Chinese ‘Ministry of Truth’ Begins Editing God Out of Western Classics
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – China has introduced a new textbook with Western classics such as Robinson Crusoe, Vanka, and The Little Match Girl, but with every reference to God removed.
The three classics, by Daniel Defoe, Anton Chekhov, and Hans Christian Andersen respectively, mention the discovery of Bibles in a shipwreck, souls going to God after death, and Christ Himself in their original form.
But after redactions from the Chinese Communist government, reports Asia News, the stories now only mention euphemistically that Crusoe found “a few books,” with the soul that once went to God in the Hans Christian Anderson story now becoming a “person [who] leaves this world,” and Christ’s name removed altogether from Vanka.
“[The plan] emphasized that ‘the heart and soul of Christianity’s Sinicization is to Sinicize the Christian theology,’ and even proposing to ‘re-translate the Bible or re-write biblical commentaries,'” the Rev. Bob Fu, a former Chinese house church leader, testified before Congress last year of China’s plan to convert all of Christianity into a servant of the state.
“Sinicization,” or the adaptation of Christianity to Chinese communist culture and its values, according to Fu, includes forcing churches of the state-sanctioned variety to hang pictures of Chairman Mao Zedong and President Xi Jinping on each side of the cross.
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