An item
on the BBC the other day drew attention to the explosive growth of Christianity
in China. The Government estimates that there are 25 million Chinese Christians,
but a much bigger though still conservative estimate puts it at 60
million.

According to the BBC: “There are already
more Chinese at church on a Sunday than in the whole of
Europe”.

It says the new converts straddle all social
classes from poor and rural, to young, urban and middle class.

This is a huge turnaround because
Christianity used to be associated with Western imperialism and so there was
huge local resistance to it. That has obviously disappeared and Christianity is
now being viewed by many Chinese people as an antidote to a growing spiritual
malaise in the country.

The BBC puts it down to a rebellion on the
part of some Chinese against rampant capitalism, or materialism. I’m sure that
is a big part of it.

But the collapse of communism as a
pseudo-religion has left a very big vacuum that also has to be filled, and while
many Chinese are turning to materialism, others are turning to Christianity.
(But oddly not to Confucianism, it would appear).

The contrast with the fate of Christianity
in much of the West could hardly be starker. Materialism is very dominant in the
West as well, but people are not turning to Christianity in response and that is
because we believe we have tried Christianity, and it
failed.

What the contrast between Europe and China
shows is that local, historical conditions – as distinct from the arguments for
or against Christianity – have an awful lot to do with whether it rises or falls
in a given area.

Christianity has a bad image in Europe and
is therefore in decline (and Europe with it), but it has shaken off its bad
image in China and is therefore growing fast.

This gives some hope that if Christianity
can shake off its bad image in China, it might also eventually do so in Europe
as well.

One way or the other though, the fact that
Christianity is growing fast in China (and in South Korea by the way) has to
discommode arch-secularists like Richard Dawkins who confidently predict the
final demise of religion worldwide.

Indeed, they should be doubly discommoded in
that Chinese remains officially atheistic and in the past it went out of its way
to destroy religion, and failed.

Indeed, to this day China treats religion in
much the same way Richard Dawkins and many others like him would like to see it
treated in the West, namely believers are allowed to worship, but never in
public. In other words, Christianity is to play no part in public
life.

Of course, the Chinese Government wants
every religion to answer to the State, which is why it distrusts the Vatican so
much. The Pope in Rome is, after all, the guarantor of the independence of the
Catholic Church from State control.

Come to think of it, maybe the State in
Ireland believes the attitude of the Chinese State towards the Vatican has
something to recommend it. Let’s recall that an official Chinese newspaper
recently quoted Enda Kenny’s attack on the Vatican in support of its battle to
win total control of the Catholic Church in China.

What strange bedfellows; the Chinese
Government and Enda Kenny.

But far bigger and more wonderful than this
very odd fact is the rapid growth of Christianity in China , a country that is,
let it be remembered, the world’s rising power.