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.
ChinaSource Team
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April 13, 2014
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Stories
Schools, nostalgia, and explaining the unexplainable these are the subjects of our top picks in ZGBriefs this week.
ChinaSource Team
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April 11, 2014
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Resources
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.
Joann Pittman
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April 9, 2014
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Stories
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.
Amy Young
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April 8, 2014
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Resources
An interview with Dr. Fenggang Yang about a new exchange program at Purdue University.
Joann Pittman
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Ideas
The following eschatological scheme is what I have pieced together from scattered statements in Eastern Lightning writings. It does not seem altogether consistent, and it may not reflect the common understanding among the cult's rank and file.
William Bennett
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April 7, 2014
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Scholarship
The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity (三位一体) is that there is one God (一神) in three persons (三个位个).
William Bennett
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Scholarship
The Spring 2014 issue of ChinaSource Quarterly takes up the topic of Confucianism'S resurgence in China and its implications for the church. Certainly not a new topic, the relationship between China's dominant worldview and the Christian gospel has been a perennial subject of discussion since at least the days of Matteo Ricci. Successive generations of Christians in China have asked the pertinent questions in different ways, some choosing to find accommodation between the two, while others find them to be mutually exclusive.
Brent Fulton
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Ideas
Christians from a church in Shanghai minister to leukemia patients.
ChinaSource Team
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Stories
A brief discussion of the origins and evolution of the Eastern Lightning cult, an introduction
William Bennett
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April 4, 2014
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Ideas
Tomorrow (April 5) is "Tomb-Sweeping Day," a festival to honor the ancestors by tending their graves. There were two articles about this that caught our attention this week.
ChinaSource Team
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Resources
Section three of "Where did Eastern Lightning Come From?" This section looks at the origins of Eastern Lightning's ideas.
William Bennett
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April 3, 2014
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Ideas