Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem – from the East. A website entitled Back to Jerusalem proclaims, “From the Great Wall of China through Central Asia along the silk roads, the Chinese house churches are called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all the way back to Jerusalem.”
Spengler, The Pope, the President and Politics of Faith. As always with Spengler: RTWT.
Interesting if true. Spengler’s link to “Back to Jerusalem” does not work. Does anyone know about it?
UPDATE: Thanks to Eric Anondson for the correct link to the Back to Jerusalem site.
To fix Spengler’s link, simply delete the “%20target=” from the address in the URL.
From the site:
“Back to Jerusalem is not some kind of end times theory. We have no plans to rush to Israel. Rather, BTJ refers to a call from God for the Chinese Church to preach the Gospel and establish fellowships of believers in all the countries, cities, towns, and ethnic groups between China and Jerusalem. This vision is no small task, for within those nations lay the three largest spiritual strongholds in the world today that have yet to be conquered by the Gospel: the giants of Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.”
Hmm I think I remember something of this vein being discussed on Hugh Hewitt’s show, in the wintertime I think.
European imperialists used Christian proselytizing as a pretext for their own agenda.
That the Chinese might do the same is a ridiculous conjecture…as ridiculous as today’s China would have seemed during the Cultural Revolution?
“European imperialists used Christian proselytizing as a pretext for their own agenda.”
I keep hearing people say that, but the history does not seem to bear it out. Maybe the Spanish and Porguguese did this. But the French missionaries in Canada, Africa and Southeast Asia were acting from religious motives, and sometimes at cross-purposes with the economic and political interests of the French.
This is even more true of British missionaries. The political elite wanted to keep missionaries OUT of the Empire, since they stirred things up. In India for example, the government was strongly opposed to missionary activity. The country was a powderkeg of possible religious animosity as it was, without Christian missionaries running aroung.
So, as with much anti-religious sentiment, this is not based on sound facts. It is a sort of vulgar Marxism to think that the extraordinary and often heroic European missionary activity must have “really” been about money and power. Most of the time it was not. It was about Jesus Christ, the cross, love, sacrifice and martyrdom. Non-economic, non-political motives exist, however hard that may be for some of us to understand.
“That the Chinese might do the same is a ridiculous conjecture…as ridiculous as today’s China would have seemed during the Cultural Revolution?”
Read Spengler’s post. He is not talking about Chinese Christians being a tool of Chinese Copmmunist imperialism. He is talking about Chinese Christians taking over China, or having sufficient strength to act on their own, and acting from religious motives. In other words, he is talking about hundreds of millions of new Chinese Christians acting like real religious activists acting from real religious motivations.
I wonder what Beijing thinks of this “Back To Jerusalem” movement. On one hand, if it really represents 100 million Chinese – almost 10% of the total population – that kind of pull must really make the Communist Party there nervous. On the other hand, considering the Muslim separatist problem in China’s own backyard (Xinjiang), BTJ could be useful to Beijing there.
“European imperialists used Christian proselytizing as a pretext for their own agenda.”
If so, then this represents an extraordinary dedication to the imperialist agenda:
Of St. Gabriel Lalemant it was said that “we saw no part of his body, from the feet even to the head, which had not been broiled, and in which he had not been burned alive, – even the eyes, into which those impious ones had thrust burning coals.” He died uttering a prayer, not a scream or a curse.
It is a mark of modernity to suppose that there are no better men than oneself, or no better motives than ones own, but it is a mistake.
Sheesh.
I did not write, “At all times, all European imperialists used Christian proselytizing as the sole pretext for their agenda.” I did not discuss the proselytizers’ reactions to imperialist pretexts.
The British Empire admits that Christian proselytizing was invoked to justify its expansion. (But it was not always invoked and it was not the only factor that was invoked, okay?)
“Christians and spices.” “The three C’s: Christianity, commerce, and civilization.”
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If Christianity becomes a Sinocentric religion, I would expect feedback to develop between a large Chinese Christian population and the state.
I think that widespread support for terrorism has damaged the “brand” of Islam to far greater degree than most muslims suspect. For people in China or non-muslims in Africa, Islam means nothing but death and terror.
We have a brand too. Its chief characteristics are individual freedom and political liberty. It seems to me that our use of military force to support freedom around the world is not an exercise in political self-indulgence as some self-described “realists” assert, but rather a force multiplier. (IIRC TM Lutas made this point, or a similar one, several years ago.)