July 2014 (Vol. 29, No. 9)

It seems credible to estimate that there are now more than 70 million Christians in China, with a large proportion of them highly educated, said sociologist Rodney Stark (Baylor University, Waco) at the CESNUR conference in Waco, Texas.

Like other scholars interested in the issue of the current state of religion in China, Stark was faced with the uncertainties related to statistics. Figures of 130 million Christians in China are often circulated, sometimes even 200 million, but those are based on no solid evidence. However, it is known that Christian groups officially registered under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) number some 16 million adherents, but such figures include neither the unofficial Catholic parishes, nor the tens of thousands of house churches currently active.

Stark and colleagues estimate that the current number of Chinese Christians is over 70 million, a figure based on a 2007 survey that they then supplemented with more recent research. This means that Christians would currently make more than 5 percent of the Chinese population, i.e. about as many as members of the Chinese Communist Party.

Stark’s data also show that Christianity is spreading more rapidly among the more affluent people. In an article coauthored with Ph.D. student Xiuhua Wang (Baylor University) and recently published this year in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion (vol. 10), Stark emphasizes the impact of Christianity and rates of conversion to the appeal of the religion among Chinese students. More educated Chinese are more likely to become Christians, although the least-educated people are the second group most likely to convert.

Educated converts tend to associate Christianity with Western modernity. Moreover, the authors note that in several other Asian countries, college-educated people are also more likely than less educated people to be Christians, while the more educated they are, the less likely they will be Buddhists. There are strong variations in the percentages of adherents of each religion from one country to another, but the same pattern in China is found among Christians in South Korea (36 percent), Hong Kong (22 percent), Singapore (18 percent), Taiwan (7 percent) and Japan (3 percent), “in all six of these Asian nations, it is the more-educated who are most likely to have become Christians.”

(Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion, http://www.religjournal.com.)

Efforts to turn Israel’s burgeoning ultra-Orthodox population into soldiers under the new law lifting their long-time exemption from the mandatory two-year stints in the army has had the unintended effect of solidifying a high-tech revolution in Haredi ranks.

The Christian Science Monitor (June 1) reports that “Through a program known as a hesder yeshiva, the men spend their daytime hours poring over religious texts and engaging in vigorous theological debates-—the bedrock of a Haredi man’s often lifelong education. But in the evenings, they apply those critical thinking skills to the 1,000 hours of cyber training required as preparation for their military service” in Israel’s renowned cybersecurity force.

The program “parallels broader efforts to integrate Israel’s burgeoning ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, population into the workplace—many of them into hi-tech positions, one of Israel’s biggest areas of growth and an easier way to support a large family than low-skilled labor.”

Ultra-Orthodox participation is also expanding in academic programs, including at leading technological schools like the Technion. Ninety percent of Haredim in the Air Force already serve in high-tech jobs. In the world of start-up firms the government recently announced a new program to provide Haredi entrepreneurs with 85 percent funding for hi-tech ventures. The field has also been ideal for Haredi women, who often serve as the family breadwinners while their husbands study.

Just as atheism is gaining a more public profile in the West, atheists are becoming more visible in the Muslim world, while becoming stigmatized by Muslim leaders at the same time.

The Global Post (June 12) reports that a growing number of Saudis are privately declaring themselves atheists. Caryle Murphy reports that the evidence for this trend is more anecdotal than scientific but the instances of people claiming atheism are “persistent.” One human rights atheist says, “I know at least six atheists who confirmed that to me. Six or seven years ago, I wouldn’t even have heard one person say that.

Not even a best friend would confess that to me.” The greater willingness to identify as an atheist—at least two Gulf-produced television talk shows recently discussed it—may be a factor in why the Saudi government has made talk of atheism a terrorist offense. The March 7 decree from the Ministry of Interior prohibited, among other things, “calling for atheist thought in any form, or calling into question the fundamentals of the Islamic religion on which this country is based.”

Statistically speaking, the rate of professed atheism in Saudi Arabia is low. A 2012 poll by WIN-Gallup International of about 500 Saudis found that 5 percent described themselves as “convinced atheist.” This was well below the global average of 13 percent. But whether they identify as atheist or not, there is more of a tendency to question Islam than was previously the case, especially on social media sites. A Saudi journalist adds that the idea of being irreligious and even atheist is spreading because of the discrepancy “between what Islamists say and what they do.”

The Islam and science blog Irtiqua (May 5) notes that there are an “increasing number of atheist stories coming out from the Muslim world.” In some cases, it is about an individual proclaiming his or her atheism, as is the recent case in Indonesia when a man publicly declared his atheism on a Facebook page started by Indonesians living in the Netherlands, and was then imprisoned for 19 months on the charge of “inciting religious hatred.” But other instances of atheism in Muslim societies are more about “governments or political groups silencing opponents by calling them atheists,” as was the case during riots in Bangladesh last year.

Blog editor Salman Hameed writes that “doubters of all shades (from deists to hardcore atheists) have always been present in all societies, and Muslim countries are no exception. The sudden increase of such stories is probably due to a combination of reasons. On the one hand, you have the globalization of [the] religion-atheist debate (one can be a participant . . . from a computer anywhere in the world) and a related increase in the number of people who declare themselves to be atheists.

On the other hand, the social upheavals (and political turmoil in many cases) of the past few years are leading to intolerance toward religious minorities…and atheist boogeymen [as has been the case in Egypt]. In addition such stories become a rallying cry for fundamentalists as well as good material for newspapers in the West.”

(Irtiqa, http://www.irtiqa-blog.com.)

Religious tolerance is growing in the Persian Gulf over the past six years, going beyond the practical concern of accommodating the large migrant worker populations in the region, reports the National Catholic Register (June 15).

One example of greater religious freedom is the construction of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Arabia in Awali, Bahrain, which will be the largest Catholic church in the Persian Gulf, on land donated by King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa. Driving the trend is the increased number of Christian guest workers, mainly from India and the Philippines and “initiatives by wealthy rulers to open up the region to the world,” writes Victor Gaetan. The large numbers of guest workers in the region, totaling over 3 million, has led to a spate of building large church complexes—from the 2,700-seat Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in 2007 to the addition of Protestant, Anglican and Eastern Orthodox churches in an area of Qatar known as “church city.” Qatar’s openness to churches is significant because the country follows the strict Wahhabi school of Islam and until recently did not allow the practice of the Christian faith.

Although churches are not allowed in Saudi Arabia, the new cathedral in Bahrain will likely serve the worker population of 1.5 million Catholics in the country who only have to cross a 15-mile causeway to attend Mass. Churches have been allowed in Bahrain and Kuwait for decades, but the recent expansion of churches in the region is “more than an attempt to contain” foreign populations and is a “positive opening” to the outside world, according to Allan Keiswetter of the Middle East Institute in Washington. Another unusual gesture in Doha, Qatar is the inclusion of Georgetown University in its invitation for American universities to open campuses in the country.

The core curriculum is the same in Washington as in Doha—all students have to take theology and philosophy, which include Bible and Muslim-Christian relations courses.

(National Catholic Register, http://www.ncregister.com.)

While Bosnia has been hailed as one of the more successful efforts of international peacekeeping, Croation nationalism is making a comeback in the nation with some help from elements of the Catholic Church, reports The Economist (June 25).

The magazine notes that the release and return to Bosnia of Croatian nationalist Dario Kordic, after serving 17 years of a 25-year prison sentence for his role in a massacre of Muslim civilians in 1993, has helped revive hard-line nationalist sentiment. Kordic was given a “hero’s welcome” by prominent Catholic bishop Vlado Kosic. A service to celebrate Kordic’s homecoming was held at Zagreb’s main place of Catholic worship, “prompting a peace-minded NGO to stage a demonstration outside the cathedral . . .”

Kordic’s supporters claim that as a political leader he did not bear direct responsibility for the killings and that the court did not pay enough attention to the Croats killed by Muslims during the conflict. The recent violent attack against a professor who criticized the return of Croat nationalism has created foreboding in the Bosnian-Croat heartland of Mostar. Although church-run peace and reconciliation efforts have spoken against a return to violence, the magazine concludes that “peace-minded Catholics” are facing a double challenge.

“On one hand, they are trying to discourage their Catholic and Croat co-religionists from relapsing into chauvinism; on the other, they see among their Muslim neighbors a resurgence of hard-line Saudi-influenced Islam which has little interest in co-existence. A few hundred Muslims from around Sarajevo have gone to fight in Syria. In Bosnia, as in many European countries, people await the return of these mujahideen with trepidation.”

From 1964 to August 2013, a total of 209 cases related to Jehovah’s Witnesses were filed at the European Court of Human Rights. Not only the Witnesses, but all religious minorities have gained from those legal battles for the rights of groups to exist, especially in new member countries of the Council of Europe, said James T. Richardson (University of Nevada) at the CESNUR conference in Waco, Texas.

Moreover, according to Richardson, there seems to have been a “mutually beneficial interaction” between courts and the Witnesses, with Witness cases being used “to expand authority and establish individual rights as well as judicial autonomy.” Richardson describes the Witnesses as possibly “the most litigious of all religious organizations.” It is well-known that the many court cases initiated by the Jehovah’s Witnesses at U.S. courts in the 1930s and 1940s contributed to the progress of freedom of association, freedom of expression and rights to conscientious objection. The Witnesses have won 50 cases at the Supreme Court.

Richardson notes that in the 1950s a similar pattern started in Canada, contributing to the movement toward the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Richardson’s analysis seems to make clear that a similar process has been taking place in Europe, especially since the famous Kokkinakis v. Greece case (1993), in which a violation of Article 9 (religious freedom) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms was found for the first time.

It marked the start of “a flood of successful Article 9 cases,” said Richardson. Witnesses cases have included a variety of issues. The Witnesses have also been successful at the level of national constitutional courts. Over time, this contributes to diminishing discrepancies across European countries in the way they deal with issues of religious freedom.