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Thursday, March 28, 2024

HUH? Chinese Government ‘Bans’ Reincarnation

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Although China is an officially atheist country run by its communist party government, they are having trouble keeping their citizens from believing in a higher power. Consequently officials have decided to dictate how these believers worship their deity in an attempt to maintain control.

According to the China Daily, the government will now create, specifically to keep in line its growing population of Christian believers, a “Chinese Christian Theology” to ensure that their citizens are not taught anything against communist party rules while worshiping God.

According to researchers Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer, in their book “The Religious Question in Modern China,” over 400 million people in China now practice some form of religion, since the communist party relaxed prohibitions in 1982. This equates to around 31% of the total population of the country of about 1.4 billion.

Goossaert, a research fellow at Centre national de la recherché scientifique (CNRS), and Palmer, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong, wrote that Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism and Taoism are now recognized religions in China. They added, however, that the communist party enforces how these believers worship their deity to make sure their authority is not undermined, without actually understanding the different religions.

For example, the communist party forbade Buddhists in 2007 from doing something which is an integral part of their faith, namely being reincarnated. It is unsure if the communist party actually found any violators of this ridiculous law.

Another form of keeping control over the Muslim population of China came when local government officials in Karamay forbid the boarding of city buses to followers of Islam wearing their traditional garb or men with long beards.

However, some prohibitions by the government are not so innocent and have undermined the faith of certain religions.

For instance, monks were replaced by government minders in Tibetan Buddhist temples and Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region were limited as to the number who would be allowed to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. They were also prohibited from celebrating the religious month of Ramadan in their normal manner, because the Chinese government wouldn’t allow fasting.

Recently, the Christian population has come under attack from government officials in Wenzhou, when they shut down a popular church without prior notice and police went through the city tearing down crosses from thousands of other churches.

(via Christian News)

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