Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break
with guest Ed Cooke,
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we were talking about China,
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and I wanted to
go back a little way
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to explain their
attitude toward religion.
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You know, Chinese
religion is complex,
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but Confucianism is dominant.
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Sure.
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There's a
little bit of Buddhism,
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but I think Confucianism
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and really in
today's China, they're not
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necessarily
religious, but traditional.
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And that's where
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the Falun Gong got into trouble.
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People are
attracted to the traditions
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and that offended the communist.
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But I think
there's a deeper reason
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within China, culturally,
quite apart from communism,
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why they are a bit suspicious
of Christianity in the West.
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It goes back a way, doesn't it?
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Yeah.
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When did
Christianity really hit China?
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Well, back at
the time period of,
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you had the Protestant
Reformation in 1518 onward,
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and then around 1560
you had the organization
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and the founding
of the Jesuit order,
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the Society of Jesus
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from within the Catholic Church.
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And one of the primary
goals was to in essence resist
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and try to overthrow
and eradicate Protestantism.
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Well, that was their...
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I mean, that's why
Ignatius of Loyola founded it.
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I mean, as they developed
they became missionaries
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to non-Christian places.
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So it wasn't just
against Protestantism,
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but their founding
reason was to be warriors,
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to war violently.
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In fact, not if necessary
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presumed violence
against non-Catholics.
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Correct.
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And from there they developed
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or, of course,
organized into missionary
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works as well as educators.
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And so part of it
was Charles Xavier
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that traveled over to
China and began doing a work
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on behalf of the
Catholic Church there
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in China.
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And, you know,
one can say that in,
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when looks at the
history of the Jesuit order,
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their first entry
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into a large
number of countries,
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not just over in Asia,
but also in Latin America,
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South and Central America.
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In those countries,
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they started out
with a good beginning
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starting out with orphanages,
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taking time to
educate the children...
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And they were often the
educators to the nobility.
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Correct.
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They insinuated themselves
the court advisors and so on.
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So one can say that their
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first beginnings were often good
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and benevolent,
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at least in appearance
and the actions they did,
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but over time,
especially by 1750,
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there were a
number of the Jesuits
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that were actually expelled
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from not only
South American countries,
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but also from Asian
countries like China.
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And I think that's
due to their involvement
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in politics to the extent
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that those
countries felt that they,
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that those orders and movements
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became a threat
to national security.
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Yeah.
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And that was the earliest
Christian influence in China.
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But as far as China's attitude
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toward the
so-called Christian West,
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which is, we know talking
about Christian nation in the US
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that's really in the modern
era of a false assumption,
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maybe a Christian
sensibility in the culture,
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but it's a wrong idea to think
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that this was all
Christian activity,
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but still in the
imperial colonial aspirations
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of most of the European
powers, China was the prize,
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and China resisted
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it because of this insularity
that I've spoken about.
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And more and more,
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they began to see
the Jesuit missionaries
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and some other missionaries
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as really a front line
of the enemy coming at them.
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And that's when there
was a bit of a turnabout.
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And then one of
the worst days...
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Excuse me, I was just
going to say on that point,
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that mindset from
back in that time period
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is what still prevails today
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with the
Chinese Communist Party.
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Because part of
what they look at
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is that if you've got a foreign,
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you've got a religious
organization that has...
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Absolutely, that's the
point I'm trying to make too.
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Foreigner that is
coming in into the country.
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And they're not wrong.
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They say that they're coming in
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with actually
underlying motives, right?
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They have a hidden
agenda through by doing that.
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You know, I used to
take a sermon on it.
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I'm very enamored, this
is taking another country.
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But Stanley Jones,
a missionary to India
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ran up against
this cultural resistance
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to the whole Christian message.
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And on one meeting
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that was
central to his ministry,
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Brahman priest, I
think it was, says,
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we don't care for
your Christ of the West,
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your Western Christ.
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And he thought quickly.
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And so he described
Jesus like a Hindu holy man,
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wandering down the dusty roads
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and functioning as they would
and reaching out to people.
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And the guy says,
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I think I could learn to love
the Christ of the Indian road,
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to love and serve the
Christ of the Indian road.
