Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
China: The Economics of Religious Freedom
China: The Economics of Religious Freedom
Apr 4, 2025 4:34 PM

Here’s a summary of a piece over at Forum 18:

Economics has a large effect on China’s religious freedom, Forum 18 News Service notes. Factors such as the need of munities for non-state e, significant regional wealth disparities, conflicts over economic interests, and artificially-induced dependence on the state e all provide the state with alternative ways of exercising control over munities. Examples where economics has a noticeable effect on religious freedom include, to Forum 18’s knowledge, the Buddhist Shaolin Temple’s business enterprises, clashes between Buddhist temple personnel and the tourism industry, the demolition of a Protestant church in Zhejiang Province, the expropriation of Catholic properties in Xian and Tianjin mercial development, the dependence of senior state-sanctioned religious leaders on the state for personal e, petition between and amongst registered and unregistered religious groups. Perhaps the greatest beneficiary of economic clashes is the state, which can use both control of e and also favouritism in economic conflicts to restrict religious freedom.

The Voice of the Martyrs News & Prayer Update also passed this along from the China Aid Association:

A pastor in the Three-Self Church in Pinglu County, Shanxi Province was prohibited from preaching and forced to leave the church by the Religious Affairs Bureau. The Pinglu Church invited a Hong Kong-based American pastor, Dennis be (Chinese name Bao Dening), to visit the church. The evening of July 9th, the head of the Pinglu Religious Affairs Bureau, Zhang Lianjie, came to the church and tried to dismiss the Bible classes and forbid the children to listen to Bible stories. He returned the next day with more officials, forcing the elders to retract their invitation to Pastor Bao Dening. In spite of immense pressure, church activities continued. On July 24th, Zhang came again and announced that a meeting would be held the next day to “discuss” Pastor Hu Qinghua’s leaving Pinlu. All the members of TSPM (Three-Self-Patriotic Movement) and CCC (Chinese Christianity Council) were to be at the meeting. The meeting began at 6 p.m. and the elders enumerated the achievements of Pastor Hu since taking charge of the church. The meeting continued till 11 p.m., but no matter how hard the elders insisted, Zhang Lianjie declared that Pastor Hu Qinghua had to leave Pinglu Church immediately. Pastor Hu Qinghua has left Pinglu, but he still tries fort and encourage the brothers and sisters in Linglu Church, by phone, to stand firm in the truth.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Helping The Poor With, Of All Things, Cash
Christopher Blattman, an associate professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, thinks giving cash to the poor is a good idea. Not free meals, not tickets to redeem for food, but cash. And it just might work. Blattman writes in The New York Times of the experience of giving cash to the poor. The knee-jerk reaction to this idea is, “Well, they’re just gonna waste it.” But Blattman finds evidence to the contrary. Globally, cash is a major...
China’s One-Child Policy Creates Human Trafficking Plights
China’s one-child policy and a cultural preference for boys means that the world’s most populous country has a severe shortage of women. That means a severe shortage of brides. And that means a human trafficking crisis. Kiab, a Vietnamese girl who had just turned 16, was told by her brother that he was taking her to a party. Instead, he sold her as a bride to a Chinese man. The ethnic Hmong teenager spent nearly a month in China until...
American Freedom: Is It Overrated?
We Americans will celebrate 238 years of freedom this Friday. In 1776, the 13 colonies unanimously declared: When in the Course of human events, it es necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare...
What You Need To Know About ISIL In Iraq
has an excellent piece on Iraq’s ISIL and the political crisis there. Here are some of the most salient points. ISIL is Al Qaeda’s arm in Syria and Iraq.ISIL began as ISI or “Islamic State in Iraq” and was seeking to regain power for Sunni Muslims. “…“…after U.S. forces left in 2011 the Iraqi government failed to follow U.S. advice to take good care of the Sunni tribes, if only to keep the tribes from again supporting the Islamic terrorist...
Political Contributions To The Real War On Women
Gender disparity in pay has been discussed ad nauseum, especially given that the facts are that women really don’t get paid less than men, taking into account real life circumstances. But are there factors that hold women back? Women still tend to choose lower-paying jobs, and are more likely to leave the job market than men. Less than 5 percent of our nation’s leading CEOs and corporate leaders are female. What’s behind this? Abby M. McCloskey, program director of economic...
Hobby Lobby Reaction Speaks to Future of Religious Liberty
Regarding the Hobby Lobby decision and the Supreme Court, I believe the National Review editors summed it up best: “That this increase in freedom makes some people so very upset tells us more about them than about the Court’s ruling.” I address this rapid politicization and misunderstanding of religious liberty and natural rights in today’s mentary. The vitriolic reaction to the ruling is obviously not a good sign for religious liberty and we’re almost certainly going to continue down the...
The Root of All Freedoms: Kuyper on Freedom of Conscience
The Obama administration’s HHS mandate has led to significant backlash among religious groups, each claiming that certain provisions violate their religious beliefs and freedom of conscience. Yesterday’s Supreme Court rulingwas a victory for such groups, but other disputes are well underway, with many more e. Even among many of our fellow Christians, we see a concerted effort to chase religious belief out of the public square, confining such matters to Sunday mornings, where they can be kept behind closed doors....
Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
In the latest video blog fromFor the Life of the World, Evan Koons reads abeautiful poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins over some striking visual imagery. Watch it below: Hopkins begins by highlighting the wondrous and mysterious pulse of nature, moving eventually to the acts of we “mortal things,” prone to appease the self, and bent on crying, “Whát I dó is me: for that I came.” But he doesn’t stop here, for surely man was neither created nor destined to...
Audio & Video: Sirico on the Hobby Lobby Decision
Acton Institute President and Co-Founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico had a busy media day yesterday in the wake of the release of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby vs. Sebelius case. using the audio player below, you can listen to an interview with Rev. Sirico on The Michael Berry Show on Houston’s 740 AM KTRH radio where the impact of the decision is examined. Additionally, beyond the jump I’ve embedded Rev. Sirico’s appearance on Bloomberg TV’sStreet Smart with...
Net Neutrality and Religious Advocacy
Yesterday, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) held a Senate hearing on his proposed bill, the Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act of 2014. The bill, reading at just four pages, serves as a tool bat “paid prioritization” in the network traffic business in an effort to maintain petition in that market. This idea, known as net neutrality, as explained by Joe Carter, assumes “that a public information network should aspire to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally” as well as...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved