Posted on 11/07/2007 7:11:17 PM PST by Aristotelian
The organizers of the 2008 Olympic Games in China have put the Bible on the list of items that athletes are banned from bringing with them to Beijing, we learn from a report in the Catholic News Service, picking up an item in the Italian daily La Gazzetta dello Sport. ...
As it so happens one of the great challengers of the Beijing regime, the James Madison of Hong Kong, Martin Lee, was in our office recently. The topic of the Olympics came up, and Mr. Lee said he and his pro-democracy allies had weighed the pros and cons and come down strongly against boycotting the games. "If you boycott the games, the games will take place anyway, and you miss a golden opportunity," Mr. Lee told us. An opportunity, that is, to press Communist China for expansion of freedom on topics such as, well, being able to bring a Bible into the country.
During the visit here of Mr. Lee, a democratically elected member of the parliament of Hong Kong, talk turned to the way some of America's founders had been emboldened by their religious beliefs. An editor of the Sun asked whether the same applied to those fighting for freedom in Hong Kong and China. Mr. Lee replied, "As a Catholic, I don't mind dying. I go up to heaven. I know somebody is up there, guiding me." It is the fear of sentiments like that that no doubt explains why Chinese Communist authorities would try to keep the Bible out of their country. Once it gets in, there is no telling where the ideas will spread or what will be the consequences.
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
CNA STAFF, Nov 7, 2007 / 04:50 pm (CNA).- Last week CNA published a report from the Italian daily “La Gazzetta dello Sport” stating that Bibles will not be allowed into the Olympic Village at the upcoming Olympic Games. Since then, CNA has learned that a contradictory set of policies has been put in place regarding the possession of the Bible at the international sporting event.
Making a slight change to its total ban on religious items, the Chinese Olympic Committee has decided, "devotional objects” will be allowed in compliance with Chinese "freedom of religion" laws, but “religious objects meant to propagate a cult” will not be permitted.
http://catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=10915
How about a bible covered in red with the title “The thoughts of Chairman Mao” printed on it.
Korans will be welcome, I’m sure. Don’t want to offend the Muzzies.
How about we tell them no bibles, no US team?
We went to China for two months (hubby was on a job assignment) and we took in our Bibles. No problem at customs whatsoever. I venture to say athletes will bring Bibles and they will not be confiscated.
So that means Bibles are in, but Korans are out?
5.56mm
The Chinese rulers are very shrewd. There is a long tradition in Chinese culture for ethical systems developed by sages to be adopted or rejected by the elite based on their tendency to encourage a loyal, docile, easily governed populace. The Chicoms apparently know history better than most modern Westerners (even some here on FR), and recognize that the translation of the Bible into vernacular European languages, making it available to common people, triggered revolutionary change, leading ultimately to free societies where the uniqueness of the individual is recognized and valued.
Is that you, Jimmy? It worked so well in 1980 maybe we should try it again. Brought those pesky commies right to their knees in Moscow.
My guess that the reason this is so unknown even to FReepers is that it’s balderdash. The myth of this role for the vernacular Bible has no basis in history—the common people couldn’t read, for God’s sake, when the shift to the vernaculars took place. Vernacularization took place in a variety of ways throughout European culture. Vernacularizing the Bible was just part of that and Catholics vernacularized at the same time as Protestants. It had nothing to do with the “spread of freedom.”
I found the following very telling:
Lopez: Many of the Christians are elites — scientists, intellectuals. How did that happen?
Aikman: Several of the Chinese students and scholars studying in the U.S. and other foreign countries become Christian. Many of these also returned to China and meet up with colleagues of similar professional attainment who were holding private Christian meetings. Those attending these meetings then began to invite others. Word spread that Christianity “worked,” that is, that people who were Christian were genuinely concerned for each other’s welfare and that prayers often produced remarkable physical healings from difficult illnesses.
But another factor has been a very open-minded approach by many Chinese intellectuals into such phenomena as the remarkable historical primacy of Western civilization around the world. How could this happen? What were the core principles of Western civilization that enabled it, time and again, to correct itself rather than plunge into cyclical and eventually permanent decline? Many concluded that it was Christian ethics and the dynamism of a faith based on a profound hope in the future and a belief that history was not cyclical, as Buddhism and even Confucianism proclaimed, but linear, and with a specific end goal. [Emphasis added.]
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/aikman200312220001.asp
No Bibles in a Chicom hotel? Does Mr. Gideon know? What a great opportunity. All Americans take a Bible with them and leave it in their hotel room!
This doesn’t sound particularly surprising. As long as they’re not preventing spectators, athletes, coaches, etc from bringing Bibles (or any other religious literature) for personal use, I don’t think it’s worth making an issue over. The athletes/coaches are supposed to be going there to compete in the Olympics, and it wouldn’t really be appropriate for them to come with religious or political or any other type of persuasional material with the intent of distributing it. And if spectators are coming to the event with supplies of any kind of literature for distribution, I think they’d run into trouble at any country’s Olympics. The Olympics are first and foremost a commercial event, and sponsors do not expect anybody who hasn’t paid a fat sponsorship fee to be allowed to be allowed to do any kind of advertising with the Olympic Village or competition venues. I seriously doubt that anyone was being allowed to pass out Bibles or religious tracts at the Atlanta Olympics.
Basically, you are saying that most historians are all wrong. If you’re right, then why did the Catholic Church relentlessly persecute people who tried to disseminate vernacular versions of the Bible, burning some at the stake and forcing the survivors to work in secret? As for ability to read, it all depends on what is meant by “common people.” I didn’t mean that every peasant could read, but that some people who were not priests finally had access to it. Just one person reading the New Testament to his illiterate friends, or giving sermons based on it, could have an enormous effect. (That’s the way Christians have to operate in some hostile countries today; there are seldom enough Bibles for all the believers, but those which are available are used to the max.) Soon they would all know that much of the late-medieval Church’s doctrine and organization was profoundly anti-scriptural.
I have decide not to watch the Beijing Olympics.
Why wouldn’t it be “appropriate” for athletes and other visitors to bring in Bibles? Christians are commanded to spread the Gospel? Is it not “appropriate” to do anything which upsets a one-party dictatorship? There are quite a few Christian athletes and fans, and I’m sure some would like to assist their persecuted Chinese brethren, who are always clamoring for more Bibles. The Chicoms want to control the Church and make it tame and dead, so they don’t want more Bibles brought in. They would probably kill the Church entirely if they didn’t think it would imperil their economic game plan at this point.
Very interesting, and in line with what I have read about India, where some intellectuals, pondering the success of their British rulers, came to believe that the Christian worldview had been crucial to the economic and technological advancement of the West. This helped motivate these Indians to become Christians.
Same reason it wouldn’t be appropriate for Chinese athletes to show up at Olympics in our country and start passing out Communist propaganda. The Olympics, despite having degenerated into a commercialized monster, are supposed be about people from very different countries and cultures coming together to do something that they have in COMMON — not for people to try to show others how wrong their beliefs/culture are. There are plenty of other appropriate times and places for that.
“The only good thing about these communists is that they have stopped killing Christians in mass, and are putting them in prison for shorter terms.”
They have streamlined the process of matching organ “donors” with paying recipients.
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