The following devotion was written for the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin ministry. Like deep darkness, persecution, injustice and tribulation can shake a believer's faith. It can also shake the faith of faithful prayer warriors, especially if the darkness lingers. But Easter provides us all with the most perfect example of the fact that our world includes a spiritual dimension that we are not always privy to. Things are not always as they seem -- and God can be trusted. In this, Jesus Christ has shown us the way.
Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 049 | Tue 30 Mar 2010
EASTER 2010: PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING
By Elizabeth Kendal
The darkness and coldness of the night are deepest just before dawn. How dark and cold Good Friday must have seemed to Jesus' followers, to those who had put their hope in him. And in the afternoon, when actual darkness shrouded the land, how terrifying that darkness must have been. Yet all was not as it seemed -- and this is one of the profound lessons to take away from the suffering and terror of Good Friday.
Perspective is everything. Jesus' followers, family and friends saw Christ's crucifixion as an appalling injustice. Their loved one, their hope, was hanging on a cross, crucified for a crime -- blasphemy -- he did not commit, purely to appease hatred. The Jews who earlier had shouted 'Crucify him! Crucify him!' saw Christ's crucifixion as thoroughly deserved. The Romans saw Christ's crucifixion as the end of a trouble-maker. Meanwhile, God in heaven saw a Lamb being slain in the name of everlasting love. He saw the penalty of sin being paid to enable reconciliation between God and man. He saw people from every tribe, language, people and nation (Revelation 5:9) being redeemed, brought out from under that shroud of death that covers all peoples (Isaiah 25:7) and given access to God's Most Holy Place (Hebrews 10:19). Dear struggling prayer warrior, dear persecuted believer -- trust in God, things are not always as they appear and the dawn is just around the corner.
This wonderful and mysterious truth gives us confidence to know we can trust God and follow Christ in attitude, amidst suffering and through the veil.
Trusting that our sovereign, provident and faithful God is always at work, we can follow Christ by adopting his attitude. 'Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus', who humbled himself, taking the nature of a servant, and was obedient even to the point of death -- 'even death on a cross' (Philippians 2:5-8 NIV).
Trusting that our sovereign, provident and faithful God is always at work, we can follow Christ by modelling his faith. It was only after Christ Jesus endured the cross in humility and faith, that 'God exalted him to the highest place' (Philippians 2:9-11 NIV). Jesus did not doubt that God would be faithful. He did not fear being rejected by the Father and left in hell. He entered the darkness with absolute faith that God the Father, who is faithful by nature, would be true to his promise, and that he would emerge victorious at the dawn of the third day.
Trusting that our sovereign, provident and faithful God is always at work, we can follow Christ through the veil. Christ went through the veil and into the Most Holy Place for us. Our souls are now anchored there through our union with him (Hebrews 6:19,20). While one day we will live there with him and see him face to face, even now we enter through the veil by faith whenever we make intercessions for ourselves and for others. How greatly this great mystery is misunderstood! How greatly this great privilege is neglected! Dear believers -- enter through the veil into the courts of the Lord and do business with God in the confidence that Christ opened the way for you.
Why is there so much pride and arrogance? Why is faith so shaky? Why is there so little prayer? May Easter be an encouragement: things are not always as they appear and the dawn is just around the corner. Jesus Christ has shown us the way. May we follow HIM.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Fitna in Morocco
TIME magazine has published an article by Lisa Abend entitled: In Morocco, a Crackdown on Christian Aid Workers. 21 March 2010
(For background and analysis see my earlier post of 14 March 2010 entitled, Morocco: up to 70 foreign Christians expelled.)
Abend's article mentions a number of cases not previously mentioned in other reports; such as that of a Korean-born Protestant pastor in Marrakesh who was arrested as he led a worship service in his church. It also includes a moving 55 second film clip which shows the distress suffered by the orphans at the Village of Hope orphanage on 8 March, after they learned that their foster parents were going to be taken from them and deported. Furthermore, it also gives us another hint as to what might be simmering beneath the surface.
