Separation of Church and State — Part 1/3

January 6, 2011

In 1998, something dire happened in Washington DC while President Clinton was in the White House and the GOP controlled both houses of Congress.

Clinton must have made a compromise with the GOP since in the 105th Congress, the GOP held 55 seats in the Senate and Newt Gingrich was the Speaker of the House with 228 GOP votes of 435.

I have no idea what Clinton got out of the deal, but what happened was a huge victory for America’s conservative evangelical Christians. It also created a threatening situation for most of the world’s population.

These evangelicals are the same people who want to control women’s reproductive rights in the US and the same people who fight to block sex education designed to combat the spread of HIV AIDS.  These evangelicals are the same people that managed, while President G. W. Bush was living in the White House, to limit stem cell research possibly leading to many early deaths and much suffering among the living. 

To explore more on this topic, see Christian Today Australia – US evanglical engagement in politics is too partisan, say authors or Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right.

What President Clinton and the GOP majority in Congress did was turn the U.S. Department of State into a global advocate for organized religion.

For many in China, this blending of government with religion in the US may be of a particular concern since China has a history with Christianity that has often ended badly.

When the treaty was signed ending the First Opium War (1840-1842), the British Empire included a clause that forced China to open its doors to Christian missionaries.

A decade later, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864) was led by a Christian convert that wanted to turn China into a Christian nation. In fact, Jonathan D. Spence wrote about this Christian convert in God’s Chinese Son.

In the end, more than twenty million were killed.  Ironically, Hong Xiuquan called the part of China he controlled the Kingdom of Heavenly Peace.

Then in 1900, there was the Boxer Rebellion (Righteous Harmony Society Movement), which was a popular peasant uprising to rid China of meddling Christian missionaries and foreigners.

An armed force made up of military from mostly Christian nations invaded China and ended the Boxer movement. The Christians stayed.

In Part 2, we will see why it is dangerous to allow a government to use taxpayer dollars to get into the business of spreading organized religion across the world.

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, cultural differences, politics, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Greenpeace China

January 2, 2011

If China is a totalitarian country without much freedom as critics such as Liu Xiaobo claim, why is Greenpeace thriving there without harassment from China’s central government?

Then, if democracies are so desirable, why did Japan send two Greenpeace activists to jail for one year after exposing widespread corruption in the Japanese government’s Southern Ocean whaling programme?

Even though the US remains the world’s worst number one CO2 polluter, during the Bush administration, warnings from government scientists were ignored as if climate change wasn’t happening.

While in China, efforts to combat climate change demonstrate that China’s government acknowledges the challenge as well as the responsibility of China to tackle them.


Listen to Greenpeace China’s Tom Wang in Tianjin calmly being honest about China’s pollution challenges.

In fact, Greenpeace China has offices in Hong Kong (opened 1997), Beijing and Guangzhou (opened in 2002) and is the largest non-governmental organization (NGO) in the People’s Republic of China.

Then in 2006, Greenpeace China was the only NGO to be consulted on an early draft of renewable energy law by China’s National People’s Congress.

Has the US government consulted with Greenpeace?

China has also allowed two Greenpeace expeditions to China’s Himalayan region in 2006 and 2007 where evidence was discovered of the dramatic retreat of glaciers, which was reported in National Geographic Magazine.

One Greenpeace China campaign focused on stopping Monsanto, a US-headquartered biotechnology giant, from patenting a Chinese indigenous soybean variety.

Earlier campaigns in China focused on food, agriculture and electronic waste while highlighting the dangers of PVC in children’s toys.

Today, Greenpeace China runs five major campaigns focused on climate, energy, food and agriculture, water pollution and a campaign on air pollution focused on Hong Kong only.

I admit finding this information about Greenpeace China surprised me because all I’ve heard in the Western media of Greenpeace is that they are a gang of dangerous activists doing crazy things to get attention.

Until reading about Greenpeace in China, I didn’t know what a positive force this NGO was for cleaning the environment.

Now I want to know why the US isn’t doing more.

Discover Where All that Pollution Came From

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to iLook China, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

1 Comment | America, China, environment, government, media, politics, science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Yuan Shikai — the general who became China’s second president then emperor

December 28, 2010

For thousands of years, the history of China has been defined by wars, rebellion, power struggles and famine, which explains why today’s central government worries about famine and allowing dissidents a voice.

Between 1911 and 1976, three men were responsible for much of the devastation and death that swept over China causing tens of millions of deaths — Yuan Shikai, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse-tung.

In 1911 when the Qing Dynasty fell, Yuan Shikai was a general and commander of the most modern military force in Imperial China. He kept his position by supporting the revolutionaries that brought down the Qing Dynasty.

After the Qing Dynasty fell, rebellion spread through the Yangtze River Valley before revolutionaries from fourteen provinces elected Sun Yat-sen president of a provisional (temporary) government and in January 1912, Sun announced the establishment of the Republic of China.

However, generals controlled China’s provinces and refused to give up power. China’s young republic was essentially the capital city of Nanjing.

On March 20, 1913, Yuan Shikai’s agents assassinated Sung Chiao-jen, who helped Sun Yat-sen become the first president. Sun demanded that those responsible be brought to justice.

