Recently back from China, Geoff Hobden, the minister of Christ Church in Weston-super-Mare, gave a glowing report of religious freedoms and Christian progress in China. He entertained as well as informed his audience with a PowerPoint presentation - ably answering questions during and after his presentation. The guided slide tour took us to the Cities of Shanghai, Nanjing and Hefoi in the Province of Anhoi . After showing us Hotel accommodation scenes with his descriptions of the offered cuisines, typical scenes of busy streets and congested traffic conditions with the varied innovative bicycle wheel transports, and the typical architecture and the high rise flats accommodating many of China’s 1.3 billion population, Geoff Hobden then introduced us to China’s progress towards Christian freedom and religious liberty not afforded to previous generations. As the Free Library website reports, “DECADES AGO, only a few brave souls dared to own a Bible in Communist China. Owning one–whether smuggled from overseas or copied by hand from dog-eared Bibles that managed to survive the turmoil of the cultural revolution (1966-76) when Red-Guards ransacked homes and burned anything perceived to be ‘bourgeois’ - often guaranteed a sentence to hard labour, torture, or death.”
What a turn around in 30 years. Amazingly, in cooperation with the United Bible Societies the Amity Printing Company in Nanjing is the largest producer of Bibles in China, and can now boast to be one of the largest in the world!
Brand new churches are being built with no hint of state control said Geoff Hobden,- as long as they are government registered. Contrary to what China appears to us in the Western world Christianity is expressing itself freely and is growing rapidly. Some church congregations number in their thousands with no evidence of any outside control over church management or worship. What was interesting was that the new churches are not just impressive in size, but that they reflect Western cathedral style architecture. In one large new church he visited they were having brand new pews installed - a remark that I well understood. While listening to Geoff Hobden I was aware we were sitting on upholstered chairs. Christ Church, an old Anglican church with steeple, sitting imposingly on Weston’s hillside had updated from pews to upholstered chairs around 20 years ago - even the choir stalls went - with additional modern facilities it now gives more generous space and is more adaptable for its varied programmes and activities. Said, Rev. Hobden, while we are getting rid of pews in our churches in the West in China they are installing them.
What must be amazing to many Chinese is that while they are wanting to discard the failed system of Communism with its oppressive atheistic regimes to replace it with Christianity with its democratic foundations, we in the West seem to being doing the reverse!
With limits put on publication China just cannot get enough Bibles to cope with the phenomenal growth of Christianity. Back in March 28 of this year The Times reported that Christianity in China is booming. Said Jane Macartney, the author of the report, “With 100 million believers, far more than the 74 million-member communist party, Jesus is a force to be reckoned with in the People’s Republic.” The opening paragraph in the Asia Times back on the 7th of August, 2007 stated: “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.” Read the full story here.
An Adventist report of the number of Christians in China of 20 million must follow the official or government figures from its registered churches, which is still impressive considering China’s recent history. But with the illegal house churches in China the unofficial figures of 100 to 130 million might be nearer to the truth. In the Adventist report Jan Paulson expressed how important it was to cooperate with other Christian denominations. With such cooperation in church mission who knows what greater freedoms are to come with China eventually achieving that reputation as having “the world’s largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history“? Should the secularised Western world brace itself for a future Chinese invasion? - by Christian missionaries, of course!
Chinese Christians have had to suffer great persecution in the past and may well be suffering persecution in some parts of China today. But considering China’s bad human rights record it is surprising to hear and read of the religious freedoms that now exist in China and how well Christianity is doing, and how much it is valued.
Scroll down this Amazon link for three reviews on Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power by David Aikman, author and former journalist for Time Magazine.
