In China they’re closing churches, jailing pastors, and even rewriting scripture

Religious institutions are in a very odd place these days.

They are on the front lines, in terms of contact with the weakest, poorest and most troubled members of society. They attract people who are suffering.

The growth and existence and passionate defense of religious institutions, despite all our advances, signal society isn't providing alternatives that perform the same function that contribute to well being and community.

The more religion gets attacked the less is focus on providing those alternatives. And those alternatives will come only with a deep understanding of what religion got right in dealing with human suffering.

> The plan calls for “retranslating and annotating” the Bible, to find commonalities with socialism and establish a “correct understanding” of the text.

With the age of the Internet I’d be surprised if a tactic like this would have any affect. There will be so many websites pointing out where things were changed. The Chinese government can try to block all of these sites and access to the original content but information is hard to contain.

> “What really makes the government nervous is Christianity’s claim to universal rights and values.”

That this wouldn’t be a common truth sounds radical as someone who has lived in the US my whole life and takes this world view for granted.

Religion is so popular in China in part because of the great ideological changes in the country. Over the last century or so it has gone from Confucianism to Sun Yet Sen's Christian social democracy to Maoism to Deng Xiaoping's moderate capitalist socialism to Xi Jin Ping's new authoritarianism. The result of all these swerves is that a large part of the population has lost any ideological belief in the government, and looks for meaning and guidance elsewhere.

And when it comes to this Christianity presents a particular threat to the government. Besides being associated with the West, it is universalistic, as the article says. All people are children of the one God, so they all have rights and the right to criticize the government, and the Chinese government also has no right to try to imperialistically dominate the world.

You know, when a government engages in this sort of suppression, it likes to say it is because it is so strong, but actually it usually means it is in a panic over lack of support by the population.

Two words sum up why China would have issues with the Bible: Taiping Rebellion.