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This paper examines how religion has become increasingly important in Taiwan’s anti-nuclear movement at Gongliao. Originally led by opposition politicians, the movement later shifted toward local religious leadership as public distrust of party politics grew. A Mazu temple emerged as a central force in the protests. The study interprets the conflict as a struggle among three forms of power: nuclear-industrial power, political power, and religious power rooted in local community networks and secular activism.

In Taiwan’s traditional patrilineal society, ancestral status and a ‘good death’ are granted exclusively to those with male heirs. Unmarried women are consequently excluded from the family lineage, relegating them to the marginalised category of a ‘bad death’. By analysing how families navigate this exclusion—first through private Daoist rituals in pre-modern, rural areas, and later through public Buddhist institutions in modern, urban environments—this study reveals how age-old religious structures continually adapt to broader processes of societal modernisation.