
In China they’re closing churches, jailing pastors, and even rewriting scripture - room271
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible
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k9s9
Religious institutions are in a very odd place these days.

They are on the front lines, in terms of contact with the weakest, poorest and
most troubled members of society. They attract people who are suffering.

The growth and existence and passionate defense of religious institutions,
despite all our advances, signal society isn't providing alternatives that
perform the same function that contribute to well being and community.

The more religion gets attacked the less is focus on providing those
alternatives. And those alternatives will come only with a deep understanding
of what religion got right in dealing with human suffering.

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ch_123
> They are on the front lines, in terms of contact with the weakest, poorest
> and most troubled members of society.

Indeed, and in many cases, exploiting them for their own benefits.

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exien
Do you have any sources to back that up? I can't imagine what (beside
altruistic) benefits would be received by donating time, energy, and money for
the benefit of people who don't have it?

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todd3834
> The plan calls for “retranslating and annotating” the Bible, to find
> commonalities with socialism and establish a “correct understanding” of the
> text.

With the age of the Internet I’d be surprised if a tactic like this would have
any affect. There will be so many websites pointing out where things were
changed. The Chinese government can try to block all of these sites and access
to the original content but information is hard to contain.

> “What really makes the government nervous is Christianity’s claim to
> universal rights and values.”

That this wouldn’t be a common truth sounds radical as someone who has lived
in the US my whole life and takes this world view for granted.

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woodandsteel
Religion is so popular in China in part because of the great ideological
changes in the country. Over the last century or so it has gone from
Confucianism to Sun Yet Sen's Christian social democracy to Maoism to Deng
Xiaoping's moderate capitalist socialism to Xi Jin Ping's new
authoritarianism. The result of all these swerves is that a large part of the
population has lost any ideological belief in the government, and looks for
meaning and guidance elsewhere.

And when it comes to this Christianity presents a particular threat to the
government. Besides being associated with the West, it is universalistic, as
the article says. All people are children of the one God, so they all have
rights and the right to criticize the government, and the Chinese government
also has no right to try to imperialistically dominate the world.

You know, when a government engages in this sort of suppression, it likes to
say it is because it is so strong, but actually it usually means it is in a
panic over lack of support by the population.

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mullingitover
Two words sum up why China would have issues with the Bible: Taiping
Rebellion.

