Oops! I lost a couple of piks in the first post, so here they are again:
fulltimestudent
JoinedPosts by fulltimestudent
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For Band on the Run-My Chinese Experiences
by fulltimestudent inband on the run, stated on another thread, that rather than hearing that china is now the world's greatest manufacturer of cars (something, i guess, no red-blooded american wants to hear), that her preference is to hear about:.
if you are in china, i would much rather hear about your experiences.
how much freedom do christians have?
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For Band on the Run-My Chinese Experiences
by fulltimestudent inband on the run, stated on another thread, that rather than hearing that china is now the world's greatest manufacturer of cars (something, i guess, no red-blooded american wants to hear), that her preference is to hear about:.
if you are in china, i would much rather hear about your experiences.
how much freedom do christians have?
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fulltimestudent
I'll come back to the lives of my friends, but will jump now to BOTR.s request for information on Jws in China.
The answer, is that I don't have any specific detail.
We all know they are attempting to establish an organisation there. But they cannot operate officially without being licensed by the State, and I doubt they'll do that. Why? As I understand it, because firstly, the church has to agree to give the State final approval on key leadership appointments. Second, the organisation must be native Chinese. Third, it must operate in harmony with State laws, and I'd see a conflict with the JW stand on military and blood transfusions.
Many westerners feel those rules discriminate against freedom of belief. I think the Chinese response is likely to be, that an individual may believe what he wants to, but if he/they want to form an organisation, they they must register with the state.
This is not a modern law. I've seen that as far back as the Tang dynasty, (early 7thC to early 10th C, CE) the State was requiring foreign religions to register with the State. Also the Chinese, in their 3000 year experience, have had some bitter experiences with religions, as lately as the 19th C and the Christian Taiping rebellion that nearly toppled the weakened Qing dynasty. And I've spoken elsewhere of the arrogant Christian attitude to the Chinese state in colonial times. So I do not have a problem with these rules.
Lack of registration, means the JWs cannot build Kingdom halls, so whatever meetings are held will have to be on an underground level.
How much freedom do Christians have? Does it vary in urban or rural areas?
There's another thread in which I've posted images of Chinese churches. I'll never finish the thread. There are just too many churches to cover.
In (early to late) modern times, the Catholic church has been the big missioniser up until the 19th C. Catholicism is well established along the coast, particularly in the south, where Dominican and Franciscan priests from the Philipinnes established churches. The Spanish administration in Manilla even planned an invasion of China in the 17th C, because they thought they could do what they did in Central and South America and conver the whole nation.
So as long as a church sticks strictly to religion, there is not much restriction on Christian churches. And, I have not come across any difference in treatment between city and rural areas, but now I've started the thread, I'll look out for any thing tht throws light on that topic.
Buddhism seems to thrive, lots of old temples have been re-built. Maybe I should post on that too.
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For Band on the Run-My Chinese Experiences
by fulltimestudent inband on the run, stated on another thread, that rather than hearing that china is now the world's greatest manufacturer of cars (something, i guess, no red-blooded american wants to hear), that her preference is to hear about:.
if you are in china, i would much rather hear about your experiences.
how much freedom do christians have?
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fulltimestudent
Band on the Run, stated on another thread, that rather than hearing that China is now the world's greatest manufacturer of cars (something, I guess, no red-blooded American wants to hear), that her preference is to hear about:
If you are in China, I would much rather hear about your experiences. How much freedom do Christians have? Does it vary in urban or rural areas? How is Mao treated by the government? Are there KHs in China?
So OK - let's do it!
First, I don't live in China (though, I wouldn't mind living there) but I have visited China on about 12 occasions. I also have a number of Chinese friends, so I thought I'd tell you about the friends I've made and their lives. I won't use their real names, as I've no permission to discuss their lives.
1. My friend Mxx.
I met this girl, when another friend arranged for her to be a guide for me in his city. It was an arrangement made out of friendship and was not commercial.
This attractive and mature young lady works in the office of my friend. She is studying acountancy part time (two nights a week) and hope to qualify as an accountant one day. Her grandfather was an accountant, so she feels there's a sort of family tradition. M lives with her boyfriend of two years, because she so often works back, he cooks the evening meal. They live in a small studio type apartment and a few months ago paid a deposit on a new (under construction) two bedroom apartment in a new part of the city with wide roads and lots of parkland. Her English is quite good, though she says it's difficult to practise, as there is not always the opportunity to meet English speakers. I'd judge she is very happy with being Chinese, but is also outward looking. ** We correspond (maybe an email every month or two).
** Most Chinese I've met are outward looking, interested in learning about life in other countries.
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My friend, XHX.
