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JESUS IN BEIJING How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance
of Power David Aikman Regnery Publishing Inc., 2003, 344 pp. |
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David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time
magazine has spent much time in China over the past 30+ years. In the summer of 2002 he spent three
months with key Christian leaders in China gathering the final information
for this book. While the subtitle may
be over ambitious (the publisher decides) I found it quite encouraging. This book contends that “Christianity will change the
nature of China in many different ways over the next several decades, and in
doing so, will change the world in which we live.” (292) “In 1949, the world’s most populous nation adopted the
materialist philosophy of a nineteenth-century German and a twentieth-century
Russian in its search for wealth and power after a century of foreign
encroachments on its government and culture.
That philosophy turned out to be bankrupt and China is almost
self-consciously casting around for something to replace it. Christianity has not yet been embraced as
that replacement by the Chinese people, but today it is in a very good
position to do so.” (17-18) A two-ton stone tablet in the Forest of Steles Museum
gives an official account of the first major Christian mission to China by
the Nestorians in 635 AD. It was
uncovered in 1623. (20-22) The first Protestant missionary on Chinese soil, Robert
Morrison in 1807, won only 10 converts in 27 years. (35) At the peak in 1926 there were 8,325 Protestant
missionaries in China. (43) Morrison and Protestant successor “coincided with the most
violent period of expansions into Asia by all of the Western imperialist
nations. Gunboats had indirectly
enabled missionaries to penetrate the remote fastnesses of China’s teeming
inland. But the message of their
barking cannons deafened many Chinese to the serene sounds of the Gospel.”
(44) “At the time of the missionary departure in 1949, Chinese
Christians were numbered at approximately 3 million Roman Catholics and
three-quarters of a million Protestants.” (44) However, together they had founded 429 middle schools and high schools,
16 universities, and 538 hospitals.
Up to 40% of all qualified physicians had been trained at
missionary-founded medical schools.
“The cultural influence of such Christians in positions of social
prestige and influence was considerable.”
(52) Aikman visited a seminary isolated out in the countryside
and found it was bit one of an estimated 200 underground seminaries serving
the four main house church networks among rural and urban communities
throughout the country. There may be
100 in Shanghai alone. (126, 128,
132) Some 15-20 million Chinese attend 13,000 Three Self
churches (the officially registered and recognized church). There are only 3,000 authorized clergy to
serve these churches. Most of these
churches teach orthodox, evangelical Christianity and the overwhelming
majority of its clergy are evangelical in their faith. “Chinese evangelicals from Three Self
churches are as eager as evangelicals all over the world that all human
beings should hear and receive the Christian message.” (136-37) However, “the Three Self continues to live at the beck and
call of the Religious Affairs Bureau….” (175) “Thought persecution of Christians is sporadic rather than
uniform, it still exists in vicious forms across the country. It is a grim and cruel reality, but an
important aspect in the growth of China’s Christianity.” (178) House church leaders in Henan and Wenzhou have a daring
vision of taking the Gospel west, some going back along the Silk Road to
Afghanistan and some taking the ocean route to the Persian Gulf. It is referred to as “Back to Jerusalem,”
and it has become familiar to the Christians of China’s house church
Christian networks. (191-92) An idea has between circulating through house churches for
at least five years, of raising 100,000 Christian missionaries to send out to
the world on a global evangelization expedition. (195) The Gospel has spread, for the most part, in a westward
direction: from Jerusalem to Antioch, to all of Europe, to America, to the
East, from the southwest of China to the northwest, “until today from Gansu
on westward it can be said there is no firmly established church. You may go westward from Gansu, preaching
the Gospel all the way back to Jerusalem, causing the light of the Gospel to
complete the circle around this dark world.” (quoting church leader, Mark
Ma 195-96) “We believe that now that the Gospel has reached China it
will follow the old Silk Road back to Jerusalem. Once the Gospel comes back to Jerusalem, it will mean that the
Gospel has been preached to the whole world.” (quoting church leader Zhang
Rongliang, p. 203) See www.backtojerusalem.org “Globalization is indeed here to stay, and the Christian
component of it, more and more, will have a Chinese accent.” (205) “The story of Catholicism in China under Communism is
tragic and heroic, pragmatic and sophisticated.” “In some ways, it is a miracle that Catholicism survived the
onslaught from China’s Communist rulers in the 1950s.” “By the end of 1955, some 1,500 Catholics
in Shanghai alone were in custody….” (208, 209, 212) “Those Christians who are arrested and imprisoned often
still face severe torture at the hands of the authorities.” (229) Yuan Zhiming produced a six-part documentary, River
Elegy, aired by Beijing Central Television. Yuan’s objective is “to change the perception of China by the
Chinese. If you go to any city and
ask the average person, 99 percent of the people don’t understand
Christianity. They don’t even know what
the question is. Some people in China
don’t even know that there are Christians in China.” (248) “Yuan’s goal is to expose Chinese intellectuals to the
broadest range possible of historical and contemporary Christian
theology.” (250) “Liu Xiaofeng has a gigantic ambition with his theory: To
promote the expansion of Christian scholarship in China’s university system;
and at the same time, present his intellectual views through book series and
periodicals in order to build a foundation for Christian scholarship in the
midst of tension and competition in Chinese intellectual cultural space, so
that the values system of the ‘sacred’ may have its own cultural capital.”
