Was bedeutet die Bewegung? What does this movement mean? Bringt die Ost mir frohe Kunde? 1 Does the East bring me glad tidings? An analogy comparing Shin Buddhism-the largest, most active, and most liberal of Japan's traditional Buddhist institutions-to Protestant Christianity has existed for a long time, beginning with the sixteenth century Jesuit encounter with Japan. 2 The analogy has always been distinctly limited in scope and in important respects has also always-in the context of all world history-remained primarily confined to the Shin-Christian encounter. Apparently, the kind of evolution of consciousness it indicates is historically rare. 3 Nevertheless, the analogy is not eccentric and not insignificant. Broadly, it gestures towards certain structural patterns visibly shared by both this form of Buddhism and by Protestant Christianity. Especially at issue is the powerdispersing shift towards a new level of de facto self-reliance in religious thought, via revolutionary teachings about the radically independent relations of the individual to a deity or an existential vision. Historically, such teachings undermined and revised earlier versions of religious authority, contributing to the establishment of a stronger sense of spiritual equality and a higher level of freedom of individual conscience. Often, they were associated with a gradual transition from a polytheistic, magical, ritualized cosmological worldview to a more monotheistic, less magical, less ritualized worldview. In the United States-although uniquely so in the Euro-American sphere-such ideas contributed to a relatively sharp legal separation of church and state. Finally, less 724
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.