Religion and History in Vietnam

Vietnamese religion is best described as a set of layers that most people occupy simultaneously. The base is the village: a communal house honouring a tutelary spirit, a lineage altar in every home, and death anniversaries observed for named ancestors. Above that sit the three teachings, Mahayana Buddhism, Confucian social order and Taoist ritual, which arrived during the millennium of Chinese rule and were adapted rather than adopted; the Truc Lam Zen school founded by the retired emperor Tran Nhan Tong in the thirteenth century is a distinctly Vietnamese formation.

Catholicism came with Portuguese and then French missions in the seventeenth century, and the Jesuit Alexandre de Rhodes contributed to the romanised script that eventually replaced Chinese characters as the national writing system, an outcome few missionary projects can claim. Two indigenous religions founded in the twentieth century remain substantial: Cao Dai, established at Tay Ninh in 1926, with a hierarchy modelled loosely on the papacy and a canon of spirits that includes Victor Hugo, and Hoa Hao Buddhism, founded in 1939, which teaches lay practice at home rather than in temples. Religion was severely restricted after 1975 and has been permitted through registration since the 1990s.