Chinese Law and Religion Monitor (07-12 / 2013)

Book excerpt: To sum up, the central topic of the four papers is religion, in particular Christianity, and the significance of religious freedom for constitutionalism and social civilization. It is inevitable that the development of Christianity in China, including government-sanctioned churches but in particular the increasingly mature house churches, will exert a broad influence on people's awareness of faith, produce socially progressive ideologies, and as a result, advance China's political ecosystem, civil society, and the rule of law, and promote China's overall social civilization.As some scholars have pointed out, the corruption of human society and the decline of powerful nations, if not caused by interference from outside forces, always begins with ethical and moral corruption within a society. Christianity created a glorious civilization in the West, but today, the Christian-influenced ethical system is facing unprecedented challenges from political pride and democratic bias and is rapidly declining in Europe and the United States. “Desolations have been decreed.”On the other hand, Chinese society is at the point of going through a [process of] fission and re-composition of its civilization; Christianity is sprouting like buds in the spring and roaring like the surging tides. Who can stop such a robust advance of civilization? Not only that, to our great amazement, the ethics of the Orthodox Church is already being resurrected in Russian society on the platform of the church, and this once-glorious civilization is on the verge of shining again. Thus is the curtain slowly rising to reveal a new era in the history of human civilization.