Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your program to inform
you about religious liberty
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and related
topics around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
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for 22 years editor
of Liberty magazine,
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and my guest Ed Cooke.
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Trying to think how to explain
your multiple qualifications,
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a doctorate in
church state studies
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from Baylor University.
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You're a
lecturer, pastor, author,
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book reviewer from Texas,
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and a contributor to
Liberty magazine for many years.
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Let's talk about Jina as
our president used to say.
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Sure. No, China.
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I remember when I was in college
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studying Chinese
history, very captivating to me
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and the message I
got that China saw,
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and I think still sees
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most of the world as
barbarians out there.
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They're not that interested
in going out into that world,
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but unavoidably as
now a manufacturing engine
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China is throwing
its weight around.
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But in religious liberty
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that weight can get
quite heavy, can't it?
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Sure.
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What are some of your
concerns about religious liberty
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and civil liberties
when we deal with China?
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I think that at
the foundational level
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we could say,
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there is the obvious
difference in perspective
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between the West
and the East, right?
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So for example, in
the Eastern, excuse me,
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in Western development,
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especially due to
Christianity's influence,
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there's the high regard
and respect for the conscience.
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Not throughout the history
of Christianity, obviously,
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'cause there was persecutions,
the crusades, the inquisition,
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but after that period,
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like from the
Protestant Reformation onward,
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a lot of scholastic emphasis
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was placed upon the
regard for the conscience,
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the individual civil
liberties and rights.
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Whereas over in the
East, it's more of a,
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what I always
look at as they had
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the communal perspective
rather than the individual.
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An individual does
not exist as a standalone,
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they exist as
part of a community.
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And therefore
from that perspective
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on the scale of
value, your individual rights
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and liberties and
respect for conscience goes down
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and it's more so what
is good for the community.
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What is good for the
body of the community?
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And because it's not all wrong.
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I mean, even a lot
of the Old Testament
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thinking was communal.
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Yep.
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Even repentance was
corporate repentance
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along with the individual.
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But, yes, you're right,
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in a general
sense Asian culture,
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not just Chinese has a
high stake on the responsibility
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to the family, to the country.
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And, of course,
Japan in World War II,
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we saw that in a toxic way.
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People going off to
war, soldier going off to war
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believed that he was dead.
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And now he lived
only for the emperor
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and to be
captured or stop fighting
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was such a shame that
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he betrayed not just his family,
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not just
himself, but the emperor
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and the country and...
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We saw in the
kamikaze attacks there
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where the pilot
would die himself.
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Yeah.
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There's plenty of stories
that individual kamikazes
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were afraid and
didn't want to do it,
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but it was a
phenomenon of their culture
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where they were
very self-sacrificing
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and I think that
was a good thing.
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And what you say about
the reformation influence
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on Christianity is very true.
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It was that era that we got
individual self-determinism,
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but I don't think that
existed in Christianity
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very much before that.
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It was the same idea.
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You are a Christian community,
therefore you were set
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against all the
others and your own community
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would hold you to a standard
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where you didn't have
much choice and if you slipped,
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stepped out alone, you were
a betrayer of the community.
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Yeah.
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What we would refer to as
the Christian Commonwealth,
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you know, in Roman
Catholicism heavily emphasized
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that in the
formative years as well,
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all leading up into the
time period of the medieval era.
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But one thing...
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I'm leading you somewhere,
you're trying to lead the way.
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You wrote an article years
ago on this developing idea
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in Roman
Catholicism of the common good.
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Yes.
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And for the first time
it suddenly clicked with me
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that they haven't
brought a new concept.
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They're actually
restating the medieval view.
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Yeah. Correct.
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Which would bring with it some
of the excesses of the church
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during the Reformation.
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But back to China.
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What's China up to on religion?
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You know, it's a
nominally Christian...
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It's a nominally
communist state, of course,
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even though it's functioning
in a highly market driven way.
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Yeah.
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So one of the things that
is a more recent development
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is in 2017 there was a
revision of the portion
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of the constitution
that relates to the rights
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of citizens in
regards to faith to believe,
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not to believe,
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to be part of a religious
organization, et cetera.
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And one can say
that there's two periods
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that one would look at
in this century, right?
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So one was in 2005
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and then the
other one was in 2018.
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The law went into effect.
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It was written in 2017,
went into effect in 2018.
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What does the law specify?
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So basically the one thing
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that I'll note that
is in common between
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both periods is
that it refers to,
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or caveats the
religious preference
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of a Chinese citizen,
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as long as it is something
that is a good religion
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or good for in
essence, the country,
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that's the
underlying defining factor.
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So under those terms,
the communist government
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can actually say, well,
we define these religions
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as good for the country
because, and they define
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it specifically
in that paragraph,
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it is non
divisive in the country.
