[geocentrism] Re: CHRISTIANITY GROWING FAST IN RED CHINA
- From: "philip madsen" <pma15027@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "ABCs of Faith www.abcsoffaith.com" <latonyk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Governor" <governor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "geocentrism list" <geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <TraditionalCatholicsUnited@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 11:55:10 +1000
FW: CHRISTIANITY GROWING FAST IN RED CHINADo you think, going on these figures,
that God has dumped the RC church, and gone over to the Protestants, like he
dumped the Jews?
Phil.
----- Original Message -----
From: Governor
To: CENTRAL QUEENSLAND FREESTATE ELECTORS, MEMBERS, FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES ;
TRADITIONAL CATHOLICS
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 11:35 AM
Subject: FW: CHRISTIANITY GROWING FAST IN RED CHINA
------ Forwarded Message
From: Nick Maine <nmaine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 7 Aug 2007 08:56:27 +1000
To: Undisclosed recipient <nmaine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: CHRISTIANITY GROWING FAST IN RED CHINA
CHRISTIANITY GROWING FAST IN RED CHINA
> from Hong Kong Asia Times
>
> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IH07Ad03.html
<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IH07Ad03.html>
>
> "The World Christian Database offers by far the largest estimate of the
> number of Chinese Christians at 111 million, of whom 90% are Protestant,
> mostly Pentecostals. "
>
> Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning
> report by the National Catholic Reporter's veteran correspondent John
> Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world's largest
> concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary
> force in history. [1] If you read a single news article about China this
> year, make sure it is this one.
>
> I suspect that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the downside,
> and that Christianity will have become a Sino-centric religion two
> generations from now. China may be for the 21st century what Europe was
> during the 8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past 200
> years: the natural ground for mass evangelization. If this occurs, the
> world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it. Islam might defeat
> the western Europeans, simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with
> immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from the East.
>
> China, devoured by hunger so many times in its history, now feels a
> spiritual hunger beneath the neon exterior of its suddenly great cities.
> Four hundred million Chinese on the prosperous coast have moved from
> poverty to affluence in a single generation, and 10 million to 15 million
> new migrants come from the countryside each year, the greatest movement of
> people in history. Despite a government stance that hovers somewhere
> between discouragement and persecution, more than 100 million of them have
> embraced a faith that regards this life as mere preparation for the next
> world. Given the immense effort the Chinese have devoted to achieving a
> tolerable life in the present world, this may seem anomalous. On the
> contrary: it is the great migration of peoples that prepares the ground
> for Christianity, just as it did during the barbarian invasions of Europe
> during the Middle Ages.
>
> Last month's murder of reverend Bae Hyung-kyu, the leader of the
> missionaries still held hostage by Taliban kidnappers in Afghanistan, drew
> world attention to the work of South Korean Christians, who make up nearly
> 30% of that nation's population and send more evangelists to the world
> than any country except the United States. This is only a first tremor of
> the earthquake to come, as Chinese Christians turn their attention
> outward. Years ago I speculated that if Mecca ever is razed, it will be by
> an African army marching north; now the greatest danger to Islam is the
> prospect of a Chinese army marching west.
>
> People do not live in a spiritual vacuum; where a spiritual vacuum exists,
> as in western Europe and the former Soviet Empire, people simply die, or
> fail to breed. In the traditional world, people see themselves as part of
> nature, unchangeable and constant, and worship their surroundings, their
> ancestors and themselves. When war or economics tear people away from
> their roots in traditional life, what once appeared constant now is shown
> to be ephemeral. Christianity is the great liquidator of traditional
> society, calling individuals out of their tribes and nations to join the
> ekklesia, which transcends race and nation. In China, communism leveled
> traditional society, and erased the great Confucian idea of society as an
> extension of the loyalties and responsibility of families. Children
> informing on their parents during the Cultural Revolution put paid to
> that.
>
> Now the great migrations throw into the urban melting pot a half-dozen
> language groups who once lived isolated from one another. Not for more
> than a thousand years have so many people in the same place had such good
> reason to view as ephemeral all that they long considered to be fixed, and
> to ask themselves: "What is the purpose of my life?"
