Christianity in China

Christianity in China

The article you enclosed below is interesting and obviously the person who wrote it has been quite involved for many years. Generally that makes it touch to critique - but not for me, of course.

His discourse seems to be very much from the Protestant, Pentecostal point of view and, as far as I am concerned, anytime someone looks at an issues from such a one sided point of view they run a real risk of missing very important aspects and even dimensions of the issue. Someone might say, well it may be he is coming from one direction, but then, he is right. This of course raises one of the main distinctions between ‘preaching’ and ‘intellectual discussion’. Here, will all due respect, it seems to me he is preaching but couching it in intellectual discussion. One of the main issues he appears to overlook, of course, is religions indigenous to the Far East, for example, Buddhism, and now Fallun Gung (if it can be classified as a religion).

Another issue he appears to overlook is the co-relation between economy prosperity, along with its desire for anything Western, and Protestantism. Basically, one may argue that Western religion, and Protestantism in particular, go hand in hand with economic development. A further argument is that it is economic development that gives rise to democracy (it creates a middle class who are educated and have the economic freedom to consider things on a level higher than hand-to-mouth, and who, with a newly installed vested interest demand a say on how things are run).

So, it is not entirely accurate, in my opinion, to say that Protestantism gives rise to democracy. But, it may be more accurate that Christianity helps to creates an social order that is favourable to the development of commerce which in turn gives rise to democracy. A trivial example of how this may work is the commandment “Thou shalt not steal”. Clearly, dealing with people on a commerce basis requires a considerable amount of trust. For example, you may sign a contract with another person but if they don’t honour it, or, worse, never had any intention of honouring it, then doing business becomes impossible. This is even though there may be a well developed civil court system. This example is very apropos for the China situation since, as I am sure you have heard a million times, one of the big complaints Canadian businesses have had over the years is that the Chinese businessmen simply can’t be trusted. So, as people become more prosperous they demand a society that is more stable and where conducting commerce is more predictable. The Ten Commandments are very much suited to this. So they naturally are drawn towards Christianity. To take this further, any denomination that proselytises aggressively will, perhaps, make considerable gains.

Also, as mentioned he does not take into account indigenous religions and I think that this is a weakness in his presentation. In a word, Christianity is a Western religion and they are Eastern. There is a difference and, in such issues, in my opinion, these differences are significant. For example, if we look at history, it may be that the Chinese take Protestantism and meld it with a more eastern religion so that the result is something in between. It may be called Pentecostal but it is really Chinese-Pentecostal and 100 years from now people will look back at the differences.


On the other hand, as we have discussed before, the Chinese government ban on religious freedom to the extent of persecution, will likely result in one religion emerging as the dominant religion. He, of course, touches on this issue, but there are two things. If the Chinese government were to allow religious freedom, which, if they were smart they would, then this phenomenon would, in my opinion, very likely by undermined, resulting in, basically, 1.3 billion little religions. Also, there is competition for the spirits of the Chinese and since they are Chinese in nature may very have a greater chance in a ‘survival of the fittest’ atmosphere.


Anyway, after the above, I hope you’re still talking to me.

© Lloyd MacIlquham, all rights reserved, August, 2007