as a whole by focusing on the broader category of Chinese cultural
identity. The broader Singaporean political context has to be examined as well. The Yiguan
Dao’s growth in the country cannot be understood without consideration of the policies of the
Singapore government in the 1980s to Confucianise Singapore society by promoting values
such as filial piety, loyalty, thrift, and diligence, and the government’s discursive practice of
cultivating “Asian values” to counter the supposedly morally corrupting influence of the
“West”. To provide a “cultural ballast” for Singaporeans in general, and to the Chinese
population in particular, the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) initiated a series of policy
measures such as the Courtesy Campaign, religious education in schools, and the Speak
Mandarin Campaign. Hence, despite the initial setback to establish its presence in Singapore,
the Yiguan Dao was able to tap into the social and political trends of the time, and registered
itself as a moral cultivation society with the focus on promoting Chinese culture and
Confucian values. The affinity between the Yiguan Dao and the state is similar to the case of
the De Jiao studied by Bernard Formosa and Tan Chee-Beng, who describe how the De Jiao’s
provision of social and relief services has endeared it to the respective governments (Tan,
1985; Formoso, 2010).

To forge close links with the state, the Yiguan Dao members have been actively participating
in national events, for example, as performers during the National Day Parade, and
volunteering as ushers during the Chinggay Festival, an annual state-sponsored procession
showcasing street performances and decorative floats (Other religious organisations also have
a strong presence in these national events, either as performers or ushers) ). In 1995 the Huan
Yuan Hui won the Outstanding Volunteering award from the Ministry of Community
Development, the first voluntary organisation to receive this award. In his speech, the
minister said that “volunteers could play a very important part in changing the perception that
Singapore was not a compassionate society”. He lauded the members of the organisation as
having proven wrong the perception of selfish, “ugly Singaporeans” caught up in the rat race.
In 1999, the secretary of Hua Yuan Hui was awarded the Public Service Medal during the
National Day celebrations (Straits Times 9 Aug. 1999). Baoguang Jiande’s focus on social
welfare services, especially for the elderly in a society with rapidly ageing population, fills a
gap in society created by the PAP government’s ideological taboo of state welfarism, which
called for the active participation of voluntary welfare organisations and the family to be the
bulwark of social support (Trocki 2006, pp. 129-130).

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In addition to active engagement in the volunteer sector, to broaden its appeal to the masses
the Yiguan Dao members also frequently appeal to science to support the organisation’s key
teachings. Speakers repeatedly note that the group’s doctrines are “scientific” by alluding to
“scientific studies” that apparently support the Yiguan Dao’s key assertions. For example, in
a talk on the Three Treasures, a hall master mentioned, but without giving any detail, a
“recent scientific study that proves the location of the Window to the Soul”. In a Basic
Course talk which I attended, the speaker, Mr. Chen, constantly emphasised to a hall full of
neophytes that “we are not talking without any basis, our views are justified by science”. In
another seminar open to all Yiguan Dao members, the speaker, Mr. Zhong, used the science
of climatology and its findings on ozone depletion to support the view that humanity’s
collective bad karma had resulted in the current dire state of climate change. Mr Zhong
further asserted in the seminar—in support of the Yiguan Dao’s teachings on
vegetarianism—that scientific studies of human molars have shown that humans had
originally been vegetarian since their molars had evolved to grind grain and vegetables.

In sum, Yiguan Dao’s “secular turn” in its engagements in the public domain has to been
examined in the contexts of its historical development in recent mainland China and Taiwan,
and more recently in Singapore and the Southeast Asian region. Often labelled as a heterodox
movement by leaders of mainstream Buddhism, and has in the past been reviled by the public
media and various governments as an “evil cult” (this is still the case in mainland China), the
Yiguan Dao in Singapore has undergone a process of transformation that highlights in the
public domain its more “secular” elements (e.g. the transmission of Chinese culture, the
cultivation of morality, etc.), thus aligning it with the nation-building agenda of the
Singaporean state. In an important sense, its growth as a formally secular organisation has
been contingent upon its conscious alignment with the political project of the Singapore
government, most notably through its provision of welfare services and support for the
government’s effort to cultivate moral citizenship through the promotion of values such as
filial piety, loyalty, thrift, and diligence in Singapore society. However, there is another way
through which Yiguan Dao propagates itself and establishes a significant presence in
Singapore society, and that is through its practice of religious territoriality.

