Christianity sparks China's new cultural revolution
Robert L. Moore Special to the Sentinel
July 15, 2007

Christianity in China has come a long way since 1870. That was the year that violent Chinese mobs in the city of Tianjin, enraged by rumors that French missionaries were kidnapping babies, massacred every Christian they could get their hands on. In those days, China's citizenry saw Christianity as a tentacle of Western imperialism, and as such viewed it as a threat to their country's very existence.

But the role of Christianity in China today could hardly be more different from what it was then. While doing research on Chinese society in Beijing this summer, I met a surprisingly large number of recently converted Chinese Christians. And I wasn't the only one aware of the rising tide of Christian conversions. When I visited the South Cathedral, Beijing's oldest and most famous church, a young priest bragged to me that 300 young people would be baptized after the coming Sunday's Mass. "That won't happen in the U.S.," he said.

The evidence is undeniable: Despite the government's official doctrine of atheism, its general disapproval of religion, and its occasionally ruthless suppression of those Christian groups that it views as threatening, millions of Chinese are now choosing to convert. the rest