Items of Interest February 13, 2012 Issue

Christianity's rocky path in China

Paul Bennett

“Christianity’s ‘secret history’ in China is long and fascinating” Ekklesia and ENI News. December 31, 2011.

Though Western companies, from American automakers to European luxury firms, have recently gained a foothold in China, Christian religion has played a role there for much longer than General Motors or Hermes. 

Nonetheless, Christianity’s presence in China has been “hidden from the West for many years,” says Wenguang Huang in the introduction to his translation of God is Red: The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China (HarperOne, 2011) by Liao Yiwu, a dissident writer whose previous book landed him in jail.

Wenguang reports there are about seventy million practicing Christians in China. “In a society tightly controlled by an atheist government, Christianity is China’s largest formal religion,” he says in the introduction. But for many years it was severely repressed by the Communist government. The book gives voice to numerous stories—from rural backwaters to big cities—of bravery and faith under extremely trying conditions.

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