{"id":70633,"date":"2019-02-20T08:26:15","date_gmt":"2019-02-20T15:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=70633"},"modified":"2019-02-20T08:26:15","modified_gmt":"2019-02-20T15:26:15","slug":"christian-faith-in-contemporary-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2019\/02\/christian-faith-in-contemporary-china.html","title":{"rendered":"“Christian Faith in Contemporary China”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"LDS<\/a>
The Hong Kong China LDS Temple \u00a0 \u00a0(Wikimedia CC photo by Chamrat Charoenkhet)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Here\u2019s an article that I published in the Deseret News<\/em> way back on 29 April 2010:<\/p>\n

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China is, by a margin of nearly 200 million, the most populous country on earth. And it appears, at least, to be a rising economic superpower. (According to The Economist, it averaged 15.1 percent annual growth in real GDP between 1997 and 2007, by far the highest rate of any major nation.) Fortified by its increasing wealth, China is integrating itself into the global economy and is modernizing rapidly, in all respects.<\/span><\/p>\n

Important social theorists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber and \u00c9mile Durkheim predicted in the 19th and early 20th centuries that religious belief and practice would decline as society modernized. This is the so-called \u201csecularization thesis,\u201d and contemporary China is a pretty good laboratory in which to evaluate whether their prediction was accurate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Christianity seems first to have entered China when believers (perhaps, but not certainly, of a Nestorian type) reached Xian, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, in 635 and were permitted to establish places of worship and to proselytize. Mongol Nestorians were influential in the 13th-century Yuan Dynasty, and Franciscan friars from Europe arrived in 1289. However, in the latter portion of the 14th century, the Ming Dynasty set out to cleanse China of all foreign influences, including not only Christianity but Buddhism<\/a>. Although St. Francis Xavier never reached the mainland, Jesuit missionaries (including the celebrated Matteo Ricci) arrived in the late 16th century, and Protestant missionaries came in the 19th century. (Chinese Protestants often describe them as the first Christian missionaries, period, frequently refusing to recognize Catholics as fellow Christians.) Then, however, the Communists took power in 1949, and, in what has been termed a \u201creluctant exodus,\u201d foreign missionaries left. Worse still, during the 1966-1976 \u201cCultural Revolution,\u201d religious practice was effectively banned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, though, China may be witnessing the biggest surge of Christianity in history. The Chinese government\u2019s own statistics put the number of Chinese Christians at 21 million in 2006, up fully 50 percent from only 14 million in 1997. These Christians are affiliated with 4,600 Catholic churches and with approximately 55,000 official Protestant congregations. But the government figures are probably far too low. There is an underground Catholic Church that is almost certainly larger than the official one, and the government refuses to recognize thousands of Protestant \u201chouse churches.\u201d A fairly conservative estimate is that China\u2019s population includes at least 65 million Protestants and 12 million Catholics \u2014 slightly more Christian believers than there are members of the Chinese Communist Party. And some observers claim that Christianity in China has as many as 130 million adherents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Official government statistics put the number of Muslims in China at roughly 20 million, mostly concentrated in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the country\u2019s northwest. As with the Christians, though, this is probably a considerable understatement. But even the government figure puts China only a few million Muslims behind Saudi Arabia, the homeland of Islam, and there is strong reason to think that Chinese Muslims are surging, too, both in numbers and in commitment to their faith.<\/span><\/p>\n

The more established traditions of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism \u2014 often somewhat jumbled together, mixed with ancestor veneration and folklore \u2014 also enjoy a more public presence in today\u2019s China than they have for several decades previously. Buddhist<\/a> temples dot the countryside, large Buddhist festivals are increasingly tolerated, and a significant Tibetan Buddhist shrine \u2014 no less! \u2014 sits in the heart of the capital city, Beijing. The official state news agency says that there are approximately 100 million Chinese Buddhists<\/span><\/p>\n

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in 2006, 31 percent of today\u2019s Chinese say that religion is very important or somewhat important in their lives. (Another survey put the percentage at nearly twice that.) By comparison, only 11 percent of the population, in this country that has been officially atheistic since the Communist Party gained control of it, says that religion is not important at all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The flourishing of religion in China today provides little or no support for the so-called secularization thesis. And when we factor into our analysis the brutal repression to which religious believers were subject under the totalitarian rule of Chairman Mao, the persistence and even rebirth of religious faith in China is more remarkable still.<\/span><\/p>\n

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For a somewhat more recent and longer discussion, see Louis C. Midgley, \u201cChristian Faith in Contemporary China,\u201d Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship<\/em> 2 (2012): 35-39.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Posted from Richmond, Virginia<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 \u00a0 Here\u2019s an article that I published in the Deseret News way back on 29 April 2010: \u00a0 China is, by a margin of nearly 200 million, the most populous country on earth. And it appears, at least, to be a rising economic superpower. 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