A spectre is haunting Communism. It is the spectre of churches without buildings. If there were a Christian Karl Marx today, his Manifesto of Third World Christianity could begin with these words. In 1973, in his last years, Maos persecution had reduced the number of Protestants in China to something in the range of 3 million people. The estimate today is 120 million. No one knows. This is a good thing. If the state cannot count them, it cannot persecute them. Chinese Protestants have adopted a strategy used in the late Roman Empire. They are worshiping in homes and secret buildings. They stay on the move. In short: the churches do not have 9-digit zip codes. [...] The same strategy has worked in the tribal states of the post-European empire world in sub-Sahara Africa. The same system is working in Latin America, to the dismay of the bureaucrats. This has received little attention in the West, because this strategy relies on invisibility. The Wests intellectuals suffer from a myth of modernism: If bureaucrats cannot count something, it cannot be important. It it cannot be computerized, it cannot be socially relevant. Call it the NSAs blind spot. Call it the IRSs nightmare. The strategy is simple to describe: no permanent real estate. There are no permanent church buildings. If you cant find it, you cannot tax it. If you cannot find it, you cannot regulate it. If you cannot find it, you cannot subsidize it. If you cannot tax it or regulate it or subsidize it, the state cannot suppress it. Its simple. And it is working, just as it worked from Nero to Diocletian. There is a book that touches on this peripherally: Philip Jenkins The Next Christendom (Oxford University Press). It has received little attention from the humanists or the Christians in the West. They do not think it is important, because anything that cannot be taxed, regulated, or subsidized is too far outside the comprehension of ether Western bureaucrats or Western Christians. Chistendom means Christian civilization. The home church movement launches the church in a hostile environment. Eventually, it comes out of the shadows. Eventually, it becomes respectable. Eventually, it can afford church buildings. This is the moment of truth. Can it possess influence without possessing political power? Political power seems to be the nemesis of the church. Yet churches must speak to issues like infanticide, which they did in the Roman Empire. How can any institution speak truth to power, yet not become corrupted by power? This has been the conundrum facing the church for almost two millennia. -Gary North, Beating the State: Third Century Christianity in the Third World Today This is the future of Christendom...
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 02:18:53 +0000
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