LACK OF OPPRESSION HURTS CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN

c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service=

IKITSUKI, Japan—When Kinshiro Ichinose was beheaded here in 1622 for believing in Jesus, his last words were, ``The time will come when the teachings of Christianity will spread once more.''

He was half right. These days, young people on this rocky fishing islet in southern Japan can indeed worship Jesus freely and loudly sing hymns that once had to be whispered. But paradoxically, nothing has killed off traditional Christianity in Japan like freedom of religion.

Back in the 1500s, Christianity spread rapidly in Japan, until a fierce repression began 400 years ago this spring. That sent believers into hiding, and these Hidden Christians, as they are called, survived hundreds of years of torture and executions with their faith intact.

Yet now believers say their ranks are shrinking under more insidious pressures: televisions, cars and video games.

A faith that endured centuries of unfathomable repression is collapsing in just a couple of generations. ``I haven't been able to teach my kids the prayers,'' fretted Yoshiaki Isomoto, 49, a lean clerk whose heavy eyebrows waggled in despair as he reflected on Christianity on the rocky, remote island of Ikitsuki.

It was partly Ikitsuki's isolation that protected its Hidden Christians, and a century ago, 90 percent of the island's residents were still Christians. Now only a bit more than 10 percent are.

In all of Japan, less than 1 percent of the population are Christians of any denomination; only a small portion of those are Hidden Christians.

``I wonder how long this faith can last,'' Isomoto said, ``because there aren't many young people among the believers. They haven't been baptized yet, and they have no faith in their minds.''

It is a tribute to human orneriness—and to courage and tenacity—that persecution sometimes sustains what collapses in freedom. That may be one explanation for why young people in these rocky islands are uninterested in living the religion for which their ancestors died.

This paradox may also help explain why the country in Asia where Christianity may be growing the fastest is China, where religious persecution is among the most severe. Early in this century, Christian missionaries could proselytize freely in China but made relatively few converts. Today missionary work is banned and worship can be risky, yet underground churches are booming.

``It's ironic that our faith is fading at a time of religious freedom,'' mused Hisami Taniyama, a postal worker and local Hidden Christian pastor. ``My ancestors kept this faith despite severe repression, and I want it to survive further. It shouldn't end here.''

St. Francis Xavier helped bring Christianity to Japan in 1549, and he and other missionaries were initially spectacularly successful—although for his first two years St. Francis, because of a poor translator, inadvertently preached salvation by worshiping Buddha. Within a few decades, Japan had at least 300,000 Christians.

Hideyoshi, the general who unified Japan in the 16th century, reportedly toyed with the idea of becoming a Christian but decided against it after he learned that he would then be allowed only one wife. Alarmed by the threat that he believed Christians posed to his rule, he soon banned Christianity, and 26 Christians were executed in the spring of 1597.

This part of Japan, near Nagasaki, was a center of Christianity and soon became legendary for the torments used to force Christians to recant. Christians were crucified, tied up in bags and thrown into the sea, dipped repeatedly in boiling hot springs and subjected to what was reputedly the most agonizing death of all: the torture of the pit, in which they were suspended upside down in a hole half-filled with excrement, with a light cut on their forehead, and left to bleed to death.

An hour of this was said to be excruciating, yet some Christians lingered in the pit for weeks before dying. Some were left with one arm untied and told that they could save themselves at any time by simply lifting a hand to renounce their faith.

The centuries passed and everyone assumed that Christianity had been exterminated in Japan. But when the country reopened to the outside world in the middle of the last century a French priest was amazed to get a visit from a group of Japanese who knelt and told him that they were secret Christians.

Up to 50,000 of these Hidden Christians had maintained the faith, although it became transformed over the centuries.

``I have a Buddhist altar and Shinto shrine in my house,'' said Tomeichi Oka, a genial Hidden Christian pastor, as he knelt on the tatami floor of his living room. ``In the old days that was just for camouflage, because our Christianity was hidden, but now I believe in the other gods as well.''

This acceptance of other religious beliefs is common in Japan; most Japanese identify themselves as followers of both Buddhism and Shintoism. But this pantheism has led to tensions between the Hidden Christians and those Japanese who in modern times have converted to Catholic or Protestant churches.

Because of the centuries of persecution, the Hidden Christians have no tradition of churches or public displays of their faith, although some have crucifixes that were secretly handed down from generation to generation.

When someone dies, a public Buddhist funeral is held, and then the Christians secretly gather to chant prayers—often in Latin, still recognizable despite mistakes introduced over the centuries.

``After the Buddhist funeral is held, we tell our God that it was all a mistake,'' Oka said. ``And then we hold the Christian funeral and sing the Christian hymns.''

