title: Washington National Cathedral

text: In June 2016, after an examination by a five-person task force, it was announced that two Confederate battle flag images would be removed from stained glass windows commemorating the lives of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The windows were installed in 1953 after lobbying by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In its report, the task force wrote that it "is unanimous in its decision that the windows provide a catalyst for honest discussions about race and the legacy of slavery and for addressing the uncomfortable and too often avoided issues of race in America. Moreover, the windows serve as a profound witness to the cathedral's own complex history in relationship to race."


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: On September 6, 2017, the cathedral, in a statement signed by the Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, the Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, dean of the cathedral, and John Donoghue, chair of the cathedral chapter, announced its decision to deconsecrate and remove the stained glass windows honoring Lee and Jackson.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: In January 2003, the Reverend Nathan D. Baxter, dean of the cathedral, announced his retirement effective from June 30, 2003. Baxter had led the cathedral since 1991. After an 18-month search, Samuel T. Lloyd III was named dean and began his tenure on April 23, 2005. Using a $15 million bequest the cathedral received in 2000, Lloyd rapidly expanded the cathedral's programming. Meanwhile, the cathedral deferred maintenance and declined to make needed repairs. Construction also began in summer 2005 on a $34 million, four-level, 430-car underground parking garage. It opened in 2007. The structure was pushed by John Bryson Chane, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and was mostly funded by debt. Payments on the garage were $500,000 per year, with a major increase in the annual debt service beginning in 2017. In early 2008, the National Cathedral Association, the church's fundraising donor network, was disbanded after cathedral leaders concluded that the building was "finished" and it was no longer necessary to raise significant funds for construction.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The 2008–2009 Great Recession hit the cathedral hard. By June 2010, the cathedral cut its budget from $27 million to $13 million, outsourced the operation of its gift shop, shut its greenhouse, cancelled its plans to replace the Skinner organ in the sanctuary, and ceased operation of the College of Preachers that had provided Episcopal clergy nationwide with continuing theological education. The cathedral also laid off 100 of its 170 staff members, including its art conservator and its liturgist (who researched and advocated the use of liturgies at the cathedral). It also significantly cut back on programming, music performances, and classes. To help stabilize its finances, the cathedral began an $11 million fundraising campaign and used $2.5 million of its $50 million endowment to plug budget holes. The National Cathedral Association was recreated as well.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: In June 2010, the cathedral announced that it was exploring the sale of its rare book collection, the value of which was estimated to be several million dollars. It sold a number of books to a private collector in 2011 for $857,000 and in 2013 donated most of the remaining collection to Virginia Theological Seminary.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: As the economic downturn continued, a report by cathedral staff identified $30 million in needed maintenance and repairs. Among the problems were cracked and missing mortar in the oldest sections of the building; broken HVAC, mechanical, and plumbing systems throughout the structure; extensive preservation needs; and a main organ in disrepair. Repointing the building was estimated to cost at least $5 million, while organ repair was set at $15 million.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The cathedral's final design shows a mix of influences from the various Gothic architectural styles of the Middle Ages, identifiable in its pointed arches, flying buttresses, a variety of ceiling vaulting, stained-glass windows and carved decorations in stone, and by its three similar towers, two on the west front and one surmounting the crossing.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The structure consists of a long, narrow rectangular mass formed by a nine-bay nave with wide side aisles and a five-bay chancel, intersected by a six-bay transept. Above the crossing, rising above the ground, is the Gloria in Excelsis Tower; its top, at above sea level, is the highest point in Washington. The Pilgrim Observation Gallery—which occupies a space about 3/4ths of the way up in the west-end towers—provides sweeping views of the city. Unique in North America, the central tower has two full sets of bells—a 53-bell carillon and a 10-bell peal for change ringing; the change bells are rung by members of the Washington Ringing Society. The cathedral sits on a landscaped plot on Mount Saint Alban. The one-story porch projecting from the south transept has a large portal with a carved tympanum. This portal is approached by the Pilgrim Steps, a long flight of steps wide.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: Most of the building is constructed using a buff-colored Indiana limestone over a traditional masonry core. Structural, load-bearing steel is limited to the roof's trusses (traditionally built of timber); concrete is used significantly in the support structures for bells of the central tower, and the floors in the west towers.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The pulpit was carved out of stones from Canterbury Cathedral; Glastonbury Abbey provided stone for the bishop's formal seat, the cathedra. The high altar, the Jerusalem Altar, is made from stones quarried at Solomon's Quarry near Jerusalem, reputedly where the stones for Solomon's Temple were quarried. In the floor directly in front of that altar are set ten stones from the Chapel of Moses on Mount Sinai, representing the Ten Commandments as a foundation for the Jerusalem Altar.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: There are many other works of art including over two hundred stained glass windows, the most familiar of which may be the Space Window, honoring mankind's landing on the Moon, which includes a fragment of lunar rock at its center; the rock was presented at the dedication service on July 21, 1974, the fifth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Extensive wrought iron adorns the building, much of it the work of Samuel Yellin. A substantial gate of forged iron and carbon steel by Albert Paley was installed on the north side of the crypt level in 2008. Intricate woodcarving, wall-sized murals and mosaics, and monumental cast bronze gates can also be found. Most of the interior decorative elements have Christian symbolism, in reference to the church's Episcopal roots, but the cathedral is filled with memorials to persons or events of national significance: statues of Washington and Lincoln, state seals embedded in the marble floor of the narthex, state flags that hang along the nave, stained glass commemorating events like the Lewis and Clark expedition and the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The cathedral was built with several intentional "flaws" in keeping with an apocryphal medieval custom that sought to illustrate that only God can be perfect. Artistically speaking, these flaws (which often come in the form of intentional asymmetries) draw the observer's focus to the sacred geometry as well as compensate for visual distortions, a practice that has been used since the Pyramids and the Parthenon. The architects designed the crypt chapels in Norman, Romanesque, and Transitional styles predating the Gothic, as though the cathedral had been built as a successor to earlier churches, a common occurrence in European cathedrals.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: Numerous grotesques and gargoyles adorn the exterior, most of them designed by the carvers; one of the more famous of these is a caricature of then-master carver Roger Morigi on the north exterior of the nave. There were also two competitions held for the public to provide designs to supplement those of the carvers. The second of these produced the famous Darth Vader grotesque which is high on the northwest tower, sculpted by Jay Hall Carpenter and carved by Patrick J. Plunkett.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The west facade follows an iconographic program of Creation rather than that of the Last Judgement as was traditional in medieval churches. All of the sculptural work was designed by Frederick Hart and features tympanum carvings of the creation of the Sun and Moon over the outer doors and the creation of man over the center. Hart also sculpted the three statues of Adam and Saints Peter and Paul. The west doors are cast bronze rather than wrought iron. The west rose window, often used as a trademark of the cathedral, was designed by Rowan LeCompte and is an abstract depiction of the creation of light. LeCompte, who also designed the clerestory windows and the mosaics in the Resurrection Chapel, chose a nonrepresentational design because he feared that a figural window could fail to be seen adequately from the great distance to the nave.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The cathedral contains a basement, which was intentionally flooded during the Cuban Missile Crisis to provide emergency drinking water in the event of a nuclear war.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The cathedral's master plan was designed by George Frederick Bodley (founder of Watts & Co.), a highly regarded British Gothic Revival architect of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, and was influenced by Canterbury. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. contributed a landscaping plan for the cathedral close and Nellie B. Allen designed a knot garden for the Bishop's Garden. After Bodley died in 1907, his partner Henry Vaughan revised the original design, but work stopped during World War I and Vaughan died in 1917.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: When work resumed after the war, the chapter hired Boston architecture firm Frohman, Robb and Little to execute the building. Philip Hubert Frohman, who had designed his first fully functional home at age 14 and received his architectural degree at age 16, and his partners worked to perfect Bodley's vision, adding the carillon section of the central tower, enlarging the west façade, and making numerous smaller changes. Ralph Adams Cram was hired to supervise Frohman, because of his experience with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York, but Cram insisted on so many major changes to the original design that Frohman convinced the cathedral chapter to fire him. By Frohman's death in 1972, the final plans had been completed and the building was finished accordingly.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The cathedral is both the episcopal seat of the Bishop of Washington (currently the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde) and the primatial seat of the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (currently the Most Reverend Michael Curry). Budde was elected by the Diocese of Washington in June 2011, to replace Bishop John Bryson Chane; upon her confirmation in November 2011 she became the ninth bishop of the diocese and the first woman to fill the role.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The National Cathedral Association (NCA) seeks to raise and provide funds for and promote the Washington National Cathedral. Across the United States, it has more than 14,000 members, more than 88 percent of whom live outside the Washington area, and who are divided into committees by state. Visitors to the cathedral provide another significant source of funds, through donations and group touring fees. Every year, each state has a state day at the cathedral, on which that state is recognized by name in the prayers. Over a span of about four years, each state is further recognized at a Major State Day, at which time those who live in the state are encouraged to make a pilgrimage to the cathedral and dignitaries from the state are invited to speak. American state flags were displayed in the nave until 2007; currently the display of the state flags alternates throughout the year with the display of liturgical banners hung on the pillars, reflecting the seasons of the Church year.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The budget, $27 million in 2008, was trimmed to $13 million in 2010. Staff was reduced from 170 to 70. There was an endowment of $50 million.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: In May 2016, Randolph Marshall Hollerith was named as the next dean of the cathedral. Hollerith came to the National Cathedral from St. James Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, where he was rector from 2000 to 2016.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The worship department is, like the cathedral itself, rooted in the doctrine and practice of the Episcopal Church, and based in the "Book of Common Prayer". Three services are held each weekday, including the daily Eucharist. Sunday through Thursday, the cathedral choirs sing Evensong. The 40-minute service is attended by roughly 50 to 75 people, with more on Sunday. Three services of the Eucharist are held on Sunday, along with Choral Evensong.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The cathedral also has been a temporary home to several congregations, including a Jewish synagogue and an Eastern Orthodox community. It has also been the site for several ecumenical and interfaith services. In October 2005, at the cathedral, the Rev. Nancy Wilson was consecrated and installed as moderator (denominational executive) of the Metropolitan Community Church, by its founding moderator, the Rev. Troy Perry.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: Each Christmas, the cathedral holds special services, which are broadcast to the world. The service of lessons and carols is distributed by Public Radio International. "Christmas at Washington National Cathedral" is a live television broadcast of the 9:00 a.m. Eucharist on Christmas Day. It is produced by WJLA-TV and is shown on national affiliates in most cities around the United States. Some affiliates broadcast the service at noon. The Christmas service at the cathedral was broadcast to the nation on television from 1953 until 2010 and is still webcast live from the cathedral's homepage.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The Washington National Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys, founded in 1909, is one of very few cathedral choirs of men and boys in the United States with an affiliated school, in the English choir tradition. The eighteen to twenty-two boys singing treble are of ages 8 to 14 and attend St. Albans School, the Cathedral school for boys, on vocal scholarships.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: In 1997, the Cathedral Choir of Men and Girls was formed by Bruce Neswick, using the same men as the choir of the men and boys. The Choir consists of middle and high school girls attending the National Cathedral School on vocal scholarships. The two choirs currently share service duties and occasionally collaborate.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: Both choirs have recently recorded several CDs, including a Christmas album; a U.S. premiere recording of Ståle Kleiberg's "Requiem for the Victims of Nazi Persecution"; and a patriotic album, "America the Beautiful".


