Interpreting Thai Religious Change: Temples, Sangha Reform and Social Change

Abstract

Thai religion is changing. So is Thai society. To most scholars the connection is obvious: social and especially material changes drive religious ones. So a new middle class causes religious ferment while a crisis in legitimacy explains a militant Buddhist movement as well as the fervour for amulets and forest monks. Such explanations are typical in using extra-religious current events to explain religious change. We need not dispute their specific interpretations to make a larger historical point: today's religious changes are, if only in part, the unintended consequences of a century and a half of Sangha reform that has undermined the local Buddhism of the temple or wat. In effect centralizing reforms took the wat away from locals and, by driving folk practices out of the temple, fostered today's religious “free market”. This long-term institutional shift, changing the wat's place in Thai society, can be the context for understanding today's religious changes.