Can Christianity save China?

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, The Week, July 14, 2016

The growth of Christianity in China has been astonishing. At this point, it’s no longer a question of if China will become a Christian nation, but when. The ramifications of this religious shift are massive, and will shake China’s culture and economy to their cores.

Since 1979, Protestant Christianity has been growing in China at a compound annual growth rate of more than 10 percent. There were 3 million Christians in China in 1980, compared to 58 million in 2010, according to Fenggyang Yang, director of the Center of Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. By 2025, that number could swell to 250 to 300 million.

Surprised? That makes sense. The Chinese Communist Party has done all it can to downplay this phenomenon and keep a tight media lid on it. Meanwhile, Western media outlets are so taken with the idea that religion is an irrelevant (and declining) facet of modern life that they don’t pay attention to its growth in most places outside calcified Western Europe.

But this shift is happening, and it is astonishing, especially considering that China is officially an atheist country. From Chairman Mao’s accession to power until his death, China officially banned all religion, the only country in history besides Albania to do so. Then, in 1979, in keeping with its liberalization program, China cautiously allowed a few places of worship to open. But the government’s policy is still that religious expression must obey the party. Religion that is not officially sanctioned is still oppressed.

While it might seem surprising that Christianity could grow in the face of such repression, it is repression that prompted the growth of Christianity in the first place. In the third century, the church father Tertullian famously boasted that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.”

To better understand what’s going on in China, let’s look back at the Roman Empire. There, both government and society had values that were at odds with Christianity. The religion was so foreign, the reaction was an incoherent mix of savage oppression, benign neglect, and attempts at cooptation.

Still, Christians eventually became the dominant group in the Roman Empire by compounding with a respectable yearly growth rate. But there was more to it than that. Christians were often over-represented among the intelligentsia, which gave them a strong cultural cachet, even as their innovative welfare work made them attractive to the poor. (Bone fragments show Christians were healthier and lived longer than pagans, almost certainly thanks to the church’s welfare system.) And of course, the church’s heroic work was great PR. After a plague, while most people fled to the countryside, Christians rushed in to help the people, like they did in China in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has stepped up its oppression of Christianity. As the Chinese writer and dissident Yu Jie writes in the magazine First Things:

An internal government document obtained by The New York Times in May 2014 shows that the church demolitions are part of a larger campaign to curb Christianity’s influence on the public. According to the nine-page provincial policy statement, the Xi administration wants to put an end to “excessive” religious sites and “overly popular” religious activities, but it names one religion in particular, Christianity, and one symbol, the cross. [First Things]

If history is any guide, this will only increase the popularity of Christianity. As Yu writes: “One of the phrases I have heard most often among [Chinese Christians] is: ‘The greater the persecution, the greater the revival.’” Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s, when oppression was at its fiercest, Christianity actually grew in China.

Interestingly, Protestant Christianity is growing much faster in China than Catholic Christianity, almost certainly because the Roman Catholic Church has practiced a doctrine of appeasement to the Chinese government.

Today, China is pursuing a nationalistic foreign policy, combined with a domestic policy focused almost exclusively on economic growth and productivity. This comes at the expense of families, social welfare, and the environment. To say that these are not exactly Christian values is an understatement. It is not hard to understand why the Chinese leadership is not a fan of Christianity.

But Christianity could be China’s only chance to survive. Because of its one-child policy, and sex-selective abortion and infanticide, China is a fast-aging country with a massive gender imbalance. If you add to that the tensions wrought by breakneck crony capitalism and consumerism and inequality and pollution, the country is a powder keg. Most Westerners see China as a strong rival, but China’s actual leaders see the country as always teetering on the brink of collapse, which is why their grip on power is so white-knuckled. More deeply, decades of Communism have stripped China of so much of its cultural heritage and left its society and culture aimless.

Christianity’s enormous cultural and spiritual heritage, its emphasis on the rule of law, and its traditional focus on fertility are just what China may need to manage the next few decades without collapsing into civil war, revolution, or something equally terrible.

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Can Running Make You Smarter?

By Gretchen Reynolds, NY Times, July 13, 2016

To strengthen your mind, you may first want to exert your leg muscles, according to a sophisticated new experiment involving people, mice and monkeys. The study’s results suggest that long-term endurance exercise such as running can alter muscles in ways that then jump-start changes in the brain, helping to fortify learning and memory.