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The choirs rehearse separately every weekday morning in a graded class incorporated into their school schedule. The choristers sing Evensong five days a week (the Boys Choir on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Girls Choir on Mondays and Wednesdays). The choirs alternate Sunday worship duties, singing both morning Eucharist and afternoon Evensong when they are on call. The choirs also sing for numerous state and national events. The choirs are also featured annually on "Christmas at Washington National Cathedral", broadcast nationally on Christmas Day.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The Great Organ was installed by the Ernest M. Skinner & Son Organ Company in 1938. The original instrument consisted of approximately 8,400 pipes. The instrument was enlarged by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company in 1963 and again between 1970 and 1975, during which time more than half of the original instrument was removed. The present instrument consists of 189 ranks and 10,647 pipes.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The organ was to be replaced with a new instrument built by Dobson Pipe Organ Builders, but this plan was scrapped in 2009. As of 2018, it is currently unknown whether the organ replacement will take place.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: Michael McCarthy is the canon director of music, Thomas Sheehan is the cathedral organist and associate director of music, and George Fergus is the Assistant Organist. The carillonneur is Edward M. Nassor. Former organists and choirmasters include Edgar Priest, Robert George Barrow, Paul Callaway, Richard Wayne Dirksen, Douglas Major, Bruce Neswick, James Litton, Erik Wm. Suter, Scott Dettra, Christopher Betts and Benjamin Straley.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The cathedral is unique in North America in having both a carillon and a set of change ringing bells.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The ring of 10 bells (tenor in D) are hung in the English style for full circle ringing. All ten were cast in 1962 by Mears & Stainbank (now known as The Whitechapel Bell Foundry) of London, England.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The carillon has 53 bells ranging from to and was manufactured by John Taylor & Co of Loughborough, England in 1963. The bells are hung "dead", meaning rigidly fixed, and are struck on the inside by hammers activated from the keyboard.


title: Washington National Cathedral

text: The cathedral played a major role in The West Wing season 2 finale Two Cathedrals. In a scene following the funeral of a major character, President Bartlet engages in a one-sided argument with God which seamlessly blends English and Latin dialogue.


title: Casualties of War

text: Casualties of War is a 1989 American war drama film directed by Brian De Palma and written by David Rabe, based primarily on an article written by Daniel Lang for "The New Yorker" in 1969, which was later published as a book. The film stars Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn, and is based on the events of the 1966 incident on Hill 192 during the Vietnam War, in which a Vietnamese woman was kidnapped from her village by a squad of American soldiers, who raped and murdered her. For the film, all names and some details of the true story were altered.


title: Casualties of War

text: Lieutenant Reilly leads his platoon of American soldiers on a nighttime patrol. They are attacked by the Viet Cong (VC) after a panicked soldier exposes their position. While guarding the platoon's flank, Eriksson falls as the top of a VC tunnel gives way beneath him. Eriksson's squad leader, Sergeant Tony Meserve, pulls Eriksson out of the hole and eventually, the platoon retreats out of the jungle.


title: Casualties of War

text: The platoon takes a break outside a river village in the Central Highlands. While relaxing and joking around, one of Meserve's friends, Specialist 4 "Brownie" Brown, is killed when the Viet Cong ambushes them. Brownie's death has a major impact on Meserve. The platoon is sent back to their base. Private First Class Antonio Dìaz arrives as the replacement radio operator.


title: Casualties of War

text: Frustrated because his squad has been denied leave for an extended period, Meserve orders the squad to kidnap a Vietnamese girl. Eriksson strenuously objects, but Meserve, Corporal Thomas E. Clark and Private First Class Herbert Hatcher ignore him. Before the quintet disembarks, Eriksson voices his concerns to his closest friend, Rowan. At nightfall, the squad enters a village and kidnaps a Vietnamese girl, Tran Thi Oanh.


title: Casualties of War

text: As the squad treks through the mountains, Dìaz begins to reconsider raping Tran and begs Eriksson to back him up. The squad and Tran eventually take refuge in an abandoned hooch, where Eriksson is confronted and threatened by Meserve, Clark, and Hatcher. Dìaz suddenly gives in to the pressure, leaving Eriksson alone in opposing the act. Meserve forces Eriksson to stand guard outside while the other men sequentially rape Tran.


title: Casualties of War

text: At daybreak, Eriksson is ordered to guard Tran while the rest of the squad takes up a position near a railroad bridge overlooking a Viet Cong river supply depot. Through his acts of kindness, Eriksson manages to earn Tran's trust and prepares to go AWOL and return Tran to her family. However, Meserve sends Clark to get Eriksson and Tran to go to the bridge before Eriksson can carry out his plan.


title: Casualties of War

text: Meserve has Dìaz order close air support for an assault on the depot and then orders Dìaz to kill Tran with a knife. Before Dìaz can kill her, Eriksson fires his rifle into the air, exposing them to the nearby Viet Cong. Amidst the firefight, Tran tries to escape. Eriksson tries to save her, but Meserve stops him and knocks him down with the butt of his gun. Eriksson watches helplessly as the entire squad shoots Tran numerous times until she falls off the bridge to her death.


title: Casualties of War

text: After the battle, Eriksson wakes up in a field hospital at the base. He eventually bumps into Rowan and tells him everything that happened. Rowan suggests that Eriksson see Reilly and company commander Captain Hill. Reilly and Hill both prefer to bury the matter but Hill, infuriated at Eriksson's determination to press the issue, resolves to get rid of Eriksson and orders him transferred to a tunnel rat unit. The other men in Meserve's squad will all be reassigned as well.


title: Casualties of War

text: After narrowly escaping an attempt to kill him in the latrine with a grenade (made by Clark), Eriksson storms into a tent and smacks Clark in the face with a shovel, reminding Meserve that killing him is unnecessary because no one cares about what they did. Meserve shakily derides Eriksson, saying he's crazy, and Eriksson leaves.


title: Casualties of War

text: Eriksson then meets an Army chaplain at a bar and describes what happened during the patrol. The chaplain in turn reports it, launching an investigation. The four men who participated in the rape and murder are court martialed: Meserve receives 10 years hard labor and a dishonorable discharge, Clark receives life in prison, and Hatcher and Diaz receive 15 and 8 years of hard labor, respectively.


title: Casualties of War

text: At the end of the film, Eriksson wakens from a nightmare to find himself on a J-Church transit line in San Francisco, just a few seats from a Vietnamese-American student who resembles Tran. She disembarks at Dolores Park and forgets her scarf, prompting Eriksson to run after her to return it. As she thanks him and turns away, he calls after her in Vietnamese. She surmises that she reminds him of someone, and that he has had a bad dream. They go their separate ways, and Eriksson is somewhat comforted.


title: Casualties of War

text: The film continued the pseudonyms Lang used in his article, even though the soldiers' real names had since become public. Only the victim "Tran Thi Oahn" was referred to by her real name.


title: Casualties of War

text: The film was based on the real-life incident on Hill 192, and on Daniel Lang's lengthy New Yorker article, "Casualties of War," published in October 1969 and released as a book, with the same title, a month later. Film rights were bought by David Susskind who was to produce the film for Warner Bros. Pete Hamill wrote a script and Jack Clayton was to direct. However the film was not made. In the meantime, Michael Verhoeven made his film based on the incident, titled "o.k.". Verhoeven's film was entered to the Berlin Film Festival in 1970, causing so much controversy among the judges, that the festival was shut down for that year with no awards given. De Palma was at that festival with his film "Dionysus in '69".


title: Casualties of War

text: In 1979 David Rabe mentioned the project to Brian De Palma, who was interested but was unable to raise the money to finance it. Some years later Rabe had written a script, and De Palma attached Michael J. Fox and Sean Penn as actors. They almost succeeded in getting the film financed at Paramount Pictures, but ultimately decided not to proceed when the budget went from $17 million to $20 million. De Palma then went on to make "The Untouchables" which was a big hit; Dawn Steel had liked the project at Paramount, and when she became head of production at Columbia Pictures, "Casualties of War" was the first film she green-lit.


