> from Hong Kong Asia Times
>
> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IH07Ad03.html
>
> "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. "
>
> 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.
>
> forwarded by Bob Vinnicombe