Monday, June 23, 2008

Jesus in China

Yesterday, the Chicago Tribune ran a fascinating and extensive cover story on the rapid rise of evangelical Christianity in China and how it's reshaping the officially atheist nation. According to some estimates, the mostly underground church consists of approximately 70 million members. The article is a preview of a joint project of the Trib and PBS' FRONTLINE/World called "Jesus in China" which airs tomorrow night at 9 p.m. ET. The program is momentous in that it includes interviews with numerous church leaders and members publicly declaring their faith for the first time. In a related story, the LA Times reports on China's booming business of Bible production.

1 comment:

Dennis D. said...

hey, sorry for the inappropriateness of this question/comment's locale, but wanted to bounce this off a thoughtful Christian crowd whom I assume agree with me on the basic belief in Pro-Life ethics.

Watching Chris Matthews for a minute with Matthews talking with Pat Buchanan. Buchanan was making a point about the immoral nature of abortion and how ecumenical desires cannot trump standing for right. Anyhoo, Matthew took the conversation in an interesting direction. I'll paraphrase a few seconds of their conversation. "Ok, so some Christians believe that abortion is wrong and immoral, but how do you translate that into real government policy that makes sense? Do you lock up women who are guilty of abortion? Is that what we want to do?" Buchanan tries to steer back toward his original thoughts, but Matthews presses the point. "Is that what you think should happen? Should women who are guilty of having abortions be put into prison?"

This was certainly an effective technique by Matthews, but it raises an interesting question that I don't recall having heard many believers discuss. Ok, let's suppose that we could make abortion illegal tomorrow(yes, I know that even overturning Roe V. Wade wouldn't do that on a national level, but go with me on this) How would/should we prosecute the crime of abortion? What should be done to doctors, women, nurses, accomplices, etc.? Hope I haven't bored you all to tears with these thoughts, but I'd love some feedback. By the way, very interested in the frontline piece. David Aiken's book Jesus in Beijing was very interesting and I'll be curious to see if they follow any of his reporting about this.