title: Casualties of War

text: "Historically Vietnam War movies have been very profitable," said Steel. "All of them. "Platoon", "Full Metal Jacket", "Apocalypse Now", "The Deer Hunter". You're looking at movies that have never been not pretty successful, but very successful. The foreign numbers have been extraordinary."


title: Casualties of War

text: The film was shot in April–May 1988, mostly on location in Thailand, with some filming in San Francisco. The bridge location was filmed in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, which was the same as the famous "Bridge on the River Kwai".


title: Casualties of War

text: This film was Fox's third major dramatic role. He had previously starred in "Light of Day" and "Bright Lights, Big City". John C. Reilly makes his screen debut in the film; he would work with Penn again in "We're No Angels" and "State of Grace". John Leguizamo, who appeared in his first major film role, would again star with Penn in another picture by De Palma, 1993's "Carlito's Way".


title: Casualties of War

text: "Let's be honest," said Fox at the time. "If this movie makes a buck and a half it's going to be things like "Bikini's Away" for me. But to fail doing something unexpected is no disgrace. To fail doing the ordinary is a disaster. This movie is about how much you will risk if you have nothing to gain."


title: Casualties of War

text: "Casualties of War" opened in 1,487 theatres, and ranked number 4 in box office for the first week of its release. It went on to gross $18.7 million.


title: Casualties of War

text: The theatrical cut of the film was released on DVD in 2001. This version has the original 113 minute running time.


title: Casualties of War

text: An extended cut of the film was released on DVD in 2006, that contains two scenes cut from the original release. One has Eriksson being interrogated by the two investigators, and the other is the defense attorney (played by uncredited Gregg Henry) trying to discredit Eriksson during the trial. This extended version has a running time of 119 minutes.


title: Casualties of War

text: The film holds an 83% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 47 reviews. The site's consensus states: ""Casualties of War" takes a harrowing plunge into the Vietnam War with a well-acted ensemble piece that ranks among director Brian De Palma's more mature efforts." Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Casualties of War

text: Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and wrote, "More than most films, it depends on the strength of its performances for its effect – and especially on Penn's performance. If he is not able to convince us of his power, his rage and his contempt for the life of the girl, the movie would not work. He does, in a performance of overwhelming, brutal power." Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" stated, "'Casualties of War' moves toward its climax so inevitably and surely that the courts-martial, which are the film's penultimate sequence, are no less riveting for the theatrical way in which they have been compressed." He also called Penn's performance "extremely fine" and wrote of Fox that he "remains firmly in character" in a "difficult" role. Todd McCarthy of "Variety" wrote, "A powerful metaphor of the national shame that was America's orgy of destruction in Vietnam, Brian DePalma's film is flawed by some punch-pulling but is sure to rouse strong audience interest, even if the Columbia release will be a bitter pill for many." Gene Siskel of the "Chicago Tribune" gave the film three stars out of four and called it "a major effort in a minor key because of the limitations of the simple story." Michael Wilmington of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote, ""Casualties of War" is DePalma's 19th movie and easily his best. His detractors saw his Hitchcock-pastiche thrillers as manipulative and sadistic, but here he's not dealing with stylish slashers or bloody set-pieces. He doesn't have to reach for a shock. He's dredging up a deeper horror: the hell that lies beneath every man's skin, waiting to erupt." Hal Hinson of "The Washington Post" praised it as "a film of great emotional power" and "one of the most punishing, morally complex movies about men at war ever made."


title: Casualties of War

text: Dr. Valerie Wieskamp, who has written about sexual violence in U.S. wars, cites the film as an example of the whitewashing of U.S. military war crimes in popular culture. She highlights how the few changes made to the real story serve to support a narrative of the military as a flawed, but ultimately just and heroic institution. Among the details she highlights is its failure to mention that the sentences imposed at trial were later severely cut down, with the last of the perpetrators being freed after only four years. While Eriksson/Storeby is the hero whose bravery is suggested to represent U.S. national and military identity, even the rapists and murderers on his squad are granted an imaginary backstory of a recently fallen squadmate to "explain" their acts.


title: Casualties of War

text: De Palma invited Steven Spielberg to a private screening of the film, and after the screening ended, Spielberg said to Columbia Pictures executive Dawn Steel, "You'll be thinking about this for a week." David Rabe disassociated himself from the film, saying that De Palma had not been faithful to his script. It was also criticized by Vietnam veterans' groups. Quentin Tarantino has hailed the film as "the greatest film about the Vietnam War."


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: Rainbow Kitten Surprise is an alternative rock indie band, featuring lead vocalist Ela Melo, Darrick "Bozzy" Keller (guitar, backup vocals), Ethan Goodpaster (electric guitar), Jess Haney (drums), and Charlie Holt (bass). The band formed in Boone, North Carolina. (Robbinsville, North Carolina is the hometown of Jess Haney and Ethan Goodpaster.)


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: Rainbow Kitten Surprise, "RKS" for short, is known for its harmonies, instrumentation, and lyrics. Their sound has been influenced by artists such as Modest Mouse, Kings of Leon, Frank Ocean and Schoolboy Q.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: Rainbow Kitten Surprise was formed in 2013 by Ela Melo and Darrick Keller. The two wrote and composed music together as they attended Appalachian State University. The band name was created by a friend who was on a morphine drip at the time, recently out of surgery. Their first EP, "Mary", was recorded in a dorm room at the university. They later added three new members, Ethan Goodpaster, Jess Haney, and Charlie Holt. RKS independently released its first album, "Seven", which was later re-released together with the band's first EP as a joint album called "Seven + Mary". RKS initially recorded its music under the Split Rail Records label, a student run label at Appalachian State University's Hayes School of Music, where three of the band's members attended. From 2014 through 2017, Rainbow Kitten Surprise has performed at multiple music festivals and other events, including Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival and Austin City Limits Festival.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: On April 6, 2018, RKS released its "How To: Friend, Love, Freefall" album, under the Elektra Records label. It features 13 tracks, including the single "Hide", the music video of which depicts four drag queens coming out to their families. The single "Fever Pitch" from the album climbed to number 34th on "Billboard"s Alternative Songs chart in spring 2018. In spring and summer 2018, the group toured the US and Canada to promote the album.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: In April 2019, RKS performed at several venues across North Carolina to raise funds for Equality NC, the country's oldest statewide LGBT equality organization.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: In May 2019, RKS released "Mary (B-Sides)", consisting of a studio recording of "Heart" (a song originally released via YouTube and SoundCloud in 2014) and the track "No Vacancy".


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: In June 2019, they performed at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheater, which they sold out in seven days. This was the last stop on their summer tour.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: In January 2020, the long-running PBS show Austin City Limits aired Rainbow Kitten Surprise in a half-hour set recorded the previous fall.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: On July 14, 2020, RKS played a livestream concert. This was their first of the year because of the cancellation of many events due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: On October 9, 2020, Rainbow Kitten Surprise released the single "Our Song", which had been previously played at multiple live events. This single marked their first release as a band since May 2019.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: On August 13, 2021, Rainbow Kitten Surprise released the live album "RKS! Live from Athens Georgia". It included a collection of 25 songs performed at a previous live concert.


title: Rainbow Kitten Surprise

text: On April 6, 2022, Rainbow Kitten Surprise released the single "Work Out," their first new single released in nearly 18 months.


title: Christianity in China

text: Christianity in China has been present since at least the 3rd century, and it has gained a significant amount of influence during the last 200 years.


title: Christianity in China

text: While Christianity may have existed in China before the 3rd century, evidence of its existence begins to surmount with the attestation of the Syriac-speaking ethnographer Bardesanes at the end of the 2nd century. Presently, verifiable evidence of Christianity's existence in China can only be dated back to the 7th century. The significant lack of evidence of Christianity's existence in China between the 3rd century and the 7th century can likely be attributed to the barriers placed in Persia by the Sassanids and the closure of the trade route in Turkestan.


title: Christianity in China

text: Both events prevented Christians from staying in contact with their mother church, the Syriac Antiochian Church, thereby halting the spread of Christianity until the reign of emperor T'sai-tsung, or Taizong (627-649). Taizong, who had studied the Christian Scriptures which were given to him by the Assyrian missionary Alopen, realized "their propriety and truth and specifically ordered their preaching and transmission."


title: Christianity in China

text: The Syro-Persian Church of the East (frequently mischaracterized as Nestorianism) appeared in China in the 7th century, during the Tang dynasty. Catholicism was one of the religions patronized by the emperors of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, but it did not take root in China until it was reintroduced by Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, Protestant missionaries attracted small but influential followings, and independent Chinese churches were also established.


title: Christianity in China

text: It is estimated that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in China. There were some four million before 1949 (three million Catholics and one million Protestants). Accurate data on Chinese Christians is difficult to access.


title: Christianity in China

text: In the early 2000s, there were approximately 38 million Protestants and 10-12 million Catholics, with a smaller number of Evangelical and Orthodox Christians. The number of Chinese Christians had increased significantly since the easing of restrictions on religious activities during the economic reforms of the late 1970s. In 2018, the Chinese government declared that there are over 44 million Christians in China. On the other hand, some international Christian organizations estimate that there are tens of millions more, who choose not to publicly identify as such. These estimations are controversial because the organizations which make them are often accused of deliberately inflating them.


