{"id":2383,"date":"2005-09-14T23:26:28","date_gmt":"2005-09-14T23:26:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html"},"modified":"2005-09-14T23:26:28","modified_gmt":"2005-09-14T23:26:28","slug":"sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html","title":{"rendered":"Sowing Seeds in Mongolian Soil"},"content":{"rendered":"

An AP article on the flourishing of religion in Mongolia:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Mongolia is flush with foreign missionaries these days — young Mormons going door-to-door, Korean Christians working with homeless children, new Catholic churches sprouting up on the grassy steppe.<\/p>\n

The collapse of communism in 1990 brought religious freedom as well as democracy, opening the doors to proselytizers from around the world. They have flocked to this sparsely populated country wedged between Russia and China, eager for fresh converts. <\/p>\n

"Here, history is ancient but Christianity is very young," said the Rev. Tiago Copolla, a Roman Catholic priest from Brazil.<\/p>\n

The new openness has also sparked a revival of Mongolia’s traditional religions — Buddhism and a native shamanism. Everywhere, there are pictures of the Buddha in people’s homes and, along country roads, piles of "shaman" rocks that are shrines to spirits in nature.<\/p>\n

Even Orthodox Russian priests are back, not to proselytize but to serve the dwindling ranks of Russian expatriates who moved here when Mongolia was a Soviet satellite.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Here’s an article from the Philly Archdiocesan paper, from this spring, about the Church in Mongolia<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s the page from the Missionhurst site about their ministry in Mongolia<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

A bit more on the order’s care for homeless children<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

There are about 300 Catholics in Mongolia. You might recall that Pope John Paul had hoped to visit Mongolia, and a trip was tentatively scheduled back in 2003.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An AP article on the flourishing of religion in Mongolia: Mongolia is flush with foreign missionaries these days — young Mormons going door-to-door, Korean Christians working with homeless children, new Catholic churches sprouting up on the grassy steppe. The collapse of communism in 1990 brought religious freedom as well as democracy, opening the doors to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSowing Seeds in Mongolian Soil - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sowing Seeds in Mongolian Soil - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An AP article on the flourishing of religion in Mongolia: Mongolia is flush with foreign missionaries these days — young Mormons going door-to-door, Korean Christians working with homeless children, new Catholic churches sprouting up on the grassy steppe. The collapse of communism in 1990 brought religious freedom as well as democracy, opening the doors to…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-09-14T23:26:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Sowing Seeds in Mongolian Soil - Via Media","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\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Sowing Seeds in Mongolian Soil - Via Media","og_description":"An AP article on the flourishing of religion in Mongolia: Mongolia is flush with foreign missionaries these days — young Mormons going door-to-door, Korean Christians working with homeless children, new Catholic churches sprouting up on the grassy steppe. The collapse of communism in 1990 brought religious freedom as well as democracy, opening the doors to…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2005-09-14T23:26:28+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html","name":"Sowing Seeds in Mongolian Soil - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2005-09-14T23:26:28+00:00","dateModified":"2005-09-14T23:26:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/09\/sowing-seeds-in-mongolian-soil.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Sowing Seeds in Mongolian Soil"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?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\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}