In the late 1970s when Mao's Cultural Revolution ushered in China's
reform era, religion played a small role in the changes the country
was undergoing. There were few symbols of religious observance, and
the practice of religion seemed a forgotten art. Yet by the new
millennium, China's government reported that more than 200 million
religious believers worshiped in 85,000 authorized venues, and
estimates by outside observers continue to rise. The numbers tell
the story: Buddhists, as in the past, are most numerous, with more
than 100 million adherents. Muslims number 18 million with the
majority concentrated in the northwest region of Xinjiang. By 2000
China's Catholic population had swelled from 3 million in 1949 to
more than 12 million, surpassing the number of Catholics in
Ireland. Protestantism in China has grown at an even faster pace
during the same period, multiplying from 1 million to at least 30
million followers. China now has the world's second-largest
evangelical Christian population -behind only the United States. In
addition, a host of religious and quasi-spiritual groups and sects
has also sprouted up in virtually every corner of Chinese society.
Religion's dramatic revival in post-Mao China has generated
tensions between the ruling Communist Party state and China's
increasingly diverse population of religious adherents. Such
tensions are rooted in centuries-old governing practices and
reflect the pressures of rapid modernization. The state's response
has been a mixture of accommodation and repression, with the aim of
preserving monopoly control over religious organization. Its
inability to do so effectively has led to cycles of persecution of
religious groups that resist the party's efforts. American concern
over official acts of religious persecution has become a leading
issue in U.S. policy toward China. The passage of the 1998
International Religious Freedom Act, which institutionalized
concern over religious freedom abroad in U.S. foreign policy,
cemented this issue as an item on the agenda of U.S.-China
relations. God and Caesar in China examines China's religion
policy, the history and growth of Catholic and Protestant churches
in China, and the implications of church-state friction for
relations between the United States and China, concluding with
recommendations for U.S. policy. Contributors include Jason Kindopp
(George Washington University), Daniel H. Bays (Calvin College),
Mickey Spiegel (Human Rights Watch), Chan Kim-kwong (Hong Kong
Christian Council), Jean-Paul Wiest (Chinese University of Hong
Kong), Richard Madsen (University of California, San Diego), Xu
Yihua (Fudan University), Liu Peng (Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences), and Carol Lee Hamrin (George Mason University).
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