According to the article, there are 4,000 Christian churches with 920,000 members in Taiwan. I wonder how many of them are active (i.e. go to church at least a few times a month)? When I was a Mormon missionary, our activity rate was about 15%.
The article describes some of the difficulties of “preaching the word” to Taiwanese Taoists. I can relate to many of the points made.
-Asking a local person to join your American church does feel like asking him/her to give up his/her culture.
-Some of the translations of Christian ideas (e.g. sin is translated into 罪 zui(4) in Chinese) into Chinese don’t read very well. The LDS church used to be called “The Church of the End of the World” in Mandarin, until someone finally changed it.
I found this article to be well written and insightful. I could relate to many of the realities of trying to convert people to a foreign religion in Taiwan. When I served as a TW missionary in the late 80s, our average conversion rate was one person per missionary per two years. Pretty tough.
But isn’t that precisely what you ARE doing? Is it still acceptable, for example, to worship your ancestors if you’re a Christian – I mean in the way they do it here, with the family altars, the offerings, etc?
But isn’t that precisely what you ARE doing? Is it still acceptable, for example, to worship your ancestors if you’re a Christian – I mean in the way they do it here, with the family altars, the offerings, etc?[/quote]
Well, yes. That was my point. If the family has been baibaiing all sorts of gods and the ancestors for hundreds of years, joining a Christian church is tantamount to giving up one’s family traditions and thus, part of one’s culture.
As for whether ancestor veneration is allowed by different denominations, I’m not sure. When I was a Mo’, it wasn’t allowed.
Well, Mackay et al had high success rates among the Aborigines. Of all ethnic groups here, they have the highest proportion of Christians. (Unfortunately, in my humble opinion. Missionaries play a significant role in the destruction of indigenous cultures.)
As for Taiwan being a “missionary graveyard”, it’s literally true: George Leslie Mackay, Gladys Aylward, Thomas Barclay and Hugh Ritchie are all buried in Taiwan (though Ritchie’s gravestone has been missing for some 40 years).
that’s true all over the world, and one only has to look at South America for the most blatant examples. Jesuits and Dominicans in particular, but I’m sure it’s not restricted in time to the Catholic period of evangelism. Gods are purely cultural. kill a tribe’s belief in one set of gods and replace it with another, and the whole cultural basis of the tribe disappears. you may end up with something that looks like the original tribe for a while, in terms of clothing, art, etc, but it’s still cultural genocide in my opinion.
Missionaries should be banned. What right has anyone got, forcefully in some cases, to tell anyone else what they should believe and to give up what they have believed for centuries and millenia. Christianity is no more of a valid religion than those practiced by aborigines.
If they are dying out good riddance. Leave people alone.
“Aww, shucks. This place is no longer mired in abject poverty and not susceptible to bartering away their native beliefs in exchange for vitally needed medicines and food. Gosh darn it.”
Wow! bigoted stereotypes against christians on forumosa.com. I’m shocked.
BTW, Attend church, learn about it, and try to grasp the idea that the things you very much take for granted are due to the Christianity.
Chinese have “soft” beliefs in regards to religion. Hence the addition of gods and heroes over time to the normal Daoist pantheon. You could stick Jesus on a cross in a Daoist temple and it may not raise a stink and might be considered beneficial by covering all your afterlife bases. I’d say some of the very real problems in converting are the fact that you would literally lose everything you ever believed in, hence Christianity’s very real appeal to the poor and destitute. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. Chinese culture’s adherence is very similiar to a religion as much as American left wing thinking is. If you’ve read “Mere Christianity” and “The Screwtape Letters” by C. S. Lewis than you might want to check out “The Loser Letters” by Mary Eberhardt.
I think in the future the Middle East would be a more fertile ground for conversion due to its backwardness and relative poverty amongst the unwashed masses.
