Taiwan’s Religious Matrix and Charity

Abstract

In recent decades, the development of Taiwan’s folk religions relative to local Western religions has been blooming and thriving, so have been the religious charity activities. From the perspective of the multiple contracts theory framework, in a period of division and redefinition between politics-religion and citizen-government relationships, the traditional ascetic Buddhism and Taoism contain more altruistic and universalism implications than Christian and Catholicism and they have reshaped in great proportions the landscape of folk religious beliefs in Taiwan and propelled the flourish of the religious modern charity.