I often have written about the benefits of exercise for the brain and, in particular, how, when lab rodents or other animals exercise, they create extra neurons in their brains, a process known as neurogenesis. These new cells then cluster in portions of the brain critical for thinking and recollection.

Even more telling, other experiments have found that animals living in cages enlivened with colored toys, flavored varieties of water and other enrichments wind up showing greater neurogenesis than animals in drab, standard cages. But animals given access to running wheels, even if they don’t also have all of the toys and other party-cage extras, develop the most new brain cells of all.

These experiments strongly suggest that while mental stimulation is important for brain health, physical stimulation is even more potent.

But so far scientists have not teased out precisely how physical movement remakes the brain, although all agree that the process is bogglingly complex.

Fascinated by that complexity, researchers at the National Institutes of Health recently began to wonder whether some of the necessary steps might be taking place far from the brain itself, and specifically, in the muscles, which are the body part most affected by exercise. Working muscles contract, burn fuel and pump out a wide variety of proteins and other substances.

The N.I.H. researchers suspected that some of those substances migrated from the muscles into the bloodstream and then to the brain, where they most likely contributed to brain health.

But which substances were involved was largely a mystery.

So for the new study, which was published last month in Cell Metabolism, the N.I.H. researchers first isolated muscle cells from mice in petri dishes and doused them with a peptide that affects cell metabolism in ways that mimic aerobic exercise. In effect, they made the cells think that they were running.

Then, using a technique called mass spectrometry, the scientists analyzed the many chemicals that the muscle cells released after their pseudo-workouts, focusing on those few that can cross the blood-brain barrier.

They zeroed in on one substance in particular, a protein called cathepsin B. The protein is known to help sore muscles recover, in part by helping to clear away cellular debris, but it had not previously been considered part of the chain linking exercise to brain health.

To determine whether cathepsin B might, in fact, be involved in brain health, the researchers added a little of the protein to living neurons in other petri dishes. They found that those brain cells started making more proteins related to neurogenesis.

Cathepsin B also proved to be abundant in the bloodstreams of mice, monkeys and people who took up running, the scientists found. In experiments undertaken in collaboration with colleagues in Germany, the researchers had mice run for several weeks, while rhesus monkeys and young men and women took to treadmills for four months, exercising vigorously about three times a week for approximately an hour or sometimes longer.

During that time, the concentrations of cathepsin B in the jogging animals and people steadily rose, the researchers found, and all of the runners began to perform better on various tests of memory and thinking.

Most striking, in the human volunteers, the men and women whose fitness had increased the most–suggesting that they had run particularly intensely–not only had the highest levels of cathepsin B in their blood but also the most-improved test scores.

Finally, because there’s nothing like removing something from the body to underscore how important it may be, the scientists bred mice without the ability to create cathepsin B, including after exercise. The researchers had those mice and other, normal animals run for a week, then taxed their ability to learn and retain information.

After running, the normal mice learned more rapidly than they had before and also held on to those new memories well. But the animals that could not produce cathepsin B learned haltingly and soon forgot their new skills. Running had not helped them to become smarter.

The lesson of these experiments is that our brains appear to function better when they are awash in cathepsin B and we make more cathepsin B when we exercise, says Henriette van Praag, an investigator at the National Institute on Aging at the N.I.H. who oversaw this study.

Of course, increases in cathepsin B explain only part of the benefits of exercise for the brain, she said. She and her colleagues plan to continue looking for other mechanisms in future studies.

They also hope to learn more about how much exercise is necessary to gain brain benefits. The regimen that the human runners followed in this study was “fairly intensive,” she said, but it’s possible that lighter workouts would be almost as effective.

“There is good reason to think,” she said, “that any amount of exercise is going to be better than none” for brain health.

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Japan Emperor Intends to Abdicate ‘in a Few Years’—NHK

Reuters, July 13, 2016

TOKYO–Japanese Emperor Akihito, who has spent much of his time on the throne trying to heal the wounds of World War Two, intends to abdicate in a few years, public broadcaster NHK said on Wednesday, a step that would be unprecedented in modern Japan.

