Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
China’s march against religious freedom
China’s march against religious freedom
May 16, 2026 8:25 PM

In this week’s Acton Commentary, I make the case that persecution of Chinese Christians has increased since the government’s preparation of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Freedom House is really leading the way piling a wealth of information to substantiate China’s recent crack down on freedom and human rights.

Jimmy Lai, who was featured in The Call of the Entrepreneur, has a great quote on the makeup of China’s moral failings and its relation to the Olympics. I included his words in mentary. Lai says:

When the Olympic Games begin in Beijing, China will show the world its physical strength, but also its moral poverty. This is unavoidable because the Olympics are more than just a sporting event; they are an expression of the human drive for greatness in all pursuits.

I also cited an excellent piece in The Washington Post titled “Beijing Curbs Religious Rights.” This article offers a more detailed perspective on specific crackdowns by the government on house churches in China’s capital city.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Toward a Christian view of economics
Embed from Getty Images Many Christians assume that the Bible has nothing at all to say about economics, says theologian Albert Mohler, but a biblical worldview actually has a great deal to teach us on economic matters. Mohler outlines twelve theses for what a Christian understanding of economics must do. Here are three of them: 1. It must have God’s glory as its greatestaim. For Christians, all economic theory begins with an aim to glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31). We...
What public schools should learn from homeschool economics
Embed from Getty Images If our new Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, is looking for a creative way to fix our public schools, she should look to homeschoolers. As Thomas Purifoy explains, homeschooling offers a model for how our schools can be run more effectively. “Public education is the fount of most problems in the United States, not simply based on content, but also on structure,” says Purifoy. “Simply put: it is economically impossible for American public education to be successful...
Temporary jobs have long-term effects on European youth
Ask any economist what the greatest force undermining prosperity is, and hewill answer with one word: uncertainty. But since economics is just human action, uncertainty hurts every aspect of peoples’ lives, upending their plans and delaying – or destroying – their dreams. In Europe, a growing number of young people are unable to engage in the rites of passage that marked the entrance of previous generations into adulthood – a subject Marco Respinti explores on the Religion & Liberty Transatlantic...
What does Lent tell us about markets and morality?
Embed from Getty Images The Christian season of Lent starts next Wednesday. Lent is a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. The period represents the forty days represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry. Lent is a time, says Margarita Mooney, when Christians engage in particular practices to remind ourselves of our nature as persons and our...
Video: Arthur C. Brooks on how to bring America together
American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks joined us here at the Acton Institute on Monday evening as part of the Acton Lecture Series, and as usual he delivered a great and optimistic message, even in the midst of this time of deep divisions in the United States. It’s impossible to avoid the fact that America is more deeply divided politically today than it has been in decades, and the question is whether or not the current state of affairs...
Why people prefer government to markets
People do not love markets,” says Pascal Boyer of the International Cognition & Culture Institute, “there is a lot of evidence for that.” Sadly, Boyer is right and I suspect he’s right about the cause too: People do not like markets because people seem not to understand much about market economics. We don’t fully understand this antipathy, Boyer notes, because there hasn’t been much research on folk-economics, a study of “what makes people’s economic modules tick.” But I think Boyer...
Understanding the President’s Cabinet: Veterans Affairs Secretary
Note: This is the sixth in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Department of Education / U.S. Department of Education (Public Domain) Cabinet position:Secretary of Veterans Affairs Department:Department of Veterans Affairs Current Secretary:David J. Shulkin Succession:The Secretary of Veterans Affairs is sixteenth in the presidential line of succession. Department Mission:“The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is responsible for providing vital services to America’s veterans. VA provides...
Why is customer service better at Starbucks than at the DMV?
Note: This is post #22 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Prices are signals that indicate to suppliers how much is being demanded. So what happens when the government puts a cap on the price that can be charged for a product or service? Two effects are shortages and lower quality. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, economist Alex Tabarrok explains why this happens. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d mend watching...
DonorSee: A charity app that challenges ‘Big Aid’
For far too long, Westerners have simply accepted the status quo of foreign aid, building ever-larger systems and programs for global charity even as they’re proven to squander resources and disempower the munities they intend to assist. As films like Poverty, Inc.and thePovertyCureaptly demonstrate, when es to charity, we need a profound shift in our heads, hands, and hearts — “from aid to enterprise, from poverty alleviation to wealth creation, from paternalism to partnerships, from handouts to investments.” Such a...
The Michael Novak book that changed reality
From a 2017 vantage point, it’s easy to forget just how radical this book was, says Samuel Gregg in this week’s Acton Commentary. In penning theSpirit of DemocraticCapitalism, Novak was the first theologian to really make an in-depth moral, cultural, and political caseforthe market economy in a systematic way. Needless to say, Novak’s book generated fierce reactions from the religious left. The opprobrium was probably heightened by the fact that theSpiritconfirmed what had e evident from the mid-’70s onwards: that...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved