Nestled in a spring-fed valley in the desert northeast of Los Angeles, St. Andrew’s Abbey is a long way from its roots in Chengdu. The only living link that remains is Brother Peter Zhou Bangjiu, a 91-year-old Sichuan native who rejoined the abbey in 1985 following his release from a Chinese labor camp.
The following is a translation of an excerpt of a sermon preached by Wang Yi, pastor of Early Rain Reformed Church in Chengdu. In this sermon, he proposes the Ten Commandments as a model to pray for China. For each commandment he highlights some relevant statistics about Chinese society. The sermon, titled “How to Pray for China” was originally posted on Pastor Wang Yi’s WeChat public account.
A train trip from Lhasa to Chengdu.
My first visit to Chengdu was in 1985, just before the Spring Festival holiday in late January. Having just completed one semester of teaching in Zhengzhou, Henan Province my teammates and I decided to take a boat ride down the Yangtze River from Chongqing to Wuhan on our way out to Hong Kong for a teaching conference. A dozen or so other teachers working in other parts of the country wanted to make the journey as well, so we decided to meet up in Chengdu.
One of the ways that people in China have of dealing with injustice is the administrative system known as petitioning.