Cheers,
Okami
[color=#FF00BF]Edit: comments removed by moderator[/color]
But isn’t that precisely what you ARE doing? Is it still acceptable, for example, to worship your ancestors if you’re a Christian – I mean in the way they do it here, with the family altars, the offerings, etc?[/quote]
What the fuck is dimwitted about my question? Dimwitted is your inability to read.
BTW, Attend church, learn about it, and try to grasp the idea that the things you very much take for granted are due to the Christianity. [/quote]
Been there, seen it done it. I grew out of believe that the Bible is right once I saw the hypocrisy of it all. But since you’re obviously a Christian and there for must be right there’s very little point in arguing about it.
BTW what do I take for granted that is due to Christianity?
In what way is it bigoted to say that Christianity is no better or worse than other religions, and that trying to replace one with another results in a loss of the original culture?
is it not more bigoted (ie, partial to one POV at the expense of another) to say that Christianity is better for them?
anyway, surely we’re not talking here about adding Christ on a Cross to the Daoist pantheon, but replacing it with Christian beliefs entirely.
Okami wrote: [quote]Wow! bigoted stereotypes against christians on forumosa.com. I’m shocked.[/quote]
[color=#BF0040]Edit: Comments deleted by the moderator.[/color]
I think any open-minded atheist that spends time in another culture would come to a new understanding about Christianity - about how much Western culture has been shaped by it, about how much we are a product of it.
“Aww, shucks. This place is no longer mired in abject poverty and not susceptible to bartering away their native beliefs in exchange for vitally needed medicines and food. Gosh darn it.”[/quote]
That isn’t what is meant by “prosperity.” Poor choice of words on the part of the author. “Materialism” is the single biggest obstacle to conversion to a religion that requires all sorts of life changes. The thinking is “I’ve got everything I want. Why do I need to start going to a chapel every Sunday? I’ll just go and burn some money to Tsai Shen Ye. No need to give up the whiskey, women, and part of my income to some group of prudes worshiping this Jesus guy. Easy.”
Guys, I’m not a believer anymore, but please try to show some intellectual discipline here. Don’t lump all missionaries, ancient and modern, Catholic and Protestant, into one group. There are vast differences between the different sects and the way they proselyte, now and in the past. I understand all of the anger at missionaries and the sins of some of the churches over time, but they aren’t all malicious.
Tomas wrote: [quote]please try to show some intellectual discipline here. Don’t lump all missionaries, ancient and modern, Catholic and Protestant, into one group. There are vast differences between the different sects and the way they proselyte, now and in the past. I understand all of the anger at missionaries and the sins of some of the churches over time, but they aren’t all malicious.[/quote]
Well said, and likewise there is a very wide range of beliefs that are displaced by Christianity. Some tribal beliefs are quite appealing, others repellent.
When I was traveling in the wilds of PNG as a young fella, I was really struck by how shit scared the natives were of spirits in the bush. Getting a benevolent protecting Christian god in such circumstances didn’t seem like such a bad thing.
[quote=“StuartCa”][quote=“Okami”]
BTW, Attend church, learn about it, and try to grasp the idea that the things you very much take for granted are due to the Christianity. [/quote]
BTW what do I take for granted that is due to Christianity?[/quote]
Sin. Guilt.
Original Sin.
The thorn bushes planted in Hawaii by missionaries.
Virgins.
Pederast Priests.
Hell.
Satan.
Gay-bashing.
The middle ages.
The Spanish Inquisition.
The flat Earth.
Creationism.
Cheers TT I’d forgotten about the good stuff. I was thinking that they gave us magic. Water into wine, feeding many with a little and burning bushes (ooo er missus)
[color=#BF0040]Edit: Comments deleted by the moderator.[/color]
I think any open-minded atheist that spends time in another culture would come to a new understanding about Christianity - about how much Western culture has been shaped by it, about how much we are a product of it.[/quote]
But then we can also see how much Christianity was shaped by Greek, Roman, Jewish and Germanic cultures.
