The Christian Century reports that China’s Minister of State Administration for Religious Affairs, Wang Zuo’an, is in Nairobi for a visit with the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya to “enhance the relationship between the Anglican Church, the Global South Anglican Communion and the Chinese church.” While there, Wang has said that China needs “qualified clergy who can contribute to the development of society.” Churches in China must register with the state; only Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism are legal.
Considering that China’s spent the past decade investing heavily in resource-rich African countries, using faith ties to strengthen those relationships makes great sense.
But it’s the way in which the Chinese government plans to take control of it’s growing population of Christian believers that most fascinates. State-appointed clergy? And The Chinese Church? Really?
1 comment
Chris E says:
May 13, 2011
I think you may be misinterpreting things here; The Chinese government have become interested over the last decade or so in how religion inculcate ethics in it’s followers – this against the background of their awareness that corruption could potentially slow development.
To this end, various scholars of religion and sociology have had regular invites to go and speak in Chinese universities.
So I’m not sure they are actually trying to take control of it’s Christian citizens, rather than using Christianity as another – fairly subtle – means of control of their population as a whole – minus the religious content, of course.