How many worshippers does the Taoist religion have?
Midgardsormr Jan 31st, 2008 First, it’s a bit of misnomer to use the word “worshippers” when referring to Taoism. Most Taoists do not worship the Tao–it is not a deity, or even a personality. It’s a bit difficult to really describe the Tao in English–the language isn’t built right. To be honest, it’s apparently not easy to do in Chinese, either. “The Tao called Tao is not Tao,” as Laotse put it. In any case, it’s hard to pin down how many Taoists there are in the world, since it isn’t a “standard” type of religion. For instance, it’s possible to be a Taoist and a Confucian or a Buddhist at the same time. The statistic given at Adherents.com is 394 million people practice “traditional Chinese religions.” Most of those will be Confucianists, but a large percentage of the Confucians will also be Taoists. Spaceandmotion.com estimates 225 million practitioners. Given that there are over 1 billion people in China, and prior to the Cultural Revolution, most of the population were religious
