(AgapePress) - An American anti-Communist activist says he is encouraged by a recent report that after years of atheism, the Chinese people are returning to religion. He believes that is going to be an increasing problem for the Chinese Communist Party.
D.J. McGuire is president of the China Support Network and the China E-Lobby. He says a recent article in the Chinese newspaper, the Epoch Times, points out that years of Communist rule has not brought the Chinese people satisfaction or spiritual transcendence, with the result that many are turning elsewhere to fill the void.
"The Chinese people are suffering a crisis of faith," McGuire contends. "As one would expect, Maoism has not brought them fulfillment of any kind. They're now relying on radical nationalism, the CCP is, in order to survive, and that's exactly the sort of thing that only works temporarily."
But while the Communist regime looks to nationalistic fervor for salvation, the activist says the Chinese people are returning to the very thing the government fears -- religion. "What we now see is a people, the Chinese people, crying out for faith, crying out for fulfillment," he explains. "And they're finding it, increasingly, in Christianity."
The more Christianity spreads, McGuire asserts, "and the farther and deeper that spreads, the more treacherous it is for the Chinese Communist Party." He says this is because there is something fundamentally different about the Christian church.
"What makes Christianity different," the head of the China Support Network notes, "in particular evangelical Christianity -- and I say this as someone who was born and raised Catholic -- [is that] evangelical Christianity is connected but it's decentralized, which makes it much harder for the communists to stamp out and remove."
Other religious communities, such as Falun Gong and Roman Catholicism, are more centralized, McGuire points out. "And that is why I think the rise of evangelical Christianity is one of the things that will lead to the end of the Chinese Communist regime."
Because of the structure of China's underground Christian church in cells or house church communities rather than a centralized "head" that can be easily cut off, McGuire says he believes evangelical Christianity will eventually lead to the end of Communist Party rule in China. He believes this is one reason why the Communist Chinese regime is so afraid of the church.
© 2006 AgapePress
