Tuesday, August 3, 2010

A Rising Tide in China

It's always interesting to hear about what the Lord is doing in China (miraculous things!), but I am surprised by the source for this article.  The quotes below are from In The Land Of Mao, A Rising Tide Of Christianity Among Chinese  published by (of all places) NPR:
Official Chinese surveys now show that nearly one in three Chinese describe themselves as religious, an astonishing figure for an officially atheist country, where religion was banned until three decades ago.
The last 30 years of economic reform have seen an explosion of religious belief. China's government officially recognizes five religions: Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism, Islam and Daoism. The biggest boom of all has been in Christianity, which the government has struggled to control....

...No one knows exactly how many Christians there are among China's population of 1.3 billion. There are an estimated 21 million members of the government-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic movement, but nobody knows how many Protestants worship in unregistered house churches.

Some recent surveys have calculated there could be as many as 100 million Chinese Protestants. That would mean that China has more Christians than Communist Party members, which now number 75 million.
The article at the link includes quotes from several believers in Chinese congregations.  I also think it is an interesting coincidence that I would find this story along with the one linked in the post below about House churches in the USA.

May the Lord's blessings be on and grace be with His faithful witnesses in such dangerous places.
 

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