How did the China government deal with different faiths – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Berlin-based journalist and researcher Ian Johnson, author of  The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Ma0,  joins an Asia Society panel on moral authority and how the Chinese government has dealt with faiths over the past decade. While Christianity and Islam are curtailed, traditional faiths are embraced, he says. Other participants include professor Xi Lian, and Whitman College Assistant Professor Yuan Xiaobo. Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis Fellow G.A. Donovan moderates the conversation.

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Why religion has become such an important issue in China – Ian Johnson

 

Ian Johnson

Journalist and academic Ian Johnson, author of  The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao discusses why religion has become such an important issue in China, both in domestic and international debates at the Bridge Projects. (With subtitles in Chinese)

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Help from religious groups in coronacrisis not always appreciated - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

The national fight against the coronavirus has also triggered off help in temples, churches and mosques, writes author Ian Johnson of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the New York Times, but not all help has been appreciated. Religious groups have been donating large amounts of money, a feature hard to imagine even ten years ago, he writes. 

Ian Johnson:

“In China the government likes to control all channels for donating money,” Pastor Huang said in a telephone interview. “They don’t like civil society to participate, and especially not faith-based organizations.” 

Still, many religious groups — particularly those that have registered with the government — have been doing just that. 

According to recent figures from their websites, the China Buddhist Association has contributed $14 million to the fight against the coronavirus, the Protestant association $10 million, the Islamic association $4.5 million, the Catholic association $1.5 million and the Taoist association $1.9 million. 

Some donations have been prompted by dissatisfaction with China’s large government-run charities. The Red Cross, the China Charity Federation, the Hubei Charity Federation and the Hubei Youth Development Foundation have donated the equivalent of $1.9 billion. But their work has been plagued by accusations of corruption, leading the national Red Cross to send a review team to Hubei Province, where Wuhan is. 

These charities also often channel money from big businesses, while the donations from China’s religious organizations are led by grass-roots efforts supported by ordinary people, said Professor Wu. 

The two Taoist temples that helped the town of Caohe received hundreds of small donations from believers, according to lists published on the temples’ social media accounts. 

In the Chinese city of Wenzhou, the Rev. Wu Shengli of the Chengxi Protestant Church said the city’s Protestant churches were asked by local officials if they could donate roughly 1 million yuan, or about $143,000. He said that worshipers were glad to do it.

“People aren’t reluctant,” he said. “People are very willing to help out and the final amount will be higher.” 

Susan McCarthy, a political scientist at Providence College who studies faith-based charities in China, said these kinds of donations can also help religious organizations prove their loyalty to the state. 

“The government is happy if religious groups make contributions but is wary that they will use charity to expand their base and infiltrate society,” Ms. McCarthy said. “My sense is a lot of this is defensive, or to prove their patriotism.” 

But for many believers, the nonmaterial aid is the most meaningful. 

Even though all places of worship in China are closed as part of the effort to prevent the virus from spreading, temples and churches have been organizing prayer vigils, while halal restaurants in Wuhan have provided free meals and boxed lunches to medical staff at local hospitals.

More in the New York Times.

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China's nuanced approach of religion - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson at a recent speech in Abu Dhabi

Foreign media mostly focus on China's crackdown on religion, but it's approach has become much more nuanced, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at the New York Times. Two truly global religions, Islam and Christianity, cause China's leadership most trouble. 

Ian Johnson:

Xi Jinping’s rise to power in late 2012 marks a new era, the third, in the history of the Chinese Communist Party’s religious policies. Instead of the destruction of the Mao years and the relatively laissez-faire approach of the reform period, the state has embarked on a form of highly curated revivalism. 

One part of its approach rests on a deep suspicion of Christianity and Islam. The party’s policy toward Islam has been the most draconian. Some believers, especially Uighurs in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, have been subjected to a policy of forced secularization. This has included sending hundreds of thousands of Muslims to re-education camps, compelling restaurants to serve pork and alcohol, and forbidding fasting during Ramadan. 