title: Christianity in China

text: The practice of religion was tightly controlled in dynastic times and it is also tightly controlled today. Chinese who are over the age of 18 are only permitted to join officially sanctioned Christian groups which are registered with the government-sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Church, the China Christian Council and the Protestant Three-Self Church. On the other hand, many Christians who practice Christianity are members of informal networks and unregistered congregations, these congregations are frequently described as house churches or underground churches, the proliferation of which began in the 1950s when many Chinese Protestants and Catholics rejected the state-controlled structures which were purported to represent them. Members of such groups are said to represent the "silent majority" of Chinese Christians and they also represent many diverse theological traditions.


title: Christianity in China

text: There are various terms which are used for "God" in the Chinese language, the most prevalent of them is "Shangdi" (, literally, the "Highest Emperor"), commonly used by both Protestants and non-Christians, and "Tianzhu" (, literally, the "Lord of Heaven"), which is most commonly used by Catholics. "Shen" (), which is also widely used by Chinese Protestants, defines the gods or the generative powers of nature in Chinese traditional religions. Historically, Christians have also adopted a variety of terms from the Chinese classics as references to God, for example, the Ruler () and the Creator ().


title: Christianity in China

text: Terms for Christianity in Chinese include: "Protestantism" (); "Catholicism" (); and Eastern Orthodox Christians (). The whole of Orthodox Christianity is named "Zhèng jiào" (). Christians in China are referred to as "Christ followers/believers" () or "Christ religion followers/believers" ().


title: Christianity in China

text: The Christian apologist Arnobius (died c. AD 330) claimed in his work "Against the Heathen: Book II", that Christianity had reached the land of Seres (an old Roman name for northern China) saying "For the deeds can be reckoned up and numbered which have been done in India, among the Seres, Persians, and Medes; in Arabia, Egypt, in Asia, Syria; among the Galatians, Parthians, Phrygians; in Achaia, Macedonia, Epirus; in all islands and provinces on which the rising and setting sun shines; in Rome herself, finally, the mistress of the world, in which, although men are busied with the practices introduced by king Numa, and the superstitious observances of antiquity, they have nevertheless hastened to give up their fathers' mode of life, and attach themselves to Christian truth." However, to date, there is little to no archaeological evidence or knowledge about the pre-Church-of-the-East classical Chinese and/or Tocharian church.


title: Christianity in China

text: Two (possibly Church of the East) monks were preaching Christianity in India in the 6th century before they smuggled silkworm eggs from China to the Byzantine Empire.


title: Christianity in China

text: The first documentation of Christianity entering China was written on an 8th-century stone tablet known as the Xi'an Stele. It records that Christians reached the Tang dynasty capital Xi'an in 635 and were allowed to establish places of worship and to propagate their faith. The leader of the Christian travelers was Alopen.


title: Christianity in China

text: Some modern scholars question whether Nestorianism is the proper term for the Christianity that was practiced in China, since it did not adhere to what was preached by Nestorius. They instead prefer to refer to it as "Church of the East", a term which encompasses the various forms of early Christianity in Asia.


title: Christianity in China

text: In 845, at the height of the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, the Emperor Wuzong of Tang decreed that Buddhism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism be banned, and their very considerable assets forfeited to the state.


title: Christianity in China

text: Christianity is extinct in China; the native Christians have perished in one way or another; the church has been destroyed and there is only one Christian left in the land.


title: Christianity in China

text: Karel Pieters noted that some Christian gravestones are dated from the Song and Liao dynasties (ca. 900s to 1200s), implying that some Christians remained in China in these eras.


title: Christianity in China

text: Christianity was a major influence in the Mongol Empire, as several Mongol tribes were primarily Church of the East Christian, and many of the wives of Genghis Khan's descendants were Christian. Contacts with Western Christianity also came in this time period, via envoys from the Papacy to the capital of the Yuan dynasty in Khanbaliq (present-day Beijing).


title: Christianity in China

text: Church of the East Christianity was well established in China, as is attested by the monks Rabban Bar Sauma and Rabban Marcos, both of whom made a famous pilgrimage to the West, visiting many Church of the East communities along the way. Marcos was elected as Patriarch of the Church of the East, and Bar Sauma went as far as visiting the courts of Europe in 1287–1288, where he told Western monarchs about Christianity among the Mongols.


title: Christianity in China

text: In 1294, Franciscan friars from Europe initiated mission work in China. For about a century they worked in parallel with the Church of the East Christians. The Franciscan mission disappeared from 1368, as the Ming dynasty set out to eject all foreign influences.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Chinese called Muslims, Jews, and Christians in ancient times by the same name, ""Hui Hui"" ("Hwuy-hwuy"). Christians were called ""Hwuy" who abstain from animals without the cloven foot", Muslims were called ""Hwuy" who abstain from pork", Jews were called ""Hwuy" who extract the sinews". ""Hwuy-tsze"" ("Hui zi") or ""Hwuy-hwuy"" ("Hui Hui") is presently used almost exclusively for Muslims, but Jews were still called ""Lan Maou Hwuy tsze"" ("Lan Mao Hui zi") which means "Blue-cap Hui zi". At Kaifeng, Jews were called ""Teaou-kin-keaou"", "extract-sinew religion". Jews and Muslims in China shared the same name for synagogue and mosque, which were both called ""Tsing-chin sze"" ("Qingzhen si"), "temple of purity and truth", the name dated to the thirteenth century. The synagogue and mosques were also known as ""Le-pae sze"" ("Libai si"). A tablet indicated that Judaism was once known as ""Yih-tsze-lo-nee-keaou"" (Israelitish religion) and synagogues known as ""Yih-tsze lo née leen"" (Israelitish temple), but it faded out of use.


title: Christianity in China

text: It was also reported that competition with the Roman Catholic Church and Islam were also factors in causing Church of the East Christianity to disappear in China; the Roman Catholics also considered the Church of the East as heretical, speaking of "controversies with the emissaries of … Rome, and the progress of Mohammedanism, sapped the foundations of their ancient churches."


title: Christianity in China

text: The Ming dynasty decreed that Manichaeism and Christianity were illegal and heterodox, to be wiped out from China, while Islam and Judaism were legal and fit Confucian ideology. Buddhist Sects like the White Lotus were also banned by the Ming.


title: Christianity in China

text: By the 16th century, there is no reliable information about any practicing Christians remaining in China. Fairly soon after the establishment of the direct European maritime contact with China (1513) and the creation of the Society of Jesus (1540), at least some Chinese become involved with the Jesuit effort. As early as 1546, two Chinese boys became enrolled into the Jesuits' St. Paul's College in Goa, the capital of Portuguese India. Antonio, one of these two Christian Chinese, accompanied St. Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuits, when he decided to start missionary work in China. However, Xavier was not able to find a way to enter the Chinese mainland and died in 1552 on Shangchuan Island off the coast of Guangdong.


title: Christianity in China

text: With the Portuguese establishing an enclave on Zhongshan Island's Macau Peninsula, Jesuits established a base nearby on Green Island (now the SAR's "Ilha Verde" neighborhood). Alessandro Valignano, the new regional manager ("Visitor") of the order, came to Macau in 1578–1579 and established St. Paul's College to begin training the missionaries in the language and culture of the Chinese. He requested assistance from the orders' members in Goa in bringing over suitably talented linguists to staff the college and begin the mission in earnest.


title: Christianity in China

text: In 1582, Jesuits once again initiated mission work inside China, introducing Western science, mathematics, astronomy, and cartography. Missionaries such as Matteo Ricci and Johann Adam Schall von Bell wrote Chinese catechisms and made influential converts like Xu Guangqi, establishing Christian settlements throughout the country and becoming close to the imperial court, particularly its Ministry of Rites, which oversaw official astronomy and astrology. Ricci and others including Michele Ruggieri, Philippe Couplet, and François Noël undertook a century-long effort in translating the Chinese classics into Latin and spreading knowledge of Chinese culture and history in Europe, influencing its developing Enlightenment.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Jesuits also promoted phenomena of artistic hybridization in China, such as Chinese Christian cloisonné productions.


title: Christianity in China

text: The introduction of the Franciscans and other orders of missionaries, however, led to a long-running controversy over Chinese customs and names for God. The Jesuits, the secularized mandarins, and eventually the Kangxi Emperor himself maintained that Chinese veneration of ancestors and Confucius were respectful but nonreligious rituals compatible with Christian doctrine; other orders pointed to the beliefs of the common people of China to show that it was impermissible idolatry and that the common Chinese names for God confused the Creator with His creation. Acting on the complaint of the Bishop of Fujian, finally ended the dispute with a decisive ban in 1704; his legate Charles-Thomas Maillard De Tournon issued summary and automatic excommunication of any Christian permitting Confucian rituals as soon as word reached him in 1707. By that time, however, Tournon and Bishop Maigrot had displayed such extreme ignorance in questioning before the throne that the Kangxi Emperor mandated the expulsion of Christian missionaries unable to abide by the terms of Ricci's Chinese catechism. Tournon's policies, confirmed by Clement's 1715 bull "Ex Illa Die...", led to the swift collapse of all of the missions across China, with the last Jesuits—obliged to maintain allegiance to the papal rulings—finally being expelled after 1721. It was not until 1939 that the Catholic Church revisited its stance, with Pope Pius XII permitting some forms of Chinese customs; Vatican II later confirmed the new policy.


