Cao Đài

Cao Đài was formally established on October 7, 1926, in Tây Ninh, southern Vietnam, growing out of a spiritualist circle that had begun meeting in Saigon the previous year. Its founders — including Cao Quỳnh Cư, Cao Hoài Sang, Lê Văn Trung, and Phạm Công Tắc — presented the new faith as a deliberate synthesis: Confucian ethical precepts, Taoist ritual practice, Buddhist teachings on karma and rebirth, and an organizational hierarchy modeled on Roman Catholicism, unified under the worship of a single God, Cao Đài. Adherents refer to their faith as the 'Third Universal Redemption' — a final revelation completing two earlier eras of divine communication with humanity through history's great prophets.

Cao Đài's most recognizable symbol, the Divine Eye, appears throughout its temples to represent God's all-seeing presence. Its founding scriptures — the Tân Luật (Canonical Codes) and Pháp Chánh Truyền (Religious Constitution) — were composed in part through spirit-writing séances, a mediumistic practice influenced by the French spiritist Allan Kardec, through which adherents believe they received guidance from God and a pantheon of spirits that includes historical and literary figures such as Victor Hugo and Sun Yat-sen. Core practices include prayer, ancestor veneration, vegetarianism on set days, and a commitment to nonviolence.

The Tây Ninh Holy See, with its ornately colorful cathedral, remains Cao Đài's spiritual center and a major site of Vietnamese religious tourism. Estimates of the faith's following vary considerably depending on source and methodology — Vietnamese government figures place adherents at 4.4 to 6 million, while United Nations estimates from 2015 suggest a smaller figure near 2.5 million — but by any measure Cao Đài ranks among Vietnam's largest indigenous new religious movements, with additional communities in the Vietnamese diaspora in the United States, France, and Cambodia.