This article, written by a Taiwan-based "sinologist," has been copied and pasted over several major outlets and a dozen other Christian clickbait news sites. The pastor in question is John Sanqiang Cao, and was charged with human trafficking upon returning from a mission trip to Myanmar.
I don't know anything about the validity of the charges he's facing, and I'm quite certain that IF the events alleged by the article are true, then this is a clear miscarriage of justice.
There is something very funny about this story appearing all over American media, though. As if ex-convicts in the US don't deal with very similar problems...
This is not true. Christianity was introduced to China by Syriac (Syria and Iraq) missionaries and believers of Nestorian Christianity who traveled the Silk Road in the 7th century in 635. Literally 1400 years ago, and 20 years after Islam was even founded.
These missionaries settled in Xi’an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, where they met with Emperor Tiazong, who was extremely interested in the religion, and allowed the missionaries to settle. They then built around 20-30 churches across China, translated the Bible into Chinese, and established a significant presence that would last the next thousand years. There are silk portraits of Jesus, thousands of tombstones dating to 700-1200 with crosses and Christian iconography, and so on.
It’s also an extremely unknown portion of history, but the Mongol Empire was significantly influenced by Christianity and was in close contact with the Papacy. This only spread Christianity further in China.
Fair point. However, the modern trend of Western Christian missionaries is explicitly associated with colonialism. Anyone who willingly contributes to spreading that kind of poison should be viewed with scrutiny.
I think it might be fair to say that while Christianity did exist in China for over a thousand years, it's probably also true that the Christianity introduced by colonial missionaries barely resembled Chinese Christianity as it existed.