On Religious Care of Local Confucian Intellectuals in the Late Ming Dynasty and Early Qing Dynasty

In late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty, local Confucian intellectuals in some undeveloped areas of China, such as Wen Xiangfeng in Shanxi, Wang Qiyuan in Guangxi, Xie Wenjian in Jiangxi, Wei Yijie in Hebei, etc., not only showed their faith in Confucianism, but also highlighted their thinking on some religious issues. In this paper, three aspects are discussed as following. Firstly, they proposed actively with view of serving Heaven, respecting Heaven, holding in awe to Heaven and putting down some roots; some of them even attempted to establish a kind of religion as Confucianism. Secondly, concept definition of religious issues, such as the Heaven, the God, etc., is a vivid mirror of interaction between Confucianism and religions in late Ming Dynasty and early Qing Dynasty. Thirdly, they held quite different attitudes towards Catholicism, rejecting or evaluating foreign religion from perspective of traditional religion or Confucian idealist philosophy. In a word, new thinking trend between Ming and Qing Dynasties brings us much reflection.