The religious environment [in Dubai] prompts many Chinese expatriates to do some soul-searching… For Muslims… it has meant being in an environment where they are …part of a majority… They feel the pressure of having to be “good citizens” …as they are unofficial ambassadors.
Xiamen (厦门), meaning “door to the house,” is on the western side of the Taiwan Strait and was a treaty port ceded to the British. Today it’s the eighth largest port city in China with a thriving economy.
When facing situations in which right and wrong choices are not quite so black and white, we need each other more than ever to discern the right path to take. In supporting each other, I believe we should also give each other the benefit of the doubt more often than not.
I’m not the tidiest or most organized person in the world, so the expression luan qi ba zao (乱七八糟) was one I learned and took to heart early. A direct translation is “chaos seven eight in a wretched state.”
Following the rhythm and images in [Haizi’s] poem, my poem introduces complementary and contrasting ideas as well as tones and metaphors from a Christian perspective. The repeated lines of “Today” in contrast to Haizi’s “From tomorrow on” signify that salvation is available today (Luke 4:21).
The Christian community contributed a third way to imagine national salvation, an equivalent force to the two major political parties, the Nationalists (KMT) and the Communists (CCP)…. Modernist and Fundamentalists… had a common political vision. They both embraced Chinese nationalism and portrayed Christ as the only power that could overcome imperialism.
How important unity must be for Jesus, that right before he was arrested, before he faced the suffering on the cross—at that moment, he did not refer to the horrible suffering which was to come. Rather he was thinking about the issue of unity.
Johnson talked about how China is using civil religion, which he defines as the government using religion and religious images to legitimize its rule. This has been most visible in the government’s more tolerant attitude towards what it considers to be indigenized religions.
Those I interviewed in China… expressed repeatedly that holding tight to these unexamined views of themselves and their positions was a big hindrance in reconciling relationships. Yet, as their mindsets shifted, a door to potential reconciliation opened.
An interesting feature of Chinese social and political discourse is propensity to label institutions or political campaigns using numbers… They are catchy and thus relatively easy to remember. Here are some of my favorites.
Official and popular attitudes towards the written language vacillate between shame (characters are too awkward, slowing China’s development) and pride (characters are China’s unique cultural heritage) …China’s place among the nations rises in tandem with the development of her language, revealing the intimate relationship between linguistic modernization and the modernization of the nation itself.
A new paper available in ResearchShare on calling, vocation, and spiritual formation as it relates to Chinese Christians in mission service and the churches that send them.