CONTESTING TERRITORIALITIES

Turner (2007, p.125) has argued that one of the ways through which the modern state
manages and regulates religion is by what he calls “enclavement”. The enclave can be both in
the form of physical barriers (such as a walled space), or non-physical ones related to
technologically-augmented forms of surveillance and control. Many modern states through
legal provisions demarcate appropriate physical public spaces as places of worship for
various religious groups. However, I would argue that while it is important to examine the
various strategies of the state to manage and regulate religion, we should also be aware that
religious groups (or at least some of them) are capable of finding innovative ways to put the
state at arm’s length. I have described above how Yiguan Dao in Singapore and in other parts
of Southeast Asia has adapted itself to the initially hostile environments by presenting itself
publicly more as a voluntary charitable organisation involved with the promotion of Chinese
culture than as an explicitly religious group with a controversial history. In what follows, I
shall describe another way the Yiguan Dao seeks to escape state’s enclavement with the
concept of territoriality.

10

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The concept of territoriality can be considered a form of cultural strategy “through which
individuals and groups seek to exert control over the meanings and uses of particular portions
of geographical space” (Stump 2008, p. 222). Territoriality involves a social ordering of
space informed by prevailing cultural norms of various groups and individuals as they seek to
express and exert their identities and influence in relation to one another. Like many secular
states, Singapore adopts a functional conception of territoriality underpinned by the ideology
of development and modernisation. In other words, the fundamental principle that guides the
state’s policy of land use is the efficient allocation of scarce land for the purposes of
economic development and national building. Given the scarcity of land in Singapore, the
state adopts a highly pragmatic and interventionist stance with regard to the allocation of land
parcels to be used for religious purposes. As discussed by Kong (2002), each parcel of land in
any of the new towns built by the Housing Development Board allocated for religious
purposes “is open to tender to each particular religious group”. For example, a site that is
reserved for Hindus will not be open for tender by other religious groups such as Christians,
Muslims and Chinese religionists. This is to ensure that each of the major religions in
Singapore, such as Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, popular Chinese religion, and other
religious groups would be represented in the various government housing estates. Very often,
in the effort of urban renewal, old buildings and structures, whether commercial, residential
or religious, are torn down to make way for new developments. Sometimes, secular buildings
can be converted to religious use. However, the main criteria to be considered are not based
on the perceived needs of the specific religious communities, but on planning considerations
“such as the location of the building, whether the area is a predominantly residential one,
whether too much traffic is going to be generated” (Kong, 1993).

The form of secularism adopted by Singaporean state is not the anti-theistic, militant type. It
recognises the importance of religion in people’s life and in principle accord equal treatment
to all religions. For the government, this policy is necessary for the peaceful coexistence of
the diverse religious and ethnic groups that make up the Singaporean population. While
Singapore’s constitution does not mention the term “secular”, and the state does intervene in
religious affairs, especially in Islam through a statutory board, its secularism is delineated
most clearly in Article 15 (1) of the constitution: “"Every person has the right to profess and
practise his religion and to propagate it." Like other modern secular states, the legitimacy of
Singapore’s political authority is not founded upon divine or ecclesiastical sanction, but
solely on democratic elections that serve as the foundation of ultimate political authority.
While spelling out what secularism in Singapore context mean, the state has also in the
process provided a rather narrow definition of religion. For example, Singapore’s Court of
Appeal has defined religion “as a citizen’s faith in a personal God, sometimes described as a
belief in a supernatural being” (Thio, 2008, p.82). This way of delineating the domain of
religion thus excludes philosophical beliefs such as humanism and patriotism4.

However, there are important qualifications to religious freedom provided under the
country’s constitution. Most importantly, the constitution makes a distinction between
religious beliefs and actions: while one can freely choose to adhere to any religious beliefs,
one’s actions based on such beliefs must conform to Singapore’s laws pertaining to public
order and public service (Tan, 2008; Thio, 2009). For example, practitioners of Chinese
religion who live in government housing are not allowed to burn joss papers and paper
money in the confines of their flats or anywhere they wish in the shared public space. What
was previously done in front of altars at home is now mainly conducted with bins provided
by the local town councils so that the ashes from the burning will not pollute the environment
(Tong and Kong, 2000).

