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> ...Christianity, which by some estimates is China’s fastest-growing religion, promotes Western values and ideals like human rights that conflict with the aims

> ...Christianity, which by some estimates is China’s fastest-growing religion, promotes Western values and ideals like human rights that conflict with the aims of China’s authoritarian government This is the part that confuses me. I'm not sure what Christianity intrinsically promotes (ask 12 Christians and I suspect you'll receive 13 conflicting opinions). But practically speaking, governments and ruling classes have used it for nearly two-thousand years to promote social order and subservience. It's been used to justify the Crusades, and slavery. Within living memory it's been used to justify Jim Crow laws, and the Salvation Army used as a tool against labor union organizing. It's been used to promote leftist regimes in Catholic South America, and the far-right "Protestant work ethic" class structure in the USA. It's been used everywhere to enforce a social order based on strict sexual norms and patriarchal gender roles. Christianity became one of the Top Two religions on earth, precisely because of how malleable it is. In other words, in practice, it tends to promote whatever the ruling class in a given place and time WANT it to promote. It's been that way since Emperor Constantine. So why try to violently suppress it? That's never been an effective strategy. Just co-opt it, and make it promote whatever Chinese/Confucian values you want like everyone else does.

wbl 8y ago
You also had William Wilberforce and Oliver Cromwell. Co-option can only go so far: they have state run churches, but those don't appeal to people. See also Dissenters in England during the industrial revolution.
skymt 8y ago
China has party-authorized Christian churches with exactly your goal in mind. This crackdown is on unauthorized churches. For an example of how they frame it in propaganda: http://en.people.cn/n/2014/0807/c90882-8766262.html http://en.people.cn/n/2014/0807/c90882-8766262.html
- acqq 8y ago
  It matches what’s written in the OP article: “The government has focused its campaign on unofficial Christian churches that promote ideas like social justice or have been critical of the party’s grip on society.” And knowing what’s documented about the CIA activities in the past, which include using religion(1) I fully understand that attitude. 1) See https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview but also what was yearx before: https://www.npr.org/2010/06/05/127500908/cia-fight-against-communism-bolsters-radical-islam https://www.npr.org/2010/06/05/127500908/cia-fight-against-c...
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Focused ? Why that word ? That's very different from only unofficial churches ? This is a fact that comes back in the stories of Chinese people very often: it doesn't matter how "approved"/legal or tolerated something is. Parts of the government go after it. Parts of the party are in open war with eachother, to the point that they send child services after eachothers' children, police after restaurants that commit the crime of allowing political rivals to eat there, and then there's the occasional moral panic, which is the most disruptive. Every now and them some fact will make the news, through social media most often. This may be quality of goods (food for children happened once, but has likewise happened with houses, animal feed, ...), relationship stuff (e.g. a young couple, a girls pictures "leaking", in some cases outright racism (romeo and juliet couple), ...) someone dying from exhaustion while gaming, a few people very sick or dead from food poisoning, hospitals getting caught abusing psychological patients, ... and then the police will take "action". By that of course we mean arresting hundreds whose only crime is to be in the same street as where the news event happened. Or arrest everyone under 16 out after 18h. Or arrest everyone including owner and customers in every internet cafe, or real cafe. Or ... They're innocent. Doesn't matter of course. They get convicted. And yet, under normal circumstances, anyone in China will tell you it's absurd what you get away with.
partiallypro 8y ago
You have a grave misreading of the history of Christianity. It was used as a control device when it was centrally controlled and delivered (like all religions)...the invention of the printing press changed all of that with the Reformation. Once the knowledge was spread through the people and open to interpretations, the general direction of Christianity (despite all the faults of modern movements) has trended towards equality and freedom, which is much in line with the Gospels. Martin Luther and John Calvin had a profound impact, and once you saw those movements you began to see all the modern western values emerge, from economics to political freedom.
- Fricken 8y ago
  In Chinese history it's a little different. The Taiping rebellion was a militant uprising against the ruling Manchus by a Christian Millenarian sect known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in the mid 19th century. It was the bloodiest war of the 19th century, and the bloodiest civil war in history, with an estimated 20-70 million killed. You don't have to agree with China's response to these chruches, but maybe you can understand why they get nervous when Christians start getting uppity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
  - tivert 8y ago