The 82-year-old monarch, who has had heart surgery and been treated for prostate cancer in recent years, expressed his intention to the Imperial Household Agency, NHK said.

It did not cite a reason and officials at the agency could not immediately be reached for comment. Akihito has been cutting back on his official duties, handing over some of the burden to his heir, Crown Prince Naruhito, 56.

Born in 1933, Akihito was heir to Emperor Hirohito, in whose name Japan fought World War Two.

The soft-spoken Akihito marked the 70th anniversary of World War Two’s end last year with an expression of “deep remorse”, a departure from his previous remarks seen by some as an effort to cement a legacy of pacifism under threat from conservative Japanese nationalists.

“Looking back at the past, together with deep remorse over the war, I pray that this tragedy of war will not be repeated and together with the people express my deep condolences for those who fell in battle and in the ravages of war,” he said.

While Akihito’s father was a controversial figure, Akihito “was the first post-war emperor to embrace the (pacifist) constitution and his role as a symbol of national unity”, said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.

“He cares a great deal about war issues and reconciliation (with Asian countries). Naruhito has made clear that he will carry on with that,” Nakano added.

Akihito has sought to deepen Japan’s ties with the world through visits abroad. In 1992 he became the first Japanese monarch in living memory to visit China, where bitter memories of Japan’s past military aggression run deep.

Emperor Kokaku, who gave up the throne in 1817, was the last Japanese emperor to abdicate, NHK said.

Miiko Kodama, a professor emeritus at Musashi University, said the Imperial Household Law would need to be amended to allow Akihito to step down, a process that could take time and debate in parliament.

A scientist by avocation, Akihito is the first royal heir to have married a commoner, Michiko Shoda, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist.

Under the U.S.-drafted, postwar constitution, Japan’s emperor is “the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People”, with no political power.

Akihito’s efforts to draw the imperial family closer to the people in image, if not in fact, have played into a carefully crafted picture of a “middle-class monarchy” that has helped shield it from the harsh criticism suffered by flashier royals abroad.

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Thirsty? New Study Links Good Hydration To Slimmer Waistlines

Allison Aubrey, NPR, July 12, 2016

A quick consultation with Dr. Google will tell you that drinking lots of water–and staying well-hydrated–can help you lose weight.

But is there any truth to this? A new study published in the Annals of Family Medicine adds to the evidence that hydration may play a role in weight management.

“What we found was that people who were inadequately hydrated had increased odds of being obese,” says study author Tammy Chang of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan.

The study was based on data collected by a federal health survey, in which researchers had documented weight and height of participants. They also conducted urine tests to establish an objective measure of participants’ level of hydration.

Chang and her colleagues found the odds of being obese were 1.59 times higher for people who were not well-hydrated. And overall, they found that a lack of proper hydration was associated with higher body mass index.

“The idea that hydration could have this effect is interesting and important,” says Chang. But there’s still a lot that remains unknown. This study captures one snapshot in time, and it does not prove that staying hydrated helps people manage weight.

It is possible that people who stay well-hydrated also have other habits–say, a healthful diet–that keeps them slimmer.

The new findings do fit with a few, small studies that found dieters who drink water before meals are more successful at weight loss, at least in the short term.

“Over several months, people who are drinking water before their meal lose more weight,” explains Eric Rimm of the Harvard School of Public Health. The idea here is that people feel less hungry after filling up on water. “But is it a lasting effect?” Rimm says it’s not clear.

He says what is clear when it comes to the relationship between weight and what we drink is this: Swapping sugary drinks for water is beneficial.

In long-term studies that tracked people’s habits over several decades, “we found that people who choose water instead of sugar-sweetened beverages gain weight at a much slower rate,” says Rimm. It’s not necessarily pointing to the importance of hydration, “just drinking fewer calories,” he adds.

There’s no hard and fast rule on how much water is ideal to drink. A gardener working outside or an athlete in training needs more than someone sitting in an air-conditioned office.

So, how do you know if you’re well-hydrated? Chang says she tells her patients to notice the color of their urine. If it’s dark, you probably need to drink more.

“If your urine is light–almost like the color of water–then you’re probably well-hydrated,” Chang says.

This may be particularly important for older people. Research suggests people over 65 years old don’t feel as thirsty as younger people, even when they are dehydrated.