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While the spatial practices of the state do shape religious practices to varying degrees through
its effort to enforce hegemonic meanings in geographical spaces, we should not think that
religions and religious practitioners are always simply in a reactive or reactionary position.
Place-making is inherently a dynamic process involving a contestation of meaning. Ordinary
people in the lived city will often negotiate, resist or reject the totalistic modernist visions of
the planning authorities by carving out spaces for themselves in the expressions of self-
determination (de Certeau, 1988). This also means that a given geographical space can have
different meanings for different individuals and groups interacting within that space. In the
religious expressions of territoriality, spaces can be transformed into religious places by
being imbued with the distinct worldview and ethos of the believers. It is useful at this
juncture to recall Jonathan Z. Smith’s view of rituals as the primary means in creating sacred
space. Contrary to Mircea Eliade’s influential idea that sacred spaces are sites of hierophany
acting as “centres” from which human activities acquire their transcendental meanings, Smith
(1987) argues that it is often human actions, more specially, rituals, that create sacred spaces.
Georges Bataille (1985) sees the ritual actions undertaken by ordinary people that are capable
to resacralise state-imposed secular, profane spaces as acts of transgression that seek to break
out of the rationalizing tendency of society. Such ritualistic acts of transgression can be most
evidently seen in Yiguan Dao’s effort to transform public housings into sacred sites.

As a congregational sect, the Yiguan Dao members gather for religious activities and to
receive teachings in “Buddha halls” (fotang). These are divided into the “public halls”
(gonggong fotang) and the “domestic halls” (jiating fotang). In Singapore, the Hua Yuan Hui
currently operates three publics halls, which are massive three to four-stories buildings
painted in white, and constructed with a nod towards Chinese architectural style. These three
public venues serve as central sites for the conduct of the many self-cultivation and training
classes and allow members from the neighbouring “districts” (de) to gather for religious
worship and social activities. The offices for the administrative staff and leaders of the
Baoguang Jiande in Singapore are also found in these buildings5. The constructions of these
public halls were of course subjected to the state’s urban planning rules and regulations as
described previously. However, the vast majority of Yiguan Dao’s Buddha halls are domestic
ones, and are largely hidden from the view of the public and the purview of the state. In terms
of religious hierarchy, the Baoguang Jiande is led by the Prior/semior master (qianren), who
resides in Taiwan and pays frequent visits to various “Dao mission-fields” (daochang) around
the world. The Singapore mission field, like others, are led by a group of Preachers
(dianchuanshi) who have received the apostolic commission and are able to conduct initiation
rites for new members. Below the Preachers are the hall masters (tangzhu) of domestic
Buddha halls who maintain the closest ties with ordinary members.

The domestic halls are the most basic unit of the Yiguan Dao organisation structure, and are
located in the homes of the members. The first public Buddha hall to be established in
Singapore in 1975, the Tianguo Fotang, was a house in a private residential estate purchased
with funds transferred from Taiwan. The Yiguan Dao domestic Buddha halls are different
from the altars found in the homes of practitioners of other forms of popular Chinese
religion/shenism. For the latter, while the altar marks the dwelling place of the deities or
ancestors, and hence a sacred space, the home in which the altar is constructed is not itself
considered a temple or a religious place. However, the establishment of a Buddha hall in the
home of a Yiguan Dao member transforms the house itself into a temple and a sacred place6.
So while the congregational nature of the Yiguan Dao is similar to that of Christian “cell
groups” which often meet in the homes of their members, the significant difference is that the

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houses where the Christians meet are usually not considered sacred sites, and are not formally
part of a religious organisation.

Recall that in Singapore, the state is the ultimate arbiter on the purpose of land utilization in
its urban planning efforts. State bodies such as the Land Office, the Urban Redevelopment
Authority and the Housing Development Board (HDB) determine the appropriate sites for
residential, recreational/cultural, commercial and religious functions. In its headlong pursuit
to construct a modern nation (see e.g. Kong and Yeoh 2003), Singapore through its urban
planning policies to build a modern nation has desacralized many pre-existing sacred spaces
such as shrines, temples, burial sites, causing them to either disappear, or to combine to form
“united temples” or to re-locate. Hence, Singapore’s urban planning efforts have prevented
the creation of enduring sacred religious spaces that have historical depth and with defined
historic communities. These days, most Singaporeans live in government housing, which
comprises of standardised high rise apartments distributed in various high-density new towns
or housing estates. The design of the apartments is primarily functional, and in line with the
state’s official secularism, does not taking into account the religious practices of various
ethnic groups. This means that Singapore public housing estates are designed to be a secular
modernist environment that discourages the emergence of religious and ethnic enclaves
(Chua, 1997). Also, , government flats must not be used for public religious purposes (This is
confirmed to me by a HDB official in a telephone enquiry). Unlike the other mainstream
religions which have to compete either denominationally or with each other to secure limited
sites provided by the state for religious use in order to build their churches, temples, mosques,
etc., the Yiguan Dao is able circumvent this problem through its territorial practices.