Quoting from Abend's TIME magazine article: "According to the Moroccan government, the deportees all broke the law, using their status as aid workers to cover their proselytizing. 'They are guilty of trying to undermine the faith of Muslims,' Interior Minister Tayeb Cherkaoui said in a press release.
"But were they? Broadbent denies the charges. Part of his job at the Village of Hope was to ensure that staff members understood the rules prohibiting proselytizing, and he notes that all the orphanage's children received instruction in Islam. 'We weren't teaching Christianity in any formal way,' he says. But asked if reading the Bible to Muslim children constitutes proselytizing, he said, 'We understood that it wasn't. And in any case, the authorities have always known that these children were being raised in Christian families.' "
Herein lies the problem -- it is a matter of perspective. The foreign Christians and the fundamentalist Muslims are viewing the issue of Christian aid work through completely different lenses. The Christian aid workers believe that as long as they are not pressuring Muslims to convert to Christianity then they are not guilty of proselytising. They believe that for a conversion to be genuine it must be of the heart and absolutely free, so they have no interest in "proselytising". They simply believe in liberty, and that it is an idea's ability to stand on its own two feet in the open market place of ideas that gives it worth. But for the Muslim fundamentalists who are doubtless behind this move and possibly pressuring the reformist government for concessions, the issue is fitna.
Fitna
In his book The Third Choice, Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom (Feb 2010, Deror Books), pastor, linguist and Islam-scholar Rev Dr Mark Durie notes (page 96): "The Arabic word fitna 'trial, persecution, temptation' is of crucial importance in understanding Muhammad's metamorphosis" [from rejected "loser" in Mecca, to victorious "winner" in Medina]. "The word," explains Durie, "is derived from fatana 'to turn away from, to tempt, to seduce or subject to trials'." (Quote taken from E.W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon. Book 6, p.2334ff.)
Thus fitna, which is equated with persecution, involves anything that could cause a Muslim to leave Islam -- anything from vile torture to magnetic grace. The whole purpose of jihad was to eliminate fitna. For some, this simply meant that infidels had to be so totally subjugated and humiliated, to the point of wretchedness and paralysis, that the alternative to Islam was abhorrent and repulsive. For others, the elimination of fitna required the elimination of infidels in order to ensure that there was no alternative that could threaten Islam in any way.
For according to the Islamic order, Muslims are superior -- the most noble/best community ever raised up for mankind (Q3:110) -- and therefore must dominate. It is the Muslims who are called to success. Thus a thriving dhimmi would be a source of fitna for the Muslim community. Of course a thriving apostate is the most threatening embodiment of fitna imaginable. This is why the dictators of Islam are so desperately apostaphobic.
Durie writes (p.97) concerning the fitna phrases in the Quran (Q2:190-193 and 217, and 8:39): "These fitna phrases, each revealed twice in the Quran, establish the principle that jihad was justified by the existence of an obstacle to people entering Islam, or of inducements to Muslims to abandon their faith. However grievous it might be to fight others and shed their blood, undermining or obstructing Islam was worse."
For, as the Quran states: ". . . to turn men from the way of Allah, and to disbelieve in him . . . is a greater transgression with Allah [than fighting in the sacred month], for persecution (fitna) is worse than killing. . ." (Q2:217)
Fitna in Morocco
Consider again the words of Tayeb Cherkaoui, Morocco's Interior Minister who has accused the Christian aid workers of being "guilty of trying to undermine the faith of Muslims", and the words of Christian aid worker Chris Broadbent, who flatly denied that any "proselytisation" had taken place.
Obviously MP Cherkaoui has determined that nothing shakes the faith of a Muslim, tempting him/her to leave Islam, as much as the sacrificial gracious love of a Christian. As far as he is concerned, every one of the deported Christian aid workers was guilty of fitna (persecuting Islam, attacking Islam, seducing Muslims away from Islam) whether they were aware of it or not.