title: Christianity in China

text: Further waves of missionaries came to China in the Qing (or Manchu) dynasty (1644–1911) as a result of contact with foreign powers. Russian Orthodoxy was introduced in 1715 and Protestants began entering China in 1807.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Qing dynasty's Yongzheng Emperor was firmly against Christian converts among his own Manchu people. He warned them that the Manchus must follow only the Manchu way of worshipping Heaven since different peoples worshipped Heaven differently. He stated:


title: Christianity in China

text: The Lord of Heaven is Heaven itself. . . . In the empire we have a temple for honoring Heaven and sacrificing to Him. We Manchus have Tiao Tchin. The first day of every year we burn incense and paper to honor Heaven. We Manchus have our own particular rites for honoring Heaven; the Mongols, Chinese, Russians, and Europeans also have their own particular rites for honoring Heaven. I have never said that he [Urcen, a son of Sun] could not honor heaven but that everyone has his way of doing it. As a Manchu, Urcen should do it like us.


title: Christianity in China

text: By the 1840s China became a major destination for Protestant missionaries from Europe and the United States. Catholic missionaries, who had been banned for a time, returned a few decades later. It is difficult to determine an exact number, but historian Kathleen Lodwick estimates that some 50,000 foreigners served in mission work in China between 1809 and 1949, including both Protestants and Catholics. They encountered significant opposition from local elites, who were committed to Confucianism and resented Western ethical systems. Missionaries were often seen as part of Western imperialism. The educated gentry were afraid for their own power. The mandarins claim to power lay in the knowledge of the Chinese classics—all government officials had to pass extremely difficult tests on Confucianism. The elite currently in power feared this might be replaced by the Bible, scientific training and Western education. Indeed, the examination system was abolished in the early 20th century by reformers who admired Western models of modernization.


title: Christianity in China

text: The main goal was conversions, but they made relatively few. They were much more successful in setting up schools, as well as hospitals and dispensaries. They avoided Chinese politics, but were committed opponents of opium. Western governments could protect them in the treaty ports, but outside those limited areas they were at the mercy of local government officials and threats were common. They were a prime target of attack and murder by Boxers in 1900.


title: Christianity in China

text: 140 years of Protestant missionary work began with Robert Morrison, arriving in Macau on 4 September 1807. Morrison produced a Chinese translation of the Bible. He also compiled a Chinese dictionary for the use of Westerners. The Bible translation took 12 years and the compilation of the dictionary, 16 years.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Qing government code included a prohibition of "Wizards, Witches, and all Superstitions". The Jiaqing Emperor, in 1814, added a sixth clause with reference to Christianity, modified in 1821 and printed in 1826 by the Daoguang Emperor prohibiting those who spread Christianity among Han Chinese and Manchus. Christians who would not renounce their conversion were to be sent to Muslim cities in Xinjiang, to be given as slaves to Muslim leaders and beys. Some hoped that the Chinese government would discriminate between Protestantism and the Catholic Church, since the law was directed at Rome, but after Protestant missionaries in 1835– 36 gave Christian books to Chinese, the Daoguang Emperor demanded to know who were the "traitorous natives in Canton who had supplied them with books".


title: Christianity in China

text: The pace of missionary activity increased considerably after the First Opium War in 1842. Christian missionaries and their schools, under the protection of the Western powers, went on to play a major role in the Westernization of China in the 19th and 20th centuries. Liang Fa ("Leung Faat" in Cantonese) worked in a printing company in Guangzhou in 1810 and came to know Robert Morrison, who translated the Bible to Chinese and needed printing of the translation. When William Milne arrived at Guangzhou in 1813 and worked with Morrison on translation of the Bible, he also came to know Liang, whom he baptized in 1816. In 1827, Liang was ordained by Morrison, thus, he became a missionary for the London Missionary Society and the first Chinese Protestant minister and evangelist.


title: Christianity in China

text: During the 1840s, Western missionaries promulgated Christianity in officially designated coastal Treaty ports that were open to foreign trade. The Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) originated in the influence of missionaries on its leader Hong Xiuquan, who called himself the younger brother of Jesus Christ, but he was denounced as a heretic by mainstream Christian groups. Hong's revolt against the Qing government lead to the establishment of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace, and its capital was established at Nanjing. Hong attained control of significant parts of southern China, at its height, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom ruled around 30 million people. Hong'ss theocratic and militaristic regime instituted social reforms which included the strict separation of the sexes, the abolition of foot binding, land socialization, the suppression of private trade, and the replacement of Confucianism, Buddhism and Chinese folk religion with Hong's version of Christianity. The Taiping rebellion was eventually put down by the Qing army, which was aided by French and British forces. With an estimated death toll of between 20 and 30 million due to warfare and the resulting starvation, this civil war is considered one of history's deadliest conflicts. Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong viewed the Taiping as heroic revolutionaries who fought against a corrupt feudal system.


title: Christianity in China

text: Christians established clinics and hospitals,and provided training for nurses. Both Roman Catholics and Protestants founded educational institutions from the primary to the university level. Some prominent Chinese universities began as religious-founded institutions. Missionaries worked to abolish practices such as foot binding,and the unjust treatment of maidservants, as well as launching charitable work and distributing food to the poor. They also opposed the opium trade and brought treatment to many who were addicted.


title: Christianity in China

text: Some early leaders of the Chinese Republic, such as Sun Yat-sen were converts to Christianity and were influenced by its teachings.


title: Christianity in China

text: By the early 1860s the Taiping movement was almost extinct, Protestant missions at the time were confined to five coastal cities. By the end of the century, however, the picture had vastly changed. Scores of new missionary societies had been organized, and several thousand missionaries were working in all parts of China. This transformation can be traced to the Unequal Treaties which forced the Chinese government to admit Western missionaries into the interior of the country, the excitement caused by the 1859 awakening of faith in Britain. A major role was played by J. Hudson Taylor (1832–1905). Taylor (Plymouth Brethren) arrived in China in 1854. Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette wrote that Hudson Taylor was "one of the greatest missionaries of all time, and ... one of the four or five most influential foreigners who came to China in the nineteenth century for any purpose."


title: Christianity in China

text: The China Inland Mission, based in London with a strong appeal to fundamentalist and evangelical Anglicans, was the largest mission agency in China and it is estimated that Taylor was responsible for more people being converted to Christianity than at any other time since The days of the apostles. Out of the 8,500 Protestant missionaries that were at one time at work in China, 1000 of them were from the China Inland Mission. Dixon Edward Hoste, the successor to Hudson Taylor, originally expressed the self-governing principles of the Three-Self Church, at the time he was articulating the goal of the China Inland Mission to establish an indigenous Chinese Church that was free from foreign control.


title: Christianity in China

text: In imperial-times Chinese social and religious culture there were charitable organizations for virtually every social service: burial of the dead, care of orphans, provision of food for the hungry. The wealthiest in every community—typically, the merchants—were expected to give food, medicine, clothing, and even cash to those in need. According to Caroline Reeves, a historian at Emmanuel College in Boston, that began to change with the arrival of American missionaries in the late 19th century. One of the reasons they gave for being there was to help the poor Chinese.


title: Christianity in China

text: By 1865 when the China Inland Mission began, there were already thirty different Protestant groups at work in China, however the diversity of denominations represented did not equate to more missionaries on the field. In the seven provinces in which Protestant missionaries had already been working, there were an estimated 204 million people with only 91 workers, while there were eleven other provinces in inland China with a population estimated at 197 million, for whom absolutely nothing had been attempted. Besides the London Missionary Society, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, there were missionaries affiliated with Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Wesleyans. Most missionaries came from England, the United States, Sweden, France, Germany, Switzerland, or the Netherlands.


title: Christianity in China

text: In addition to the publication and distribution of Christian literature and Bibles, the Protestant missionary movement in China furthered the dispersion of knowledge with other printed works of history and science. As the missionaries went to work among the Chinese, they established and developed schools and introduced medical techniques from the West. The mission schools were viewed with some suspicion by the traditional Chinese teachers, but they differed from the norm by offering a basic education to poor Chinese, both boys and girls, who had no hope of learning at a school before the days of the Chinese Republic.


title: Christianity in China

text: Local affairs in China were under the control of local officials and the land-owning gentry. They led the opposition to missionary work. According to historian Paul Varg:


title: Christianity in China

text: In December 1897, Wilhelm II declared his intent to seize territory in China, which triggered a "scramble for concessions" by which Britain, France, Russia and Japan also secured their own sphere of influence in China. After the German government took over Shandong, many Chinese feared that the foreign missionaries and possibly all Christian activities were imperialist attempts at "carving the melon", i.e., to colonize China piece by piece.


title: Christianity in China

text: Local gentry published hate literature against the foreign missionaries. One tract featured foreign missionaries praying to crucified pigs—the Catholic term for God was "Tianzhu" (Heavenly Lord), in which the Chinese character ""zhu"" had the same pronunciation as the word for "pig". The pamphlet also showed Christian clergy engaging in orgies following Sunday services and removing the placentas, breasts, and testicles from kidnapped Chinese. It concluded with repeated calls for their extermination by vigilantes and the government.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Boxer Uprising was in large part a reaction against Christianity in China. Missionaries were harassed and murdered, along with tens of thousands of converts. In 1895, the Manchu Yuxian, a magistrate in the province, acquired the help of the Big Swords Society in fighting against bandits. The Big Swords practiced heterodox practices, however, they were not bandits and were not seen as bandits by Chinese authorities. The Big Swords relentlessly crushed the bandits, but the bandits converted to the Catholic Church, because it made them legally immune to prosecution under the protection of the foreigners. The Big Swords proceeded to attack the bandits' Catholic churches and burn them. Yuxian only executed several Big Sword leaders, but did not punish anyone else. More secret societies started emerging after this.


title: Christianity in China

text: In Pingyuan, the site of another insurrection and major religious disputes, the county magistrate noted that Chinese converts to Christianity were taking advantage of their bishop's power to file false lawsuits which, upon investigation, were found groundless.