The policy toward Christianity is more nuanced. Last year, Beijing struck a deal with the Vatican to jointly appoint Catholic bishops. The Vatican seemed to hope to reverse the decline in the number of Catholics in China. But for Beijing, the measure was a way to tighten control over the Catholic clergy — and, by extension, the church itself. 

Protestantism poses an especially vexing problem for the party. It is arguably China’s fastest-growing religion, with an estimated 60 million or more adherents today (compared with one million in 1949), including some 20 to 30 million who are thought to worship in unregistered (or underground) Protestant churches. But the faith lacks a unifying structure that would allow for negotiations. And so the government has fired a few shots across the bow, closing several of the country’s best-known underground churches. 

In many ways, however, the Xi administration’s embrace of traditional faiths is more radical. Since taking office, the president has met with Buddhist leaders, and his government has allowed Taoism to flourish. The state recently issued a landmark plan to improve social mores, the first such program since 2001. 

The plan stems from a widespread feeling that China’s relentless drive to get ahead economically has created a spiritual vacuum, and sometimes justifies breaking rules and trampling civility. Many people do not trust one another. The government’s blueprint for handling this moral crisis calls for endorsing certain traditional beliefs.

More in the New York Times.

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The return of religion to China - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Religion has returned to the center of politics, argues journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao at the McGrath Institute for church life. Religion has returned to center of society over the past decades. 

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On sinicizing Christianity - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

China's central government has been trying to sinicize religion, and that had especially a major effect on Christianity, writes journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. For the New York Review of Books, he reviews Jesus in Asia by R.S. Sugirtharajah, but starts with a thorough overview of Beijing's efforts to curtail Christianity.

Ian Johnson:

Over the past few years, the authorities in Beijing have given churches across the country orders to “Sinicize” their faith. According to detailed five-year plans formulated by both Catholic and Protestant organizations, much of this process involves the predictable palaver of state control: “to actively practice core values of socialism, love the motherland passionately, support the leadership of the Communist Party, obey the law and serve society.”¹ 

But the authorities want more than just political control; they want a say over Christianity’s spirit, too. According to one document, “Chinese styles” are to be promoted in the religion’s “building, painting, music, and art,” and also in Christian liturgy and theology. Other documents speak of reflecting Chinese traditions, but what this means isn’t exactly clear—perhaps filial piety, ancestor worship, and explicitly rejecting foreign influence. 

While these new regulations affect China’s other religions too, they hit each one in different ways. They probably matter least to Daoism, which is an indigenous Chinese religion, and little to Buddhism, which is a global religion but has been in China for so many centuries that it has spawned local schools and practices. But for China’s other two main religions, Islam and Christianity, the rules raise serious concerns. In the case of Islam, the state’s aim seems to be mainly political control of sensitive border regions, because of the faith’s predominance among several ethnic minorities, especially the Hui and the Uighurs, who live in China’s far west. 

Christianity poses a subtler and possibly more profound challenge. This is not only because it has spread among the ethnic Chinese, or Han, majority, who make up 92 percent of China’s population, but also because it has grown fastest not in remote border regions but in the cultural heartland and among white-collar professionals who are supposed to be leading China’s modernization. This makes Christianity the first foreign religion to gain a central place in China since Buddhism’s arrival two millennia ago. Hence the authorities’ unease and their vague desire for Christianity to become something Chinese and nonthreatening. 

These concerns have arisen before. Christianity has had a presence in China for four hundred years. Missionaries such as the Jesuit Matteo Ricci got a foothold in the country by acting like Confucian officials: dressing in gowns, learning the formal language of classical Chinese, and downplaying differences between Christianity and Chinese thought. The Jesuits called God tianzhu, or “lord of heaven,” a plausible term for the Heavenly Father, but not coincidentally also the name of an old Chinese deity. Over the following decades, Christianity spread in North China by fitting into familiar folk religious patterns: offering moral precepts that sounded like Confucian principles or worshipping a virgin saint who seemed much like local female deities. Missionaries in this era, before imperialism made them arrogant, softened unfamiliar or disturbing ideas, such as Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.² 

The new effort to sinicize Christianity is something different—and probably unique in its encounter with Asia. In years past, Chinese and other Asian governments were weak, and even if Christianity found followers it was later tarnished by the fact that missionaries arrived along with Western gunboats. Now we have a strong government in Beijing that accepts the reality of Christianity but wants it to conform to Chinese foreign and domestic policy. This isn’t unusual in Christian history—look at the innumerable British churches with tableaux and plaques that glorify British imperialism—but Beijing’s firmness is something new in Asia.