>
> The World Christian Database offers by far the largest estimate of the
> number of Chinese Christians at 111 million, of whom 90% are Protestant,
> mostly Pentecostals. Other estimates are considerably lower, but no
> matter; what counts is the growth rate. This uniquely American
> denomination, which claims the inspiration to speak in tongues like Jesus'
> own disciples and to prophesy, is the world's fastest-growing religious
> movement, with 500,000 adherents. In contrast to Catholicism, which has a
> very long historic presence in China but whose growth has been slow,
> charismatic Protestantism has found its natural element in an atmosphere
> of official suppression. Barred from churches, Chinese began worshipping
> in homes, and five major "house church" movements and countless smaller
> ones now minister to as many as 100 million Christians. [2] This
> quasi-underground movement may now exceed in adherents the 75 million
> members of the Chinese Communist Party; in a generation it will be the
> most powerful force in the country.
>
> While the Catholic Church has worked patiently for independence from the
> Chinese government, which sponsors a "Chinese Catholic Patriotic
> Association" with government-appointed bishops, the evangelicals have no
> infrastructure to suppress and no hierarchy to protect. In contrast to
> Catholic caution, John Allen observes, "Most Pentecostals would obviously
> welcome being arrested less frequently, but in general they are not
> waiting for legal or political reform before carrying out aggressive
> evangelization programs."
>
> Allen adds:
> The most audacious even dream of carrying the gospel beyond the borders of
> China, along the old Silk Road into the Muslim world, in a campaign known
> as "Back to Jerusalem". As [Time correspondent David] Aikman explains in
> Jesus in Beijing, some Chinese evangelicals and Pentecostals believe that
> the basic movement of the gospel for the last 2,000 years has been
> westward: from Jerusalem to Antioch, from Antioch to Europe, from Europe
> to America, and from America to China. Now, they believe, it's their turn
> to complete the loop by carrying the gospel to Muslim lands, eventually
> arriving in Jerusalem. Once that happens, they believe, the gospel will
> have been preached to the entire world.
> Aikman reports that two Protestant seminaries secretly are training
> missionaries for deployment in Muslim countries.
>
> Where traditional society remains entrenched in China's most backward
> regions, Islam also is expanding. At the edge of the Gobi Desert and on
> China's western border with Central Asia, Islam claims perhaps 30 million
> adherents. If Christianity is the liquidator of traditional society, I
> have argued in the past, Islam is its defender against the encroachments
> of leveling imperial expansion. But Islam in China remains the religion of
> the economic losers, whose geographic remoteness isolates them from the
> economic transformation on the coasts. Christianity, by contrast, has
> burgeoned among the new middle class in China's cities, where the greatest
> wealth and productivity are concentrated. Islam has a thousand-year
> presence in China and has grown by natural increase rather than
> conversion; evangelical Protestantism had almost no adherents in China a
> generation ago.
>
> China's Protestants evangelized at the risk of liberty and sometimes life,
> and possess a sort of fervor not seen in Christian ranks for centuries.
> Their pastors have been beaten and jailed, and they have had to create
> their own institutions through the "house church" movement. Two years ago
> I warned that China would have to wait for democracy. [3] I wrote:
> For a people to govern itself, it first must want to govern itself and
> want to do so with a passion. It also must know how to do so. Democracy
> requires an act of faith, or rather a whole set of acts of faith. The
> individual citizen must believe that a representative sitting far away in
> the capital will listen to his views, and know how to band together with
> other citizens to make their views known. That is why so-called civil
> society, the capillary network of associations that manage the ordinary
> affairs of life, is so essential to democracy. Americans elect their local
> school boards, create volunteer fire brigades and raise and spend tax
> dollars at the local level to provide parks or sewers.
> China's network of house churches may turn out to be the leaven of
> democracy, like the radical Puritans of England who became the
> Congregationalists of New England. Freedom of worship is the first
> precondition for democracy, for it makes possible freedom of conscience.
> The fearless evangelists at the grassroots of China will, in the fullness
> of time, do more to bring US-style democracy to the world than all the
> nation-building bluster of President George W Bush and his advisers.
>
> Notes
> 1. The uphill journey of Catholicism in China, August 2, 2007, National
> Catholic Reporter.
> 2. See Luke Wesley, "Is the Chinese Church predominantly Pentecostal?" in
> American Journal of Pentecostal Studies 7:2 (2004).
> 3. China must wait for democracy, Asia Times Online, September 27, 2005.
>
> forwarded by Bob Vinnicombe
***********************************************************************************************
"I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I
cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What
I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." -
Edward Everett Hale
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