title: Christianity in China

text: French Catholic missionaries were active in China; they were funded by appeals in French churches for money. The Holy Childhood Association (L'Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance) was a Catholic charity founded in 1843 to rescue Chinese children from infanticide. It was a target of Chinese anti-Christian protests notably in the Tianjin Massacre of 1870. Rioting sparked by false rumors of the killing of babies led to the death of a French consul and provoked a diplomatic crisis.


title: Christianity in China

text: Many scholars see the historical period between the Boxer Uprising and the Second Sino-Japanese War as a golden age of Chinese Christianity, as converts grew rapidly and churches were built in many regions of China. Paul Varg argues that American missionaries worked very hard on changing China:


title: Christianity in China

text: Extensive fund-raising and publicity campaigns were held across the U.S. The Catholics in the United States also supported large mission operations in China.


title: Christianity in China

text: Following the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Glasgow, Protestant missionaries energetically promoted what they called "indigenization", that is assigning the leadership of churches to local Christian leaders. The Chinese National YMCA was the first to do so. In the 1920s, a group of church leaders formed the National Christian Council to coordinate interdenominational activity. Among the leaders were Cheng Jingyi, who was influential at the Glasgow Conference with his call for a non-denominational church. The way was prepared for the creation of the Church of Christ in China, a unified non-denominational church.


title: Christianity in China

text: After World War I, the New Culture Movement fostered an intellectual atmosphere that promoted Science and Democracy. Although some of the movement's leaders, such as Chen Duxiu, initially expressed admiration for the role that Christianity played in building the strong nations of the West, as well as approving the emphasis on love and social service, Christianity became identified in the eyes of many young Chinese with foreign control of China. The 1923 Anti-Christian Movement attacked missionaries and their followers on the grounds that no religion was scientific and that the Christian church in China was a tool of the foreigners. Such Chinese Protestants as the liberals David Z. T. Yui, head of the Chinese National YMCA, and Y. T. Wu (Wu Yaozong), Wu Leichuan, T. C. Chao, and the theologically more conservative Chen Chonggui responded by developing social programs and theologies that devoted themselves to strengthening the Chinese nation. Y. C. James Yen, a graduate of Yale University, led a program of village reform.


title: Christianity in China

text: Several political leaders of the Republican period were Protestant Christians, including Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, Feng Yuxiang, and Wang Zhengting. Leading writers include Lin Yutang, who renounced his Christianity for several decades. His journey of faith from Christianity to Taoism and Buddhism, and back to Christianity in his later life was recorded in his book From Pagan to Christian (1959).


title: Christianity in China

text: Lottie Moon (1840-1912), representing the Southern Baptist, was the most prominent woman missionary. Although an equality-oriented feminist who rejected male dominance, the Southern Baptists have memorialized her as a southern belle who followed traditional gender roles.


title: Christianity in China

text: Medical missions in China by the late 19th century laid the foundations for modern medicine in China. Western medical missionaries established the first modern clinics and hospitals, provided the first training for nurses, and opened the first medical schools in China. By 1901, China was the most popular destination for medical missionaries. The 150 foreign physicians operated 128 hospitals and 245 dispensaries, treating 1.7 million patients. In 1894, male medical missionaries constituted 14 percent of all missionaries; women doctors were four percent. Modern medical education in China started in the early 20th century at hospitals run by international missionaries. They began establishing nurse training schools in China in the late 1880s, but nursing of sick men by female nurses was rejected by local traditions, so the number of Chinese students was small until the practice became accepted in the 1930s. There was also a level of distrust on the part of traditional evangelical missionaries who thought hospitals were diverting needed resources away from the primary goal of conversions.


title: Christianity in China

text: Of the 500 hospitals in China in 1931, 235 were run by Protestant missions and 10 by Catholic missions. The mission hospitals produce 61 percent of Western trained doctors, 32 percent nurses and 50 percent of medical schools. Already by 1923 China had half of the world's missionary hospital beds and half the world's missionary doctors.


title: Christianity in China

text: Due to the essential non-existence of Chinese doctors of Western medicine in China and Hong Kong, the founding of colleges of Western medicine was an important part of the medical mission. These colleges for the training of male and female doctors were separately founded. The training of female doctors was particularly necessary, due to the reluctance of Chinese women to see male doctors.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (香港華人西醫書院) was founded in Hong Kong by the London Missionary Society in 1887 for the training of male doctors. Sun Yat-Sen, the first graduate of this college and the founder of modern China, graduated in 1892. Hong Kui Wong (黄康衢) (1876-1961) graduated in 1900 and then moved to Singapore, where he supported the Chinese Revolution led by Sun Yat-Sen.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Hackett Medical College for Women (夏葛女子醫學院), the first medical college for women in China, and its affiliated hospital known as David Gregg Hospital for Women and Children (柔濟醫院), located together in Guangzhou, China, were founded by female medical missionary Mary H. Fulton (1854-1927). Fulton was sent by the Foreign Missions Board of the Presbyterian Church (USA), with the support of the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, New York, of which David Gregg was pastor. The college was dedicated in 1902 and offered a four-year medical curriculum. Its graduates include Lee Sun Chau.


title: Christianity in China

text: Indigenous Christian evangelism started in China in the late 1800s. Man-Kai Wan (1869–1927) was one of the first Chinese doctors of Western medicine in Hong Kong, the inaugural chairman of the Hong Kong Chinese Medical Association (1920–1922, forerunner of the Hong Kong Medical Association), and a secondary school classmate of Sun Yat-sen in the Government Central College (currently known as Queen's College) in Hong Kong. Wan and Sun graduated from secondary school around 1886. Doctor Wan was also the chairman of the board of a Christian newspaper called "Great Light Newspaper" (大光報) that was distributed in Hong Kong and China. Sun and Wan practiced Western Medicine together in a joint clinic. The father-in-law of Wan was Au Fung-Chi (1847–1914), the secretary of the Hong Kong Department of Chinese Affairs, manager of Kwong Wah Hospital for its 1911 opening, and an elder of To Tsai Church (renamed Hop Yat Church since 1926), which was founded by the London Missionary Society in 1888 and was the church of Sun Yat-sen.


title: Christianity in China

text: During World War II, China was devastated by the Second Sino-Japanese War which countered a Japanese invasion, and by the Chinese Civil War which resulted in the separation of Taiwan from mainland China. In this period the Chinese Christian churches and organizations had their first experience with autonomy from the Western structures of the missionary church organizations. Some scholars suggest this helped lay the foundation for the independent denominations and churches of the post-war period and the eventual development of the Three-Self Church and the Catholic Patriotic Church. At the same time the intense war period hampered the rebuilding and development of the churches.


title: Christianity in China

text: The People's Republic of China (PRC) was declared October 1, 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong, while the Republic of China led by the Kuomintang maintained its government on the island of Taiwan. The historian Daniel Bays comments that it was "not surprising that this new government, like the emperors of several dynasties of the last millennium, evinced an insistence on monitoring religious life and requiring all religions, for example, to register their venues and leadership personnel with a government office." Christian missionaries left in what was described by Phyllis Thompson of the China Inland Mission as a "reluctant exodus".


title: Christianity in China

text: The Chinese Protestant church entered the communist era having made significant progress toward self-support and self-government. While the Chinese Communist Party was hostile to religion in general, it did not seek to systematically destroy religion as long as the religious organizations were willing to submit to the direction of the Chinese state. Many Protestants were willing to accept such accommodation and were permitted to continue religious life in China under the name "Three-Self Patriotic Movement". Catholics, on the other hand, with their allegiance to the Holy See, could not submit to the Chinese state as their Protestant counterparts did, notwithstanding the willingness of the Vatican to compromise in order to remain on Chinese mainland—the papal nuncio in China did not withdraw to Taiwan like other western diplomats. Consequently, the Chinese state organized the Catholic Patriotic Church that operates without connection to the Vatican, and the Catholics who continued to acknowledge the authority of the Pope were subject to persecution.


title: Christianity in China

text: From 1966 to 1976 during the Cultural Revolution, the expression of religious life in China was effectively banned, including even the Three-Self Church. During the ten-year period the government began to crackdown and persecute all religions. This forced the Christians to be secretive and go underground to avoid getting executed by the communist government. Religions in China began to recover after the economic reforms of the 1970s. In 1979 the government officially restored the Three-Self Church after thirteen years of non-existence, and in 1980 the China Christian Council (CCC) was formed.


title: Christianity in China

text: Since then, persecution of Christians in China has been sporadic. During the Cultural Revolution believers were arrested and imprisoned and sometimes tortured for their faith. Bibles were destroyed, churches and homes were looted, and Christians were subjected to humiliation. Several thousand Christians were known to have been imprisoned between 1983 and 1993. In 1992 the government began a campaign to shut down all of the unregistered meetings. However, government implementation of restrictions since then has varied widely between regions of China and in many areas there is greater religious liberty.


title: Christianity in China

text: The members of the underground Roman Catholic Church in China, those who do not belong to the official Catholic Patriotic Church and are faithful to the Vatican and the Pope, remain theoretically subject to persecution today. In practice, however, the Vatican and the Chinese State have been, at least unofficially, accommodating each other for some time. While some bishops who joined the Catholic Patriotic Church in its early years have been condemned and even excommunicated, the entire organization has never been declared schismatic by the Vatican and, at present, its bishops are even invited to church synods like other Catholic leaders. Also, many underground clergy and laymen are active in the official Patriotic Church as well. Still, there are periods of discomfort between Vatican and the Patriotic Church: Pope Benedict XVI condemned the Patriotic Catholic leaders as "persons who are not ordained, and sometimes not even baptised", who "control and make decisions concerning important ecclesial questions, including the appointment of bishops". The Chinese state indeed continues to appoint bishops and intervene in the church's policy (most notably on abortion and artificial contraception) without consulting the Vatican and punishing outspoken dissenters. In one notable case that drew international attention, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, the auxiliary bishop of Shanghai whom both the Vatican and Chinese state agreed as the successor to the elderly Aloysius Jin Luxian, the Patriotic Catholic bishop of Shanghai (whom the Vatican also recognized as the coadjutor bishop), was arrested and imprisoned after publicly resigning from his positions in the Patriotic Church in 2012, an act which was considered a challenge to the state control over the Catholic Church in China.


