In a recent lecture on Chinese religious policy, I endeavored to bring some context to current developments. Wanting to address the latest events impacting the lives of China’s Christians in 2025, I began by talking about China nearly 1,400 years ago.
Understanding China today requires a sense of where China has been. When China’s leader takes his cues from philosophers who lived more than 2,000 years ago, when following an everyday conversation depends on grasping an obscure idiom drawn from people or events in ancient China, when the various items on a restaurant menu comprise mini history lessons, it is only by reaching back into China’s rich past that we can engage the present.
Most non-Chinese who commit themselves to serve in China or among Chinese elsewhere understand this (or ignore it at their peril). The process of learning Chinese is itself an initiation into a lifelong journey of discovery, exploring past dynasties, forgotten scholars, and celebrated poets, along with China’s geography, climate, and customs, all of which hold clues to events that have shaped the country into what it is today. Understanding how Christians of past centuries navigated cultural challenges can inform efforts to make the Gospel relevant in 21st century China. Relationships with friends in China reveal the multi-layered structure of society, where family and institutional ties stretch back for generations. The greater one’s appreciation of the past, the better one can make sense of China today.
Yet relationships cut both ways. It is possible to come to China with humble hearts and open minds, and even to make heroic efforts to understand the nuances of culture and relationships and to bless our own and future generations with these insights yet still fail to appreciate how our own histories—our inherited culture and worldview— play into our current interactions with China.
Grandpa in our Bones
An unlikely but perhaps helpful perspective on this generational dynamic comes from New York pastor Pete Scazzero, the founder of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship. Addressing how our own family histories shape the people we are today, Scazzero offers insight into how embedded family patterns get repeated through generations. By exploring our spiritual family tree, so to speak, we can map relationships between parents, siblings, and other significant family members, identifying attitudes and behaviors that have become part of the family operating system. Getting a handle on these can often go a long way toward addressing negative relationship dynamics in the present.
Some Christians may balk at Scazzero’s approach. They argue that having been redeemed by the blood of Christ, we are no longer bound by the past. Rather than dwelling on past sins or wounds, we need to simply leave these behind and live in the freedom we have in Christ. Yet, as Scazzero is fond of saying, “Jesus may be in your heart, but Grandpa lives in your bones.” True freedom is only possible as we deal with the generational baggage that continues to drag us down.
The same could be said about the generations of Christians from abroad who have engaged with China over the centuries. Being a good student of Chinese history is essential in relating to China, but it is not sufficient. We also need to be honest about our own cultural histories, particularly the embedded patterns and attitudes that, whether we realize it or not, have shaped how we approach China.
Historic Ambivalence
Understanding the historical relationship between church and state, for example, can help explain how Christians are treated in China today, yet as foreign observers it is easy to overlook the deeper cross-cultural dynamics at work in China’s historic ambivalence toward Christianity.
We tend to forget or to minimize the cultural insensitivity of past Gospel messengers, missionaries who were well-meaning, but who did not grasp the deep-seated role of honor in Chinese tradition, nor how their presence threatened existing Chinese social relationships. We fail to appreciate that, in the minds of many Chinese, the Gospel has long been identified with foreign aggression, as the same ships that brought missionaries to China’s shores often carried opium as well—with Western soldiers defending the illicit drug trade and forced treaties allowing foreign missionaries free access to Chinese territory.
We also forget that in the political upheaval that gave birth to modern China, foreign Christians were often seen as supporting China’s opponents. We lose sight of their unfortunate entanglement in the power struggles that would eventually recreate China’s political landscape.
If we simply lay blame for the current wave of repression at the feet of Marx, Mao and Xi, we overlook the historic tensions that have complicated the spread of the Gospel ever since the name of Christ was first proclaimed on Chinese soil.
We cannot undo past mistakes, but we can choose not to repeat them. First we must acknowledge our own place in history. Just as China’s rich history illuminates the present, so do the histories of the countries, organizations, or denominations to which we belong. Each of these identities—the political, organizational, and theological or doctrinal—carries with it an inherited set of assumptions and attitudes and behaviors toward China. For better or worse, these legacies live on in our own words and actions, which are often judged in light of what has been done by previous generations. Just saying “We know better” or “We would never do that” does not erase the past.
Whether it’s Morrison or Gutzlaff, Taylor or Pollard, Wang or Hsi or Moon, diagnosing the DNA in our spiritual bones not only deepens our appreciation of those who came before, whose faith and courage have inspired many in subsequent generations. It also enables an honest understanding of their impact on those generations, on China, and on how we and the Gospel are perceived in China today.
