Christians and ancestor worship – are they compatible?

A friend told me how, during the recent Ching Ming Festival – a day when Chinese pay respects to their ancestors – a mini-controversy arose in his family because several members had recently converted to Christianity and refused to observe the rituals for fear of breaching the articles of their new-found faith.

Many Chinese converts are obsessive about avoiding the customs of their pre- Christian past, even when the traditions aren’t religious. It’s as if they are insecure about their present faith and fear sliding back to their not-too distant former selves. It’s as if the Chinese Rites controversy hadn’t been resolved.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, a dispute arose within the Catholic Church over whether Chinese Christians could take part in traditional Chinese rituals that honoured ancestors. Some argued that these rites were secular and didn’t contradict Christian beliefs while others held the opposite view; that Chinese were in fact “worshipping” their ancestors when they offered incense and bowed before the graves or inscribed tablets of the dead.

The Church decided in 1704 and again in 1742 to ban Chinese Christians from taking part in the rituals, but its attempt to enforce the ban led to the expulsion of missionaries and persecution of Christians in China. It was only in 1939 that the Church formally acknowledged that the Chinese rituals were not religious but an honourable way of respecting the dead.