Overlooked by most media types who fancy themselves as ‘old China hands’ is the spread of Christianity in that country. By most accounts – including the Chinese government’s own surveys – over 10% of China’s population is now Christian and the pace is accelerating.
The Chinese government’s reaction to Christianity has been interesting. Recall that Christianity is an import – Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism are China’s traditional religions. These were suppressed during the Maoist years, replaced, quite naturally, by the Cult of Mao. But when Mao’s cult was displaced in the early 80s, there was no unifying religious alternative to take its place. Throughout the 80s and 90s the pace of Christian evangelism exploded, making deep inroads even into the Party elite. While Christianity was suppressed – sometimes savagely – the regime began to consider the gospel in a more utilitarian light.
And as in late third century Rome, the regime’s attitude began to change as its need for a unifying influence became acute. So it is in China. From Francesco Sisci’s fascinating article in this month’s First Things:
But the decisive result of China’s reconsideration of religion may have been the Seventeenth Party Congress, held in Beijing in October 2007. Religious affiliation is forbidden for party members—but there, in close-ups on television screens showing the plenary session in the cavernous Great Hall of the People, was the slim and attentive face of the young Panchen Lama, the second-ranking figure in Tibetan Buddhism, listening to Hu Jintao’s speech. The badge on his chest read “Guest.”
The close-up sent a message that the important religious dignitary in Tibet was supportive of the Beijing government, certainly. But it also sent a message that the party was reconsidering its stance on religion. Hu’s keynote speech reserved a paragraph for religion, emphasizing that religious people—priests, monks, and lay believers—played a positive role in the social and economic development of China. In the official version of the text, Hu is quoted as saying that the party must mobilize the positive elements of religion for economic and social development. Thus, religion can play an important role in realizing the “harmonious society” that is the new political goal of the party.
Two months later, on December 18, 2007, the Chinese Politburo held an extraordinary meeting. All twenty-three members of China’s top leadership gathered for a daylong set of lectures on the subject of Christianity—and, even more significantly, announced that it was doing so: an unambiguous signal to the public that the Communist party now approved of the practice of Christianity alongside Buddhism and Confucianism.
The identity of the speakers and the topics of their presentations were made public, although the proceedings were kept private; one can only imagine what sort of questions China’s communist leaders put to their experts on the subject of Christian theology. But what was not left to the imagination was the fact that the Politburo had gathered to take instruction in Christianity—and, by way of followup, the Politburo commissioned a series of reports on Catholicism from a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Ren Yanli, the foremost Chinese academic specialist on the Catholic Church.
Read it all.
Observe that the Chinese leadership views Christianity as synonymous with science and progress. That’s an accurate observation – and one that’s largely lost on western academics and culture mavens. While the leadership’s current interest in the gospel is largely utilitarian, if it’s a choice between utilitarianism and persecution, I’ll take utilitarianism any old day.