For active evangelisation is not the only form of fitna presenting a challenge to Islam. The fundamentalists know that in order to really eliminate fitna, they must eliminate every demonstration of Christian sacrificial love, Christian mercy, Christian grace, Christian joy and Christian assurance/peace -- for these amount to the most devastating fitna of all!
The expulsion of foreign Christian aid workers from Morocco may well set a precedent. All does not bode well for Christian aid work in the Muslim world.
(For background and analysis see my earlier post of 14 March 2010 entitled, Morocco: up to 70 foreign Christians expelled.)
Abend's article mentions a number of cases not previously mentioned in other reports; such as that of a Korean-born Protestant pastor in Marrakesh who was arrested as he led a worship service in his church. It also includes a moving 55 second film clip which shows the distress suffered by the orphans at the Village of Hope orphanage on 8 March, after they learned that their foster parents were going to be taken from them and deported. Furthermore, it also gives us another hint as to what might be simmering beneath the surface.
Quoting from Abend's TIME magazine article: "According to the Moroccan government, the deportees all broke the law, using their status as aid workers to cover their proselytizing. 'They are guilty of trying to undermine the faith of Muslims,' Interior Minister Tayeb Cherkaoui said in a press release.
"But were they? Broadbent denies the charges. Part of his job at the Village of Hope was to ensure that staff members understood the rules prohibiting proselytizing, and he notes that all the orphanage's children received instruction in Islam. 'We weren't teaching Christianity in any formal way,' he says. But asked if reading the Bible to Muslim children constitutes proselytizing, he said, 'We understood that it wasn't. And in any case, the authorities have always known that these children were being raised in Christian families.' "
Herein lies the problem -- it is a matter of perspective. The foreign Christians and the fundamentalist Muslims are viewing the issue of Christian aid work through completely different lenses. The Christian aid workers believe that as long as they are not pressuring Muslims to convert to Christianity then they are not guilty of proselytising. They believe that for a conversion to be genuine it must be of the heart and absolutely free, so they have no interest in "proselytising". They simply believe in liberty, and that it is an idea's ability to stand on its own two feet in the open market place of ideas that gives it worth. But for the Muslim fundamentalists who are doubtless behind this move and possibly pressuring the reformist government for concessions, the issue is fitna.
Fitna
In his book The Third Choice, Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom (Feb 2010, Deror Books), pastor, linguist and Islam-scholar Rev Dr Mark Durie notes (page 96): "The Arabic word fitna 'trial, persecution, temptation' is of crucial importance in understanding Muhammad's metamorphosis" [from rejected "loser" in Mecca, to victorious "winner" in Medina]. "The word," explains Durie, "is derived from fatana 'to turn away from, to tempt, to seduce or subject to trials'." (Quote taken from E.W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon. Book 6, p.2334ff.)
Thus fitna, which is equated with persecution, involves anything that could cause a Muslim to leave Islam -- anything from vile torture to magnetic grace. The whole purpose of jihad was to eliminate fitna. For some, this simply meant that infidels had to be so totally subjugated and humiliated, to the point of wretchedness and paralysis, that the alternative to Islam was abhorrent and repulsive. For others, the elimination of fitna required the elimination of infidels in order to ensure that there was no alternative that could threaten Islam in any way.
For according to the Islamic order, Muslims are superior -- the most noble/best community ever raised up for mankind (Q3:110) -- and therefore must dominate. It is the Muslims who are called to success. Thus a thriving dhimmi would be a source of fitna for the Muslim community. Of course a thriving apostate is the most threatening embodiment of fitna imaginable. This is why the dictators of Islam are so desperately apostaphobic.
Durie writes (p.97) concerning the fitna phrases in the Quran (Q2:190-193 and 217, and 8:39): "These fitna phrases, each revealed twice in the Quran, establish the principle that jihad was justified by the existence of an obstacle to people entering Islam, or of inducements to Muslims to abandon their faith. However grievous it might be to fight others and shed their blood, undermining or obstructing Islam was worse."
