27 Facts About Yiguandao

Yiguandao started off with a few thousand followers in Shandong in the 1930s, but under the Patriarch and Matriarch's leadership and with missionary work the group grew to become the biggest movement in China in the 1940s with millions of followers.

In 1949, Yiguandao was proscribed in mainland China as an illegal secret society and heretical cult as part of the greater antireligious campaign that took place.

Yiguandao has since flourished in Taiwan, despite decades of persecution by the Kuomintang that officially ended in 1987 with the legalization of Yiguandao and a government apology.

Yiguandao is still not able to be officially promoted in the mainland, but there are many members who live and practice there.

Yiguandao is characterized by an eschatological and soteriological doctrine, presenting itself as a way to salvation.

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Yiguandao is the worship of the source of the universal reality personified as the Eternal Venerable Mother, or the Splendid Highest Deity .

The highest deity is the primordial energy of the universe, identified in Yiguandao thought with the Tao in the wuji or "unlimited" state and with fire.

The name used in contemporary Yiguandao scriptures is the "Infinite Mother" and the "lantern of the Mother" —a flame representing the Mother—is the central focus of Yiguandao shrines.

Yiguandao focuses on the worship of the Infinite Mother, known as the Eternal Venerable Mother, which is a feature of other Chinese folk religions.

Yiguandao conceives the cosmos as tripartite, consisting of litian, qitian and xiangtian .

Yiguandao involves an eschatological—soteriological belief: Grieving over the loss of her children, the Eternal Mother sent to the material world three enlightened beings over the "Three Eras".

Yiguandao originated in the late 19th century in Shandong as a branch of Xiantiandao, which in turn was founded in Jiangxi in the 17th century Qing dynasty as an offshoot of the Venerable Officials' teaching of fasting, a branch of the Dacheng or Yuandun eastern proliferation of Luoism.

Yiguandao took Sun Suzhen as his partner, proclaiming that their marriage was a message from the Eternal Mother, and that he was the incarnation of Jigong, a deified miracle monk that lived between the late 12th and the 13th century.

Yiguandao's nose was straight like that of a dragon, and his head was like that of a god.

Yiguandao's earlobes touched his shoulders, and his arms were very long .

Yiguandao walked beautifully and perfectly, with long strides, and was obviously not of the mortal world.

Yiguandao spread and gathered financial support through the performance of "rituals of salvation of the ancestors".

In December 1950 The People's Daily published the editorial "Firmly Banning Yiguandao", proclaiming that the movement had been used as a counterrevolutionary tool by imperialists and the Kuomintang.

The article claimed that Yiguandao members were traitors collaborating with the Japanese invaders, Kuomintang spies, and reactionary landlords.

In Kuomintang-governed Taiwan after 1949, there was initially a climate of restrictions of Chinese traditional religions and Yiguandao was attacked as immoral, politically charged, and suspect of cooperation with communists of mainland China.

The effort to legalize Yiguandao came from Chou Lien-hua and Chu Hai-yuan of the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, who lobbied on its behalf.

Yiguandao was transmitted in the Korean peninsula in the 1940s through the pioneering work of Dukbuk Lee, Sujeun Jang, Buckdang Kim and Eunsun Kim.

In Singapore the Yiguandao has three great public halls and more than 2000 house churches.

In those years, Yiguandao was spreading secretly back to mainland China from Taiwan; entrepreneurs belonging to Yiguandao were building temples, networks and factories.

Between 2000 and 2005 Yiguandao was removed from the Chinese government's official list of "evil cults", and branches of the organization were tacitly allowed to return to China.

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Yiguandao cooperates with academic and non-governmental organizations in mainland China.

Yiguandao is a collection of at least nineteen divisions .