Tony Blair, who could well be the poster boy for cafeteria Catholicism (neutralizing if not dissipating the effect of his conversion to Catholicism), made news last week by announcing he was in favor of gay 'marriage', against the teaching of the Church and the consequent pastoral statement of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales in defense of traditional marriage. This article however is his take on the Chinese government's current policy of encouraging religion (though it's strange that Blair makes no mention of the Tibetan Buddhists, who continue to be repressed terribly, or the Falun Gong, condemned by the government for being a seditious movement).
This text is taken from the next issue of the bimonthly magazine Vita e Pensiero OF the Catholic University of Milan. I cannot find the English original online, although the Insider claims it was published by the Washington Post, but the last item by Blair published by the Post and catalogued by them was from November 2011.
The new China
is close to God
by Tony Blair
Former Prime Minister of Great Britain
Translated from the Italian service of
LONDON - In China there are more Muslims than in all of the European Union. There are more Protestant faithful than in Great Britain. More practising Catholics that in Italy, counting both the underground Church and the Patriotic Association Catholics. And it is estimated that at least 100 million are Buddhists.
I found myself in a Chinese province visiting its Muslim governor who asked me openly and with interest about the activities of my Faith Foundation. Official surveys shows that about one Chinese citizen in three self-describes as 'a religious person'. It is a situation very different from just ten years ago.
Moreover, the government of Beijing is deliberately promoting a revival of Confucianism and other ancient Chinese moral philosophies, besides having supported a recent national forum on Tapoism and Buddhism.
Such approval on the part of the government is a sign of modern China's return to taking pride in her history and her ancient culture. the arrival of Islam and of Nestorian Christians in the 7th century, and the well-known Jesuit adaptation to Chinese culture during the 17th century - which was opposed by a then intransigent Vatican - are part of that history.
Confucianism, in particular, shows that the boundaries among faith, philosophy and morality can often be blurred. Confucianism represents faith understood as a cultural value - the negation of self for the interests of others.
Whenever faith has given rise to works of grace or courage, it has been the result of such Confucian gestures. It has nothing to do with ritual, doctrine or abstract theology, even if these aspects are important. It is a faith that has to do with human sentiments - particularly compassion and mercy.
The opening towards religions by the Chinese government - an opening which is complex but growing - is also a sign of something no less important: the international relations of a China in expansion and the problems created by her own economic growth, which is extraordinary and carries global significance.
The religious aspect of China's rise as a global power does not often get into the headlines. But from my experience, a country cannot be understood only by reading its politics, studying her economic statistics, measuring its gross national product.
One can understand a country better when one comes in contact with her culture, her history and traditions; with family life, the factors that have influenced her society, and above all, with her people.
The growing determination of China to commit herself with respect to religious ideas and institutions can only favor relationships between the East and the West. China embraces 60 different ethnic groups. And as I underscored, her religious diversity is obvious.
Therefore the way that China frames her course towards a 'harmonious society' [the Confucian ideal] is not just of global interest, but is also material that we can study and that perhaps we can learn from. Likewise, the way in which faith influences stability and harmony in other parts of the world will be of great interest to China.
Above all, it is the goal of a harmonious society 9we would call it honest or just) that makes China's government committed to religion. The influx of great numbers of persons from the rural areas to the coastal cities, their social position, the problems of migrants whose moral compass was set to navigate in family matters and not through the rgeat challenges of industrial cities - all this constitute an enormous challenge.
Emerging questions are the following:
- Having arrived a this point in capitalist development, how will the government provide for the residential needs of recently arrived migrants?
- Who will provide the social services necessary to a vast and new population stratum uprooted from the rural areas to serve the needs of China's manufacturing industries?
-What will happen to the aged, considering the consequences of a demographic policy which has imposed a 'one-child family? Adn what about health care?
The Christian churches and communities offer a network of relations that is wider than the limits of family, whether it is nuclear or extended. The Christian churches offer the newly-arrived migrant a community in which to ease the strangeness of facing the privations and isolation of urban life.
The social and charitable activities of the churches are seen as a significant glue within a society in motion and undergoing considerable pressures. The moral formation offered by catechists and Christian teaching constitute a valid resource for raising a new generation of young people who will not be without a moral compass.
There is a correspondence between that which religion can offer and that which Chinese society needs in this phase of her economic transformation. this does not mean that the party in power is not interested in the control and regulation of the different religions. Religion can be strongly motivating, and when it is allied to a particular ethnic group, it can be threatening.
The conflict with the Pope over the naming of bishops and the complex situation of the Patriotic Association promoted by the State are the concrete symptoms of a nationalistic sensibility. But even these tensions are gradually improving. \
But the donations by Christians who belong to the urban middle class for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake, the role of Christian entrepreneurs in the province of Wenzhou where they provide cradle-to-grave assistance to their workers, religions as a course of social benefits and an aid to the fight against corruption - all this have become interesting to the new Chinese nationalism.
The growth of interest in religious studies and their proliferation in Chinese universities are a product of this religious reawakening. Thomas Aquinas's concept of an organic society and its need for virtue finds correspondence in some aspects of Confucian ethics.
In China, one can meet more Thomistic thinkers than in Great Britain, just as one can find greater intellectual enthusiasm for Christian thought.
Just 25 years ago, Amity Press, the official publishing house of the Patriotic Association, started to print the first Bibles in Chinese. It has only been three years since Hu Jintao, the Chinese President and secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party, declared to the Politburo in Beijing: "We must strive to unite religious figures and believers in order to construct a prosperous all-around society, accelerating our pace towards modernization and socialism" - sentiments which were sustained in many official statements by Premier Wen Jiabao.
Where is this situation leading to? "Never impose on others what you do not wish to be imposed on yo," Confucius advised. We have much to learn from the religious experience that is developing in China, just as we are learning from her incredible conquest of the global economy.