Glimpses in the Church of Another World: An Overview of Liao Yiwu's "God is Red"

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          No, this book has nothing to do with the Republican Party of the U.S. Rather, it has everything to do with the communist party of China. I found this book and read through a few chapters. "God is Red" is a collection of stories from surviving saints of Mao's anti-religious reign.
          In this collection of stories, there's only the interviewer/co-author in common. There's, seemingly, no specific intertwined theme or thesis. However, there's a couple things I picked up from the few stories I read that I'd like to highlight.

          1) The Church, when faithful and loyal to its biblical convictions, can and does thrive, even under the most oppressing and resourceless circumstances. Even when the government is intrusively and violently antithetical to biblical living, there's a gold mine of inspirational stories about Christians in China that more people in the West ought to dig into. Sure, they're not all perfect stories (e.g. we learn a few stories of people who fearfully leave the faith and cheer along the persecution), but there's a reason that William Craig said Mao became, inadvertently, "the greatest evangelist of all time."

          2) The Gospel is transcendent. The author does well to paint a picture of life in the various villages of China, and it's quite the experience to see the Church in play in places worlds apart from the West. How many years before Christianity becomes an "indigenous religion"? Well, according to this book, in small villages of China, it only takes one generation. Modern academia (and sometimes, arguably, Christians in the West) need to learn that Christianity isn't the "white man's religion" anymore.

          It's pointed out in the foreword that Yiwu is, in fact, not a Christian, despite his driving passion and intrigue to create this book. This always stirs a mix of emotions in me. It's good that God-ly people can be positively portrayed by an "unbelieving" source (e.g. the ancient letter Those Christians), which may better communicate to unbelieving readers (perhaps better than Brother Yun's Heavenly Man), but, as Christians, we want unbelievers to be more than just intrigued.
          However, This book is a good source of stories of what all God is doing through the Church in China. We can learn from their unwavering reliance on God, tolerance of suffering, selfless hearts, God-ly attitudes, and maybe a few of their church practices.