(250) “From modest beginnings at Peking University in the early
1980s, institutes for the study of Christianity, or similarly named academic
entities, have appeared in more than twenty Chinese campuses. None of these is permitted to ‘teach’
Christianity—in that sense it is not unlike a contemporary U.S. college
campus—but scholars who openly profess their Christian faith staff many of
these institutions.” “One Chinese
graduate student estimated that there were at least two hundred Christian
students at Peking University.” (252) “Reports after 1989 showed that as many as 10 percent of
students on many Chinese college campuses where Christian….” (253) “With globalization and post-modernity, we cannot find a
clear value system and clear definitions and judgment. In this case, Christianity would find a
very wide space. It is one of the
strong points of Christianity to set up an absolute value system.” (254) “In December 2001, the Forbidden City Concert Hall held
the first performance of Handel’s Messiah, in Chinese, since the
Communist takeover of 1949.” (258) About 2400 foreigners worship in Beijing’s largest
Christian church and about half are in China for the purpose of advancing
Christianity among the Chinese. (264) “The great Christian revival in China that started when
the Cultural Revolution was still under way in the 1970s and caught fire a
decade later was entirely Chinese.
Other than diplomats, very few foreigners of any kind were permitted
to reside in China from the mid-1960s until the 1980s.” (265-66) No foreign missionaries are permitted to work in china but
two or three thousand do anyway under the guise of teaching English. “Almost every urban young Christian I met
in China had come to the Christian faith through a foreign, English-speaking
teacher.” (278-79) “China is in the process of becoming Christianized.” China may be 20-30% Christian within 30
years. “If that should happen, it is
almost certain that a Christian view of the world will be the dominant
worldview within China’s political and cultural establishment, and possibly
also within senior military circles.” (285) This could result in a profound Christian “sense of
restraint, justice, and order in the wielding of state power.” (285)
“No nation has ever been totally unselfish in employing its national
power. But some nations have been
unusually generous and mindful of a real responsibility—in effect before
God—to act wisely, justly, and generously in the international arena.” (286) “However, the possibility of China’s emergence as an
aggressive global superpower menace should not be discounted.” (287) Periodically China has rejected turned
violently and fanatically against the influence of outsiders. China’s think tanks estimates China will match the power
of the U.S. by 2020 and their strategic planners are envisioning the probable
emergence of China as the number-one global superpower with a few
decades. (288) “They aren’t sure if they have the needed civic virtues
that all political democracies need in some measure. Can you have a viable democracy if you
still have massive corruption? Can
you deal with corruption effectively without first constructing a system for
implementing due process sunder the rule of law? Which comes first, civic virtue or a new legal system? How do you ensure that you have a decent
legal system without a solid core of people who are, well, virtuous?” (289) “Under hardship the Chinese church will be healthy. I am concerned that some day when things
are totally open there will be corruption.”
(quoting a Chinese student leader, 290) “It is worth considering the possibility that not just the
numerical, but the intellectual center of gravity for Christianity may move
decisively out of Europe and North America as the Christianization of China
continues and as China becomes a global superpower.” (291) [I heard David Aikman speak this month. He noted that more than 50,000 Chinese
graduate students are studying in the U.S.
He point out “Never before has a country entrusted its future
leadership to another country to this degree.” How are we doing in befriending these future Chinese leaders
and helping them to find Christ? dlm] Further reading: For another “balanced” perspective, see THE GLOBAL CHINESE:
Rethinking Kingdom-Building and Nation-Building, Keynote Address for
EFMA-AFMA-ISFA Joint Gathering September 17, 2003, by Carol Hamrin, 25 year
senior China research specialist at the U. S. Department of State, in
Missions Frontiers, November-December 2003 or at China: The Church’s Long March, David
Adeny Back to Jerusalem, Paul Hattaway |
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