title: Christianity in China

text: A Christian spiritual revival has grown in the first decades of the twenty-first century. The Communist Party remains officially atheist, and has remained intolerant of churches outside party control. Christianity has grown rapidly, reaching 67 million people. In recent years, however, the Communist Party has looked with distrust on organizations with international ties; it tends to associate Christianity with what it deems to be subversive Western values, and has closed churches and schools. In 2015, outspoken pastors in Hong Kong and their associates on the mainland came under close scrutiny from government officials.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Catholic Patriotic Church and the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement are centralised and government-sanctioned Christian institutions which regulate all local Christian gatherings, all of which are required to be registered under their auspices.


title: Christianity in China

text: Many Christians hold meetings outside of the jurisdiction of the government-approved organizations and avoid registration with the government and are often illegal. While there has been continuous persecution of Chinese Christians throughout the twentieth century, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, there has been increasing tolerance of unregistered churches since the late 1970s.


title: Christianity in China

text: Catholic groups are usually known as underground churches and Protestant groups are usually known as house churches. The Catholic underground churches are those congregations who remain fully faithful to the Pope in Rome and refuse to register as part of the Catholic Patriotic Church. Much of the Protestant house church movement dates back to the coerced unification of all Protestant denominations in the Three-Self Church in 1958. There is often significant overlap between the membership of registered and unregistered Christian bodies, as a large number of people attend both registered and unregistered churches.


title: Christianity in China

text: Local authorities continued to harass and detain bishops, including Guo Xijin and Cui Tai, who refused to join the state-affiliated Catholic association. Chinese authorities raided or closed down hundreds of Protestant house churches in 2019, including Rock Church in Henan Province and Shouwang Church and Zion Church in Beijing, with their pastor, Jin Tianming and Jin Mingri under house arrest. The government released some of the Early Rain Covenant Church congregants who had been arrested in December 2018, but in December 2019 a court charged Pastor Wang Yi with “subversion of state power” and sentenced him to nine years imprisonment. Several local governments, including Guangzho city, offered cash bounties for individuals who informed on underground churches. In addition, authorities across the country have removed crosses from churches, banned youth under the age of 18 from participating in religious services, and replaced images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary with pictures of Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Chinese Independent Churches are a group of Christian institutions that are independent from Western denominations. They were established in China in the late 19th and early 20th century, including both the Little Flock or Church Assembly Hall and True Jesus Church. In the 1940s they gathered 200,000 adherents, which was 20% to 25% of the total Christian population of that time.


title: Christianity in China

text: Miller (2006) explains that a significant amount of the house churches or unregistered congregations and meeting points of the Protestant spectrum, that refuse to join the Three-Self Church—China Christian Council, belong to the Chinese Independent Churches. Congregations of the Little Flock or the True Jesus Church tend to be uncooperative towards the Three-Self Church as to their principle it represents not only a tool of the government but also a different Christian tradition.


title: Christianity in China

text: There are a small number of adherents of Russian Orthodoxy in northern China, predominantly in Harbin. The first mission was undertaken by Russians in the 17th century. Orthodox Christianity is also practiced by the small Russian ethnic minority in China. The Church operates relatively freely in Hong Kong (where the Ecumenical Patriarch has sent a metropolitan, Bishop Nikitas and the Russian Orthodox parish of St Peter and St Paul resumed its operation) and Taiwan (where archimandrite Jonah George Mourtos leads a mission church).


title: Christianity in China

text: Chinese scholars of religion have reported that a large portion of the members of the networks of house or unregistered churches, and of their pastors, belong to the Koreans of China. The pastors of the Shouwang Church and Zion Church, independent churches in Beijing noted for having been prosecuted by the government, are Chinese of Korean ethinicity. The Korean-Chinese pastors have a disproportional influence on the underground Christianity in China. Christianity has been an influential religion among the Korean people since the 19th century, and it has become the largest religion in South Korea after the division from the north in 1945. Christianity also has a strong presence in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in the Jilin province of China.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Christianity of Yanbian Koreans has a patriarchal character; Korean churches are usually led by men, in contrast to Chinese churches which more often have female leadership. For instance, of the 28 registered churches of Yanji, only three of which are Chinese congregations, all the Korean churches have a male pastor while all the Chinese churches have a female pastor. Also, Yanbian Korean church buildings are stylistically very similar to South Korean churches, with big spires surmounted by large red crosses. Yanbian Korean churches and house churches in China have been a matter of controversy for the Chinese government because of their links to South Korean churches. Many of the Korean house churches in China receive financial support and pastoral ordinations from South Korean churches, and some of them are effectively branches of South Korean churches. South Korean missionaries have major influence not only on Korean-Chinese churches but also the Han Chinese churches in mainland China.


title: Christianity in China

text: In China there are also a variety of Christian sects based on biblical teachings that are considered by the government as "heterodox teachings" () or cults, including the Eastern Lightning and the Shouters. They primarily operate in a form similar to the "house churches", small worship groups, outside of the state-sanctioned Three-Self Church, that meet in members' homes. One feature that some Christian sects with this label have in common is particular emphasis on the authority of a single leader, sometimes including claims to be Jesus. In the mid-1990s, Chinese government started to monitor these new religious movements, and prohibited them officially, so their activities soon turned underground.


title: Christianity in China

text: As of 2012 in China Catholicism has 6,300 churches, 116 active dioceses of which 97 under the Catholic Patriotic Church, 74 Chinese Patriotic bishops and 40 Roman Catholic unofficial bishops, 2,150 Chinese Patriotic priests and 1,500 Roman Catholic priests, 22 major and minor Chinese Patriotic seminaries and 10 Roman Catholic unofficial seminaries. In the same year, there are 53,000 Three-Self churches and meeting places and 21 Three-Self theological seminaries.


title: Christianity in China

text: In 2010, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in China revealed its on-going efforts to negotiate with authorities to regularize its activities in the country. The church has had expatriate members worshiping in China for a few decades previous to this, but with restrictions. On March 31, 2020, during its general conference, the church announced its intent to build a temple in Shanghai as a "modest multipurpose meetinghouse." When it opens it will operate by appointment only for Chinese members, excluding tourists.


title: Christianity in China

text: Although a number of factors—the vast Chinese population and the characteristic Chinese approach to religion among others—contribute to a difficulty to obtain empirical data on the number of Christians in China, a series of surveys have been conducted and published by different agencies. Government figures only count adult baptized members of government sanctioned churches. Thus they generally do not include un-baptized persons attending Christian groups, non-adult children of Christian believers or other persons under age 18 and they generally do not take into account unregistered Christian groups. There is often significant overlap between the membership of registered and unregistered Christian bodies, as a large number of people attend both registered and unregistered churches.


title: Christianity in China

text: Protestants concentrate mainly in three regions: Henan, Anhui and Zhejiang. In these provinces the Christian population is in the millions, yet small in percentage. For instance, in Zhejiang 2.8% of the population is officially Protestant as of 1999, higher than the national average. In Wenzhou, a city of Zhejiang, about one million people (approximately 11%) are Christians, the highest concentration in one city. The Protestant population consists predominantly of illiterate or semi-illiterate people, elderly people and women. These characteristics are confirmed by the findings of the Yu Tao survey of 2008, which also found that Protestantism has the lowest proportion of believers who are at the same time members of the CCP in comparison to other religions, and by the China Family Panel Studies' survey of 2012.


title: Christianity in China

text: The province of Hebei has a concentration of Catholics and is also home to the town of Donglu, site of an alleged Marian apparition and pilgrimage center. According to the Yu Tao survey of 2008, the Catholic population, though much smaller than that of the Protestants, is nevertheless younger, wealthier and better educated. The survey also found that Christianity overall has a higher proportion of ethnic minority believers than the other religions.


title: Christianity in China

text: Controversy exists regarding the veracity of estimates published by some sources. For example, Gerda Wielander (2013) has claimed that estimates of the number of Christians in China that have been spread by Western media may have been highly inflated. For instance, according to Asia Harvest, a US non-profit organization and "inter-denominational Christian ministry", there were 105 millions Christians in China in 2011. The compiler of these figures, Paul Hattaway, indicates that his figures are his own estimate, based on more than 2,000 published sources such as Internet reports, journals, and books, as well as interviews with house church leaders. The study points out that "owing to the difficulties of conducting such a [study] in China today – not the least of which is the sheer size of the country – there is [in the study’s rough estimation] a margin of error of 20 percent." Citing one of the aforementioned surveys, Gerda Wielander says that the actual number of Christians is around 30 million. Similarly, missionary researcher Tony Lambert has highlighted that an estimate of "one hundred million Chinese Christians" was already being spread by American Christian media in 1983, and has been further exaggerated, through a chain of misquotations, in the 2000s. Christopher Marsh (2011) too has been critical of these overestimations. On 6 January 2015, David Ferguson published on the "People's Daily" the satirical news "Merry Christmas, 100 million Chinese!" criticising such type of journalism.