The full review in the New York Review of Books.

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How China's urbanites create new identities - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

China's big cities are developing a new city life, including new identities, writes journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at the opening chapter of, Shanghai Sacred: The Religious Landscape of a Global City, by photographer and anthropologist Liz Hingley, quoted in a review of the photo exhibition in Liverpool at Creative Boom.

Creative Boom:

With around 26 million inhabitants, the megalopolis is home to a multitude of religions from Buddhism and Islam, to Christianity and Baha'ism, to Hinduism and Daoism and many other alternative faiths, which are constantly growing and evolving. 

In the book's introduction, Ian Johnson, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and specialist in Chinese religion, adds: "Freed from being defined by where they were born, China’s urbanites have created new identities, discovering for themselves what they truly believe with the aid of new technologies, social media and convergence of faiths and cultures. 

"Some of this religious life takes place in skyscrapers and apartment blocks, but also in the pockets of the past that still dot Shanghai: a traditional New Year’s dinner, the persistence of burning paper houses, cars, and money for the dead, or a rambunctious music group announcing a wedding, birth, or funeral. Faith in China may be vulnerable, yet its unwavering importance is beyond doubt. Its very presence in people’s hearts makes it impossible to eradicate. More than economics or politics, it is these moments that are the new heart of China."

More in Creative Boom.

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Ian Johnson no.1 in 2019 Best In-Depth Newswriting on Religion Contest

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, has won the 2019 Best In-Depth Newswriting on Religion Contest, says the website of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).

The AAR:

“The AAR is pleased to recognize these journalists whose news reporting includes well-written, diverse and engaging topics,” said Alice Hunt, Executive Director of the AAR.  “The news articles address some of the prominent religion news stories of 2018 that not only inform but also enhance the public understanding of religion,” Hunt added. 

Ian Johnson submitted articles that address an unfettered interest in religion in China that speaks to the relationship between religion, politics, and society, including "#MeToo in the Monastery," "10 Million Catholics in China Face Storm They Can’t Control," and "The Uighurs and China’s Long History of Trouble with Islam." Jurors described this work as a “deep-dive series of articles with an excellent mix of journalism and public scholarship.” 

The winning series “also provides new and relevant information to today's political and religious debates and is informed by scholarship that the public sometimes has a hard time accessing,” cited the jurors.

More at the AAR. 

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A realistic view on Tibetan Buddhism - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao reviews a show at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City on Tibetan Buddhism for the NY Review of Books, a must read even when you do not make it to New York. Ian Johnson adds on Facebook: "Probably no faith is more stereotyped than Tibetan Buddhism, which has morphed in the West to a sort of feel-good faith led by a nice guy with a Nobel Peace Prize."

Ian Johnson:

Probably no faith is more stereotyped than Tibetan Buddhism, which has morphed in the West to a sort of feel-good faith led by a nice guy with a Nobel Peace Prize. While that isn't necessarily wrong, its infantilizes (or Orientalizes; pick your stereotyping verb) a complex religion that--like others in the world--has always been closely linked to power and even violence. 

That's why I was really excited to see a show at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City on exactly this topic--how religion and politics are tightly intertwined in Tibetan Buddhism. I review the show for the New York Review of Books Daily (click on the link below for the review) and think you'll find the piece interesting even if you don't have a chance to see the show. And if the article isn't enough, buy the outstanding catalogue that accompanies the show.

You can find Ian's article in the NY Review of Books here. Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Christians return from China's diaspora - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Religion is on the rise in China, despite worries from the government. China's diaspora's are a source of Christianians, as a growing number of Chinese return home with their newly found religious feelings, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at CNN in a story on Kenya.