This is Mxx's boss. I met him in Australia, where he spent near 10 years studying. I helped him through a problem once, and he still shows his gratitude, whenever I visit. He also asked my advice on whether he should (then) attempt to permanently migrate, or to return to China. I told him, that it depended on his personal goals. If he stayed in Aust, he would be living in a mature economy with diminished opportunities. He could have a good life here, but he may have to put his mind to sleep. OTOH, if he felt he was up to the challenge, China had opportunities that Australia could not offer him. His home province has a population of100,000,000 people. His home city has a population of 15,000,000. Sydney has less than 5,000,000, New South Wales state around 7,500,000.
He chose to return home to China and took over a small family business and turned it into a dynamo associated with the construction industry. (Mostly selling imported products). He was later invited to become a member of the city government and is often travelling the world as part of his city trade delegation. Next month he's off to Germany on city government business. He has a special interest in a new city development which is really huge, with wide roads and parks with many trees, and in the centre a huge lake has been constructed. He's rightly proud of his city and his role in its development
I visited recently. He picked me up from a huge modern rail station. On the fast train, we'd travelled the 85 km in just 25 minutes. This time he was in a chauffeur driven, Mercedes S350. He explained, that nearly every night he's out at some official function (which involves drinking toasts) and his family took him to task about his safety - hence the decision to have a chauffeur.
Here's some piks of the new city, where he lives and works.
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Today's "gay-bashing" and other embarrassing content public talk!
by stuckinarut2 inoh wow..... the public talk today is certainly embarrassing for witnesses!.
started (completely left field too...seemed to come out of nowhere) with condemning homosexuality, and anyone who even tolerates it.
if you like tv shows or movies with gay characters, you are "just as bad" (eg modern family tv show).
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fulltimestudent
DATA-DOG
[ I no longer subscribe to the terms "gay" or "straight", as we are just human.]
An excellent perspective!
My friend claims that where he lives, no-one in the apartment block treats him and his (same sex) partner any differently to anyone else. People always ask how their partners are, just as they would with any other couple.
If the mythical Yahweh/Jesus combo god is really homophobic, he has already lost the battle to inculcate homophobia in people, in so many places in the world.
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Churches (and other religious buildings) in China - Picture story
by fulltimestudent ini'm busy organising my trip to china, ticket purchased.
the cheapest ticket was on australian airline qantas, whose fallen on hard times.
my ex-qantas friends warned me not to fly qantas - they predict disaster.
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fulltimestudent
Just found details of the Shanghai Catholic Church for the post before last.
It was built in 1918.
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Today's "gay-bashing" and other embarrassing content public talk!
by stuckinarut2 inoh wow..... the public talk today is certainly embarrassing for witnesses!.
started (completely left field too...seemed to come out of nowhere) with condemning homosexuality, and anyone who even tolerates it.
if you like tv shows or movies with gay characters, you are "just as bad" (eg modern family tv show).
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fulltimestudent
RedhorseWoman:
redvip2000, quoted below is a snippet explaining why male rape was utilized in ancient times. My comment was not necessarily to "defend the Bible" per se, but to point out that things were different thousands of years ago.
I absolutely agree that the past is "different." As my Ancient History lecturer's often repeat (to help students get past mthe idea that contemporary culture is the only "correct" way), " the past is another country, they do things differently there."
But male rape sadly is not uncommon even today. Perhaps, its used as a means to humiliate the enemy, as in the civil wars that raged during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
It is claimed to be common in the inter-tribal conflicts that are accompanying the re-organisation of African societies.
Here's some examples:
From the UK Guardian:
Reference: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-men
The rape of men: the darkest secret of war
Sexual violence is one of the most horrific weapons of war, an instrument of terror used against women. Yet huge numbers of men are also victims. In this harrowing report, Will Storr travels to Uganda to meet traumatised survivors, and reveals how male rape is endemic in many of the world's conflicts.another story from the Interpress News Agency Service:
Reference: http://www.ipsnews.net/2011/11/unreported-horrors-male-rape-in-dr-congo/
Unreported Horrors – Male Rape in DR Congo
By Moses SeruwagiReprint |KAMPALA, Nov 13 2011 (Street News Service) - They are men who have lost all pride and self-confidence and who have been left severely traumatised by their experience.
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John is one of the victims of male rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo who was brave enough to speak out about his horrifying experiences.
“In the past, I thought that it was only females who were raped but not men. I cannot understand myself today. I feel pain all the time in my anus and bladder. I feel like my bladder is full of water. I do not feel like a man. I do not know whether I will ever have children,” said John (not his real name), a 27-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is just one of possibly thousands of victims of male rape as civil wars and tribal conflicts continue unabated across Africa.