Yuan Shikai resisted, sparking a “so-called” second revolution and on September 15, 1913, he ordered Sun Yat-sen’s arrest. To survive, Sun fled to Japan as a political refugee. He wouldn’t return to China until a few months after Yuan Shikai’s death.

Yuan Shikai, supported financially by the British Empire, became China’s second president, but after 1914, World War I caused a reduction in Britain’s financial support.

Weakened, Yuan Shaikai was forced to accept twenty-one demands made by Japan, which included giving up Chinese territory. He agreed on May 7, 1916, which is now considered National Humiliation Day.

Yuan Shaikai was unable to establish control beyond Nanking so he declared himself emperor. His attempt to replace the republic with a monarchy and him as emperor touched off revolts in southwestern China followed by uprisings of Sun Yat-sen’s followers in several other provinces.

This resulted in twelve years of warfare between the warlord generals of China’s provinces and the weak Republic of China.

Yuan Shikai died in 1916, then Sun Yat-sen returned to lead the republic. Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, which caused the Civil War between the Chinese Communist Party and Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists.

Discover more from The Roots of Madness

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

1 Comment | China, Chinese history, government, history, politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Religion’s “Cold War” with China – Part 3/3

December 20, 2010

Another reason that China’s government does not want the Pope to rule over China’s Catholics is because of the Catholic Church’s political meddling and bloody history.

In 1088, Pope Urban II was responsible for launching the First Crusade to rescue the Holy Land from the Turks.

In 1147, King Louis VII was enlisted by Bernard of Clairvaux, a French abbot in the Catholic Church, to lead the Second Crusade.

Pope Gregory VIII proclaimed the Third Crusade in 1188.

During the Fourth Crusade in 1202, European Christians sacked Constantinople, a Christian city in Turkey.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Church waged war against the Christian Cather religious sect in the Languedoc region of France and in other parts of Europe. The last known Cathar leader was executed in 1321.

Then there were the four Inquisitions from 1184 to 1860 along with the religious wars that followed the reformation.

Protestants and Catholics shed each other’s blood in national wars and in civil wars from 1562 to 1648.

Then there is the fact that the Pope issues edicts for his followers and some of them go against Chinese law such as the one-child policy designed to control the growth of China’s population.

In addition, China has never had a religion that dominated its culture as in the West and the Middle East.

Moreover, if you are one of those people that believes the Church has changed its evil ways consider how it has shielded priests accused of molesting children or the money laundering by the Vatican’s bank.

Although Chinese believe in heaven and God, most do not believe n God and heaven the same as Christianity and Islam do.

In China, the people are raised to honor the ancestors and obey the central government’s laws not the laws and edicts of a religion.

Catholics in China are free to worship but not free to have the Pope be their spiritual and political ruler since the Pope often issues edicts that influence political beliefs leading to civil unrest and more pressure on China to change.

In fact, China is often depicted as an atheist nation, which is far from the truth.

In China, it is believed by many that Heaven is said to see, hear and watch over all men (sounds like God to me). Heaven is affected by man’s doings, and having personality, is happy and angry with them. Heaven blesses those who please it and sends calamities upon those who offend it.

Heaven was also believed to transcend all other spirits and gods, with Confucius asserting, “He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray.”

If anything, most Chinese are guilty of being Deists (as many of America’s Founding Fathers were) or nonreligious since they do not belong to or believe in religions.

Since both Christian and Islamic sects believe they must convert nonbelievers, it must be frustrating to the Catholic Pope that he cannot have freedom to convert as many as possible in China.

It is obvious that the Catholic Church and other world religions want China to change its culture to accept religion as the rest of the world does.

Return to Religion’s “Cold War” with China – Part 2

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Christianity, cultural differences, history, politics, religion | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Religion’s “Cold War” with China – Part 2/3

December 20, 2010

What happened in China between the Communists and Nationalists during the revolution isn’t the reason China is blocking the Pope from having the same level of control of China’s Catholics that he has over the rest of the world’s Catholics.

The Vatican is a sovereign nation. Of 195 countries in the world, three are not members of the UN and the Vatican City/The Holy See is one of those three nations.

The independent papal state of less than 1,000 people chose not to join the UN.

Instead, the Vatican is a Permanent Observer in the UN and the Holy See enjoys, among other things, the right to participate in the general debate of the General Assembly; the right of reply; the right to have its communications issued and circulated directly as official documents of the UN assembly; and the right to co-sponsor draft resolutions and decisions that make reference to the Holy See. Source: Holy See Mission.org

The Vatican is listed as the smallest nation with the smallest population on the globe, yet the Pope rules over about a billion Catholics scattered throughout the world as if he were a world leader and they were the citizens of his nation.

In fact, since nations have banks, the Associated Press recently reported that the Vatican’s bank was mired in a laundering scandal.

The Pope is elected for life by the Church’s bishops as if he were a religious dictator.  The Pope decides if it is wrong to divorce, have abortions, etc.  He even prescribes dietary laws such as only eating fish on Friday.

Allowing the Pope to lead China’s Catholics would be the same as letting the US President lead all American expatriates living and working in China regardless of China’s laws.

In Part 3, we shall see how the Catholic Church waged war against all who threatened its existence.

Return to Religion’s “Cold War” with China – Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Christianity, cultural differences, expatriates, family values, politics, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »