Fri 8 Aug, 2008

Irony in China

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Sometimes it’s fascinating to compare stories. The excerpt on the left is from The Telegraph, on July 21. The one on the right is from today’s Washington Post.

Eric Liddell’s story to set Chinese hearts racing

Who knows how the Chariots of Fire story is likely to go down in communist China, but we are about to find out. Eric Liddell, or Li Airui as he was known in the Far East, was considered a godly, heroic figure in non-communist China, and now the modern-day Chinese authorities have agreed to let his story of Christian humanity and sporting excellence be told.

John Keddie’s acclaimed Running the Race, a biography that places Liddell’s sporting life in the religious context in which it was lived, has been published in Mandarin and will be launched in China next month - the land where the 1924 Olympic 400 yards champion was born, worked as a missionary and died in a Japanese internment camp.

Getting such a ‘western’ book, containing so much religious and moral content, past the Communist party censors is rare indeed, but Liddell has always been held in the highest regard in China.

Indeed some of China’s Olympic literature lists the Scotsman as China’s first Olympic champion, while his part in protecting his ‘flock’ from the Japanese invasion in 1937 has always been acknowledged by the Chinese.

In Spite of Rules, Olympic Athletes Say They Won’t Lose Faith

Sanya Richards envisions 91,000 fans at Beijing National Stadium and millions more on television watching her cross the finish line first in the 400 meters later this month. Immediately afterward, Richards said, she plans to kneel, say a quick prayer and then point skyward in spiritual appreciation…. Richards is among the athletes who openly display their faith on the playing field, and feel the two are inextricably linked….

But this month, Richards will have another set of eyes watching her that might take note of her celebration. The Chinese government frowns upon organized public displays of faith outside state-sanctioned religious events and does not allow proselytizing. While a private religious gesture likely will not be a problem, it will be difficult for athletes such as Richards to know when they have crossed the line.

… Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, [said], “The practice of religion should be within the laws. The Chinese government is against conducting other activities in the name of religion.”

Sat 31 May, 2008

Christianity in China: Hope of Freedom

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An outsider’s view of the West can be enlightening, especially when that person’s view moves him toward spiritual answers. Here is one such voice from China. The source is a Christianity Today article, “Great Leap Forward.”

Hsu, a former television journalist for the state-sponsored CCTV, is a telling example of how a member of China’s educated elite moves to Christianity.

Hsu told his story to CT over a meal at a crowded Beijing KFC. It began with his search for freedom—politically and personally. The search led him to European history. “Westerners are not more interested in freedom than anyone else,” he says.

Yet the West has achieved and sustained a greater degree of liberty than any other culture. Hsu wondered what the West had that China didn’t. “Before freedom comes, you have to have a foundation. In the West that foundation is Christianity.”

Hsu’s vision for a new China parallels his readings on the march of freedom in the West. From the 10th to 12th centuries, Hsu reasons, Europe developed legal studies, hospitals, and universities, all of which grew out of the church. These developments resulted in breakthroughs in human liberty, as seen in the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. Today, Hsu says, the church is an incubator for similar developments in China.

“After the country adopted Western science and philosophy, it left a value vacuum,” Hsu says. “After Tiananmen Square, some scholars lost hope. They wanted to start asking the ultimate questions about the purpose of life. People in China have lost faith in human wisdom. The Cultural Revolution was a disaster, but this spiritual awakening is an unexpected result.” Hsu’s quest led him to the Bible. There, he learned that “faith in God as the Lord is the beginning of freedom.”

Recently, he delivered a paper on freedom to a local gathering of the American Political Science Association. In it he wrote, “The more I knew about the growth of freedom in the West, the more I was captivated by the role of faith in God as the Lord.”

“You need a standard of absolute truth,” Hsu told CT. “You have to convince people that the God of the Jews and Christians is the God of the universe.”

The rest of the article, by the way, is filled with encouragement for those of us who have been praying for China.