Chinas Christian Future? The growth of house church Christianity in China is bound to change the world
Aikman, David
China's Christian Future? The growth of house church Christianity in the world's most populous nation is bound to change the world as we know it. BY DAVID AIKMAN NINA IS IN...
...Just as the U.S...
...Democracy—But Not So Fast Yuan Zhiming, whose docuILL CHINA EVOLVE into a mentary The Soul of China has political democracy...
...ally convincing way not just the compatibility, but DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 AMERICAN SPECTATOR 39...
...China's Christian Future...
...Pillsbury says that Beijing's prestigious democracy, aren't really sure that they have the military think tank, the Academy of Military needed self-discipline to make it work...
...Yuan, both through The cal process is far less likely to lie—as the govern-Soul of China and his most recent documentary, ment did in the early stages of the SARS epidem-The Cross, hopes to demonstrate in an intellectuic—or to be an international bully...
...In China Debates the Straits of Malacca...
...They want to over Taiwan, China's political China by the see religious and political freeleadership could lurch in the dom come to China, but in an direction of a dangerous and creation, for evolutionary, reformist process, vengeful nationalism...
...In the 1920s, problems that allows for the elimi-n nationalistic anti-Westernism nation of Israel as a Jewish state...
...What do I mean by a "Christian view of the world...
...Can you have a viable democracy if you still have come across a few times already and which have massive corruption...
...uniformly realistic these predictions of In this context, China's China's rise to prominence may or patriotic and house church Christians are unimay not be, Chinese strategic formly patriotic and cautious: planners are currently envision-They do not want to see a ing the probable emergence of cautious: breakup of China by the creation, China as the number-one global for example, of an independent superpower within a matter of Tibet...
...They do not want to see a They do not decades...
...The For example, a Christianized Boxer Rebellion of 1900 was the China would be unlikely to consent most violent and fanatical of be unlikely to to any resolution of Middle East the episodes...
...than the military find itself in close cooperation with the rest of the strategists of the current regime...
...Christians are have a decent legal system withWhat Pillsbury and others out a solid core of people who have shown is, regardless of how are, well, virtuous...
...That does not mean that all Chinese will become Christian, or even that a majority will...
...A China that is more humane society, not to mention a functionaccountable to its own people through the politi-ing political democracy...
...China would technology and ideas...
...Of course, there is no uniform "Christian view" on many domestic and international issues...
...But at the present rate of growth in the number of Christians in the countryside, in the cities, and especially within China's social and cultural establishment, it is possible that Christians will constitute 20 to 30 percent of China's population within three decades...
...has carried for the past times in China's history since the seventeenth five decades...
...has believe that political activism in no major security concerns with nations that and of itself is the best way to change China into a practice freedom of religion...
...I do Middle East entry into the Korean War in not think that China would try to 1950 and Henry Kissinger's bully its way into the hearts of visit of 1971 were another periMuslims in the way Western impe-problems that od when China closed in upon rial powers tried to do into the allows for the itself in great hostility to the hearts of Chinese in the nineteenth major Western power of the century...
...certainly desirable...
...Chengdu in 1999 after the U.S...
...The U.S...
...The growth of house church Christianity in the world's most populous nation is bound to change the world as we know it...
...It down the U.S...
...Christians differ with one another over political and social questions...
...A Christianized China may also Future Security Environment, Pillsbury, who has 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 DAVID AIKMAN personally known many of the Chinese theorists So how will China get from the one-party about whom he writes, reports how Chinese political dictatorship of today to the desirable strategists have devised a system for denominat-multi-party democracy of tomorrow...
...day, the United States...
...If China becomes Christian-elimination of More recently, the Chinese ized, the dominant form of its mobs that stoned the U.S...
...Can you deal with corhas generally had a much more ruption effectively without first pro-Western bent to it, the constructing a system for impleChinese Academy of Social China's house menting due process under the Sciences, has predicted that by the rule of law...
...still possesses it...