The doctrine of the Hidden Christians is a fascinating example of how a religious faith can evolve to match local ideas and history. For example, the bible of the Hidden Christians, published last year in English as ``The Beginning of Heaven and Earth'' (University of Hawaii Press), describes not a great flood but a sudden tsunami, and the Noah-like figure survives not in an ark but in a canoe.

Mary is a 12-year-old girl from the Philippines who studies hard, turns down a proposal from the Philippine king and apparently visits Japan. Holy Sacrament is the name of a tutor for Jesus, the chief disciple is the pope, and Jesus is betrayed by Judas, ``who eats his rice with soup every morning.''

Later, the Crucifixion is arranged not by Pontius Pilate but by two different men, Ponsha and Piloto.

Some Hidden Christians rejoined the Roman Catholic Church after freedom of religion was introduced late in the last century, while others continued to follow Hidden Christian practices.

Ikitsuki Island is filled with sites like the eerily named Thousand Corpse Mound, where the authorities executed and buried Christians. Officials sometimes ordered the heads of Christians to be buried far from the rest of their bodies, to reduce the risk of resurrections.

But most of the Christians here were executed on a tiny islet that today is a sacred spot where water is believed to gush forth when Hidden Christians repeat their traditional prayers.

The Hidden Christians say that one of their pastors once visited the spot with a Catholic priest, and that first the priest repeated prayers to no avail.

``Then I hear that our pastor chanted our prayers,'' said Taniyama, the pastor, ``and water came gurgling from the rock.''< 

SURVEY OF SCIENTISTS FINDS STABILITY OF FAITH IN GOD

By NATALIE ANGIER

Scientists have been accused of playing God when they clone sheep, and of naysaying God when they insist that evolution be taught in school, but as a new study indicates, many scientists believe in God by the most mainstream, uppercase definition of the concept.

Repeating verbatim a famous survey first conducted in 1916, Edward Larson of the University of Georgia has found that the depth of religious faith among scientists has not budged regardless of whatever scientific and technical advances this century has wrought.

Then as now, about 40 percent of the responding biologists, physicists and mathematicians said they believed in a God who, by the survey's strict definition, actively communicates with humankind and to whom one may pray ``in expectation of receiving an answer.'' Roughly 15 percent in both surveys claimed to be agnostic or to have ``no definite belief'' regarding the question, while about 42 percent in 1916 and about 45 percent today said they did not believe in a God as specified in the questionnaire, although whether they believed in some other definition of a deity or an all-mighty was not addressed.

The figure of unqualified believers is considerably lower than that usually cited for Americans as a whole. Gallup polls, for example, have found that about 93 percent of people surveyed profess a belief in God. But those familiar with the survey said that, given the questionnaire's exceedingly restrictive definition of God—narrower than the standard Gallup question—and given scientists' training to say exactly what they mean and nothing more, the 40 percent figure in fact is impressively high.

More revealing than the figures themselves, experts said, is their stability. The fact that scientists' private beliefs remained unchanged across almost a century defined by change suggests that orthodox religion is no more disappearing among those considered the intellectual elite than it is among the public at large. The results also indicate that, while science and religion often are depicted as irreconcilable antagonists, each a claimant to the throne of truth, many scientists see no contradiction between a quest to understand the laws of nature, and a belief in a higher deity.

The results of Larson's survey, which he conducted with a religion writer, Larry Witham of Burtonsville, Md., appear on Thursday in the journal Nature.

Larson did not try to determine whether the scientists he polled were Christian, Jewish, Muslim or any other creed, whether they went to religious services or otherwise attended to the rituals of a particular faith. He merely wanted to see what had happened in the 80-plus years since the renowned psychologist James Leuba asked 1,000 randomly selected scientists if they believed in God.

Leuba, a devout atheist, had predicted that a disbelief in God would grow as education spread, and Larson decided to use the psychologist's exact methods to see if the prediction held.

He polled the same number of researchers as had Leuba and used the same source for picking his subjects—the directory ``American Men and Women of Science,'' a compendium of researchers successful enough to win awards and be cited regularly in the scientific literature. He followed Leuba's survey format to the letter, with the same introduction and the same questions written in the same stilted language, even enclosing the same type of return envelope. More than 600 of about 1,000 scientists answered the questionnaire, similar to Leuba's response rate.

In addition to the question about a belief in an accessible God, the survey asked whether the respondents believed in personal immortality, and if not, whether they would desire immortality anyway. Here there were some changes in the responses. In Leuba's survey, 50 percent of the scientists said they believed in personal immortality, a puzzling and inconsistent figure given the more modest 40 percent belief in God. Moreover, many doubters confessed to a strong desire for immortality. Larson found that his two statistics, a belief in God and in life everlasting matched; and that those who didn't believe in personal immortality had little wish for it. ``I see this as a healthy trend,'' he said. ``People have become more consistent, confident and comfortable with their world views.''

