Confucianism Report: Religion & Theology Essay

The goal of this essay is to give you a chance to reflect on our first course theme (Confucianism and religion) and then organize your thoughts and express them in writing. The broad essay questions are designed to help us think about a few issues:
The challenges of defining both “religion” and “Confucianism”
The role of cultural and personal perspectives in defining these terms
Applying these questions to our readings from and about the Confucian tradition
We began the semester by thinking about some broad questions about Confucianism and the challenges of defining and categorizing this tradition. We then turned to the history of the Jesuits who arrived in China during the Ming dynasty. By reading several Jesuit documents, we could get a sense of some of the ways that people from different cultural backgrounds think about “religion,” and how the Jesuits understood Buddhism and Confucianism to be distinct.
Then, we examined the Four Books, the history of how they become central to the Neo-Confucian tradition, and how the Jesuits had a hand in communicating the significance of these texts to their audience in Europe. Of these Four Books, we have so far examined the contents of the Analects and the Mengzi.
Finally, before your in-class assignment, we will have looked at the significance of ritual/ritual propriety (li 禮) in the early Confucian tradition and how the rituals related to Ancestral Veneration became a topic of debate within the Catholic church.
Imagine the following scenario. You are a Jesuit missionary in China, and you have been asked to send a Mission Report back to the Vatican (the authorities of the Catholic faith). They want you to use your knowledge of Confucianism, based on what you have studied so far (i.e. based on the material we have covered in class so far), to explain this tradition to them.
Write a letter back to the Vatican providing your analysis of Confucianism, explaining whether or not it should be considered a “religion” (or you could argue that the term “religion” is not useful in this case). The Vatican wants to understand the Confucian tradition, so you should support and elaborate upon this argument by providing specific information about the tradition. For example, if you believe Confucianism is not a religion, then what exactly is it? And how can you explain this with specific reference to the history, texts and/or practices of Confucianism that we have studied and learned about in class?
Notes:
You may write this in the form of an actual letter and add some creative flair, or if you prefer you may simply write a standard essay – whichever you are most comfortable doing.
The Jesuits, of course, would not have had access to all of our assigned readings and lecture content, but for the sake of this assignment please use any relevant readings and course material that will help strengthen your paper.
Remember to provide some sort of basic citation when referring to readings.
Requirements
Your essay should be a minimum of 500 words in length (I would suggest writing at least 750 words) and should preferably be no longer than 1200 words.
Submitted to Turnitin.com as either a .PDF or .DOC/DOCX file
See Syllabus for Turnitin information.
Submitted by the posted deadline. Late submissions will be penalized 5% per day late.
The file should contain either your name or a pseudonym (if you prefer not to post personal information on Turnitin). If you use a pseudonym, please inform me of what it is so I know whose assignment it is!
Should have an opening paragraph that contains a thesis statement/argument.
The body of the essay should draw on specific course information, including assigned readings, to support and expand upon your argument.
Any references to course readings should contain a basic citation. Any citation format is fine as long as it includes information to help me find the quotation or reference -- e.g. a page number (if there is one) or passage number and the name of the text.
You do not need to cite any information taken from lecture videos, but your essay should demonstrate knowledge of information learned from these lectures.
Your essay should make use of a minimum of three assigned readings from the course, which should not all be from the same text (e.g. you should not only reference the Analects).