Chinese Christianity

Sandro Magister has an article asking why there is no discussion of the "Chinese model" of Christianity instead of an (imaginary) one being pushed as the "Amazon synod". He includes an essay link about this history.

Essentially it says that locals kept the church traditions open even when the priest was only visiting a few times a year.

Like most things in the church, it's not new: much of South America have few priests in rural area, and for hundreds of years, Catholics in England and Ireland were forbidden to practice the faith. (remember the "priest holes" in that James Bond movie Skyfall? That's where they hid the priest when the law came looking for him).
In Japan, Christians also were priestless but kept the faith for 300 yearsl
And in Korea, the church was spread by converts who learned about it when they were studying in China.

here is a Chinese history podcast about Christianity in China:



toward the end of the lecture, he discusses how the church debated how much to "inculturate" the Church with Chinese traditions. (they lost: No Chinese language mass allowed). But inculturizations, i.e. how much of the local beliefs should be allowed and which should be discouraged arguments go back to Pope Gregory the Great and the debate whether or not to allow some beloved benign customs into Church practice when they preached to the Anglo Saxons. Indeed, some say it started with Paul.

here's another history lecture:

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and right now? Millions of Chinese Christians, who were converted by their own people.

the dirty little secret is that Protestant Christianity is being spread via home churches, but are now facing a persecution (UK Guardian article) as Xi tries to unite China under him and is trying to make churches subservient to the communist party.

the article predates the Hong Kong protests which has a core of Christian believers as it's base, but does point out how some churches dare to point out corruption in the government. 

and it is ironic that the Pope essentially told Catholics to obey the government which means making the Catholic church there a puppet of the government. But it didn't work: the government there is prosecuting the Catholic anyway.

Sigh.