    > In Chinese history it's a little different. The Taiping rebellion was a militant uprising against the ruling Manchus by a Christian Millenarian sect known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in the mid 19th century. > You don't have to agree with China's response to these chruches [sic], but maybe you can understand why they get nervous when Christians start getting uppity. That's just a pretext, if anything. This oppression isn't some challenging but benevolent attempt by the Communist Party to protect China from a bloody civil war based on past historical experiences, it's part of systematic campaign to protect the personal and institutional power amassed by China's unelected leaders and keep the country submissive to them. This is clear when you look these actions in context: the repressive actions against democracy activists before, after, and on June 4th 1989; as well as more recent actions against human rights lawyers (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusade-of-chinas-human-rights-lawyers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa... ); and even Communist true believers acting outside of party control (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/world/asia/china-student-activists.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/world/asia/china-student-... ).
martythemaniak 8y ago
You're correct that it is whatever people need it to be. But it is also its own thing, not so much ideologically, but that it is a social grouping and and alternate hierarchy of power separate from the state. Every ruler from Constantine on has had trouble with the Church to some degree, as the Church has always laid claim to various social and political powers that rulers would have wanted for themselves. In this sense, maybe the Chinese Communists are right to be worried, after all many of the functions churches perform in the west are the exclusive domain of the Chinese State. Coopting it would require them to become Christian themselves, which is what happened in the Roman Empire, but only after Christians had become entrenched in the upper levels of society.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
>>Christianity became one of the Top Two religions on earth, precisely because of how malleable it is Christianity i one the top ten religions on earth--or the most popular, depending on how you look at it. :) But you are right, its interpretation depends on the Pope. While they are Orthodox and Protestants (fragmented), the Vatican sucks the oxygen out of them when it comes to the media and reputation. What China is doing is very logical: any religion is a threat to their ideology and if you're a leader in China you don't want that. Who needs the Bible when you have the Chinese version of the Manifesto? Or the Pope when you have Xi Jinping?
- perfmode 8y ago
  > What China is doing is very logical: The ends can never justify such means.
  - onetimemanytime 8y ago
    the word logical was used to include "morals aside." China knows what they want and to go there they are smart and dumb ways.
    - perfmode 8y ago
      I don’t think morals with respect to shared notions of fundamental human rights can be “put aside” for the sake of discussion. What is the discussion worth if it doesn’t take into consideration fundamental dignity?
clairity 8y ago
while there is some interpretive leeway, malleability isn’t a feature of christianity, it’s the effect of coercive power attracted to the centralized conduit of control that religion provides. if christians actually followed christ’s teachings, we’d see a lot more generosity and a lot less wealth disparity and homelessness.
bitcrusher 8y ago
I think you’re making the mistake of equating Christianity and Catholicism. They have the same roots but all of the things you’re assigning to Christianity is really the machinations of ‘The Church’ weilding Christians beliefs as a cudgel for the aspirations of ruling bodies. There is definitely a fine line between the two that is often blurred, but Christianity at its core is about people who are oppressed finding freedom in faith. It’s one of the reasons it is easy to ‘spread’; every culture on earth has oppressors and oppressed. I think your other point is super interesting however, in that when the oppressed are ‘free’ and become the majority, Christianity doesn’t have much to offer and then becomes the weapon of the ruling class ( or majority ) keeping people ‘in line’.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- StevePerkins 8y ago
  > "I think you’re making the mistake of equating Christianity and Catholicism. They have the same roots but all of the things you’re assigning to Christianity is really the machinations of ‘The Church’ weilding Christians beliefs as a cudgel for the aspirations of ruling bodies." I grew up in the rural South. I assure you churches serving as the cudgel of ruling classes is not limited to a single denomination. Catholics are barely represented here, the pattern is nevertheless the same.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    I think you'll find that historically, due to the interference from Rome, Catholicism was the denomination that resisted this the most, and that this was in fact a large part of the reason for Protestantism to come into existence in the first place.
geofft 8y ago
I think part of the answer is that these churches are tied to Western missionary movements pushing a Western reading of Christianity (not so much on purpose as because that's "Christianity" to them).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dragonwriter 8y ago
> So why try to violently suppress it? That's never been an effective strategy. Just co-opt it, and make it promote whatever Chinese/Confucian values you want like everyone else does. They also do that. The problem, from the regimes perspective, is that international Christianity (including and with assistance of domestic Christians already indoctrinated into the foreign varieties) keeps sabotaging their efforts to co-opt Christianity.

