How Christianity builds democracy
China and the rise of faith. Growth of religion helping usher in social, economic modernization
Jennifer Green, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, March 03, 2007

Christianity is catching on in China like never before, and for reasons that would surprise the secular West: It's a great way to build a democracy.

For the past 25 years, Christianity has been realigning worldwide, shifting south toward Africa, Asia and Latin America, away from western Europe.

Relatively few Chinese are Christian, but with its enormous population of 1.3 billion, even a small percentage has a huge global repercussion. It already has the world's fourth-largest Christian population.

The China Daily, controlled by the Communist government, recently reported on its front page that 31.4 per cent of the country considers itself religious, astonishing in a dictatorship in which religion is strictly controlled and was banned outright only 40 years ago.

A poll done by professors at a Shanghai university indicated 300 million Chinese regard themselves as religious. Of these, about 40 million are Christian, far higher than the 2005 official estimate of 16 million. the rest