But of the divination that religion was on its way out, Larson writes, ``Leuba misjudged either the human mind or the ability of science to satisfy all human needs.''

Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington in Seattle, said that because the questions in the Leuba survey are so narrowly phrased, the results probably underestimate the extent of religious sentiment among scientists. Several recent surveys of American college professors, he said, show that professors are almost as likely to express a belief in God as are Americans as a whole.

Moreover, he said, when the sample in a study he and his coworkers are now doing is broken down into specialties, teachers of the so-called hard sciences, like math and chemistry, are more likely to be devout than are professors of such softer sciences as anthropology and psychology or of the humanities.

Since the analysis is not finished he could not give exact numbers. The reason for the discrepancy may be that, in an odd sort of way, traditional religious dogma suits the mathematically inclined mind, suggested George Marsden, a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. ``It could be that scientists are used to looking for definite answers, whereas humanists go into their field because they like to deal with ambiguities.''

Leuba's survey had an enormous impact in its day. William Jennings Bryan, a populist Democratic politician and orator, used the results as ammunition in the Scopes trial of the 1920s, claiming that they showed a scandalous level of atheism among scientists and thus proved the dangers of allowing evolutionary thinking to pollute education.

Larson suggests that the updated survey could be used for very different ends, to calm public fears that scientists are godless at heart. Whether the public hungers for the reassurance is another matter.

``In 1916, when scientists were emerging as the high priests of a new technological culture, everybody cared about what they thought and believed,'' Marsden said. ``But the prestige of science peaked in 1960 and has been declining ever since. Do people still care whether scientists believe in God? I'm not so sure.''

< NYT-04-02-97 2041EST< 

COMMENTARY: THE CHINESE CHRISTIANS

c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service=@

They knew what they did. When President Clinton and Vice President Gore opened the White House to visits from China's top arms peddlers and allowed Beijing's middlemen to drop money into the political begging bowl, they knew that they were increasing the power of the world's biggest dictatorship, one particularly devoted to religious persecution.<

Now they complain about not being fully informed by their staffs or investigators about donations. Journalists ask what counts in courts of law—what did they know, or why didn't they know?<

But in the courts of political morality and common sense, they are indicted for having empowered China not just at fund-raising time but year round since 1993. That was when Clinton made business deals with China his top priority, not human rights, or weapons proliferation, or other items outside the cash flow.

The evidence is obvious. Clinton and Gore are neither ignorant, stupid nor naive. They understand that when you hold out the bowl, the hand that gives today will be the fist that knocks on the door tomorrow. They know nobody in a dictatorship interested in staying off the rack arranges money for foreigners, or pays campaign White House visits, without instructions from the regime.

But here's some lovely news: Americans are getting fed up with the administration's passionate courting of China.

They are awakening, sadly late, to the Communists' persecution of the Christianity that the great majority of Americans practice themselves. The awareness is creating the first nationwide constituency to oppose American appeasement of Beijing.

So far, the administration and the China business lobby have been getting away with a collection of falsehoods about U.S.-China relations:

An annual deficit of $35 billion in trade with China somehow is dandy for the United States. Americans will eventually get jobs out of it, if they wait patiently while forced-labor products flood them out of the market.

The persecution in China of Christianity and other religions will not be as easily diddled out of the American conscience once it takes full hold.

For all dictatorships, free religion means free minds, their particular terror. Beijing meets its fears as dictatorships do: arrests and beatings of clergy and worshipers—recently as prelude to Gore's grand visit—and regulations to drive congregations into officially supervised churches. Millions of Chinese Catholics and Protestants resist and commit the crime of worshiping together in their own ``house churches.''

The oppression is reported by human rights groups and the U.S. government itself. The only mystery is why Americans, Christian or not, showed such callousness to Christian persecution in China, other Communist countries and some Muslim countries. American businessmen may have feared closing off markets or oil contracts, but that does not excuse them, and certainly not the rest of us.

The time of our apathy may be ending. The letters that have come to me since I began writing about Christian persecution enrich my life, and buoy my belief in the importance of people living in freedom to speak and act in support of victims of despotism.

How to move from attention to action? In New York, City Council President Peter Vallone is working to end municipal investments and deposits in persecuting countries. Done nationally in cities and states, it would amount to scores of billions.

In Washington, there is increased congressional determination to help Chinese Christians and Tibetan Buddhists, the two major targets, but no agreement on how to do it.

One approach is to use the tariff weapon, specifically against imports from China's largest exporter and beneficiary of forced labor—its armed forces. The other is to withhold loans from the World Bank and the Export-Import Bank, and fight about tariffs next year.

Failure in Congress to push forward to help Christians in China would be the China lobby's greatest victory. One letter I got came from the 11-year-old granddaughter of a famous American politician, whom she already outwrites.