A Yiguan Dao member who wishes to transform his home into a domestic Buddha hall will
have to undergo a training program7 and seeks the approval of one of the Preachers within the
organisation. The various courses that comprise the training programme are not only for those
deeply committed members who wish to establish a house temple. Leaders of the Yiguan Dao
strongly encourage all members, especially new ones, to attend a series of courses on the
basic doctrines and rituals of the group. This emphasis on doctrinal training, and the
downplaying of spirit-writing, is a relatively recent phenomenon8. When the training is
completed, the potential hall master will proceed to convert his home, a state-defined secular
space, into a sacred one. Whether the person lives in public or private housing, some form of
renovation to existing living spaces and changes in amenities are required. First, a new altar
has to be constructed in accordance with Yiguan Dao’s stipulations. The most important
items include the Buddha Light (fodeng), a statue of Maitreya in the form of the Laughing
Buddha, an urn for the burning of incense, holders for two large size candles placed on either
side of the altar, and vegetarian offerings (e.g. fruits, noodles, snacks). Since the burning of
incense and candles is an essential part of collective worship in a Buddha Hall, new fans and
other forms of ventilation equipment have to be installed. The house has to be thoroughly
cleaned before its official consecration by the Preacher as a Buddha hall on an auspicious day.
It must the emphasised again that the establishment of the Buddha Hall is not merely an
installation of an altar, but the radical transformation of a secular, residential space into a
sacred one.

The sacredness of the house temple space can be observed here in the adherence of certain
taboos and prescriptions that mark out the new space as extraordinary and different from
other residential quarters. For example, a vegetarian diet has to be observed within the
confines of the Buddha hall, and meat is prohibited to be brought in even if it is not to be
consumed. Family members of the hall master who are not Yiguan Dao members or who are

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still not vegetarians are also subject to this rule. Members of the congregation have to wipe
their hands clean with wet hand towels at the entrance of the house temple upon arrival as a
way of purifying themselves upon entering a sacred space. This preoccupation with purity
prompted me to ask Ms Wong, the hall master of the temple where I regularly attend, if the
presence of the toilet and the rubbish bins in the kitchen area posed any problem. She
downplayed the significance by highlighting the restricted area of the flat and the fact that the
kitchen where the toilet is usually located is in a separate area:

‘That is not a problem at all; the flat is already so small, how can we have the
toilet in another place? Not possible to be located outside! Also, the toilet is in
the kitchen, which is at the back, so it is separated and not near the altar at all.
If we keep the toilet clean, actually we have to keep the whole place clean, this
is not a problem for us. Most important is that our heart is pure (xin shi chun
de)’.

In addition to the emphasis on cleanliness, the deportment of the congregation and the
language used are also highly formalised. The reason given is that due the sacredness of the
place, one has to switch from the everyday vernacular to “speaking in Heaven’s words”
(jiang shangtian de hua). When addressing one another, members tend to use titles with
surnames, such as “Mister Tan”, “Madam Lee”, “Hall Master Lim”, rather than given names,
which would signal a more informal and usual way of address among peers. The
preoccupation with modesty among members is reflected in the practice of referring to
oneself as ‘junior student’ (houxue). Finally, as a nod towards the preservation of Chinese
traditional culture, members tend to use the formal and classical form of the Chinese
language, such as saying yong instead of the commonly used chi, to refer to eating. Members
refer to each other as “kinsmen of the Way” (daoqin); male members are called qiandao
while female ones are the kundao. Typically, the congregation that meet regularly at a
specific Buddha hall—usually to celebrate the 1st and 15th day of the lunar month, and the
birthdays of important deities—numbers between 20 and 30 people.

