The Legacy of an Accommodative Secularism: Religions and Taiwan’s Responses to COVID-19

Abstract

Throughout the two years of this pandemic, Taiwanese public authorities have obtained cooperation from religious organisations in limiting and mitigating the contagion, and the population was largely spared the influence of conspiracy theories about the virus’ origins. I have found no trace of any significant doomsday theologies among the major religions practiced in Taiwan emerging in the public health emergency caused by COVID-19. What explains this largely cooperative relationship? From the perspective of public policy, why has the government obtained the compliance of most religious actors to its directive and faced little or no opposition coming from them? I use a historical institutionalist approach to argue that decades of toleration from political leaders of all trends towards religions have generated a path dependency of mutual trust and that legacy predates the period of democratisation. The article explores the extent to which this outcome results from three factors: Taiwan’s religious diversity, or the absence of a religious hegemony opposed to the state; pragmatic and flexible theologies; and/or convergence between successive Taiwanese governments’ social policies and the social teachings of religions.