Asian atheism

Political boundaries of Asia

Desecularization is the process by which religion reasserts its societal influence though religious values, institutions, sectors of society and symbols in reaction to previous and/or co-occurring secularization processes.

The current atheist population mostly resides in East Asia (particularly China) and in secular Europe/Australia among whites. See: Western atheism and race

According to the global news website Quartz:

“

Atheists, agnostics, and other religious non-affiliates are a dying breed in Asia. According to a Pew Research Center study released last week, Asia’s shrinking pool of men and women who don’t identify with any religion are driving a drop in the proportion of “religious nones” in the world. The percentage of the unaffiliated in Asia Pacific—home to about 76% of the world’s unaffiliated—will fall to 17% in 2050 from 21%, Pew estimates. ...this drop in Asia and the growth of religious communities elsewhere will mean the unaffiliated will make up only 13% of the world’s population in 2050, down from 16% in 2010.

”

Growth of Christianity in China

See also: Growth of Christianity in China

In front of the Great Hall of the People in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

According to Slate, "Protestant Christianity has been the fastest growing religion in China." Evangelical Christianity is especially growing sharply in China.

On November 1, 2014, an article in The Economist entitled Cracks in the atheist edifice declared:

“

Officials are untroubled by the clash between the city’s famously freewheeling capitalism and the Communist Party’s ideology, yet still see religion and its symbols as affronts to the party’s atheism... Yang Fenggang of Purdue University, in Indiana, says the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980. He reckons that on current trends there will be 250m Christians by around 2030, making China’s Christian population the largest in the world. Mr. Yang says this speed of growth is similar to that seen in fourth-century Rome just before the conversion of Constantine, which paved the way for Christianity to become the religion of his empire.

”

Collapse of atheism in the former Soviet Union

See also: Collapse of atheism in the former Soviet Union

The Soviet Union after WWII.

In 2003, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard published a paper by Assaf Moghadam entitled A Global Resurgence of Religion? which declared:

“

As the indications leave little doubt, Russia is showing clear signs of a religious resurgence. In fact, all seven criteria by which change in religious behavior and values are measured here confirmed that Russia is experiencing what could be called a religious revival. Since 1970, the nonreligious/atheist population has been on steady decline, from 52% in 1970 to 33% in 2000. Further, the percentage of this population is projected to decrease even further, possibly reaching the 20% mark in 2025. Between 1990 and 1997, belief in God has risen from 35% to a whopping 60%, while belief in the importance of God has climbed to 43% in 1997, up from 25% in 1990. More people have been raised religious in Russia in 1997 (20%) than at the beginning of the decade (18%), and 8.39% more Russians believed religion to be important toward the end of the 1990s, when compared to 1990. “Comfort in Religion” has also sharply increased within this time period, from less than 27% to over 46%. Finally, more and more Russians attend church services more regularly in 1997 than they did in 1990. In the three Eastern European countries that were included in the WVS survey on belief in God, a drastic rise could be witnessed of respondents who answered this question in the affirmative. In Hungary, the percentage of believers in God jumped from 44% to 58% from 1981 to 1990, even prior to the collapse of the former Soviet Union. In Belarus, the number of people who believe in God nearly doubled over the course of the 1990s, from 36% to 68%, while in Latvia this figure almost quadrupled, from 18% to 67% in the same time period. Similar trends held true when it came to the importance of God, where there was a sharp rise in all three countries.

”

Growth of Protestantism in Russia

Russia spans from Eastern Europe to Northern Asia.

Russia spans from Eastern Europe to Northern Asia.

A large number of missionaries operating presently operating in Russia are from Protestant denominations.

According to a survey conducted at the end of 2013, 2% of surveyed Russians identify as Protestants or another branch of Christianity.

Russia Watch in an article entitled Is Russia Turning Protestant? wrote:

“

Russia’s Justice Ministry has registered 14,616 Orthodox parishes, 4,409 Protestant parishes, and 234 Catholic parishes. But Anatoly Pchelintsev, a religion specialist and professor at the Russian State Humanitarian University, estimates that for every registered Protestant congregation, there are at least two unregistered ones. Pchelintsev, who edits the Religion and Law publication here, concludes that Russia has about 15,000 Protestant congregations, roughly equal to the number of Russian Orthodox ones. He says the number of Catholic parishes is roughly the same as the official number. In Siberia, long a land of dissenters and discontents, there are believed to be more Protestants in church on Sunday mornings than Russian Orthodox. On one recent visit to Khabarovsk, the second largest city of the Russian Far East, I went to a packed Baptist church, only a kilometer from a sparsely attended Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The massive Cathedral had been built with federal funds.

”

Evangelicalism and Russia

According to the Christian Broadcasting Network:

“

The Orthodox Church's biggest competitors are the evangelical, charismatic congregations, which are experiencing tremendous growth. "So many Russians are leaving the Orthodox Church and joining the charismatic churches and they don't like it," Ryakhovski said. Ryakhovski gave CBN News a document produced by a leading Russian research group and backed by the Orthodox Church. The paper was titled, "Ways to weaken the potential of neo-Pentecostal sects and to help their victims.".... Once a persecuted minority, evangelical Christians in Russia and the surrounding countries that once made up the former Soviet Union, are now exerting more influence in society by displaying what it means to be a true follower of Jesus Christ. "People are looking for meaning, they are looking for authentic lifestyles, authentic relationships," Sipko told CBN News. "And so in the midst of all the economic and social changes, we have the opportunity to demonstrate what a personal relationship with Jesus is like."

