In our last book club meeting we discussed Silence by Shusaku Endo. It was about the Japanese persecution of Christians in the 17th century, told from the perspective of a Portuguese missionary and authored by a Japanese Catholic. Most of our group didn’t like it. It was too heavy on theology.

One of the book club members, an American, said “I don’t understand why anyone would care about evangelists in their country. I don’t understand why the Japanese cared, and I don’t understand why anyone here cares.”

I am all for religious freedom, but I thought he was being either naïve or disingenuous when he claimed not to understand why any country would limit it. It is a fact that most religious organizations are also political organizations. No one know that better than the Chinese.

The Taiping Rebellion is one of the most fascinating episodes in Chinese history. In the 1840s, a reject from China’s competitive civil service exams converted to Christianity. He believed himself to be the son of God, and Jesus’ younger, Chinese brother. He was a charismatic preacher and gained hundreds of thousands of followers. They practiced a form of collective ownership of land and personal property, inspired by accounts of the early Christians, and admired by Karl Marx. The formed an army and marched north from Guanxi province to the capital city of Nanjing, which they held for eleven years.

Imagine David Koresh and the Branch Davidians defeating the ATF at Waco, marching to Washington, and sending Congress, President Clinton and his entire administration into exile. Imagine those same Davidians holding control of DC and the Southern half of the U.S. until 2003. It might make the American government somewhat less tolerant of religious freedom.

Despite the memory of the Taiping rebellion, Christianity is tolerated and widely practiced in China. Catholicism and Protestantism are two of the five, recognized religions (along with Buddhism, Taoism and Islam.) Proselytizing is a little more complicated. As I understand it, religious people are permitted to answer questions about their faiths. Then if a Chinese person decides to convert, they have the right to do so. More aggressive forms of evangelism are not permitted, such as handing out bibles, or inviting students to study scripture.

We see people breaking the rules from time to time. A few weeks ago we took a bus trip to the other side of the province. We met a woman from Texas who entertained herself on the long trip by reading her enormous study bible. A Chinese woman, who, like the Texan, was traveling alone, asked what she was reading. From that moment on, La Evangelista had her mark. They were inseparable for the rest of the weekend.

“This is my bible. Would you like to see it?” she asked. Then later, “why don’t you come sit over here, we can talk about it.”

Our group went to an interprovince Booster club decorated to look like a Buddhist temple. The main showpiece of the structure was a giant shrine to a famous businessman. There was a large wooden statue of him that had been gilded and seated on an ornate throne, flanked by spirits; he had been made to look like a god. The mark was seemed excited to show her new foreign friend the shrine, but the Texan was having none of it.

“I don’t want to take a picture of that. That’s ugly.”

I’m not certain it was the whiff of idolatry that soured her. It seemed more like she was making a show of it. Either way, I was so embarrassed for her, I had to look somewhere else. What an amateur! A more experienced missionary would say, “That’s just what Jesus looks like.”

Over the years, I have felt various levels of tolerance for people who try to save my soul. As a general rule, I find them annoying and offensive, but at least I am prepared for them when I meet them. I can decide whether I want to respond to their advances with a polite, “no thank you,” ignore them rudely, or mess with them. There was one very cute Born Again in High School who tried to convert me. I countered by trying to corrupt him. We both failed.

You missed out on a hell of a conversion experience, Shabazz.

I have come to have a degree of sympathy for the evangelicals. They walk around with a heavy burden, believing that most people will spend eternity in Hell. For true believers, this burden justifies annoying people on the street. In Silence, it justified enduring all sorts of tortures dreamed up by the Tokugawas to convince the Jesuits to apostatize.

When we first met the Texan, she told us that she liked living in China because, “people here are so much more innocent, don’t you think?” If I had agreed, I would have been more concerned about her Chinese mark. But I wasn’t overly concerned, and I stayed out of it. I figured, the Chinese woman would be able to fend for herself.

And if she gets kicked out of the country, the Texan will be able to fend for herself, too.