She is deeply troubled about persecution of Christians. Will grown-ups keep her waiting year after year for the answer to her question: What can we do to help?

< 

CHALLENGED ON HIS PAST, SHARPTON COUNTERATTACKS

c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<

NEW YORK—In a frank and sometimes tense exchange with business leaders Thursday, the Rev. Al Sharpton said that he did not consider Louis Farrakhan to be an anti-Semite and asserted that a grand jury had erred in rejecting Tawana Brawley's story of rape and racial abuse nine years ago.

Sharpton, speaking at a private midtown Manhattan breakfast intended to confront doubts about his mayoral credentials, asserted that he is subjected to a double standard: his career, he complained, is unfairly framed by a handful of racially charged incidents.

Sharpton told his audience of lawyers and business executives that he had been assailed for questioning the Brawley grand jury by some of the same kind of people, whom he did not further characterize, who attacked a jury for acquitting O.J. Simpson of murder. And he said that his long history of working with the Rev. Jesse Jackson is often overlooked, while his more tenuous association with Farrakhan is a subject of constant attention.

``It's almost like I have to answer for every black on their mind,'' Sharpton said after the breakfast. Referring to one of his opponents, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, Sharpton continued: ``Ruth doesn't have to answer for every woman she ever attended a rally with.''

In fact, it was in a deliberate effort to move beyond his past that Sharpton accepted the invitation Thursday. And he is to give a speech Friday wrapping himself in the liberal mantle of the Democratic Party, pledging to oppose tax cuts because they hurt social programs and urging that legal immigrants be allowed to vote.

If Sharpton needed any proof that his past and his perceived ties to Farrakhan would complicate his mayoral efforts, he did not have to look any further than Thursday's meeting. During a question-and-answer session, a member of the audience asked Sharpton if he would ``denounce'' Farrakhan.

``I don't publicly denounce anybody,'' Sharpton demurred. But he noted that he had never worked for Farrakhan or belonged his organization, the Nation of Islam.

And when asked by the same man, who did not identify himself, if he considered Farrakhan to be anti-Semitic, Sharpton responded, ``No, I do not.''

That response was met with startled silence. Farrakhan has described Judaism as a ``gutter religion,'' has called Jews ``bloodsuckers'' and has argued that they were ``wicked deceivers of the American public.''

After the session, Sharpton said he based his opinion of Farrakhan's attitude toward Jews on his personal association with him. ``I don't feel he's an anti-Semite,'' Sharpton said. ``I know him. I've talked to him. I've dined with him. I don't find the man to be privately or publicly what he is projected to be.''

Sharpton said he had fully expected the skeptical reception. ``I wonder what Ruth and Freddy would say if they knew I was here,'' he said on his arrival, surveying a white and wealthy audience. He was referring to two of his opponents, Ms. Messinger and Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer.

Sharpton attempted to focus Thursday—and will again Friday _ on what he said would be central planks of his campaign. They range from restrictions on police conduct to hiking income taxes on commuters to opposing the popular idea of cutting sales taxes on clothing; government needs the revenue, he says. His opposition to cutting taxes separates him from Ms. Messinger and Ferrer, whom Sharpton criticized for a politically ill-advised move to the center.

But Sharpton was reminded again Thursday of the hurdles he faces in trying to move the spotlight from his political history to his political ideas.

Richard Wiese, 37, who works a science reporter at Channel 9 and attended the breakfast as a guest, raised Miss Brawley's name as soon as Sharpton asked for questions.

``Most people, if you mention your name, know you as the person associated with Tawana Brawley,'' Weise began. Sharpton interrupted: ``But who are most people?'' He noted that he had received overwhelming support from black voters when he ran for U.S. Senate in 1994. ``The question becomes why do blacks and others see me totally different? So when you raise `most people,' you have to talk most WHAT people? Most black Democrats don't see me that way.''

Sharpton said he saw no reason to disbelieve Ms. Brawley's story of abuse, although a grand jury dismissed her claim that she had been abducted and raped by a band of white men. ``I clearly think that if Tawana Brawley case had gone to a public trial,'' Sharpton said, ``in my opinion it would have been a different result. But it didn't.''

At one point, Paul R. Beirne, the investment partner who arranged the midtown meeting, asked about Sharpton's difficulties with Jewish voters. Sharpton said such questions came up only because of his association with Farrakhan. He said that was unfair and complained that black political figures were always asked to account for the remarks of other blacks.

Sharpton recalled an appearance with Jackson in 1994 at the Park Avenue Synagogue.

``He was heckled through his speech,'' Sharpton said. ``Twelve years after `Hymietown.' After 10,000 apologies. I mean, it's a situation where we have to have dialogue with the black community and the Jewish community.''<

< 

Go back to SOCIOLOGY 265 -- News Articles Page

If you have any questions or comments please email:

leming@stolaf.edu

Disclaimer