CNN:

It is not only the Chinese in Kenya who are embracing Christianity. Many Chinese students in America, Australia and the UK are returning home Christian, says Ian Johnson, author of "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao." Their conversion chimes with a broader trend at home: China itself is on track to be the world's biggest Christian nation by 2030, by some estimates.

For much of the 20th century, Chinese citizens were taught to worship the founding father of the Communist Party, Mao Zedong, the revolutionary leader who destroyed much of the nation's Buddhist and Taoist religious infrastructure during the Cultural Revolution. "There used to be 900 temples in Beijing alone," says Johnson. "Now there are 20."...

Mao's death in 1976 left the Chinese searching for a new value system. Christianity seemed fresh and modern to the country's newly urban residents, Johnson says, although more people in China are still Buddhist. 

By 2017, there were between 93 million and 115 million Christians in China -- around 5% of the country's population -- but fewer than 30 million practice in official churches, according to Purdue University scholar Yang Fenggang. If those estimates pan out, there would now be almost as many Christians in China as there are members of the Communist Party, which had an estimated 90 million members in 2016. 

That has riled the government. Under President Xi Jinping rhetoric has grown on the need to "Sinicize" religions perceived to be Western, despite the fact many Christians in China do not feel "un-Chinese or foreign," says Johnson.

Today, only state-sanctioned Christian organizations are legal in China. Overcrowded state churches run as many as 5 services a day and their pastors' wages are paid by the government, says Johnson. The alternatives are so-called house churches which operate illegally but can offer a more personal ministry, with pastors on first-name terms with their congregation...

In Chinese state media, the clampdown on faith goes largely unreported and Christianity is "virtually invisible," says Johnson -- the government doesn't want to "encourage anyone to think about religion."

More at CNN.

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Pacifying the Islam by force does not help - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

China is trying to pacify Islam by force, but is achieving the opposite of the stability it wants to secure, says Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China, to Foreign Policy. "By using more force to increase stability, the government is achieving the opposite effect.”

Foreign Policy:

According to Ian Johnson, a New York Times contributor and the author of The Souls of China, the government wants to limit the Abrahamic faiths that are officially recognized in China, that is, Islam and Christianity, because it sees them as too influenced by foreign ideas and trends—though Islam has a history of over 1,000 years in China, and Christianity has had a permanent presence for more than 400 years, Johnson noted. 

To that end, China released new regulations in 2017 on religious organizations and their activities, including an explicit ban on any unregistered religious activities. New laws and regulations always have a gradual roll-out in China so the recent crackdowns are merely enforcement of those 2017 regulations. The “soft opening” is over,  which Johnson concludes will lead to increasing conflict. 

“You will have an even more pacified Islam that is moribund and controlled by the state, and a search for more authentic religious experiences through unofficial churches. By using more force to increase stability, the government is achieving the opposite effect,” he told Foreign Policy.

More in Foreign Policy. (Behind a porous firewall)

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On Taoism and sex - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Western interest on Taoism has much focused on sex and especially premature ejaculation, and Amuse author Kate Lister asked journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, for his take on the subject.

Amuse:

“One act without emission makes the ch'i strong. Two acts without emission makes the hearing acute and the vision clear. Three acts without emission makes all ailments disappear. Four acts without emission and the "five spirits" are all at peace. Five acts without emission makes the pulse full and relaxed. Six acts without emission strengthens the waist and back. Seven acts without emission gives power to the buttocks and thigh. Eight acts without emission causes the whole body to be radiant. Nine acts without emission and one will enjoy unlimited longevity. Ten acts without emission and one attains the realm of the immortals.” 

Such teachings have fascinated the West for hundreds of years, and have been eagerly adopted by neo-Taoist and Tantra groups around the world today. But, our obsession with Taoist sex says far more about us than it does about the Chinese traditions being appropriated. 

Ian Johnson is a Beijing-based writer, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of religious persecution in China. He is also the author of The Souls of China: the Return of Religion After Mao, so it’s fair to say that he is man who knows a thing or two about Taoism in China today. And because everyone likes to receive unsolicited emails about sperm, I contacted him to ask him if Taoist practice in China was as preoccupied with ejaculation and sex as it is in the West. 