On Jan. 14, 2009, rebels loyal to the former renegade Congolese general Laurent Nkunda attacked Jomba village in the DRC’s North Kivu province. There, the militia abducted ten people including six boys and forced them to carry out looting before taking them to a jungle base in Virunga National Park. John was among those captured.
“We were held for nine days. The leader of the group asked to have sex with me. I did not understand what he meant. He ordered that I be tied up and then he raped me. The other nine came after him. I passed out. My bottom was covered with blood. All nine days in the bush were like that. It was like that for the others. One of the boys died,” John said.
and, in case anyone thinks that this only happens in "uncivilised" places, please re-think and consider what happens in western prison systems.
And, also in the military, as this US Army story Illustrates:
From the Baltimore SUN:
Reference: http://data.baltimoresun.com/military-sexual-assaults/
MEN WHO ARE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED IN THE MILITARY - often find it difficult to report the crime. That’s one reason they rarely get justice.
Breaking the silence
BY MATTHEW HAY BROWN
DEC. 14, 2013B rian Lewis figures he could have dealt with the rape.
It's the Navy's response to the attack that still haunts the Baltimore native.
Lewis, the son of a Defense Department civilian who commanded his JROTC battalion in high school, sailed through three years in the Navy and three months aboard the submarine tender USS Frank Cable.
Then, one night on shore in Guam, he was taken out to dinner by a higher-ranking shipmate, a man who had a wife and children. After the meal, he says, his dinner partner pulled out a knife, threatened his life, and sodomized him.
A friend reported the attack, and Lewis was visited by a senior officer on the Cable. He says the officer ordered him not to cooperate with Navy investigators.
That outcome is typical for male victims of military sexual assault, a Baltimore Sun analysis of hundreds of cases found.Lewis says he did as he was told. The investigation stopped dead. There was no court-martial. His attacker was never punished.
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Churches (and other religious buildings) in China - Picture story
by fulltimestudent ini'm busy organising my trip to china, ticket purchased.
the cheapest ticket was on australian airline qantas, whose fallen on hard times.
my ex-qantas friends warned me not to fly qantas - they predict disaster.
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fulltimestudent
And heres a very modern example (built 2008)
Haidian Christian Church is a Protestant church located in Zhongguancun , Beijing . It's claimed to be the largest in China.
It was designed by Gerkan, Marg and Partners, Architects in 2005-2007 for €3.5 million. It has a gross floor area of 4,000 m². It is interesting for another reason. It's designed to have commercial space that provides an income for the church. The Architects comment:
This design for the largest Christian church in China is characterized by a Chinese type of "triple p", meaning public-private partnership with commercial spaces on the ground floor, and by its striking facade rod system. Gerkan, Marg and Partners
The congregation is an official protestant group, known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. And that's another interesting story that reaches back into Chinese history. The military/commercial attempts by European powers to turn China into a European colony (in the 19th C) was soon used by Christian churches to piggyback on that military/commercial aggression and attempt to convert China to Christianity. The missionaries quickly started to utilise "extra-territoriality,"that is, that Europeans (and, their Chinese converts) were not subject to Chinese law, but to the law of whatever European nation the church they belonged to preferred.
When eventually the Communists came to power they told the churches that they had to be Chinese, or they could piss off.
Some did, some went underground and some conformed. This church is owned by a Chinese group that conformed to Chinese law.
The Three-Self Patriotic Movement ( 三自爱国运动 , colloquially 三自教会 , the Three-Self Church) or TSPM is a Protestant church in the People's Republic of China.
The National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China ( 中国基督教三自爱国运动委员会 ) and theChina Christian Council ( 中国基督教协会 ) are known in China as the lianghui (two organizations). Together they form the only state-sanctioned (registered) Protestant church in mainland China (see also: Protestantism in China and Christianity in China.) - Wikipedia.
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Churches (and other religious buildings) in China - Picture story
by fulltimestudent ini'm busy organising my trip to china, ticket purchased.
the cheapest ticket was on australian airline qantas, whose fallen on hard times.
my ex-qantas friends warned me not to fly qantas - they predict disaster.
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fulltimestudent
I havn't had time to add to the buildings already shown. But just came across this pik in an architectural essay.
Its interesting because it seems to have been built circa early 1900's, and clearly has Chinese influences. And, that's an interesting story. Some say that western missionaries preferred to build in the style of their homelands. But during my recent visit I did see one other (protestant) church in Shanghai that had Chinese architectural influences . I'll try to post that soon.