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It does not harm
any of the citizens.
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And it is something that
can be looked upon as promoting
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the country's good.
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That's how they define it.
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So with that kind of a
very specific definition...
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Well, it's
specific but applied very...
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Remember Falun Gong,
which is not even a religion,
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just a
traditional exercise regimen.
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The government is
more and more seeing
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this is
dangerous to the community.
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Correct.
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And maybe a little later in
our discussion on this program,
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we can talk about
the other minority group
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dealing with the Uyghurs,
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the Muslim group that is
considered to be against.
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Now why is China
against the Uyghurs?
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Well, they see it as something
that is opposed to the state
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and harmful to the state, i.e.
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they look at it as
people that are non-conformist.
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They have a different view
and practices that are not only
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vary from
traditional Chinese religions,
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like Buddhism, Taoism.
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And then, of course,
there's some Christian elements
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in China today, but
they look at the Muslims
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as a very specific sect
with very strict practices
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that in reality, I
think the underlying issue
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is that the Chinese
government sees that movement
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as something that leads
its believers to have a firm
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adherence to an authority
beyond the Chinese government.
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I've been watching.
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And I haven't looked it
up to prove that I'm right,
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but by my lights,
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tell me if I'm heading
the wrong direction on this.
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The Chinese government didn't
really make too much of a thing
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about the Uyghurs
until around 9/11, year 2001.
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Correct.
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And yet they're not in
lockstep with Western thinking.
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So it's very interesting.
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Yeah.
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And part of the
dynamic is that in that part
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of Northern China,
where the Uyghurs are,
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tend to be dominant right?
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Is that there has
been an overflow from your,
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the middle Eastern countries
like that are what we refer
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to as the Stan countries,
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the Tajikistan,
Kazakhstan and so on.
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We had an
article in Liberty once,
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if there's a Stan after it,
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there's a
religious liberty problem.
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Not always, but
it's not a bad guideline.
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So that overflow of
Muslims into Chinese
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over the border, right?
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And into that part of China.
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So from China's the
government perspective,
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they look at that as
being a threat to the state
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and issue that they wish to,
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as they would say,
they're, here's the term
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they're using in a
diplomatic language
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between dialogue between
China and the United States.
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They're referring to what
these camps that they've set up
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as reeducation camps.
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Now, from a Western perspective,
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there's the reports coming
out of that where we have heard
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that they're
doing for sterilization,
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they're taking
individuals and basically,
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the type of educate,
reeducation they're doing
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is more of a
forced reprogramming
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denying them of their
faith and things of that nature.
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Selective torture,
I mean, there's many,
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the whole gamut is going on.
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What I think is
going on here is China,
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like I say,
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China is a very ancient...
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It's not a country
in the oldest sense,
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but the region
that has the, you know,
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there're several
subgroups of Chinese,
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but what we understand
is the Chinese peoples
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have always had the sense
that they are the only ones,
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but with the
expansion of slight expansion
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in the early days
of Communist China,
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remember they took on Tibet
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and they took the
area where the Uyghurs are,
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so they've
expanded their borders.
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And I believe
that there's a racial,
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cultural issue going on.
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And if you study
the Tibetan issue,
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that's clearly ethnic,
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even though you
could choose to say
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it's persecution
of Buddhism, per se,
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because they are
repressing Buddhist behavior
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and the same with the Uyghurs.
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But China hasn't had
the dyno of any particularly
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violent incidents
analogous to 9/11.
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Correct.
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With the Muslims
they've just had complaints
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from the Uyghurs that
they're persecuting them.
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And I think that
goes back to before 9/11,
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but I believe it in 9/11,
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they got the signal
that the West is not going
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to be so offended
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at what they're
doing to the Uyghurs,
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so it became more open.
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More accepted.
So that's my take.
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So I...
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It's always on
religious Liberty,
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it's seldom as simple
as my religion is right,
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yours is wrong,
therefore I'll harass you.
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There are other
mitigating factors,
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but religion brings it
to a, you know, a special...
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Spark Point. Yeah, flashpoint.
00:11:05.16\00:11:07.13
Yeah, there's no question.
00:11:07.16\00:11:08.86
And I do think the
West needs to say more,
00:11:08.90\00:11:12.33
we've said a lot in support
of the Buddhists because many
00:11:12.37\00:11:16.20
Hollywood figures had
become enamored with Buddhism.
00:11:16.24\00:11:19.41
So the Dalai Lama
is, of course, you know,
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persona celebrated celebrate.
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And in many ways the
west has been sympathetic
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to the plight of
the Buddhist in Tibet.
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But the Uyghur
is not and I think
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partly because we've
got this sort of one-eyed
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approach since 9/11 to Islam,
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and we figured they must
be up to something there,
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but the Uyghur
thing, I've hunted.
