In China, they’re closing churches, jailing pastors - and rewriting scripture
32 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible
“The government has orchestrated a campaign to ‘sinicise’ Christianity, to turn Christianity into a fully domesticated religion that would do the bidding of the party,” said Lian Xi, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, who focuses on Christianity in modern China.
Over the past year, local governments have shut hundreds of unofficial congregations or “house churches” that operate outside the government-approved church network, including Early Rain. A statement signed by 500 house church leaders in November says authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to hang the Chinese flag and sing patriotic songs, and bar minors from attending.
In November the Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church was shut for the second time in three months. “The Chinese Communist party (CCP) wants to be the God of China and the Chinese people. But according to the Bible only God is God. The government is scared of the churches,” said Huang Xiaoning, the church’s pastor. Local governments have also shut the state-approved “sanzi” churches. Sunday schools and youth ministries have been banned. One of the first signs of a crackdown was when authorities forcibly removed more than 1,000 crosses from sanzi churches in Zhejiang province between 2014 and 2016.
As of 2018, the government has implemented sweeping rules on religious practices, adding more requirements for religious groups and barring unapproved organisations from engaging in any religious activity. But the campaign is not just about managing behaviour. One of the goals of a government work plan for “promoting Chinese Christianity” between 2018 and 2022 is “thought reform”. The plan calls for “retranslating and annotating” the Bible, to find commonalities with socialism and establish a “correct understanding” of the text.
The church continues to send out daily scripture and posts videos of sermons. In one, pastor Wang alludes to the coming crackdown: “In this war, in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man. Therefore they are doomed to lose this war.”
This isn't just Catholics, this is all Christian churches
ya but the message is pretty clear, china wants to control the curriculum and the vatican basically gave them the ability to do just that.
Not quite. As part of the deal, the Pope still has powers over who can be Bishop in China.
Not to mention there is an underground Catholic Church still running there.
I'm not really thrilled about this deal at all, but I can see that the Vatican hasn't completely turned over for China.
It's a pretty major selling out though. The bishops approved by the CCP won't be Catholics at all, because the CCP is their religion, and giving the Chinese government any amount of authority over the church lets their foot in the door to demand even more.
As of 2018, the government has implemented sweeping rules on religious practices, adding more requirements for religious groups and barring unapproved organisations from engaging in any religious activity. But the campaign is not just about managing behaviour. One of the goals of a government work plan for “promoting Chinese Christianity” between 2018 and 2022 is “thought reform”. The plan calls for “retranslating and annotating” the Bible, to find commonalities with socialism and establish a “correct understanding” of the text.
This is great. Shows how little modern day Chinese "socialism" has in common with real socialism. Jesus was basically a socialist himself, if you could classify him as political in any way - and more importantly, his teachings stand in stark contrast to the CCP's values.
China is LITERALLY the government described in 1984. Actually scratch that it somehow managed to become even more dystopian.
The West remains deeply complicit in this due to its continued support of China.
but cheap iphones though, I'll LITERALLY DIE WITHOUT ONE
maybe people will care about their atrocious human rights violations now that's it christians instead of muslims
Or they'll justify it by saying "oh, they're not real Christians."
“In this war, in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man. Therefore they are doomed to lose this war.”
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.
Taking this attitude makes them not real Christians.
Scripture doesn't say "only help those with the same faith as you"
On the bright side, messing with the bible also gets you eventually punished with every punishment described in revelation, so maybe china's not going to be crowing around for much longer
Good thing we have a president standing up to China
I guess 1984 wasn't required reading in your school system.
creating a trade war and collapsing both of our economies isn't going to help. We should absolutely be spending money to foster new industry and manufacturing using lean principles and automation as well as ensuring vital pharmaceutical and chemical precursors are made here, but you haven't seen that out of the republicans because that's a complex solution and frankly republican politicians frankly don't care about it.
A scabby peacenik lookin' hill fellow called Jesus took out half the roman empire. A Dude called Muhammad took over half the Mediterranean and some jackass called temujin who was a weak sickly boy abandoned by his clan grew up to slay his way across asia building the worlds largest empire on the skulls and blood of millions.
A single person can do quite a bit if left unchecked.
They've been attacking christians for a long time, this is just their latest assault. Nobody cared then, nobody will care now.
It was. THE POINT IS 1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale about the logical conclusion of authoritarian governments using technology to control their citizens and everywhere around the world we see it unfold before our very eyes but China is already far past that point. It LITERALLY has a social credit system now they're trying to implement everywhere for God's sake and nobody in the west wants to do anything because most of our politicians are cowards without principles.
The biggest difference is that the CCP has found you don't need to manufacture wars to consume resources and lower standards of living when you can just be an exporter of goods.
China is a shithole
Jesus definitely didn't do that, and I don't think he was ever alleged to have done that ever.
(Jesus didn't do anything btw)
Jesus didn't directly but ever since Constantines battle of the mulvian bridge and the Arian heresy rome let religion triumph over rationality and among many of the nails lining the western empires coffin Jesus and his nature was the largest.
Rome lasted all the way to 1453 because of inherent structural changes from a patron class of elites to a new clergy class. Without a shift from the polytheistic Rome to the Monotheistic Rome, it probably would have failed much sooner.
Blaming Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire? Sure, let's just ignore the hordes of Germanic tribes crashing through the gates.
Who themselves were running from the Mongols.
Do anything? Don't get me wrong, I don't buy any of the water into wine jazz, or what have you; but the guy founded his own ministry, and was deemed enough of a threat to be executed. If that isn't enough, people still kill, argue, and discuss as we do now over the faith(s) that sprung up in his wake.
I can see it now:
"War refugees burned down Rome? GOOD ENOUGH FOR US! TIME TO INSTITUTE A SPREE OF POLICY AGAINST THE SCARY BROWN PEOPLE!"
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