For, as the Quran states: ". . . to turn men from the way of Allah, and to disbelieve in him . . . is a greater transgression with Allah [than fighting in the sacred month], for persecution (fitna) is worse than killing. . ." (Q2:217)
Fitna in Morocco
Consider again the words of Tayeb Cherkaoui, Morocco's Interior Minister who has accused the Christian aid workers of being "guilty of trying to undermine the faith of Muslims", and the words of Christian aid worker Chris Broadbent, who flatly denied that any "proselytisation" had taken place.
Obviously MP Cherkaoui has determined that nothing shakes the faith of a Muslim, tempting him/her to leave Islam, as much as the sacrificial gracious love of a Christian. As far as he is concerned, every one of the deported Christian aid workers was guilty of fitna (persecuting Islam, attacking Islam, seducing Muslims away from Islam) whether they were aware of it or not.
For active evangelisation is not the only form of fitna presenting a challenge to Islam. The fundamentalists know that in order to really eliminate fitna, they must eliminate every demonstration of Christian sacrificial love, Christian mercy, Christian grace, Christian joy and Christian assurance/peace -- for these amount to the most devastating fitna of all!
The expulsion of foreign Christian aid workers from Morocco may well set a precedent. All does not bode well for Christian aid work in the Muslim world.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
An analysis of religious policy in China
I would like to alert all religious liberty monitors and analysts to a paper that has been released by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI).
The Templeton Lecture on Religion and World Affairs
Back to the Future: Pre-modern Religious Policy in Post-Secular China
By Richard Madsen. 15 March 2010
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201003.madsen.postsecularchina.html
FPRI introduces Richard Madsen as: "the Distinguished Professor & Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author or co-author of eleven books on Chinese culture, American culture, and international relations."
What I offer here is a mere summary of Madsen's main arguments and observations concerning Chinese Communist Party's religious policy and its implications for the Chinese Protestants. Anyone interested in truly understanding the evolution of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policy on religion, should read Madsen's whole paper for themselves.
Madsen notes that the Chinese government's policy on religion has been based on the secularisation theory that religion will eventually die out, becoming irrelevant as modernisation advances. However, it is becoming increasingly obvious that religion is not dying out and is even growing and dynamically evolving and reviving. According to Madsen, "Many social scientists are now saying that the secularization thesis is wrong and that we need a post-secularist social theory to account for the empirically obvious facts of the early twenty-first century. Religious belief and practice have not faded away, and in many parts of the world they are playing a more obvious role in public life than in the past century."
Madsen provides a detailed and insightful look at: "CCP Policy Towards Religion", and "Religion in China Today", concluding that the theoretical categories the CCP has long used to define religion and determine the difference between religion and superstition are simply no longer applicable. "The secularist assumptions behind the government's religious policy-that religion will gradually and inevitably, if not as quickly as once believed, fade away-are untenable."
"As a result the policy itself-which aims to constrain the growth of religion, to confine it to the private sphere, and to keep it from affecting politics and ethnic relations-has utterly failed, even on its own terms. Despite all efforts to control its growth, religion has grown rapidly and overwhelmed China's systems for surveillance and control. Clumsy methods of suppressing unwanted forms of religion have actually intensified religiously inspired conflict with the state. The attempt to disconnect religion from ethnic conflict has only added religious zeal to ethnic struggle. The failure is obvious enough that the leadership of the Communist Party has begun to recognize it and is searching for a new approach to religious policy."
Then under the heading: "Groping Toward a New Policy", Madsen provides an insightful analysis of evolving CCP policy. The trends he examines are trends I have been monitoring for over a decade.
Madsen notes the establishment of the public security forces, a secret police organisation which bypasses the state criminal justice system and reports directly to the CCP leadership. "Although originally developed [in 1999] to destroy an 'evil cult,' [Falungong] it has extended its reach to cover political dissidents and other threats to Party domination. The expanded organization has recently been given a new name-the 'Harmonious Society Security Office'.