title: Christianity in China

text: Christianity has been practiced in Hong Kong since 1841. As of 2010 there are 843,000 Christians in Hong Kong (11.8% of the total population).


title: Christianity in China

text: As of 2010 approximately 5% of the population of Macau self-identifies as Christian, predominantly Catholic. Catholic missionaries were the first to arrive in Macau. In 1535, Portuguese traders obtained the rights to anchor ships in Macau's harbours and to carry out trading activities, though not the right to stay onshore. Around 1552–1553, they obtained temporary permission to erect storage sheds onshore, in order to dry out goods drenched by sea water; they soon built rudimentary stone houses around the area now called Nam Van. In 1576, Pope Gregory XIII established the Roman Catholic Diocese of Macau. In 1583, the Portuguese in Macau were permitted to form a Senate to handle various issues concerning their social and economic affairs under strict supervision of the Chinese authority, but there was no transfer of sovereignty. Macau prospered as a port but was the target of repeated failed attempts by the Dutch to conquer it in the 17th century. Cai Gao was the first mainland Chinese convert of the 19th-century Protestant missions. He was baptized by Robert Morrison at Macau in 1814.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Qing government permitted Christian missionaries to enter and proselytize in Tibetan lands, in order to weaken the power of the Tibetan Buddhist lamas, who refused to give allegiance to the Chinese. The Tibetan lamas were alarmed by Catholic missionaries converting natives to Roman Catholicism. During the 1905 Tibetan Rebellion the Tibetan Buddhist Gelug Yellow Hat sect led a Tibetan revolt, with Tibetan men being led by lamas against Chinese officials, western Christian missionaries and native Christian converts. Wine making vineyards were left behind by them.


title: Christianity in China

text: Christianity is a minority religion in the Xinjiang region of the People's Republic of China. The dominant ethnic group, the Uygur, are predominantly Muslim and very few are known to be Christian.


title: Christianity in China

text: In 1904, George Hunter with the China Inland Mission opened the first mission station for CIM in Xinjiang. But already in 1892, the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden started missions in the area around Kashgar, and later built mission stations, churches, hospitals and schools in Yarkant and Yengisar. In the 1930s there were several hundreds of Christians among this people, but because of persecution the churches were destroyed and the believers were scattered. The missionaries were forced to leave because of ethnic and factional battles during the Kumul Rebellion in the late 1930s.


title: Christianity in China

text: Though the Hui people live in nearly every part of China, they make up about 30% of the population of Ningxia. They are almost entirely Muslim and very few are Christian.


title: Christianity in China

text: Rapid church growth is reported to have taken place among the Zhuang people in the early 1990s. Though still predominantly Buddhist and animistic, the region of Guangxi was first visited in 1877 by Protestant missionary Edward Fishe of the China Inland Mission. He died the same year.


title: Christianity in China

text: In large cities with international links such as Beijing, foreign visitors have established Christian communities which meet in public establishments such as hotels and, sometimes, local churches. These fellowships, however, are typically restricted only to holders of non-Chinese passports.


title: Christianity in China

text: American evangelist Billy Graham visited China in 1988 with his wife Ruth; it was a homecoming for her since she had been born in China to missionary parents L. Nelson Bell and his wife Virginia.


title: Christianity in China

text: Since the 1980s, U.S. officials visiting China have on multiple occasions visited Chinese churches, including President George W. Bush, who attended one of Beijing's five officially recognized Protestant churches during a November 2005 Asia tour, and the Kuanjie Protestant Church in 2008. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended Palm Sunday services in Beijing in 2005.


title: Christianity in China

text: Government authorities limit proselytism, particularly by foreigners and unregistered religious groups, but permit proselytism in state-approved religious venues and private settings. During the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, three American Christian protesters were deported from China after a demonstration at Tiananmen Square.


title: Christianity in China

text: Pope Benedict XVI urged China to be open to Christianity, and said that he hoped the Olympic Games would offer an example of coexistence among people from different countries. Unregistered Roman Catholic clergy has faced political repression, in large part due to its avowed loyalty to the Vatican, which the Chinese government claims interferes in the country's internal affairs.


title: Christianity in China

text: The Associated Press reported in 2018 that "Xi is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982." This has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith," actions taken against "so-called underground or house churches that defy government restrictions."


title: Christianity in China

text: In April 2020, Chinese authorities visited Christian homes in Linfen and informed welfare recipients that their benefits would be stopped unless they removed all crosses and replaced any displays of Jesus with portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong and General Secretary Xi Jinping.


title: Christianity in China

text: In June 2020, state officials oversaw the demolition of Sunzhuang Church in Henan province. Prior to the Church being demolished, one man was arrested and at least two women were injured.


title: Land of Punt

text: The Land of Punt (Egyptian: "pwnt"; alternate Egyptological readings "Pwene"("t") /pu:nt/) was an ancient kingdom known from Ancient Egyptian trade records. It produced and exported gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory and wild animals. It is possible that it corresponds to Opone in Somalia, as later known by the ancient Greeks, while some biblical scholars have identified it with the biblical land of Put or Havilah.


title: Land of Punt

text: At times Punt is referred to as "Ta netjer" ("tꜣ nṯr"), the "Land of the God". The exact location of Punt is debated by historians. Various locations have been offered, southeast of Egypt, a Red Sea coastal region: Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti, northeast Ethiopia, Eritrea, and north-east Sudan. It is also possible that it covered both the Horn of Africa and Southern Arabia. Puntland, the Somali administrative region at the end of the Horn of Africa is named in reference to it.


title: Land of Punt

text: The earliest recorded ancient Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (25th century BC), returning with cargoes of "antyue" and Puntites. However, gold from Punt is recorded as having been in Egypt as early as the time of Pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty.


title: Land of Punt

text: Subsequently, there were more expeditions to Punt in the Sixth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Eighteenth dynasties of Egypt. In the Twelfth Dynasty, trade with Punt was celebrated in popular literature in the "Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor".


title: Land of Punt

text: In the reign of Mentuhotep III (11th dynasty, ca. 2000 BC), an officer named Hannu organized one or more voyages to Punt, but it is uncertain whether he personally traveled on these expeditions. Trading missions of the 12th dynasty pharaohs Senusret I, Amenemhat II and Amenemhat IV had also successfully navigated their way to and from the mysterious land of Punt.


title: Land of Punt

text: In the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Hatshepsut built a Red Sea fleet to facilitate trade between the head of the Gulf of Aqaba and points south as far as Punt to bring mortuary goods to Karnak in exchange for Nubian gold. Hatshepsut personally made the most famous ancient Egyptian expedition that sailed to Punt. Her artists revealing much about the royals, inhabitants, habitation and variety of trees on the island, revealing it as the "Land of the Gods, a region far to the east in the direction of the sunrise, blessed with products for religious purposes", where traders returned with gold, ivory, ebony, incense, aromatic resins, animal skins, live animals, eye-makeup cosmetics, fragrant woods, and cinnamon. During the reign of Queen Hatshepsut in the 15th century BC, ships regularly crossed the Red Sea in order to obtain bitumen, copper, carved amulets, naptha and other goods transported overland and down the Dead Sea to Elat at the head of the gulf of Aqaba where they were joined with frankincense and myrrh coming north both by sea and overland along trade routes through the mountains running north along the east coast of the Red Sea.


title: Land of Punt

text: A report of that five-ship voyage survives on reliefs in Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri. Throughout the temple texts, Hatshepsut "maintains the fiction that her envoy" Chancellor Nehsi, who is mentioned as the head of the expedition, had travelled to Punt "in order to extract tribute from the natives" who admit their allegiance to the Egyptian pharaoh. In reality, Nehsi's expedition was a simple trading mission to a land, Punt, which was by this time a well-established trading post. Moreover, Nehsi's visit to Punt was not inordinately brave since he was "accompanied by at least five shiploads of [Egyptian] marines" and greeted warmly by the chief of Punt and his immediate family. The Puntites "traded not only in their own produce of incense, ebony and short-horned cattle, but [also] in goods from other African states including gold, ivory and animal skins." According to the temple reliefs, the Land of Punt was ruled at that time by King Parahu and Queen Ati. This well illustrated expedition of Hatshepsut occurred in Year 9 of the female pharaoh's reign with the blessing of the god Amun:


title: Land of Punt

text: While the Egyptians "were not particularly well versed in the hazards of sea travel, and the long voyage to Punt must have seemed something akin to a journey to the moon for present-day explorers... the rewards of [obtaining frankincense, ebony and myrrh] clearly outweighed the risks." An extensive account of the expedition, based on the tableaux, was provided by Amelia Edwards in 1891.


title: Land of Punt

text: According to Stuart Tyson Smith, Egyptologist and professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara, "The scene of an expedition to Punt from Queen Hatshepsuis mortuary complex at Deir el-Bahri shows Puntites with red skin and facial features similar to Egyptians, long or bobbed hair, goatee beards, and kilts".


title: Land of Punt

text: Hatshepsut's 18th dynasty successors, such as Thutmose III and Amenhotep III, also continued the Egyptian tradition of trading with Punt. The trade with Punt continued into the start of the 20th dynasty before terminating prior to the end of Egypt's New Kingdom. Papyrus Harris I, a contemporary Egyptian document that details events that occurred in the reign of the early 20th dynasty king Ramesses III, includes an explicit description of an Egyptian expedition's return from Punt:


title: Land of Punt

text: After the end of the New Kingdom period, Punt became "an unreal and fabulous land of myths and legends." However, Egyptians continued to compose love songs about Punt, "When I hold my love close, and her arms steal around me, I'm like a man translated to Punt, or like someone out in the reedflats, when the world suddenly bursts into flower."