”

Factors related to growth of Christianity in Asia

See also: Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's website RN reports:

“

The reason for this rise in Asian Christianity is as varied as the region is diverse. However for South Korea, China and other economically vibrant neighbours contributing to the rise of the Asian Century, German sociologist Max Weber got it right. Christianity is like the spiritual backdrop to the market economy. Christian business people in China ‘think that the Protestant work ethic is particularly suitable for this market economy,’ claims Professor Fenggang Yang, sociologist at Purdue University in Indiana. ‘The market economy [in China] is sometimes associated with a high ratio of corruption—doing business without rules or regulations, or when those regulations cannot be enforced,’ he says. Contrary to the belief that modernism breeds secularism, Yang posits that the rise of the Chinese entrepreneurial class has created a demand for internal rules—morality, ethics and spiritual certainty—all the elements that make up religion’s job description. The demand for this religious foundation is certainly formidable. Beijing controls Christianity by sanctioning only a set number of churches, yet underground or ‘house churches’ keep popping up, like Bible studies groups that gather at McDonalds, recounts Yang. Buddhism, Confucianism and other great religious and philosophical traditions indigenous to Asia also provide the same spiritual bedrock, and overall, religion is on the rise in China. However Christianity can claim more converts because of its association with other key aspects of a modern life like better education, individual freedom, equality and democracy says Yang. Sebastian Kim of York St John University in the UK concurs. Unlike other Asian countries, Koreans, not foreign missionaries, planted the first seeds of Christianity in Korea. Yet, it was western missionaries who brought with them hospitals, schools and other social institutions that helped transform Korea.

”

Justin Wood wrote:

“

China, devoured by hunger so many times in its history, now feels a spiritual hunger beneath the neon exterior of its suddenly great cities. Four hundred million Chinese on the prosperous coast have moved from poverty to affluence in a single generation, and 10 million to 15 million new migrants come from the countryside each year, the greatest movement of people in history. Despite a government stance that hovers somewhere between discouragement and persecution, more than 100 million of them have embraced a faith that regards this life as mere preparation for the next world. Given the immense effort the Chinese have devoted to achieving a tolerable life in the present world, this may seem anomalous. On the contrary: it is the great migration of peoples that prepares the ground for Christianity, just as it did during the barbarian invasions of Europe during the Middle Ages.

”

China, communism and atheism

See also: Atheism and communism

Communist countries practice state atheism (See: Atheism and communism).

In 1955, Chinese communist leader Zhou Enlai declared, "We Communists are atheists". In 2014, the Communist Party of China reaffirmed that members of their party must be atheists.

In 2016, the International Business Times reported:

“

A senior Chinese advisor on religious affairs has said the country should promote atheism throughout society, in remarks that appear to reflect a deepening campaign to reinforce traditional Marxist values in China — and could add to concern about official attitudes among believers in the country’s five officially recognized religions.

”

There is growing persecution of Christians by the Chinese government. However, historically persecution has often been an ineffective means to stop the growth of Christianity in a region.

The historian Martin Van Crevel points out that sovereign states are losing power/influence due to technology democratizing access to information, welfare states increasingly failing, fourth-generation warfare being waged against countries and sovereign states increasingly losing their ability to maintain internal order.

Asian century and its implications

The atheist and Harvard University historian Niall Ferguson declared: "Through a mixture of hard work and thrift the Protestant societies of the North and West Atlantic achieved the most rapid economic growth in history."

The Asian Century is the projected 21st-century dominance of Asian politics and culture by social scientists, based on current demographic and economic trends persisting. The characterization of the 21st century being an Asian Century parallels the 20th-century seen as the American Century, and the 19th century as the British Century. See also: British atheism

A 2011 study conducted by the Asian Development Bank estimates that an additional 3 billion Asians could enjoy living standards similar to those in Europe today, and the region could produce over half of global economic output by the middle of this century. It did warn, however, that the Asian Century is not cast in stone and it is merely a projection based on current trends.

In China, the growth in religion has accompanied China’s fast economic growth over the last twenty years. Christianity is seeing rapid growth in China and the historian Niall Ferguson attributes this recent economic growth to the Protestant work ethic being more incorporated into Chinese society. See: Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Atheism and sloth

Effect on global influence of Christianity

Justin Wood also wrote:

“

Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by ...veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world's largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history... I suspect that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the downside, and that Christianity will have become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now. China may be for the 21st century what Europe was during the 8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past 200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelization.

”

Traditional values in Asia and increased global cultural influence

Geographic regions which achieve increased economic dominance often increase their cultural influence in the world.

In the Western World, the secular left promotes libertine morality (see: Moral failures of the atheist population) whereas Asian cultures often have more traditional/family values. And desecularization occurring Asia along with a growth of religious conservatives in Asia, could further increase traditional/family values in Asia and the rest of the world.

Furthermore, the desecularization of Asia is not an isolated event. The world is experiencing a global resurgence of religion (see: Growth of global desecularization).