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And I haven't found
evidence with the Uyghurs
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because of their
religion of doing anything
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egregious toward China.
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Correct. I mean, from my...
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Even though there were
many Uyghurs in Afghanistan
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when we...
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There were not many,
there were a significant number
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of Uyghur missionaries
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or jihadists caught
up in that whole thing.
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But again, that
doesn't affect China.
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Correct.
00:12:07.19\00:12:08.52
And I think that that would
be a valid assessment because,
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you know, when you
look at the dynamics
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within China
itself, as you pointed out,
00:12:15.73\00:12:17.83
you know, there's different
maybe subsets we could look
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at it or classify
among the Chinese populace
00:12:20.90\00:12:23.64
themselves ethically, right?
00:12:23.67\00:12:25.64
At the same time, you've got
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a little bit of a
Christian presence there,
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predominantly
Buddhism, some Daoism,
00:12:30.35\00:12:32.81
and now you've got this group
00:12:32.85\00:12:34.18
of minority
group that are Muslims.
00:12:34.22\00:12:36.12
So looking at those dynamics,
00:12:36.15\00:12:38.12
I think that China's
biggest problem is trying to
00:12:38.15\00:12:42.19
place itself within the
broader global community,
00:12:42.22\00:12:45.09
trying to say, we want to
be part of that community.
00:12:45.13\00:12:47.46
We have a place at the table,
00:12:47.50\00:12:49.30
and at the same time
they've got some internal issues
00:12:49.33\00:12:52.47
and things they need to
work out that at the moment
00:12:52.50\00:12:55.24
it doesn't seem
like in the light,
00:12:55.27\00:12:57.11
in the eyes of the rest of
the international community,
00:12:57.14\00:12:59.74
they're really taking the
best approach towards that.
00:12:59.77\00:13:02.11
But one thing I was
gonna mention that I think is
00:13:02.14\00:13:04.81
concerning as well regarding
China's approach to the Uyghurs
00:13:04.85\00:13:08.38
is there was an
article that came out
00:13:08.42\00:13:10.15
from the New York
Times highlighting
00:13:10.19\00:13:13.15
that it's not
just in their country,
00:13:13.19\00:13:15.02
that China is
actually tracing out
00:13:15.06\00:13:18.06
and finding out where there's
Uyghurs that are descendants
00:13:18.09\00:13:21.03
or family ties to people
living in China that are Uyghurs
00:13:21.06\00:13:24.23
that are living, Uyghurs
living in other countries,
00:13:24.27\00:13:26.63
and basically trying
to be oppressive to them
00:13:26.67\00:13:29.67
or tracking where
they're at getting
00:13:29.70\00:13:31.51
information and
things of that nature.
00:13:31.54\00:13:32.87
Yeah. And that's,
yes, I've read that.
00:13:32.91\00:13:36.18
I think that's a
function of the globalization
00:13:36.21\00:13:39.61
and intercommunication any
number of repressive countries,
00:13:39.65\00:13:44.22
Iran, Russia,
China, just to name three,
00:13:44.25\00:13:48.92
but there's
others that I've noticed
00:13:48.96\00:13:50.63
seem to be tracking
down enemies abroad.
00:13:50.66\00:13:52.89
I mean their
citizenry or ancestry.
00:13:52.93\00:13:57.30
I don't know that
the mindsets changed,
00:13:57.33\00:13:59.23
but I think the ability to
do that now is greater where,
00:13:59.27\00:14:02.90
you know, under the Witness
Protection Act in the US,
00:14:02.94\00:14:05.47
you know, a criminal lawyer
00:14:05.51\00:14:08.11
or someone had
to give an evidence,
00:14:08.14\00:14:09.48
they could be planted in little
town and they'd just disappear.
00:14:09.51\00:14:11.91
That doesn't have it anymore.
You can track people down.
00:14:11.95\00:14:13.85
Yeah.
00:14:13.88\00:14:15.22
So yes, there's the long
arm of retribution from China.
00:14:15.25\00:14:19.99
But I still believe China
is a self-absorbed country
00:14:20.02\00:14:23.22
and would largely
wish the world to go away.
00:14:23.26\00:14:26.46
I don't see it as
expansionist in the way
00:14:26.49\00:14:29.03
that the old empires were.
00:14:29.06\00:14:31.03
And since we're
talking about religion...
00:14:31.07\00:14:33.70
Well, let's take a break.
00:14:33.74\00:14:35.07
I see we're at a
nice convenient point.
00:14:35.10\00:14:36.44
Stay with us.
00:14:36.47\00:14:37.81
We'll take this discussion
00:14:37.84\00:14:39.17
in an interesting
level when we return.
00:14:39.21\00:14:41.14
Thank you.
00:14:41.18\00:14:42.51