Christianity in China among Han-Chinese and ethnic minorities

The official religion of the People’s Republic of China is state atheism, based on scientific Marxism. Nonetheless, religion as a private matter can be professed and there are plenty of religions, both native and foreign. Native religions include Confucianism, Daoism, Luoism, Sanyiism, Zailiism, Yiguandao, and Tiandiism. Local Han-Chinese folk religions and folk religions of ethnic

Reflecting about God with our Tibetan friends – Part 7

“Parents make rules for their children in order to keep them safe. For example, a father tells his son not to go near the bank of a river. If the son obeys his father’s command, he will be kept safe.” ༄༅།།དཀོན་མཆོག་གི་བཀའ་ཁྲིམས་བཅུའི་འགྲེལ་བཤད་བཞུགས་སོ།། བོད་དབྱིན་ཤན་སྦྱར། / Commentary on God’s Ten Commandments, Tibetan-English Edition. Gsungrab, 2017, p. 8. Our

Is Taiwan really a country?

In recent media reports, there is a lot of coverage on the Inter-Chinese dispute, i.e. the question whether Taiwan is a part of China and therefore legitimately claimed by the latter, or whether it qualifies as an independent state, and therefore, that the Chinese claims would pose a threat on peace. Most Western media talk

The Red Guards as naughty young people who wanted to become a new elite?

One interesting question which pops up in one’s mind when thinking of the Cultural Revolution is the question, why so many Red Guards fought against each other as they more or less shared the same goals. I think one very striking point which is often ignored is that the Red Guards understood themselves as a

The complexity of the Tibet issue broken down into a few key points

Many people in the West still believe that China annexed Tibet, despite the fact that Tibet was an integral part of China since the 18th century and never left, which is why an annexation is impossible, since this presumes a secession. Nevertheless, here are some simple arguments within all the complexity which undermines the Chinese

The Cultural Revolution in Tibet and the lessons we should learn out of it

The Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) is an important chapter in Chinese history under Party leader Mao Zedong. It changed the country fundamentally and still divides opinions today. First, the Chinese society of the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s could never have developed as it did without this historical chapter (though this is a weak argument of

The gap between theoretical and practical Christianity in China

“The development of Christianity in Chinese society is actually the occurrence of a structural change between universal Christianity and the local features of Chinese Christianity. One of the biggest results of this structural change is the change in the organizational system of the Christian church. […] The institutional setting of Chinese Christianity, and modes of

Quote from my book

The ideal man as I think, however, is a woman. So the ideal man is the ideal woman, she is the prototype of humans. And though the ideal woman is the ideal human, this does neither mean that females are superior to men nor that males are in any way worse than females. Of course,

Reflecting about God with our Tibetan friends – Part 5

In the last part, I introduced the only Catholic Church in the TAR, and thus a tiny minority; today, we talk of the majority religion of the Tibetans and get acquainted with their views on God. Though there are many different Tibetan ethnicities, as pointed out in Part 3, something which connects them all is

Reflecting about God with our Tibetan friends – Part 4

Despite reflecting about God on philosophical and theological grounds, it is also noteworthy to look at the religion landscape on the ground. Today, we will take a look at Catholicism. In the Yerkalo village in Qamdo City, one can find the only Catholic Church in the Tibet Autonomous Region, serving at around 600 believers. According