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In this country we somewhat exaggerate the degree of repression against Christianity. It's very real, but it tends to be somewhat localized. Your average Christian in China hasn't been threatened, doesn't know anybody who's been beaten up. Christianity to some degree has become cool. It's become kind of a famous brand in the same way people want to have brand name clothes or carry a brand name purse. There is an element in China of Christianity being a brand name religion.

What are some ways that Christians in America can encourage the growth of Christianity in China?

I don't think we should exaggerate our ability to shape what goes on in Chinese society. All those vast efforts to send missionaries to China early in the 20th century really didn't get very far. The future of faith in China is going to be determined by the Chinese themselves. Where you get Christians who are arrested, beaten up, I think Americans can and should play a role in denouncing those kinds of abuses and speaking out against those kinds of injustices.

But if Christians are perceived as a fifth column or as pawns of Americans, that will discredit it. China is a deeply nationalist country. Americans should also be a little bit leery because Christianity in China covers a huge range. There are also a number of cults that call themselves Christians. When they get in trouble, they try to get help from the West.

Christians shouldn't only speak up on behalf of Christians who are tortured. Falun Gong is bearing the biggest brunt of religious repression in China. It behooves the American evangelical community to speak up when Falun Gong believers are tortured or their children taken away.

What do evangelicals uniquely add to American foreign policy?

One of the reasons for liberal antagonism toward evangelicals is this sort of distasteful recollection of evangelicals as pious hypocrites who just want to engage in culture wars and peer down at gays or single fathers. The National Association of Evangelicals has re-branded the movement as a group of people who try desperately to alleviate human suffering whether they're kids being tossed into bonfires in Darfur or sex trafficking victims in Cambodia.

I do have one beef with some elements of the evangelical community. Often church leaders have a rigid ideological position that is insufficiently informed by facts on the ground. Everybody does this. But on the issue of condoms, for example, there's a huge gulf between church leadership or Washington offices, with deep hostility toward condoms, and missionaries all across Africa who are just desperately trying to save lives. Their friends are dying of AIDS, and they're trying to keep people alive so they can save them. I hope the evangelical community will make use of these incredibly knowledgeable missionaries in the field who know more about African society than the CIA does. These people have lived in the country for many years, outside the capital, speak the language, and their kids go to local schools or play with local kids.

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Nicholas Kristof's columns are available from The New York Times.

Following Kristof's column, in 2004, Christianity Today asked Are Evangelicals the 'New Internationalists'?

Kristof's blog is available on the Times website. His Pulitzer-winning columns are collected at the Pulitzer site.

PBS interviewed Kristof after he was awarded the Pulitzer.

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September 2006, Vol. 50, No. 9