He explained: “The emphasis on sexual cultivation in the West is symptomatic for how exploration of foreign cultures often says more about the explorer than the explored. While Chinese do talk about sexual cultivation, it's an infinitesimally small portion of the overall discussion and the overall body of material. In other words, it's not really that important in the Chinese tradition. But sex is important in our culture, so it's not surprising that we mine ancient traditions to see what they say about it.” 

So, Taoists in China do view sex as important, and many practice self-control around orgasm, but sex is actually a very small part of their practice. It’s the Western rendering of Taoist tradition that has emphasized the sex part.

More in Amuse.

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China can still step back from repressing religion - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

China's central government has been cracking down on both Protestantism and the Islam over the past year. The direct future looks grim, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao at Foreign Affairs in an addition to a piece he wrote two years ago. The government can still go back to its previously pragmatic take, but Johnson is not sure it will.

Ian Johnson

The government’s attitude toward Islam has been even more problematic. Ten of China’s 55 non-Chinese minority groups, primarily the Hui and Uighurs in the country’s northwest and far west, are Muslim. Here, the issue isn’t just control but the forced assimilation of these peoples. 

Officially, the state is pursuing a war on terrorism in its far western province of Xinjiang.  

Although the problem of violence there is real, all independent observers agree that the main cause of unrest is the heavy hand of the state, which for decades has pursued a policy of resource extraction and resettlement in order to increase the population of ethnic Chinese. 

The resulting downward spiral of repression and violence has culminated in a recent campaign of repression aimed at the very practice of Islam. State authorities have forced Xinjiang stores to sell alcohol and tobacco, for example, and forbidden students from fasting during Ramadan. The repression seems to be spreading beyond Xinjiang to Hui communities in other parts of China, where authorities are tearing down Islamic domes, removing Arabic-language signs, and silencing the outdoor call to prayer. 

Most shocking has been the return of something that indeed has echoes from the Mao era: reeducation camps. At first, the notion of such camps seemed like an unbelievable rumor, but the state has confirmed their existence, justifying them as needed to control extremism. In them, Muslims are essentially secularized by force, forbidden from anything seen as too religious. 

Until now, if one thought of large Asian countries where the mixing of religion and politics has caused strife and violence, India, Indonesia, or Pakistan might come to mind. In the future, this list could include China.

This need not happen. If the state steps back and takes a deep breath, it could avoid the conflicts that its current policies seem bound to create. One has only to think of the years of protest caused by the crackdown on Falun Gong to get an idea of how banning even one sect can become a messy, protracted affair. House churches have also been equally stubborn—just banning the Shouwang Church in Beijing in 2009 resulted in years of protests. And the inevitable backlash against such misguided policies as forcing Muslims to eat pork and drink alcohol is scarcely imaginable. 

Up until now, I’ve always believed in the pragmatism of China’s reform-era leadership, despite the brutality of many measures taken during that period. Yet China is no longer in the reform era. Instead, it is entering a new period, one that may make observers look back fondly on the relatively light touch of the country’s past leaders.

More at Foreign Affairs.

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Religion: a double-edged sword for the government - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

The Chinese government has raided a few popular underground churches, illustrating how it sees religion as a double-edged sword, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, at NPR.

NPR:

IAN JOHNSON: I think the government sees religion as a double-edged sword. 

SCHMITZ: Ian Johnson is the author of "The Souls Of China: The Return Of Religion After Mao." 

JOHNSON: On the one hand, it is promoting some religions, like Buddhism and Taoism and folk religions. But in terms of these other religions that they think have too many foreign ties and can be influenced by outsiders taking a very hard-line approach, it's all part and parcel of a broader effort to control civil society. 

SCHMITZ: Johnson says Chinese authorities are cracking down on churches that are not officially sanctioned by the government. Nearly half of China's 60 million Christians attend these unregistered churches. The raid on Early Rain was preceded by a raid in September by Beijing police on that city's Zion church, which had 1,500 members. In his book, Johnson profiled Early Rain's pastor, Wang Yi.... 

