Reply #43: A Little History Might Be In Order Here, Sir

[The Magistrate]

Government regulation of religious practice in China long pre-dates Communism. This is in large part because the Imperial governance was itself a religious form, with the Emperor acting essentially as the chief priest of a national shamanistic cultus that things like good weather and such depended on the proper practice of. Rebellions generally originated in heterodox cults, and so any religious practice outside the established parameters was watched closely.

China's first sizeable encounter with widespread Christian belief (as opposed to diplomatic and other foreign lodgements in the Imperial court itself) was the Tai-Ping Rebellion shortly after the Opium Wars. This was one of the most cataclysmic events of human history, lasting for decades and killing someting on the order of forty million people, roughly ten percent of China's total population at the time. A certain official gingerness towards the belief system, even in the present day, is understandable, though it is certainly unpalatable to our own views here....