Christianity & Confucianism
Family, Filial Piety, and the Father
For Confucius, the family is the first school of virtue, and filial piety, the honour and care a child owes parents and ancestors, is close to the root of all goodness. Christianity also commands us to honour father and mother, and treats the family as sacred. Yet Jesus said something startling: that love for him must come even before love of father or mother, and he pointed every family upward to one Father in heaven who makes all who follow him one family. Both honour the family; they order its place differently.
What Confucianism teaches
Filial piety (xiao) is, for Confucius, almost the root from which the other virtues grow:
The family is the first place virtue is learned, and honour toward parents, living and departed, orders the whole of life and society. To be a good person begins with being a good son or daughter.
What Christians believe
Christianity, too, commands honour to parents; it is written into the Ten Commandments and repeated by Jesus and the apostles.
Yet Jesus also set the family within a greater love, and taught his followers to call God himself Father.
Where they meet
Both hold the family sacred, both command honour and care for parents, and both see the home as the first place where love and character are formed.
Where they differ
For Confucianism, filial piety is close to the root and highest of loyalties, the foundation of the moral and social order. Jesus commands honour to parents too, yet sets even family beneath the love of God, and reframes every family around a heavenly Father who adopts all who follow him into one household. Family as the root, or family under the Father, is the difference.
Analects quotations: James Legge (1861 and 1893, public domain, from The Chinese Classics and the Sacred Books of the East); passage numbering follows the Chinese Text Project’s Legge edition and varies in other printings. Confucianism is an ethical and social tradition more than a creed about God, and we take care not to force Christian meanings onto it. Bible: King James Version. Every reference on this page was checked against its source.
The word itself
孝 (xiao) → filial piety
Xiao is filial piety: the honour, obedience, and care a child owes to parents and ancestors, and for Confucius it is close to the root of all virtue. Christianity commands honour to parents too (Exodus 20:12), yet sets the family under the love of God the Father.
Frequently asked questions
- What is filial piety in Confucianism?
- Filial piety (xiao) is the honour, obedience, and care a child owes to parents and ancestors. Confucius treated it as close to the root of all virtue (Analects 1:2): a good person begins by being a good son or daughter, and the family is the first school of goodness.
- Does Christianity teach honouring parents?
- Yes. Honour your father and mother is one of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:12) and is repeated by Jesus. But Jesus also set family beneath the love of God, saying love for him must come first (Matthew 10:37), and taught his followers to call God himself Father.
Come and see
Confucius taught a lifelong cultivation of virtue, humaneness, and the honouring of others; the Gospel tells of a God who came to make us new by grace. The most direct way to know Jesus is to read his words for yourself. There is no pressure here.
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