PEOPLE, LOOK EAST: I have a book review in the current issue of Crisis of David Aikman’s Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power.

Excerpts:

…According to David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine, China may soon be among the most influential Christian countries in the world. Aikman’s provocative thesis gets a vigorous, if overhasty, presentation in his new book, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power. …

But Jesus in Beijing has its own characteristic strengths as well. Chief among them is Aikman’s understanding that China, after the wreckage of Maoism and the doubletalk of Deng Xiaoping and his successors, is a nation adrift. Aikman’s book is a portrait of an entire nation whose “hearts are restless, until they rest in Thee.”

It seems gauche to address the political effects of Christian conversion. Nonetheless, Aikman offers many predictions. On his account, Chinese Protestants tend to be reformist rather than radical, emphasizing a slow transition to liberal democracy. They do not engage in much political agitation. In short, don’t picture a Protestant Solidarnosc.

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