Christianity in China continues to grow. It is difficult to know the precise growth and numbers, which is something we Americans always seem to like know. How big? How fast? God’s timetable is not our timetable. Indeed, at nearly 2,000 years remove from the apostles, Chinese Christianity strikes us a latecomer, perhaps even at the eleventh hour. In the new hymnography for the martyrs of China, the long time span and the distance are taken into account and put into the context of the Apostles:
O little, O humble Galilee! Dost thou see how far the nets cast by thy sons, the poor fisherman, have gone forth and prevailed? Spanning times and ages, they reach all the ends of the earth; and now we all rejoice in a great and holy catch from China’s sea; and the Martyrs intercede with Christ to grant mercy unto all that sing their praises.
Indeed, it is important to emphasize that the unique apostolic witness to the Life, Death and Resurrection and teachings of Jesus is a given, which is no mere historical record but a living, enduring word of truth that continues to draw mankind into its net, daily, in the 21st century.
It was particularly striking to me, who heard that verse of hymnography last evening at vespers, to read today in the Weekly Standard David Aikman’s article, “After Tiananmen,” about how five of China’s “21 Most Wanted” from Tiananmen Square have become Christians.
One of them, Chai Ling, no. 4 on the list and “chief commander” of the students, had a conversion experience as a result of hearing about a grisly forced abortion in China. She has launched a campaign and website, All Girls Allowed, “to draw attention to the cruel implementation of China’s one-child policy.” Under this policy, Aikman notes, “the regime claims to have aborted more than 400 million babies since 1979. Chai Ling says, “The whole world is asleep in the face of this massive campaign against humanity.”
With the awakening of a Christian conscience, the slaughter of innocent babies becomes intolerable as a matter of first principles—such was the case with Christians in the early Roman Empire centuries ago, and today it is the same. The fish, caught in the nets of the Apostolic fisherman, no longer go with the flow, but swim against the current. As Tertullian put it, "We, little fishes, after the image of our Ixthys (FISH), Jesus Christ, are born in the water". (De baptismo, c. 1) The Great Fisherman has through the Apostles cast the nets on the other side of the world, as more Chinese come under His Lordship, that of Jesus Christ.
To read about earlier Chinese encounters with [Nestorian] Christianity, read "Christ on the Silk Road" by Glenn L. Thompson in Touchstone April 2007.
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