...Taiwan that has declared soverIt is certainly conceivable want to see a eign independence from China that, in the wake of a major eco-(but they also don't want to see nomic collapse in China, or per-Communist military action breakup of haps some military confrontation toward Taiwan...
...Chinese, who have never technology, national will, national weakness, and enjoyed the experience of a functioning political so forth...
...ism that was the main impetus bombing of the Chinese behind both Britain's abolition of the slave trade embassy in Belgrade indicated that there are within its own domains in 1833 and its insistence thriving grass roots of populist nationalism (even on trying to eliminate it internationally through-if the government organized the buses to drive the out much of the remainder of the nineteenth cen-demonstrators to the embassy...
...decline of the British Empire, it is not implausible OWEVER, the possibility of China's emerthat a Christianized China, now an emergent glob-1 gence as an aggressive global superpower al power, might find itself wanting to take on some _ menace should not be discounted...
...A fueled strikes, protests, and a consent to any Christianized China would seek to lingering antipathy to Western make the world safe for Christian resolution of importations like Christianity...
...missionary endeavor, especially The years between China's within the Islamic domains...
...It is also possible that, for a period of century, when the first significant Western contime, the U.S...
...tury...
...had a major impact among independent Will China permit gen-Chinese intellectuals in both uine freedom of conscience...
...There is a ing the powers of great nations called broadly based fear in China of the uncertainty and Comprehensive National Power...
...will church civic virtue or a new legal sysgrasp that China is about to over-tem...
...not through political violence example, of an against the authorities...
...emerged into a benevolent global imperial role after World War II and the ...Or an Emerging Menace...
...Another that all political democracies need in some measChinese think tank, notes Pillsbury, which we ure...
...But what I mean is an Augustinian sense of international responsibility...
...Christianity, at least initially, will Israel as a embassy in Beijing and burned be strongly evangelical in flavor...
...and China might find themselves tacts took place through the Jesuits, China has sharing a common worldview on turned aggressively xenophobic many thorny questions of interna-A Christianized after a long period of seeming to tional affairs, and in some ways digest Western trade, science, cooperating closely to resolve them...
...BY DAVID AIKMAN NINA IS IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING CHRISTIANIZED...
...Many of the burdens that the U.S...
...by the year 2020...
...Both Britain and the U.S...
...This system fac-extreme violence that has often characterized tors in matters like economic strength, military regime change in China...
...It's China and the U.S., does not Tibet...
...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 cul tural establishment, and possibly also within senior military circles...
...This is not world in the suppression of terrorism, or making a because they will have ceased to be patriotic, but more conscientious effort than hitherto to prebecause they will not see the world as a dog-eat-vent the proliferation of weapons of mass destrucdog squabble between major powers...
...Michael Pillsbury, one of America's most cessful global interdiction of the slave trade in the experienced and best-informed observers of first six decades of the nineteenth century, a China's military, has shown that among China's Christianized China might find itself eager to major military think tanks there is a deep-seated ensure international law and order wherever it strategic speculation about the country's potenhad the capability of doing so: suppression of pira-tial to become a supreme global military supercy on the South China Sea, for example, or in the power in the current century...
...Nor are these sentiments limited to the grass Just as Britain's Royal Navy operated a suc-roots...
...The word "Augustinian" derives from Augustine's calling in his major work, The City of God, for a profound sense of restraint, justice, and order in the wielding of state power...
...They Science, estimates that China's CNP will have aren't sure if they have the needed civic virtues matched that of the U.S...
...Which comes first, decade 2020-2030, the U.S...
...consulate in was without question evangelical-Jewish state...
...have possessed this at the heights of their imperial power and influence, and the U.S...
...This does not, naturally, mean that national interests are placed aside in favor of the interna 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 CHINA'S CHRISTIAN FUTURE neuver and neutralize the U.S...
...How do you ensure that you take it as a global power...
Vol. 36 • December 2003 • No. 7
