Thursday, May 17, 2018
An unusual start to the day (at least so far on this Dialogue)—thunder and lightning, with the possibility of the heavy rain from the night before coming back. After breakfast at the international student cafeteria (I had two servings of my favorite bean sprouts), we all went to our 8:30 classes. In my class, after our daily dictation quiz, Gao Laoshi and Chen Laoshi taught us the proper usage of our vocabulary words and two new grammar structures (how to order parts of speech in a sentence and how to properly construct attributive phrases). Even though we have only been taking classes for four days, we have already finished two chapters, so our first major test is tomorrow. Our teachers told us not to worry too much about it, but the grading so far has been stricter than I am used to, so we all have quite a bit of studying to do tonight.
After a quick lunch of beef noodles at what is quickly becoming my favorite restaurant, our Dialogue group gathered to travel by subway (and bus) to our field site of the day: the Early Rain Covenant Presbyterian Church. Before this Dialogue, I had mistakenly believed the Communist Party had succeeded in significantly limiting religion throughout China. While it is true that the Party generally worked to reduce the presence of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and Christianity in the twentieth century, these religions experienced a resurgence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries as people searched for more moral direction than materialism and wealth could offer. Christianity (Catholicism and Presbyterianism) was introduced to China by Western missionaries and has much fewer followers in China than Buddhism and Taoism, with estimates placing the number of followers around sixty million (compared to about 300 million Buddhist and Taoist followers combined). While Buddhist and Taoist temples are prevalent throughout China, Christian churches are less common, with many congregations gathering in living rooms, leased offices, or small temples. In recent months, the Chinese government has been increasingly pressuring Christian groups—in fact, about 200 members of the Early Rain Covenant were arrested by police just last week for participating in a memorial service for the 10th anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake, whose widespread destruction had raised dangerous questions about governmental building standards.
This gave our site visit a different air, and the frightening power of the government was on my mind as we arrived at Early Rain Covenant. We got off the bus to a nondescript building, and we were greeted on the 23rd floor by Li Yingqiang, a senior pastor and dean of the Early Rain Covenant College. The question and answer session we had with him and some of the students at the college was perhaps the most interesting Dialogue visit we have had so far. He spoke to us about the history of the church, which currently has about 500 congregants, the reasons behind opening the college (to create the next leaders of Christianity in China), and the church's tense relationship with the government. When asked how he viewed current times in the greater context of the Christianity in China, Li said that with the passing of a new law in February that forbids home churches to exist, today's time was perhaps
Christianity's darkest hour in China. Li also gave his thoughts on the importance of having your faith tested, saying that a religion that is too easy to follow results in weak faith and weak followers. The steady commitment to God and to their goals was striking—when asked why she chose the college, one student responded, "I did not choose the college, God led me here." Later in the meeting, we spoke individually with the rest of the students, and this sentiment was echoed many times. One student, Xingren, was adamant that Early Rain Covenant was the best college in China, declaring that he would not choose any other school to attend.
Today's visit really emphasized the multi-facet nature of China, a country that is not usually associated with Christianity, both in terms of the population's diversity of religion and thought and also different groups' relationship with the government in control.
No comments:
Post a Comment