Worshipping in domestic temple Self-cleansing when entering domestic temple

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In interviews with Song Guangyu (2002) in the 1990s, the leaders of Baoguang Jiande
estimated that by 1997, there were 1457 domestic halls, and by 1999, around two hundred
thousand people had been initiated, with approximately twenty thousand active members.
Based on my own interviews with a number of hall masters and Preachers, there are currently
twenty-six “districts” in Singapore, each of which has around eighty domestic halls with
around 15 to 25 active members each. According to Mr Chen the Preacher, there are around
1600 Baoguang Jiande Buddha halls on Singapore, including three public ones, and the goal
is to establish at least one Buddha hall in every floor of every block of public housing in
Singapore. Estimating from this, the Baoguang Jiande sub-division alone has between 31200
and 52000 active members.

Unlike the other major religions in Singapore whose venues for worship and other religious
activities are located in the officially demarcated sites, and hence publicly visible, the
overwhelming majority of the Yiguan Dao’s religious sites are hidden from public view,
located in the state-demarcated secular spaces of urban modernity. In other words, the
religious aspects of Yiguan Dao are manifest most fully within the state-determined “secular”
and “private” realm. At the same time, it makes use of this modernist statist distinction
between private and public spaces to overcome the limitation of land resource in an urban
environment by sacralising an officially recognized secular space, radically transforming it
into a sacred space according to its own strategy of territoriality. I would argue that the
successful proliferation of a religious sect like the Yiguan Dao lies partly in its territorial
strategy that involves the sacralisation of domestic spaces as temples for religious worship. In
modern secular Singapore where religious freedom is officially recognized, and where the
availability of land is severely restricted, the Yiguan Dao is able to thrive partly due to its
ability to replicate its most basic organisational unit through the transformation of the
domestic, “private” space into a sacred one. Such strategy of religious territoriality has
equipped members of the Yiguan Dao the capacity to transcend the limits imposed on
religious activities by the secular authorities embodied by the state. In fact, the “private”
domestic space in urban modernity can provide a favourable context for the transmission of
religious knowledge and conduct of religious activities away from state and public scrutiny,
and for the leaders of the religious sect to maintain a tight control over its members.

CONCLUSION

Religious pluralism in many societies, especially in the context of nation-building in a

globalizing world, has posed a series of challenges to nation states (Turner, 2007, pp. 123­
124). One such challenge is the question of how the “many” of religions—often assumed to
have rigid boundaries and with mutually incompatible worldviews—can be reconciled with
the nation-state’s effort of cultivating “one” public national culture with strong consensus on
the common good (Madsen and Strong, 2003). The problem of religious pluralism is more
acutely felt in a liberal polity whereby the public role of religion takes on greater social and
political significance. In officially secular and religiously diverse societies such as Singapore,
one way for the state to effectively manage religion is by delineating the domains in which
religion can legitimately operate and the public issues that it can make representations on.
One of these domains is the “private”/domestic sphere, where religious practices are deemed
the “private” concern of citizens, whose right to religious freedom is protected by law and
guaranteed under the constitution. It is only in the structurally contrastive domain—the
“public” sphere—where the state can exercise its legitimate power to regulate and manage
religious activity in the name of a higher unity or common good for the country. In Singapore

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this common good is the maintenance of religious and ethnic harmony. As pointed out
previously, such carving out of appropriate spaces for religious activities by the state would
constitute a form of “enclavement”. As I have shown here, one such physical form of
enclavement in Singapore is the designation of sites for religious buildings by the state
through its urban planning policies. This present study of the Yiguan Dao demonstrates the
various adaptive strategies that a religious group is able to enact to circumvent state’s effort
at enclaving religion. I do not wish to suggest here that the Yiguan Dao is actively resisting a
repressive state, given, as I have discussed, its accommodation of certain state policies and
nation-building agenda for its own propagation. The Yiguan Dao is, however, seeking to
circumvent state-imposed constraints through innovation in its organisational structure and its
practices of religious territoriality.

