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religion / volume 10 number 7, July 2008 The Missionary Position on Christianity in China A few weeks ago, on June 24th, the PBS show Frontline aired a segment entitled "Jesus in China" which was an excellent unbiased overview of the current status of Christianity in that emerging Asian superpower. The show was quite an eye-opener for me because, although I had taught/tutored Chinese graduate students and visiting scientists at UAF for ten years, I never had a student tell me that he/she had been a practicing Christian in his/her homeland. My very first student, who today is a world-class scientist, a US citizen, and a Christian, had never been exposed to Christianity but did astonish me by saying that he thought the Bible was "the most important book in the world." It is not surprising that my students had not been exposed to Christianity, as only 8.4 percent of the Chinese population are Christians and university science/engineering departments are not very fertile ground for proselytizing. All I believed about Christianity in China was that communism was atheistic, and there were such things as "registered" churches in China as well as illegal "house" churches. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn a bit more from "Jesus in China." There are Christian communists, religion has been added to their constitution, and there are no significant religious doctrinal differences between the legal and illegal churches. Both are protestant "evangelical." With my curiosity piqued, I went to the Internet for more information. (You need to understand that I am not too ept with computers and mine is an original old black-and-white Alaskan Bush Mac that runs on propane.) I learned that the requirements for church registration are: having a fixed place and name, regular participation by citizens, managed by citizens, leadership to be qualified by the church, and it must have its own income. Part of the "legal" church is the "Three-Self Patriotic Movement" which requires self-administration, self-support, and self-propagation. (The nice thing about propane computers is that you can fry and eat any spam you receive.) The government does not control what is taught spiritually in the approved churches but only wants to ensure that there is no foreign influence. This is a reaction to the fact that China was under colonial rule prior to Mao’s war of unification and liberation. Let me digress for a moment and suggest another way to look at China in comparison to the USA. They had their revolution in 1949. We had ours in 1776. New China is only fifty-nine years old. Where was the USA at age fifty-nine, in 1835? We still had slavery and were committing genocide against our native peoples. In some aspects China is a "baby" in the world community but growing fast with leaders who are primarily scientists and engineers who solve problems objectively rather than the way we do with our government of (predominantly) lawyers who are trained in persuasion and compromise and try to compromise on many issues that are factually either black or white. We still argue about biological evolution! Aside from spiritual teachings, the registered churches are also usually socialistic—just like the original church in the Bible (Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-35). The illegal churches may or may not endorse socialism. The illegal churches should register and stop complaining. There is no Biblical imperative that says churches must have foreign influence but there is a directive to "submit" to the "governing authorities" (Romans 13:1-5). Also, on the same day, June 24, 2008, James Dobson attacked Barack Obama which prompted the formation of the new website (www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com) where you can compare the statements of both men side by side. Another great reference on Dobson is James Dobson’s War On America, by his former co-host Gil Alexander-Moegerle(1997, ISBN 1-57392-122-X). Gil tells us how Dobson "is incensed at those whose beliefs are different from his own and who are projecting those views more effectively in the public square than he is." Personally, my favorite Dobson quote is (from his 1982 cassette tape entitled "Evolution and Creation"): "It doesn't look like we're gonna be able to find any transitional forms between the invertebrates, like fish, and the vertebrates, with a backbone, like man." Did you catch it? Invertebrates, like fish. Somebody please tell Dobson that fish, the magnetic-sticker symbol of Christianity, have backbones. No wonder Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, a geologist, wants to keep this type of foreign religious influence out of China. So would Jesus.
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