SCHMITZ: At a sermon in September, Wang called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a sinner, while congregants answer with amen. It was this, Wang's increasing political activism, that Johnson says likely contributed to his arrest. 

JOHNSON: He's denounced Xi Jinping lifting the term limits on the presidency so that he could become president for life. He said that this was destroying the constitution and similar to creating a new Caesar.

More at NPR.

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Religious crackdown: part of controlling civil society by the state - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

The crackdown on two of five churches has not so much to do with religion, but is part of the government to control civil society, says journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, including NGO's and others outside government control, at CNN.

CNN:

Analysts and civil rights advocates say Beijing is intensifying its campaign against worshipers seen as an ideological threat to the party's monopoly on power. 

"We are now entering a new era of repression toward two of China's five religions, which is different than what we've seen over the past 40 years," said Ian Johnson, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of "The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao."... Experts say restrictions on worship help those in power mold religious institutions to their liking, or co-opt them altogether. 

Christianity and Islam, Johnson said, are seen as particularly threatening because the party views them as having "strong foreign ties." "(That's) even though both religions have long roots in China and are very much localized," he added... 

While other communist regimes have also been hostile to religion, Johnson said the crackdown on Christianity and Islam was less about the faiths' practices and beliefs and more about the China's ability to control them. 

"Under President Xi, the government has further tightened control over Christianity in its broad efforts to 'Sinicize' religion or 'adopt Chinese characteristics' -- in other words, to ensure that religious groups support the government and the Communist Party," Human Rights Watch said in a statement calling for the release of Wang Yi, the Chengdu pastor, and his fellow believers... 

It remains unclear how the Vatican deal will affect Protestant churches like Early Rain, but critics believe it comes from the same playbook as the arrests in Chengdu -- it's all about control. 

"This goes back to a broader effort by the government to crack down on anything that can be construed as civil society -- in other words, groups like religious organizations, or NGOs, that are outside government control," Johnson said.

More at CNN.

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China's religious revolution is not over - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, did spend much time with pastor Wang Yi and his Early Rain Covenant Church during his research of his book. Now the government is cracking down, it means a drastic change of attitude by the authorities, but Johnson does not expect the religious revolution in China is over, he writes on his website.

Ian Johnson:

One of the main characters in The Souls of China is Wang Yi, a dynamic pastor in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

In the book, I followed him and his congregation, Early Rain Covenant Church, for more than a year in 2012 to 2013, and was amazed at how he managed to walk a fine line, almost being arrested but managing to stay out of jail and continue to lead what became a huge church of more than 500 people--all outside government control. This included a seminary, grade school, and eventually a second church. 

Wang Yi wasn't perfect. He was arch-conservative, once expelling a couple from the church because the wife had studied theology and wanted to preach. I also found him infuriatingly judgmental about other faiths and at times dictatorial. It often felt that he had some of the excessive fervor of the newly converted. 

But he was also one of the most gifted and intelligent pastors I had ever come across. Maybe because of his background as a human rights lawyer, or just because he was filled with the Holy Spirit, Wang Yi gave riveting sermons about a huge variety of topics, from problems in society to Biblical history. I felt I learned more from him than probably from any other pastor, and it made me wish I lived in Chengdu--he made you want to go to church, and I could see why his church was such a success. 

For my book, he and Early Rain were ideal to profile. The church represented an important trend--the rise of big, urban churches that attracted increasingly well-educated white-collar Chinese people. And while Wang Yi's overt political orientation wasn't typical of most pastors, it was still a key part of the story of faith's rise in China. It's no coincidence, for example, that about a quarter of the human rights (weiquan) lawyers in China were Christian... 

If in the past the government had a relatively laissez-faire attitude toward all religions--viewing them all skeptically but largely tolerating them--now we are in an era where some religions will be in ever-deeper conflict with the state and others will be courted by it. Unfortunately for Wang Yi, his faith--Christianity--is on the wrong side of this divide.

More at his weblog.

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My take on the Chengdu arrest of 100 protestants and their pastor - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao, looks at the arrest of 100 participants of the Early Rain Covenant Church and their pastor, Wang Yi, this weekend. Johnson did spend over a year with the underground church and wrote this fast overview for the New York Times.