"Initiatives toward increased tolerance of some religious activities are joined with new methods of repression toward others. There does not seem to be much central coordination of these separate developments, and they separately develop at their own pace according to the ambitions of the various bureaucratic units that were their source. Recognizing the incoherence of its ad hoc policies, the Party is looking for a new theoretical framework to guide its approach toward religion. The framework seems to be heading back to the future, away from a modernist Marxist version of secularism and toward a modernized version of Imperial China's sacral hegemony."
Concerning this New Imperial Sacral Hegemony, Madsen writes that historically, the Emperor, as the 'Son of Heaven', was mandated to mediate between heaven and earth. The Emperor differentiated between right religious practise and false (mythical/superstitious) religious practice. Often it was the case that for religious practice to be defined as right and true, it merely had to bolster social stability under imperial rule. Emperors controlled large communities by means of imperial patronage, and institutions and leaders would be rewarded for their loyalty.
"However," writes Madsen, "sectarian organizations that gathered people together from many different communities, contravened gender distinctions by allowing men and women to worship together as equals, preached an imminent end to the present era, and sometimes became the organizational basis for rebellion-such organizations might be labeled heterodox and persecuted strongly."
[. . .]
"As noted in a recent paper by Zhuo Xinping, the director of the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, the basic principle of imperial policy toward religion was that 'the government is the master, religion the follower (zhengzhu, jiaocong)'."
As Madsen notes, in recent years the CCP has moved to rebrand itself. No longer does the CCP promote itself as a party of revolution, but as a party that delivers economic development, secures territorial integrity and promotes cultural heritage. Today the CCP's slogan is "Harmonious Society", which is said to be dependent on "social stability". According to Madsen, "In religious affairs at least, the approach now seems to be more indebted to the great Ming and Qing emperors than to Mao Zedong." As such, "The history of China's rulers in protecting and promoting China's cultural heritage thus becomes a more fundamental basis for religious policy than Marxian theory."
Madsen continues: "In its new incarnation, the supposedly secular Party assumes a sacred aura. It now presents itself as the carrier of a sacred national destiny. It carries out spectacular public rituals like the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics - ceremonies which powerfully evoked the glorious cultural heritage of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism but gave no mention at all to Mao Zedong or even to socialism."
And as Madsen so rightly notes: "This can lead to new patterns of religious tolerance and repression. [. . .] Christian communities are . . . problematic, because they practice a foreign religion, not part of the Chinese cultural heritage. But as long as they thoroughly indigenize-which in practice means that they accept the principle that the government is the master, religion the follower-they can be accepted." For the truly globalised religions, however, this is particularly problematic.
As China develops, it wants to export its cultural heritage. But, as Madsen notes, the kind of religion that China wants to export "is one deeply embedded in Han Chinese culture, whose elites in the past have been willing to follow the 'government master, religion follower' formula, and which celebrates the glories of Han Chinese ethnicity. [. . .] Thus, Christianity, Islam, and Tibetan Buddhism pose severe challenges to a neo-imperial sacral hegemony."
[. . .]
"Protestant Christianity in China is much more decentralized [than Roman Catholicism], and does not pose the threat of an authoritarian ecclesiastical power attempting to impose its version of orthodoxy on Chinese believers. But as a global faith, it too is open to influence spread through modern media (and often carried directly by modern missionaries) from around the world. However indigenized Protestant Christianity becomes in China, it will remain in communication with-and be subject to-influence by spiritual movements from abroad. A completely secular liberal government would not have much problem with such cosmopolitan religious influence. But a government that claims a modern Mandate of Heaven in principle could not tolerate such influence. The outlook is that the Chinese ruling party will try to restrict the spread of Christianity while actually encouraging the revival of much of its indigenous folk religion-but the restrictions will not likely be effective and the growth of Christianity will continue to cause controversy among the Chinese elite, and the result will be seemingly arbitrary, incoherent policies toward Christianity."
