Cults and Christian Cannon Balls

March 11, 2010

Organized religions and cults like the Falun Gong have been in China for centuries, but have never played a major role in the culture until the 19th century when Christianity was forced on China. C.M. Cipolla wrote in his book, Guns, Sails and Empires, “While Buddha came to China on white elephants, Christ was born on cannon balls.”

In the early months of 1900, thousands of Boxers, officially known as Fists of Righteous Harmony, roamed the countryside attacking Christian missions, slaughtering foreign missionaries and Chinese converts.

Confucius and possibly Lao-Tse have influenced the foundation of Chinese culture and morality the most.  These two along with Buddha offer more of a blended influence on Chinese culture than Christianity or Islam. Thanks to Confucius, China’s mainstream culture understands the importance of people within the family and society more so than many other countries and cultures. This may explain why China is a powerhouse of industry today.

Discover  The Man Who Made China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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1 Comment | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Christianity, religion, Taoism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

American Genocide

February 15, 2010

Christ once said let he who has no sin cast the first stone.

The topic of the next few posts will be about minority native treatment in China and America. As I have done before, I will compare China to America. This post will focus on the United States with some historical background.

Atrocities abound in the history books concerning treatment of Native American Indians during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The Spanish destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations with disease and warfare. The Catholic mission system in California enslaved American Indians.

After the Civil War, the United States military was sent west and drove North American Indians from the land they had lived on for thousands of years and slaughtered men, women and children—millions died. Today, many of the surviving natives live in horrible poverty on reservations.

Trail of Tears

Then the American government grabbed Hawaii from the native Hawaiian people against their will. (There’s a native Hawaiian nonviolent separatist movement asking for freedom from America.)

It is always good to have the facts before passing judgment, and history counts.

Discover more at An American Shadow over the Philippines

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Education Chinese Style – Part 3

February 10, 2010

It seems that many of the six-thousand students I taught over thirty years felt the same way—that learning would make them mad like Acts says in the New Testament: 26:24 And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad.

Emperor Wudi

In China, during the early Han Dynasty, a different moral standard was set where earning an education was valued. Emperor Wudi from 141-187 BCE (two hundred years before Jesus Christ and five hundred years before Constantine), solidified the ideological framework of official Confucianism with a blending of Confucian, Taoist, and Legalist elements.

It looks like China may be officially returning to Confucianism or some form of it. Confucius taught that a ‘gentleman’ is the ideal figure. Among the traits of this ideal man is continued learning to develop moral character and to gain knowledge that is useful in serving others.

In China, teachers are treated with respect. Not so in the United States. Although a few students were respectful when I was a teacher, many were not. To understand what I mean, read the prologue from my memoir, Crazy Normal.

See Part 1

Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart.

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