Friday, November 14, 2014
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This week's long read
contains much of what we've already reported in Christianity Today.
And yet there are enough new quotes, stats, and stories that made it
compelling to me. For example:
There
are now about 100 million Christians in the world's most populous nation,
eclipsing the 86.7 million-strong membership of the ruling Communist party.
According to Western intellectual tradition, modernity is supposed to bring
secularization but in modern Communist China it has been accompanied by an
extraordinary rise of religions formerly banned as "opiates of the
masses."
Also, while I had read
about the demolition of the Protestant cathedral on the outskirts of the
coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou in April, for some reason I'd missed seeing
the startling before and after pictures
of it.
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I'll admit to being betwixt and between
the issue of censorship. On the one hand, it feels like a dirty word and a
repressive idea. That's what Communists and Nazis do. On the other hand, the
moral person in me wants censorship in at least a few areas, like
pornography. This essay doesn't
solve the dilemma, but it gave me more pause for thought.
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Or better, inside the decision to open
the wall. This story describes
how the opening of the wall 25 years ago was in many ways the personal
decision of a middle-ranking officer who was a dedicated Communist at the
time.
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There is an ongoing controversy about how
exactly to befriend sinners of the most notorious kind. The question is
usually provocatively posed as "Would Jesus Hang Out in a
Strip Club?" Here is my take on the topic,
as published in the latest issue of The Behemoth.
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Grace
and peace,
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