Ian Johnson

In September, the authorities informed the church that it was in violation of the government’s religious policy, according to a copy of the notice posted by church activists on social media. According to Chinese law, only churches, mosques and temples registered with the government and under government control are considered legal. Others are illegal, even though since the early 1980s, official government policy has been largely to tolerate these sorts of places of worship as long as they are apolitical. More than half of the estimated 60 million Protestants in China worship at churches like Early Rain that are not registered with the government. They are some of the most dynamic congregations in China, and widely seen as the fastest-growing religious group in the country. 

Early Rain is especially prominent because of the role of Pastor Wang. A trained lawyer, Mr. Wang was a well-known blogger and film critic, and in the early 2000s was rated by Chinese media as one of the country’s most prominent public intellectuals. In 2005, he converted to Christianity, part of a wave of interest in the religion by politically active Chinese. He started Early Rain and it quickly grew in size, and now has more than 500 members. 

In 2006, Mr. Wang met President George W. Bush at the White House along with two other prominent Christian activists. 

Over the past few years, however, the government has made a nationwide effort to more strictly regulate spiritual life in China, reflecting President Xi Jinping’s drive to exert a tighter control over society. In 2016, it enacted new regulations emphasizing that all places of worship must be controlled by the government and banning foreign ties.

Earlier this year it took other steps, such as banning online sales of the Bible, and seeking a deal with the Vatican to normalize relations. The government has also destroyed churches or removed their steeples and crosses. 

Steps against Islam, however, have been even more draconian. Hundreds of thousands of minority Muslims have been sent to internment camps in China’s far western region of Xinjiang while others have been banned from fasting during Ramadan.

More at the New York Times.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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How do you define religion, and other questions for Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Author Ian Johnson got quite some people thinking after his most recent book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao hit the bookshelves. Some of them got stuck with questions and for Oclarim Johnson answers some of them. How does he define religion, and why are the Tibetans and Uighurs not included.

Oclarim:

How did the book take form?

I tried to identify representative cases for the spiritual life of ethnic Chinese people. That meant making a tough decision to leave out minority groups, such as Tibetans and Uighurs, because I felt that their stories were very different from ethnic Chinese. Also, ethnic Chinese make up 91 percent of China’s population and so I felt it was enough to try to cover their faiths. The question was how: China is such a big country. So I read a lot, traveled a lot, and after many false starts began to find the five case studies that make up this book.

You talk about religions in China in your book. What is your definition of religion?

Good question! I try not to answer that. Sociologists debate this endlessly. I would say I have a broad definition. It is not just an organized faith like Catholicism or Islam, but can include rituals and beliefs that people practice on their own that give their life a deeper meaning. Today, in many parts of the world, this is how faith is expressed: personally and privately, as opposed to communally as in the past, especially when most of us lived in villages. So I tried to have an open definition.

You mention the destruction of religious buildings in China in the last century. Can you expand on that?

China began to attack religion in the late 19th century as part of a general self-doubt about its traditions and culture. Faith practices began to be defined as illegitimate or legitimate based on the imported western paradigm of “superstition” versus “religion,” terms that originated in the Reformation as a way initially to discredit Catholicism and later used in other parts of the world to attack indigenous faiths. Chinese elites began to define most of their practices as superstitious. A huge wave of auto-cultural genocide ensued. By 1950 half the temples in China had been destroyed. The Cultural Revolution from 1966-1976 was the culmination, when all places of worship were closed.

You have said that there is a religious awakening in China after the Mao era. Don’t you feel that Maoism was a sort of religion?

Maoism was an ersatz religion for a government that had destroyed its cultural heritage and was looking for new ways to satisfy people’s hunger for belief. Of course, it died when he died…..

What, in your opinion, is the most significant story in your book?

My preference is for the Beijing pilgrimage associations, which are working-class people who organize one of the most boisterous, hard-drinking, hard-smoking pilgrimages I’ve ever attended – to Mt. Miaofeng in Beijing’s western suburbs. It’s certainly the most fun story in the book.