The case of Yiguan Dao in modern urban Singapore has shown that the group mainly
operates publicly not only in the religious domain defined by the state, partly due to the fact
that it does not define itself both formally as well as rhetorically as a “religion”. On the one
hand, the Yiguan Dao has established its public presence in the Singapore by emphasizing its
“non-religious” aspect, primarily in its provision of social welfare and conducting of
activities involving morality cultivation. On the other hand, the group stresses its more
explicitly “religious” aspects mainly in the state-defined “private” and “secular” spheres in
the form of domestic Buddha halls. This has allowed the group to avoid competition with
other religions in the public sphere for resources, especially for the limited parcels of state
land specifically allocated for religious purposes under the state’s modernist urban planning.
At the same time, Yiguan Dao’s “secular” public activities have found a ready fit with the
some of the most important state’s efforts at social engineering. This explicit alignment with
state agenda has the intended effect of securing a more conducive environment for the
group’s propagation in the face of negative views toward it that are held by the mainstream
religions and some members of the public. Organisationally, the preeminent means adopted
by the Yiguan Dao to propagate itself is through its religious territorial practices of
establishing domestic temples in residential properties, in effect transforming formally
secular spaces into religious ones, without the need to seek official approval from the relevant
authorities. Finally, one important implication of this study of the Yiguan Dao on the limits
of state management of religion is this: The structural distinction of the “private” and the
“public” in modern secular nation-states, and the concomitant actions that the state and
citizens can legitimately engage in as a result of this very distinction, creates in the same
instance both the limitation for the state to effectively manage religion, and the space for
certain religious groups to operate outside the official purview of the state. These religious
groups, such as the Yiguan Dao, are able to slip through the grasp of the state, and flourish.

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NOTES

1. This section is a brief summary of the history of the Yiguan Dao, based on the data I have
obtained from my fieldwork in Singapore and Taiwan, and on available scholarly studies.
Some notable work on the religious group include Seiwert (1981); Jordan (1982); Jordan
and Overmyer (1986), Overmyer (1976); Clart (1997; 2000) Song (1983; 1996; 2002); Lu
(2008); and Soo (1997)

2. According to the Yiguan Dao catechism in my possession, apart from the term laomu, the
Dao is also referred to as mingming shangdi, wanling zhenzai, weiyi zhenshen, zaowu zhu,
lao tianye, and shangdi.

3. Kuah (2003), for example, has documented that many of the so-called ‘reformed
Buddhist’ groups in Singapore are also undergoing secularisation and are increasing
involved in the provision of social welfare services and organisation of ‘cultural
activities’.

4. As Thio points out in another article (2009) discussing the Court of Appeal judgement,
this definition of religion is overly narrow, even though Hinduism and Daoism with its
multiple gods and Buddhism which is non-theistic are generally considered religions in
Singapore. The Singapore constitution however does not offer a definition of “religion”.

5. These three public temples are the Tianguo Fotang in Punggol in the north, Tianhui
Fotang at Bukit Merah in the central, and Tianjüe Fotang in Pasir Ris in the east, each
providing religious, training, and social services for members living in these areas.

6. The creation of religious sites that are hidden from the public view and state authorities
can also be found in Sinha’s (2005, pp. 111-2) study of Muneeswaran worship in
Singapore. The exact locations of ‘jungles temples’ are known only a select community
of devotees, since they are illegal structures occupying state land and are not registered
with the Registrar of Societies. A number of Muneeswaran temples are home-based
temples found in both privately owned or rented properties. Hidden from the wider
society, these temples would be considered illegal since residential units are not supposed
to serve as public places of worship. One of the main differences between the case of
Muneeswaran and that of Yiguan Dao is that the ‘jungle temples’ and residential temples
of Muneeswaran worship are not part of a formal organisational structure, whereas the
domestic Buddha halls of Yiguan Dao are formally considered an essential institutional
makeup of the group.

7. For the Baoguang Jiande sub-division, the essential courses and their respective duration
include the following: Rites and Rules class (2 days); Basic Course, on the key teachings
of Yiguan Dao (1 to 2 days); Repentance class, a few days; Model class, to learn
oratorical and preaching skills, ink brush writing (2 to 3 times per week, for about a year);
Talent class, advanced training in rites and doctrines (about one and a half years);
Purification class, oath taking, pledge to Heaven that one would maintain a vegetarian
diet (a few days).

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8. According to his case study of the Yiguan Dao in Taiwan, Lu (2008) argues that, due to
its experience of state repression both in imperial China and also Kuomingtang-rule
Taiwan, the group traditionally lacked a well-organised and well-trained clergy to provide
the necessary intellectual input to create a sophisticated theological system. However,
since the Taiwan authorities revoked the ban on Yiguan Dao in 1987, the leaders of the
group increasing felt the need to develop an education system to provide members and the
public with a more coherent set of basic doctrines, both in response to the sect’s critics
and to attract more the educated people. . It now operates openly as Yiguan Dao, and has
become one of the most successful new religious movements in Taiwan.

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