Beware of Patriotic Heresy in the Church in China: Drawing on the historical lessons of the Nazis' Volk Church to analyze the Zhao Xiao Phenomenon

The phenomenal growth of the church in China has attracted worldwide attention and given Chinese Christians everywhere hope that Christianity can bring positive change to mainland China. But in the midst of this widespread optimism lurks an insidious danger—a danger that China's Communist government has adeptly manipulated and utilized, and which has ensnared even China's House Church as well as overseas Chinese churches and Christians. Mark C. H. Shan, a House Church scholar originally from mainland China, carefully examines this danger and points out the alarming parallels with the German Church under Nazism. Shan sounds a sharp warning for Chinese Christians worldwide: patriotism is already starting to replace God's rightful place in the Chinese church, and if Chinese Christians are not careful, they are in danger of walking down the same dark road of the Nazi-era German Christians, who placed their German identity and loyalty to the Nazi government above their responsibility as children of God to oppose evil, and so failed to speak out against the Holocaust. "… a powerful warning from history of the dangers of a theologized nationalism for the body of Christ…" —David Aikman, author of "Jesus in Beijing" and other books