From the article: However, the Sanjiang church is part of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, Chinas officially sanctioned and government-controlled Protestant church, making this weeks stand-off highly unusual. Parishioners believe their church was targeted after Xia Baolong, the provincial Party chief, visited the region and was unimpressed by the prominence of a church built to house thousands of worshippers. And later Yang Zhumei, 74, said she had pleaded with officials to leave her church alone. I held their hands and said, Comrades, dont take down our cross. I can give you my head instead. Even if they take my head, I can still find happiness with God, she shouted. My comments: First: Please say a prayer for these folks, if youre the praying sort. Yang Zhumeis words remind me of St. Polycarp, who in his 80s is said to have replied to demands that he renounce his faith Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong. How can I speak evil of my King who saved me? The lines between the Three-Self movement and the house churches in China are much more porous than many Americans understand. This highlights the tension the Communist government has with Christianity in general. The growth of Christianity in China has been rapid, and some estimate that by 2025, China will have the third largest population of Christians in the world--behind the US and Brazil, making up about 12% of the Chinese population, a significant percentage, and one that a number of historians estimate the Christian population of the Roman Empire to have been around (10-15%) the time of official toleration. By 2050, some projections say that China may have the single largest population of Christians in the world. Its an open question what influence Chinese culture will have on Christianity, and what sort of influence Chinese Christianity will have on the nation of China. Lamin Sanneh, in his book on global Christianity, Disciples of All Nations writes this about Mao and Christianity: ““In his rejection of China’s spiritual heritage as something superstitious and inert [...] Mao became the summary judge of cultural sins and [...] introduced extreme messianic passion into China’s reckoning. According to one assessment, from the combination of influences stemming from the church which God saw and the church human beings spoke of, “‘a messianic fire [was] cast on the earth’ which [Chinese] Marxism scattered so far from the hearths of Christendom [...] Mao might be far from Christendom, but not far enough to avoid rousing the Christian ghost from the mountain recluses and political backwaters to which rhetoric banished it. The political mission of China seemed too evocative of the Christian mission it combated for it to succeed without the Christian alibi. And that alibi came to haunt the gatekeepers of the revolution” --Lamin Sanneh
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 03:34:54 +0000
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