You also visited underground churches. What you can say about this experience?

Most underground churches are underground in name only. They are often big with hundreds of members and I guess about 99 percent are well-known to authorities. So essentially they are not underground but are simply not registered with the government because they reject government control over religion. But for various reasons the government tolerates them, largely because most are apolitical.

More questions and answers in Oclarim.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.
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Religion: back in China's center of politics and society - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Most Western media reports focus on the oppression of religion in China, and miss one of the most important developments in the country when it comes to religion, argues journalist Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao in the China Zentrum. "Faith and values are returning to the center of a national discussion over how to organize Chinese life."

Ian Johnson:

[F]ocusing on oppression can blind us to a greater truth: that China is in the midst of an unprecedented religious revival, involving hundreds of millions of people – best estimates put the figure at 300 million: 10 million Catholics, 20 million Muslims, 60 million Protestants, and 200 million followers of Buddhism or traditional religions in China. 

This doesn’t include the tens or even hundreds of millions of people who practice physical cultivation like Qigong or other forms of meditative-like practices. 

The precise figures are often debated, but even a casual visitor to China cannot miss the signs: new churches dotting the countryside, temples being rebuilt or massively expanded, and new government policies that encourage traditional values. Progress is not linear – churches are demolished, temples run for tourism, and debates about morality manipulated for political gain – but the overall direction is clear. Faith and values are returning to the center of a national discussion over how to organize Chinese life. 

What drives this growth? I would argue that hundreds of millions of Chinese are consumed with doubt about their society and turning to religion and faith for answers that they do not find in the radically secular world constructed around them. They wonder what more there is to life than materialism and what makes a good life. As one Protestant pastor (female) told me, “We thought we were unhappy because we were poor. But now a lot of us aren’t poor anymore, and yet we’re still unhappy. We realize there’s something missing and that’s a spiritual life... 

If we take all this together, the most important conclusion is that religion, far from being an issue of fringe or esoteric interest, is back in the center of Chinese politics. This is the result of hundreds of millions of worshippers pushing for a place in society. And now, because they have not died out but instead proven to be an irreplaceable part of modern-day, the Communist Party has decided to try to coopt some of this new social force, creating opportunities but also growing tensions. 

For millennia, religion was the ballast that kept the Chinese state stable. For over a century, the state cast it overboard and Chinese society heaved to and fro, swinging from dictator-worship to unbridled capitalism. Now, religion is back but the question is if it will be a stabilizing force in society, or unmoored by counterproductive government policies, a loose cannon that crashes through the decks.

Much more background from Ian Johnson in the China Zentrum.

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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How religion links to China's outbound investments - Ian Johnson

Ian Johnson

Religion in China is on the rise, shows journalist Ian Johnson in his book The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao. China's outbound investments in the One Road, One Belt (OBOR) or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) program illustrate that change in China's leaderships' approach to religion and image-building at home and abroad, he says to Indepthnews.net.

Indepthnews.net

Against this background, Chinese President Xi Jinping's One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, also known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), unveiled in 2013, has provided the countries of the wider region with a new challenge as well as a unique opportunity to fast track their economies along the path to development. An investment bonanza is being made available under the BRI, especially for the countries along the ancient Maritime Silk Road. 

Coupled with the investment-driven BRI, China has also subtly begun to underline its cultural and religious links in the wider region. A soft power caress of the region! According to Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China, President Xi Jinping has embraced religious faith as part of his "Chinese Dream" and the "Belt and Road Initiative". The nominally atheist Chinese Communist Party has now recognised that religion in Chinese history was a powerful tool in domestic governance and international diplomacy. For Xi's "rejuvenation" of the Chinese nation and national culture after the "Century of Humiliation", this mix of faith and politics constitutes a "re-imagining of the political-religious state that once ruled China". 

When Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongxun, was head of the party's religious work beginning in 1980, China's Central Committee issued the famous Document 19 warning party members against banning religious pursuits because it would isolate the Chinese people. Ever since, China has been restoring places of worship destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.

More in Indepthnews.net

Ian Johnson is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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