Late last week The Telegraph published a story about the rise of Christianity in China under the attention-grabbing headline "China on course to become the world's most Christian nation within 15 years."
China today has been variously described as an emerging superpower, an economic miracle, a totalitarian regime, a corrupt kleptocracy, a regional hegemon, a bellwether of the future, and a victim of its past. Each of these narratives contains a kernel of truth, yet none by itself begins to do justice to the complexities of China.
Many people in the West are familiar with the Back to Jerusalem Movement, which refers to a movement of Chinese Christians to take the gospel to Central Asia, and then "back to Jerusalem."
Fewer people, perhaps, are aware of the fact that this movement, or vision, is not something new; it really began in the 1940's when God called a group of Chinese believers to take the Gospel to Northwest China (Xinjiang) and Central Asia. They formed a team called the "Preach Everywhere Gospel Band," and fanned out across Xinjiang.
It can be one of life's greatest challenges and blessings.
Whether it is for a company, business or mission team, the decision to move to China can be one of the most rewarding of a lifetime.
Our favorite stories this week cover the gamut searching for Hui identity in Taiwan; the life of "Taobao Girls" in Beijing; the June 4 crack-down in Chengdu; and a trailer for an upcoming documentary about a Tibetan woman living in Beijing. China is nothing, if not complex!
One thing that I have noticed over the past couple of years is the growing influence of Calvinism among Chinese house church Christians. At a conference I attended in Germany last year, one of the speakers even listed it as a major challenge facing the church in China.
As the news of the battle for Sanjiang Church in Wenzhou began to break over the last week and I read the accounts, I was reminded again why fully understanding Christianity in China from the West is so hard.
In a recent interview in the ChinaSource Quarterly, Purdue professor Yang Fenggang is quoted as saying that "the Chinese Christian church has become an institutional base for passing on transformed Confucian values to younger generations." Dr. Yang, a sociologist and Director of the Center on Religion and Society at Purdue University, does not necessarily see Confucianism and Christianity as being in competition with one another. Rather, he encourages Christians to seek common ground where possible.
On April 4, the western press began reporting on a church in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province that was surrounded by thousands of parishioners who were blocking a crew sent to demolish the church. As reported, local officials had initially ordered that the cross be removed from the church, and later said the church was built illegally and had ordered its destruction. The story was a hot topic both inside and outside of China, and has come to be known as The Sanjiang Church Incident.
Schools, nostalgia, and explaining the unexplainable these are the subjects of our top picks in ZGBriefs this week.
On April 7, the online magazine Tea Leaf Nation (one of my favorites) published an article titled Infographic: Jesus More Popular Than Mao on China's Twitter.
Love her or hate her, Empress Dowager Cixi does not leave us with the option of just letting her drift off into historical obscurity. Jung Chang's (author of Wild Swans) recently published Express Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China is destined to become a must read for China hands.