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→Note on Taiwan's Religious Environment
==Note on Taiwan's Religious Environment==
Most of Taiwan's population follows the Chinese folk religion (which is known by various names, including both "Buddhism" and "Daoism"). Unlike Western religions, participation in the Chinese folk religion does not usually involve required beliefs or behaviors, or a formal group identity, and is difficult to separate from such borderline religious phenomena as fortune-telling, qigong practice, holiday observances, or ancestor veneration. A minority (perhaps 5 or 10 percent) are "Buddhists" in the more international sense of having taken refuge with a Buddhist monk or nun. Christians apparently comprise 4 or 5 percent of the population, with and are roughly one -third of them Presbyterian and one -third Catholic.
Dutch Calvinist and Spanish Dominican missionaries arrived on "Formosa" (as Taiwan was then called) within a few years of each other in the 17th century, but failed to establish permanent congregations before the expulsion of the Spanish (by the Dutch) and Dutch (by the Ming loyalist / pirate lord Koxinga). During the 1860's, Dominicans (from the Philippines) and Presbyterians (from England and Canada) established relatively successful missions, with immense consequences to the island's culture and development. For example, one Canadian Presbyterian missionary, George Leslie Mackay, founded Taiwan's first university and hospital.