wbl 8y ago

You also had William Wilberforce and Oliver Cromwell. Co-option can only go so far: they have state run churches, but those don't appeal to people. See also Dissenters in England during the industrial revolution.

skymt 8y ago

China has party-authorized Christian churches with exactly your goal in mind. This crackdown is on unauthorized churches. For an example of how they frame it in propaganda: http://en.people.cn/n/2014/0807/c90882-8766262.html http://en.people.cn/n/2014/0807/c90882-8766262.html

acqq 8y ago
It matches what’s written in the OP article: “The government has focused its campaign on unofficial Christian churches that promote ideas like social justice or have been critical of the party’s grip on society.” And knowing what’s documented about the CIA activities in the past, which include using religion(1) I fully understand that attitude. 1) See https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview but also what was yearx before: https://www.npr.org/2010/06/05/127500908/cia-fight-against-communism-bolsters-radical-islam https://www.npr.org/2010/06/05/127500908/cia-fight-against-c...
- candiodari 8y ago
  Focused ? Why that word ? That's very different from only unofficial churches ? This is a fact that comes back in the stories of Chinese people very often: it doesn't matter how "approved"/legal or tolerated something is. Parts of the government go after it. Parts of the party are in open war with eachother, to the point that they send child services after eachothers' children, police after restaurants that commit the crime of allowing political rivals to eat there, and then there's the occasional moral panic, which is the most disruptive. Every now and them some fact will make the news, through social media most often. This may be quality of goods (food for children happened once, but has likewise happened with houses, animal feed, ...), relationship stuff (e.g. a young couple, a girls pictures "leaking", in some cases outright racism (romeo and juliet couple), ...) someone dying from exhaustion while gaming, a few people very sick or dead from food poisoning, hospitals getting caught abusing psychological patients, ... and then the police will take "action". By that of course we mean arresting hundreds whose only crime is to be in the same street as where the news event happened. Or arrest everyone under 16 out after 18h. Or arrest everyone including owner and customers in every internet cafe, or real cafe. Or ... They're innocent. Doesn't matter of course. They get convicted. And yet, under normal circumstances, anyone in China will tell you it's absurd what you get away with.

partiallypro 8y ago

You have a grave misreading of the history of Christianity. It was used as a control device when it was centrally controlled and delivered (like all religions)...the invention of the printing press changed all of that with the Reformation. Once the knowledge was spread through the people and open to interpretations, the general direction of Christianity (despite all the faults of modern movements) has trended towards equality and freedom, which is much in line with the Gospels. Martin Luther and John Calvin had a profound impact, and once you saw those movements you began to see all the modern western values emerge, from economics to political freedom.

Fricken 8y ago
In Chinese history it's a little different. The Taiping rebellion was a militant uprising against the ruling Manchus by a Christian Millenarian sect known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in the mid 19th century. It was the bloodiest war of the 19th century, and the bloodiest civil war in history, with an estimated 20-70 million killed. You don't have to agree with China's response to these chruches, but maybe you can understand why they get nervous when Christians start getting uppity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion
- tivert 8y ago
  > In Chinese history it's a little different. The Taiping rebellion was a militant uprising against the ruling Manchus by a Christian Millenarian sect known as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in the mid 19th century. > You don't have to agree with China's response to these chruches [sic], but maybe you can understand why they get nervous when Christians start getting uppity. That's just a pretext, if anything. This oppression isn't some challenging but benevolent attempt by the Communist Party to protect China from a bloody civil war based on past historical experiences, it's part of systematic campaign to protect the personal and institutional power amassed by China's unelected leaders and keep the country submissive to them. This is clear when you look these actions in context: the repressive actions against democracy activists before, after, and on June 4th 1989; as well as more recent actions against human rights lawyers (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusade-of-chinas-human-rights-lawyers.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusa... ); and even Communist true believers acting outside of party control (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/world/asia/china-student-activists.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/world/asia/china-student-... ).

