Daniel L. Overmyer FRSC (August 20, 1935 – November 24, 2021) was a Canadian historian of religion and academic who was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Asian Studies and the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia.
He later described a turning point while in Taiwan when he discovered that the "heretics and bandits" were in fact popular religious sects much like those found in many parts of the world, including in some forms of Christianity.
One evening while attending a scholarly lecture, On an altar in the back of this chapel was the image of a female deity, Yaoji jinmu, “The Golden Mother of the Jasper Pond”, whom he recognized as a variant of Wusheng Laomu, “The Eternal Venerable Mother”, the chief deity of the groups he had been studying in traditional written texts.
[8] Overmyer's first book, Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China, published by Harvard University Press in 1976, grew out of his doctoral dissertation.
Paul Cohen's review of the field book, Discovering History in China says that Overmyer exploits new kinds of sources materials -- sectarian scriptures or "precious scrolls" (baojuan) -- to give a "bottom up" view and access an "interior view" of reality as experienced by participants rather than described by outsiders.
He edited Local Religion in North China in the Twentieth Century: The Structure and Organization of Community Rituals and Beliefs.
He was visiting scholar at the Graduate Institute of Religious Studies of National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, February to July 2002.
Among his students at Oberlin were Randall Nadeau[12] and Stephen F. Teiser, and at British Columbia, Philip Clart and Paul Crowe.