This thread is a reply to certain posts concerning Chinese Christianity in my thread on potentially heterodox parishes and local churches, as this formed the basis of an interesting discussion with
@bbbbbbb @MarkRohfrietsch and
@FireDragon76 which was off-topic to the previous thread:
Blatant interference by foreign missionaries in China is not a good idea if you care about a Christian witness there. It is a settled matter among longstanding Christian groups in China, that foreign missionaries endanger Christian mission. That is why the national Protestant church is called the "Three Self Church". This predates Communism, and has to do with the Chinese peoples' desire to uphold self-sufficiency in all matters, including religion.
What I care about is the restoration of religious freedom.
The fact is, by the way, that Christianity is a foreign religion in China, and always will be of foreign origin, but so is Buddhism, which is one of the four “traditional” Chinese religions (the others being Taoism, Confucianism, and Chinese Folk Religion, which influenced Confucianism and is largely administered by Taoist clergy - Confucianism is also completely suppressed in the PRC and is only freely practiced in Taiwan, the diaspora, and, for the time being, in the Hong Kong and Macau SARs, and who knows how long that will last given that the treaties requiring the autonomy of those regions as a prerequisite to their surrender to mainland China are, unsurprisingly, but disappointingly, being completely ignored by the brutal dictatorship of Xi Jinping, yet no meaningful sanctions are being applied to China, just as no sanctions are being applied to Azerbaijan for what they are doing to the Armenians. It seems like the world will tolerate any abuse as long as Christians are the victims, but I digress. Speaking of which, Islam is massive in China, but more people are outraged by the Chinese human rights violations against the Muslims in Western China than they are by the human rights violations against Christians throughout the entirety of China.
At any rate, it should be stressed that mainland China, from a missionary perspective, was first served by the Church of the East, until the genocide of Tamerlane and his sons killed off all members of that church in China, Mongolia, Tibet, Central Asia, the island of Socotra off the south coast of Yemen, and everywhere else outside the Fertile Crescent and Malankara, so that only the Assyrian and the Nasrani / Mar Thoma Christian ethnic groups remained. Later, northern China was evangelized with considerable success by the Russians, with the last Orthodox bishop of Shanghai, St. John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco, being much venerated among the Orthodox Christians. Additionally, the Anglicans did a superb job in Hong Kong and Shanghai, and the Roman Catholics in Macau.
Probably due to the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese Orthodox Church was completely suppressed, and there is no Orthodox equivalent of the state-run “Patriotic Catholic Association” or its Protestant counterpart, and tragically the beautiful Orthodox cathedral in Harbin is a museum. Hopefully the improved relation between Russia and the PRC might change this, but it has not thus far, and I am not holding my breath. My view is that the northern portion of mainland China ought to be regarded as the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church (since the Church of Japan is also an autonomous part of the Moscow Patriarchate), whereas the southern portion and Tibet ought to be regarded as the canonical territory of the Assyrian Church of the East, which fortunately has a very good relationship with the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Christian community in the former British and Portuguese colonies and surrounding regions on the West Coast ought to be jointly administered by a united Anglican-Methodist-Presbyterian-Congregationalist church modeled on the Church of South India, the Church of North India and the Church of Pakistan, and the Roman Catholic Church (provided Fidelis Supplicans is revoked), until such time as the blissful state of religious freedom currently enjoyed in Taiwan can be introduced to mainland China, or alternately, a Christian government emerges in China which can suppress the pagan religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, etc.
I am, to be clear, calling for direct foreign leadership of the churches in mainland China, as the ideal solution for a transitional period, in order to ensure that certain doctrinal errors such as the Prosperity Gospel are eradicated, and at the same time to protect Chinese Christianity from the unscriptural permissiveness towards homosexuality which seems to be overtaking all of the Western denominations, even the Roman Catholic church. And I am also suggesting that the suppression of the heathen religions of China would be desirable, if possible, since, while some may disagree, I do not believe that false religions benefit a society once Christianity has been introduced. The only reason why religious freedom is desirable is it prevents a situation such as happened in some Western European countries such as the Netherlands and Geneva where state control of religion resulted in people being forced to abandon traditional Christianity or worship in secret. And it can be argued that the Golden Rule compels religious freedom, although this point is debatable, however, I myself do support religious freedom to a point (the problem being where you have dangerous cults such as the Wahhabist movement within Sunni Islam, or the Jafari movement in Shia Islam, both of which are comfortable engaging in terrorism, and also Scientology, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and more extreme cases such as the Rajneeshis who terrorized rural Oregon in the 1980s and were responsible for the first bioterror attacks in US history).
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