By Spengler
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.
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