Is Falun Gong religious?
Falun Gong comports with the definition of religion generally accepted in the West, in that it involves a systematic program of spiritual exercises and teachings that seek to effect moral growth, inner purity, and higher states of spiritual realization. Its teachings discuss, as do most major religions, otherworldly realms and the existence of other, higher lives or forces. It does not, however, have any initiation rituals that differentiate member from outsider; an institutional structure; physical premises, such as houses of prayer; or worship of or devotion to any specific deity or combination thereof.