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But that's
something that Christianity,
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as it reached out
to other countries
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is often not
understood in essence,
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in projecting Christian faith,
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it's basically
westernizing people.
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And I think,
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I don't believe Christ
would be in such a thing.
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The spiritual
realities of an eternal kingdom
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shouldn't be linked
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to any
particular cultural up here.
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Especially given the fact that
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Jesus came from the
Middle East Himself, right?
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Well, you would know
that from those Bibles.
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I mean, you know, the
pictures in those Bibles,
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but anyhow the crude
graph for China's attitude
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toward the Christian West
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was when the
imperial colonial powers
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had wanted control of China
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and the way they were doing
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it was a very
lucrative opium trade.
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To subjugate China,
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they were pushing opium on them,
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and they actually
went to war with China
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and humiliated
China to force it,
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to give opium to its population
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because they were making
so much money from the opium.
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So it left a very bad
residual taste in China.
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And the
communists have picked up on
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what this Christian
West is really after.
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Correct me if
I'm wrong, Lincoln,
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but what, there
was a significant part
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that that Britain
played though in that, correct?
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Of course.
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Yeah, in that
portion of history, right?
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Coming in...
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And then there was
the boxer rebellion
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where the Chinese at that time
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had kept most of the
foreigners in an enclave.
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And so that came under
attack and yeah, it was,
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they held out for 40-50
days with a wild attack,
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but China was humiliated.
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And then even in World War II,
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China was
politically tumultuous.
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And the allies pretty
much told China what to do
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because the Japanese
had come up in Manchuria.
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So it's been the play thing
of Western wars and intrigues
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and trading
rivalries for a long time.
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This explains though
and just kind of putting
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this short historical synopsis
in its perspective, right?
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But this explains why
not only from the period of
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as they call it,
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the cultural
revolution with Mao Tse-tung,
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but even current
leaders like Xi Jinping,
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the current
leader there in China
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is looking at it of
wanting to reestablish China
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in its historical context
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i.e. the period of prosperity
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before they had
these issues with the West.
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They don't want
foreign entanglements
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and true religion
shouldn't fear that,
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but, you know, they
had a famous dispute
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of a few years ago with Rome.
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Remember over who
appointed the Catholic bishops.
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Yeah.
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And, you know, you can
see it from both sides.
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Of course, you have
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the Roman Catholic
Church based in Rome.
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It's an offense to them
that here this government
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is determining
who the bishops are,
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but in China where
they fear foreign influence
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a Christian power half a
world away is gonna tell them
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who leads the community
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in these very
influential positions.
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And at that point
coming back to what I mentioned
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at the
beginning of this program,
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dealing with the 2018 law.
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It actually
maintains that posture
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where the current pope
has actually conceded to that.
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So he says, okay, let
the Chinese government
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choose who the bishops will be,
and we will simply accept that.
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Well, they had to, or
else it was to be expelled.
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Yes.
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And, you know, I'm not
one way or the other on this.
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Culturally, I see
the Chinese position
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from a point of
religious practice.
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Yes, it's very
offensive to have a civil power
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telling a church how to operate,
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but there was a setup on this.
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And in the past,
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this sort of
privilege has been abused.
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As you know, the
Roman Catholic Church,
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I think is
quite ideally situated
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to abuse this sense
that it's at one time
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as a political power
and a religious power
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where I think a religious
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organization could more easily
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strip away its cultural origins
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and preach the
pure gospel of Christ.
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So we need to pray for China,
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there's a lot of
potential in China.
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And, but a lot of backlash
that is not just communist,
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it's historic, it's cultural.
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It goes back a long, long way.
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Many centuries. Yeah.
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And my point is, they're not
necessarily misunderstandings,
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they're lessons
they learned from history
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and in the West
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in those
elements of Christianity,
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we need to be sure
that we project Christianity
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in a Christ-like
way, don't you think?
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I think that that's
the most important thing.
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You know, we as Christians
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whatever part of
the world we live in,
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and in particular
those living in China
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as this program has
highlighted the importance of us
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to live at the
principles of Christ
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in the context and the
culture that we're living in,
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in such a way
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as to be the best
witness that we possibly can.
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