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Aussie Pentecostal Group busted as 'Abusive Cult.'
by fulltimestudent inthe australian abc ( a government owned media group) has published the results of a four year investigation into a nsw-based registered charity and religious group christian assemblies international (cai).. the four corners program revealed that self-styled religious guru pastor scott williams was using his warped brand of evangelical pentecostalism to run a clandestine homosexual sex ring while allegedly misusing vast amounts of member donations for personal use.. courageous former members broke their silence and told of their torment living inside the group, which they said is not a christian church but a horrendous cult run by one man.. they detailed shocking acts of abuse ranging from spiritual abuse, financial abuse, verbal and physical abuse, and the sexual abuse of adult men.. they said bizarre sexual rituals were carried out in secret by williams, who described himself as "the anointed one" with the lord's authorisation to sidestep biblical commands against homosexuality and sexually train his male members into submission and obedience.. .
reference: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-28/former-members-break-silence-over-christian-cult-of-horrors/5627794.
(a short video extract from the abc program can be found on the rh side/top of the above page.
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fulltimestudent
Note, the similarity with our former ever-loving brothers and sisters, this cult also used its membership to do improvements to properties that had been purchased.
Williams, now 70, is living with his wife Ree in a luxury apartment in the beachfront Pacific Towers complex in Coffs Harbour. It is one of many properties Williams purchased using money donated by church members who believed much of it was being used for charitable purposes.
Today, the CAI boasts an impressive multi-million-dollar property portfolio including Pitversie House and Douglas House, a hotel in Abernethy, Scotland.
All were renovated to luxurious standards by church members, who have told Four Corners they worked hundreds of hours updating the properties while Williams monitored their work and punished them for any mistakes or minor misdemeanours.
Katja Forkin was recruited into the Assembly as a teenager living in Germany. She says women and men were expected to work on the properties night and day, and if they did not they would be severely punished or excommunicated.She says life in the Assembly got worse once Williams began to purchase more and more properties.
"It started to change once the Assembly owned properties in Scotland, because basically all we did from then is just work on the properties, renovating, looking after Scott and Ree more or less, and everything evolved around their lives," she said.
"So the little spare time that we had sort of dwindled away more and more to the point that we started to have less and less connections to the outside."
As members disconnected from the outside world, following Williams around the world and moving away from family and friends, they say their leader's language and demeanour began to change.
Former members told Four Corners they were regularly denigrated and humiliated, losing their self-identity, confidence and sense of self.
Klaus Tishcer says it happened gradually.
"As the years went on and he was sort of more sure that things were going his way or going the Lord's way, then he was more confident to express that we were a waste of space, useless heathen and would burn in hell and "the devil would rip our balls off" in a man's case, or in females other words were used," he said.
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Aussie Pentecostal Group busted as 'Abusive Cult.'
by fulltimestudent inthe australian abc ( a government owned media group) has published the results of a four year investigation into a nsw-based registered charity and religious group christian assemblies international (cai).. the four corners program revealed that self-styled religious guru pastor scott williams was using his warped brand of evangelical pentecostalism to run a clandestine homosexual sex ring while allegedly misusing vast amounts of member donations for personal use.. courageous former members broke their silence and told of their torment living inside the group, which they said is not a christian church but a horrendous cult run by one man.. they detailed shocking acts of abuse ranging from spiritual abuse, financial abuse, verbal and physical abuse, and the sexual abuse of adult men.. they said bizarre sexual rituals were carried out in secret by williams, who described himself as "the anointed one" with the lord's authorisation to sidestep biblical commands against homosexuality and sexually train his male members into submission and obedience.. .
reference: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-28/former-members-break-silence-over-christian-cult-of-horrors/5627794.
(a short video extract from the abc program can be found on the rh side/top of the above page.
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fulltimestudent
The message of this cult was so similar to other self-styled 'prophets' that we are familiar with:
his message was that the world was going to come to an end very soon and that we didn't have much time and we needed to convert as many people as possible before the return of Jesus," he said.
Former member Gunther FrantzHis beautiful saying was always, 'I'm gonna convert the German nation, this time to do a better deed instead of what Hitler did, a bad deed'.
" his message was very much predominating around that Russia would invade Germany, a third world war would break out, and he brought up all sorts of scriptures from the Old Testament to prove his prophetic statements."
Gunther Frantz, Williams's first convert in Germany, says he was 12 when he began to be indoctrinated. He says Williams brainwashed him into doing almost anything.
"He had such power over people," Mr Frantz said.
"His beautiful saying was always, 'I'm gonna convert the German nation, this time to do a better deed instead of what Hitler did - a bad deed'."
Williams's core beliefs included a strict literal adherence to the Bible and a highly conservative lifestyle.
Upon baptism, members would often speak in tongues. As part of their membership, they were expected to donate 10 per cent of their gross income to the CAI in addition to many different offerings every year. "
From the ABC web-page cited in the first post.