martythemaniak 8y ago

You're correct that it is whatever people need it to be. But it is also its own thing, not so much ideologically, but that it is a social grouping and and alternate hierarchy of power separate from the state. Every ruler from Constantine on has had trouble with the Church to some degree, as the Church has always laid claim to various social and political powers that rulers would have wanted for themselves. In this sense, maybe the Chinese Communists are right to be worried, after all many of the functions churches perform in the west are the exclusive domain of the Chinese State. Coopting it would require them to become Christian themselves, which is what happened in the Roman Empire, but only after Christians had become entrenched in the upper levels of society.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

>>Christianity became one of the Top Two religions on earth, precisely because of how malleable it is Christianity i one the top ten religions on earth--or the most popular, depending on how you look at it. :) But you are right, its interpretation depends on the Pope. While they are Orthodox and Protestants (fragmented), the Vatican sucks the oxygen out of them when it comes to the media and reputation. What China is doing is very logical: any religion is a threat to their ideology and if you're a leader in China you don't want that. Who needs the Bible when you have the Chinese version of the Manifesto? Or the Pope when you have Xi Jinping?

perfmode 8y ago
> What China is doing is very logical: The ends can never justify such means.
- onetimemanytime 8y ago
  the word logical was used to include "morals aside." China knows what they want and to go there they are smart and dumb ways.
  - perfmode 8y ago
    I don’t think morals with respect to shared notions of fundamental human rights can be “put aside” for the sake of discussion. What is the discussion worth if it doesn’t take into consideration fundamental dignity?

clairity 8y ago

while there is some interpretive leeway, malleability isn’t a feature of christianity, it’s the effect of coercive power attracted to the centralized conduit of control that religion provides. if christians actually followed christ’s teachings, we’d see a lot more generosity and a lot less wealth disparity and homelessness.

bitcrusher 8y ago

I think you’re making the mistake of equating Christianity and Catholicism. They have the same roots but all of the things you’re assigning to Christianity is really the machinations of ‘The Church’ weilding Christians beliefs as a cudgel for the aspirations of ruling bodies. There is definitely a fine line between the two that is often blurred, but Christianity at its core is about people who are oppressed finding freedom in faith. It’s one of the reasons it is easy to ‘spread’; every culture on earth has oppressors and oppressed. I think your other point is super interesting however, in that when the oppressed are ‘free’ and become the majority, Christianity doesn’t have much to offer and then becomes the weapon of the ruling class ( or majority ) keeping people ‘in line’.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
StevePerkins 8y ago
> "I think you’re making the mistake of equating Christianity and Catholicism. They have the same roots but all of the things you’re assigning to Christianity is really the machinations of ‘The Church’ weilding Christians beliefs as a cudgel for the aspirations of ruling bodies." I grew up in the rural South. I assure you churches serving as the cudgel of ruling classes is not limited to a single denomination. Catholics are barely represented here, the pattern is nevertheless the same.
- candiodari 8y ago
  I think you'll find that historically, due to the interference from Rome, Catholicism was the denomination that resisted this the most, and that this was in fact a large part of the reason for Protestantism to come into existence in the first place.

geofft 8y ago

I think part of the answer is that these churches are tied to Western missionary movements pushing a Western reading of Christianity (not so much on purpose as because that's "Christianity" to them).

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dragonwriter 8y ago

> So why try to violently suppress it? That's never been an effective strategy. Just co-opt it, and make it promote whatever Chinese/Confucian values you want like everyone else does. They also do that. The problem, from the regimes perspective, is that international Christianity (including and with assistance of domestic Christians already indoctrinated into the foreign varieties) keeps sabotaging their efforts to co-opt Christianity.