{"id":426,"date":"2007-10-23T17:27:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-23T17:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html"},"modified":"2007-10-23T17:27:00","modified_gmt":"2007-10-23T17:27:00","slug":"no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html","title":{"rendered":"No Reincarnation without Legal Permission in China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You have got to love it.  The Chinese government, in order to have some control over certain social aspects of Buddhism in China has issued Order No. 5&#8211; from the Administration of Religious Affairs.  Cutting to the chase basically this order says that no Buddhist monk has permission to return from the dead, by way of reincarnation, WITHOUT GOVERNMENT APPROVAL.  If only the first century Jewish authorities and Pilate had thought of issuing such an edict as well!  <\/p>\n<p>The story about this made major news in the NY Times recently, and here is the link&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/11\/opinion\/11zizek.html?th&amp;emc=th\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/10\/11\/opinion\/11zizek.html?th&amp;emc=th<\/a><\/p>\n<p>What makes this Order No. 5 interesting to me is that China is increasingly allowing Christianity to proliferate prodigiously.   They believe that religion can be a major force for social stability, but they know it can also be a force for instability as well (cf. the recent events in neighboring Myanmar).   In fact  there are even students going to Regent College in Vancouver on the Chinese government&#8217;s  yen.   The Chinese government has worries that the economic boom is putting too much stress on the social fabric. What they do not say,  but what seems likely, is that they have quietly concluded that the ideology of Mao is not super-gluing the fabric of society together in the desired way.   They are also concerned about ethics as well.   This is presumably one reason why I was asked three years ago to be a founding dean or director at Bejing University&#8217;s first Christian studies program (master&#8217;s degree&#8211; and now PhD as well).  The only Mandarin  I know however is &#8216;duck&#8217;, so I will only go once in a while to do some teaching with a translator.<\/p>\n<p>Nevertheless, one thing is clear from my recent trip to Hong Kong.  Christianity is burgeoning in this whole region, and as one missionary said to me&#8211; &#8216;the 21rst century could belong to China&#8217;  both economically and spiritually, if it doesn&#8217;t get in its own way.    Time will tell.    In the meanwhile,  if you are planning to come back from the dead, and are deathly ill,  do not make last minute vacation plans for China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You have got to love it. The Chinese government, in order to have some control over certain social aspects of Buddhism in China has issued Order No. 5&#8211; from the Administration of Religious Affairs. Cutting to the chase basically this order says that no Buddhist monk has permission to return from the dead, by way&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>No Reincarnation without Legal Permission in China - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Reincarnation without Legal Permission in China - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You have got to love it. The Chinese government, in order to have some control over certain social aspects of Buddhism in China has issued Order No. 5&#8211; from the Administration of Religious Affairs. Cutting to the chase basically this order says that no Buddhist monk has permission to return from the dead, by way&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-23T17:27:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Witherington\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"No Reincarnation without Legal Permission in China - The Bible and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"No Reincarnation without Legal Permission in China - The Bible and Culture","og_description":"You have got to love it. The Chinese government, in order to have some control over certain social aspects of Buddhism in China has issued Order No. 5&#8211; from the Administration of Religious Affairs. Cutting to the chase basically this order says that no Buddhist monk has permission to return from the dead, by way&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html","og_site_name":"The Bible and Culture","article_published_time":"2007-10-23T17:27:00+00:00","author":"Ben Witherington","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html","name":"No Reincarnation without Legal Permission in China - The Bible and Culture","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-10-23T17:27:00+00:00","dateModified":"2007-10-23T17:27:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2007\/10\/no-reincarnation-without-legal-permission-in-china.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"No Reincarnation without Legal Permission in China"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/","name":"The Bible and Culture","description":"All Things Biblical and Christian","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/d1fd6c7893819eabc624db38ecfd8426","name":"Ben Witherington","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/75e\/75ec11e1916a2008bc4cc638a0a0de2fx96.jpg","caption":"Ben Witherington"},"description":"Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}