[. . .]
Madsen concludes: "The one way to keep universalizing global religious movements from undermining [CCP] policy is for China to become so powerful that it can set the terms of its relationship with the rest of world, or at least in Asia. Then it could use its military and economic might to enforce its claim that universal standards of religious freedom do not apply to China and that universal religions can only enter China if they accept the principle of government master, religion follower. Some political leaders think that they can accomplish this."
---------------
Madsen's conclusions are identical to my own. In fact, there has already been a marked increase in persecution since August 2008 when the global economy collapsed, stripping the US International Freedom from Religious Persecution Act (1998) of its economic leverage.
The Templeton Lecture on Religion and World Affairs
Back to the Future: Pre-modern Religious Policy in Post-Secular China
By Richard Madsen. 15 March 2010
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201003.madsen.postsecularchina.html
FPRI introduces Richard Madsen as: "the Distinguished Professor & Chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author or co-author of eleven books on Chinese culture, American culture, and international relations."
What I offer here is a mere summary of Madsen's main arguments and observations concerning Chinese Communist Party's religious policy and its implications for the Chinese Protestants. Anyone interested in truly understanding the evolution of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policy on religion, should read Madsen's whole paper for themselves.
Madsen notes that the Chinese government's policy on religion has been based on the secularisation theory that religion will eventually die out, becoming irrelevant as modernisation advances. However, it is becoming increasingly obvious that religion is not dying out and is even growing and dynamically evolving and reviving. According to Madsen, "Many social scientists are now saying that the secularization thesis is wrong and that we need a post-secularist social theory to account for the empirically obvious facts of the early twenty-first century. Religious belief and practice have not faded away, and in many parts of the world they are playing a more obvious role in public life than in the past century."
Madsen provides a detailed and insightful look at: "CCP Policy Towards Religion", and "Religion in China Today", concluding that the theoretical categories the CCP has long used to define religion and determine the difference between religion and superstition are simply no longer applicable. "The secularist assumptions behind the government's religious policy-that religion will gradually and inevitably, if not as quickly as once believed, fade away-are untenable."
"As a result the policy itself-which aims to constrain the growth of religion, to confine it to the private sphere, and to keep it from affecting politics and ethnic relations-has utterly failed, even on its own terms. Despite all efforts to control its growth, religion has grown rapidly and overwhelmed China's systems for surveillance and control. Clumsy methods of suppressing unwanted forms of religion have actually intensified religiously inspired conflict with the state. The attempt to disconnect religion from ethnic conflict has only added religious zeal to ethnic struggle. The failure is obvious enough that the leadership of the Communist Party has begun to recognize it and is searching for a new approach to religious policy."
Then under the heading: "Groping Toward a New Policy", Madsen provides an insightful analysis of evolving CCP policy. The trends he examines are trends I have been monitoring for over a decade.
Madsen notes the establishment of the public security forces, a secret police organisation which bypasses the state criminal justice system and reports directly to the CCP leadership. "Although originally developed [in 1999] to destroy an 'evil cult,' [Falungong] it has extended its reach to cover political dissidents and other threats to Party domination. The expanded organization has recently been given a new name-the 'Harmonious Society Security Office'.
"Initiatives toward increased tolerance of some religious activities are joined with new methods of repression toward others. There does not seem to be much central coordination of these separate developments, and they separately develop at their own pace according to the ambitions of the various bureaucratic units that were their source. Recognizing the incoherence of its ad hoc policies, the Party is looking for a new theoretical framework to guide its approach toward religion. The framework seems to be heading back to the future, away from a modernist Marxist version of secularism and toward a modernized version of Imperial China's sacral hegemony."
