Continuing this line thought, this article is rather interesting….
Here you have Chinese Christians that want the American Government to put pressure on Beijing to help their cause.
The Three-Self Patriotic Churches are under state control…so back in 2004 they were urged to pray for Kerry, who would have a less bellicose and more amiable approach to Beijing and the rest of the world.
American Evangelicals sure don’t like that…but would they have the same issue if Beijing was urging them to pray for Bush?
Isn’t this all interesting….Churches being steered by political regimes, and other Churches looking to external political regimes for aid.
This is not very encouraging news from China.
Let’s pretend for a moment that Sarah Palin and the rest are right and the Democrats are really Fascists/Marxists/Dentists/Physicists/Communists in disguise and want to take us down the totalitarian path…(the words don’t mean anything the way they use them, so just fill in the blank)
It’s 2031 and Christians are being jailed etc…..
Humor me……the Dominionist Christians in China have taken over Beijing.
Would the American Church want Beijing to start ‘putting pressure’ on Washington? Would we call upon Beijing’s moral superiority to aid us in our distress?
Wouldn’t this be problematic for the Christian Nationalists in America? Would they really want China to threaten America……after China had conquered several South America countries and built bases there? After China ruled the world economy? After China backed dictators all around the globe in order to protect Christians?...at least that could be the Chinese Church’s narrative.
Hey, that’s how ‘christian’ politician Mike Huckabee looks at it as he made clear with his statements on Egypt.
That’s no different than the situation today.
Alas…Let us pray that God raises up good leaders for the Chinese Underground Church…they are on the edge of a knife. Things are changing in China…rapidly! The Social Revolution is beyond anything we’ve ever seen or imagined and on a scale that can only be imagined in China and India.
I’ve been following the Church situation in China for years. It’s both moving and troubling…I’m often unsure what to think.
Christianity is everywhere, but I’m not sure how much of it is really grounded in Biblical doctrine. This is starting to sound familiar.
The Church will have more freedom in the next generation or so….and they will have questions before them. How will they answer? I’d like to say I’m hopeful, but I’m not.
Please don’t think me callous and unsympathetic for raising these issues….but we had better be thinking about these things.
Imagine how Roman officials would have looked at the situation if Christians being persecuted and thrown to the lions starting calling on the Persian Shah to come and help? Caesar would not have been very impressed.
Being a Beast he would have probably tried to completely destroy them, and when that failed…..
Being a Beast, he would have probably tried to set up and encourage a Church that was pro-Roman and then specifically persecuted those that were looking to Persia for help.
Think about it.
Here’s the article that was brought to my attention by a friend………..
Chinese dissidents hear Obama’s ‘silence’
Chinese Christians push for public U.S. backing of religious freedom
By Ben Birnbaum
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The Washington Times
6:40 p.m., Thursday, February 3, 2011
Leading Chinese Christian dissidents blasted the Obama administration Thursday, saying it had done virtually nothing to advance the cause of religious freedom.
“For the past two years, in public it’s been almost dead silence,” said Bob Fu, founder and president of the China Aid Association, an international Christian human rights group.
He said private pleas to State Department officials to publicly mention names of jailed and “disappeared” Christian leaders had fallen on deaf ears.
“Although I see some similarities between this administration and the last one — of course, both put an emphasis on business and trade — at least President [George W.] Bush singled out religious freedom as a foreign policy priority. He was very vocal, he made lots of policy speeches, he was not ashamed to talk about it.”
Mr. Fu, whose organization has headquarters in Midland, Texas, was in Washington on Thursday to join a six-member delegation of Christian leaders from China at the National Prayer Breakfast. Chinese authorities barred three of the six from leaving the country.
Religious freedom in China has been a growing international issue in recent years as the nation’s Christian population has mushroomed. Though the Chinese government has given space to tightly controlled state-sanctioned churches, the vast majority of the country’s Christian population — more than 100 million, by some estimates — prefer to join independent “house churches,” which remain heavily persecuted.
Zheng Leguo, a prominent evangelist from Zhejiang province, said that house-church Christians “prayed for the re-election of President Bush because he cared about the religious-freedom issue and they thought having him in office would keep them further from prison.”
“The Chinese-government-sanctioned church was praying for Mr. John Kerry,” he quipped, referring to the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.
Members of the delegation also were critical of Ambassador Jon Huntsman, saying he had not done enough to reach out to ordinary Chinese Christians rather than speaking to them through the “filter” of the Chinese government.
Human rights lawyer Li Renbing said that “Ambassador Huntsman should know that President Hu [Jintao] does not speak for the Chinese people.”
“I have no comment [on Mr. Huntsman] because I don’t know what’s he’s been doing,” said Zhang Dajun, one of two leaders of the Transition Institute, a Beijing think tank.
On Monday Mr. Huntsman announced his plan to resign his post on April 30 amid speculation that he may seek the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
Scott Flipse, director for East Asia policy and programs at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom — an independent, bipartisan federal government body — said that “you can’t prioritize trade and security issues over our human rights interests. They’re interconnected — and you have to pursue it that way.”
He said, however, that the failings on this issue were not unique to the Obama administration.
“What I’ve seen across many administrations is that we move in this undulating fashion between public condemnation and quiet diplomacy,” he said. “And that gives the Chinese the ability to say that we’re not serious.”
© Copyright 2011 The Washington Times, LLC