The Chinese Are Coming

For those who are concerned with what impact Chinese Christians can make in UK or EU, please read this article :

The following is a little excerpt:

“……. Meanwhile anti-foreign sentiments grew in the Tang court culminating in a decree in 845 ordering monks of the ‘Religion of Light’ to return to lay life ‘so that they will not adulterate the customs of China.’

Curiously, neither Rome nor Constantinople, the two principal centers of Christianity, knew of the Nestorian accomplishments in China, and it was not until Mongol armies from central Asia threatened Europe that Rome sent emissaries to the Asia. In rapid succession, the Mongols crushed the Russians, Germans, Poles and Hungarians. In 1243 Pope Innocentius IV sent a 60-year old Franciscan friar Giovanni da Plano Carpini with a letter to Guyuk Khan threatening divine judgment if the Mongols resumed attacks on Europe. Guyuk spurned the Pope’s message and prepared a renewed assault and Europe was spared only by Guyuk’s death in 1248 and ensuing internal division among the Mongols.

Seven years later, in 1253, French King Louis IX sent another Franciscan, Willem de Rubruck, to propose an alliance with the Mongols against the Muslims in the Holy Land but the khan rejected the idea. The next Westerner to meet with Mongols was Marco Polo, the young Venetian adventurer, who met Kublai Khan in 1266. He returned to Europe with a remarkable request by the khan to send a hundred missionaries, ‘wise men of learning in the Christian religion and doctrine’ and if the pope sent the missionaries, the khan promised, ‘he and all his potentates would become men of the church.’

Rome dithered and sent a single Franciscan, Giovanni of Monte Corvino who arrived in 1294 after Kublai’s death. Kublai’s grandson and successor, Timur Oljeitu, gave Monte Corvino support and the Catholics slowly built up a base in Peking. Monte Corvino built a church in 1299 and six years later reported six thousand baptized Chinese and Mongols. In 1307 Pope Clement V appointed him archbishop of Peking and with further reinforcements from Rome, the Catholics established a thriving community in the southern seaport of Quanzhou in Fujian Province. But the tide turned once again against the Christians as more and more Mongol leaders in Eurasia converted to Islam, and Christians gradually lost their patronage. The Mongols themselves were overthrown in 1372 by a peasant rebellion which established the Ming Dynasty whose leaders were Buddhists and in another wave of xenophobia both the Nestorians and the Catholics were persecuted until they disappeared at the end of the fourteenth century. It took another two hundred years before Christians set foot in China again. This time it was the Jesuits.

The Chinese Are Coming

For those who are concerned with what impact Chinese Christians can make in UK or EU, please read this article :

The following is a little excerpt:

“……. Meanwhile anti-foreign sentiments grew in the Tang court culminating in a decree in 845 ordering monks of the ‘Religion of Light’ to return to lay life ‘so that they will not adulterate the customs of China.’

Curiously, neither Rome nor Constantinople, the two principal centers of Christianity, knew of the Nestorian accomplishments in China, and it was not until Mongol armies from central Asia threatened Europe that Rome sent emissaries to the Asia. In rapid succession, the Mongols crushed the Russians, Germans, Poles and Hungarians. In 1243 Pope Innocentius IV sent a 60-year old Franciscan friar Giovanni da Plano Carpini with a letter to Guyuk Khan threatening divine judgment if the Mongols resumed attacks on Europe. Guyuk spurned the Pope’s message and prepared a renewed assault and Europe was spared only by Guyuk’s death in 1248 and ensuing internal division among the Mongols.

Seven years later, in 1253, French King Louis IX sent another Franciscan, Willem de Rubruck, to propose an alliance with the Mongols against the Muslims in the Holy Land but the khan rejected the idea. The next Westerner to meet with Mongols was Marco Polo, the young Venetian adventurer, who met Kublai Khan in 1266. He returned to Europe with a remarkable request by the khan to send a hundred missionaries, ‘wise men of learning in the Christian religion and doctrine’ and if the pope sent the missionaries, the khan promised, ‘he and all his potentates would become men of the church.’

Rome dithered and sent a single Franciscan, Giovanni of Monte Corvino who arrived in 1294 after Kublai’s death. Kublai’s grandson and successor, Timur Oljeitu, gave Monte Corvino support and the Catholics slowly built up a base in Peking. Monte Corvino built a church in 1299 and six years later reported six thousand baptized Chinese and Mongols. In 1307 Pope Clement V appointed him archbishop of Peking and with further reinforcements from Rome, the Catholics established a thriving community in the southern seaport of Quanzhou in Fujian Province. But the tide turned once again against the Christians as more and more Mongol leaders in Eurasia converted to Islam, and Christians gradually lost their patronage. The Mongols themselves were overthrown in 1372 by a peasant rebellion which established the Ming Dynasty whose leaders were Buddhists and in another wave of xenophobia both the Nestorians and the Catholics were persecuted until they disappeared at the end of the fourteenth century. It took another two hundred years before Christians set foot in China again. This time it was the Jesuits.