Concerning this New Imperial Sacral Hegemony, Madsen writes that historically, the Emperor, as the 'Son of Heaven', was mandated to mediate between heaven and earth. The Emperor differentiated between right religious practise and false (mythical/superstitious) religious practice. Often it was the case that for religious practice to be defined as right and true, it merely had to bolster social stability under imperial rule. Emperors controlled large communities by means of imperial patronage, and institutions and leaders would be rewarded for their loyalty.
"However," writes Madsen, "sectarian organizations that gathered people together from many different communities, contravened gender distinctions by allowing men and women to worship together as equals, preached an imminent end to the present era, and sometimes became the organizational basis for rebellion-such organizations might be labeled heterodox and persecuted strongly."
[. . .]
"As noted in a recent paper by Zhuo Xinping, the director of the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Science, the basic principle of imperial policy toward religion was that 'the government is the master, religion the follower (zhengzhu, jiaocong)'."
As Madsen notes, in recent years the CCP has moved to rebrand itself. No longer does the CCP promote itself as a party of revolution, but as a party that delivers economic development, secures territorial integrity and promotes cultural heritage. Today the CCP's slogan is "Harmonious Society", which is said to be dependent on "social stability". According to Madsen, "In religious affairs at least, the approach now seems to be more indebted to the great Ming and Qing emperors than to Mao Zedong." As such, "The history of China's rulers in protecting and promoting China's cultural heritage thus becomes a more fundamental basis for religious policy than Marxian theory."
Madsen continues: "In its new incarnation, the supposedly secular Party assumes a sacred aura. It now presents itself as the carrier of a sacred national destiny. It carries out spectacular public rituals like the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics - ceremonies which powerfully evoked the glorious cultural heritage of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism but gave no mention at all to Mao Zedong or even to socialism."
And as Madsen so rightly notes: "This can lead to new patterns of religious tolerance and repression. [. . .] Christian communities are . . . problematic, because they practice a foreign religion, not part of the Chinese cultural heritage. But as long as they thoroughly indigenize-which in practice means that they accept the principle that the government is the master, religion the follower-they can be accepted." For the truly globalised religions, however, this is particularly problematic.
As China develops, it wants to export its cultural heritage. But, as Madsen notes, the kind of religion that China wants to export "is one deeply embedded in Han Chinese culture, whose elites in the past have been willing to follow the 'government master, religion follower' formula, and which celebrates the glories of Han Chinese ethnicity. [. . .] Thus, Christianity, Islam, and Tibetan Buddhism pose severe challenges to a neo-imperial sacral hegemony."
[. . .]
"Protestant Christianity in China is much more decentralized [than Roman Catholicism], and does not pose the threat of an authoritarian ecclesiastical power attempting to impose its version of orthodoxy on Chinese believers. But as a global faith, it too is open to influence spread through modern media (and often carried directly by modern missionaries) from around the world. However indigenized Protestant Christianity becomes in China, it will remain in communication with-and be subject to-influence by spiritual movements from abroad. A completely secular liberal government would not have much problem with such cosmopolitan religious influence. But a government that claims a modern Mandate of Heaven in principle could not tolerate such influence. The outlook is that the Chinese ruling party will try to restrict the spread of Christianity while actually encouraging the revival of much of its indigenous folk religion-but the restrictions will not likely be effective and the growth of Christianity will continue to cause controversy among the Chinese elite, and the result will be seemingly arbitrary, incoherent policies toward Christianity."
[. . .]
Madsen concludes: "The one way to keep universalizing global religious movements from undermining [CCP] policy is for China to become so powerful that it can set the terms of its relationship with the rest of world, or at least in Asia. Then it could use its military and economic might to enforce its claim that universal standards of religious freedom do not apply to China and that universal religions can only enter China if they accept the principle of government master, religion follower. Some political leaders think that they can accomplish this."
---------------
Madsen's conclusions are identical to my own. In fact, there has already been a marked increase in persecution since August 2008 when the global economy collapsed, stripping the US International Freedom from Religious Persecution Act (1998) of its economic leverage.