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Gungor - "Please Be My Strength"

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July 14th Devotional pt. 2

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Hosanna - Praise is Rising!

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July 14th Devotional

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Japan Election, a Landslide for Abe, Could Allow a Bolder Military

By Motoko Rich, NY Times, July 11, 2016

TOKYO–The Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has governed Japan in one way or another for all but four of the past 61 years, a winning record that reflects the political inertia of a society that values stability and tradition.

But even by the standards of Japanese politics, Mr. Abe’s landslide victory in national elections on Sunday was stunning. For the first time, voters gave the Liberal Democrats and their allies more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament–a supermajority that could allow Mr. Abe to realize his long-held ambition of revising the clause in the Constitution that renounces war and make Japan a military power capable of global leadership.

Opinion polls show only lackluster support for Mr. Abe’s security agenda or even his program to revitalize the Japanese economy, but the public appeared unwilling to take another chance on the opposition Democratic Party, which stumbled badly in its last, rare stint in power, most notably in its response to the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The vote for stability at home, though, is likely to provoke unease across Asia, where memories of Japanese militarism in World War II endure and the prospect of a more assertive Japan will add to worries over China’s territorial ambitions and North Korea’s nuclear program.

In China, Xinhua, the state news agency, warned in a commentary on Monday that the election results “could pose a danger to Japan and regional stability.”

Experts say that Mr. Abe’s governing coalition will not be able to push through constitutional revisions immediately, given that some of the partners have differing opinions on what needs to be amended and how. For example, the Liberal Democrats’ main ally, a small Buddhist party, has said that it opposes changes to the clause that renounces war. At a news conference on Monday, Mr. Abe said that he intended to press for debate on constitutional revision, though he acknowledged that “it’s not so easy” and added, “I expect the discussion will be deepened.”

Mr. Abe’s party, in a draft proposal of a revised Constitution, has also recommended amendments to the clause on freedom of speech and the press that could limit these rights in cases deemed dangerous to the public interest. Another proposal would expand emergency powers for the prime minister. Any revision would need to be approved by a majority in a public referendum.

But the party’s victory on Sunday appears to have less to do with its proposals and more to do with the disarray in the opposition Democratic Party.

“The people’s distrust towards the Democratic Party is very high,” said Lully Miura, a lecturer on international politics at Tokyo University. “In 2009, the Democratic Party won the government, but they failed and failed and failed, and even once-supporters of the Democratic Party now distrust them.”

Outside Japan, Mr. Abe’s new supermajority is likely to further unsettle an increasingly tense region. South Korea defied China last week by announcing that it would deploy an advanced American missile defense system to protect itself against North Korea. And many in Asia are waiting to see how China and the United States respond to a ruling expected on Tuesday in a complaint brought by the Philippines challenging Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

“The Chinese will fear that Abe will find a way to work the system to his advantage,” said Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia and a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. At a regular news briefing on Monday, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Lu Kang, said that China and other Asian countries were “concerned about political moves in Japan” because of its past military action in the region.

In South Korea, an editorial in Munhwa Ilbo, a right-leaning newspaper, said the election results “opened the door for a Japan that can go to war,” though it added that a rearmed country “will also help deter North Korea’s nuclear threat and check the rising military power of China.”

The White House had no immediate comment on the election, but Jonas Stewart, a spokesman for the United States Embassy in Tokyo, said the Japanese government remained “a steadfast ally across our broad agenda of regional and global issues.” The United States supported Mr. Abe last year in the passing of the security bills that enable the military to participate more fully in foreign actions.

While constitutional change may be a long way off, some analysts said they worried the consequences of Sunday’s election were more fundamental.

“Democracy needs a system of checks and balances,” Gerald L. Curtis, a professor of political science at Columbia University, wrote in an email. “But if the opposition parties are impotent and the L.D.P. is firmly under Abe’s control, that system will be weakened to an unprecedented degree.”

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Bangladesh earthquake warning: 140 million people may be at risk, scientists say

Peter Hannam, The Age, July 12 2016

As many as 140 million people in Bangladesh may be at risk from a huge earthquake as pressure builds beneath the surface of one of the world’s most densely populated nations, US and Bangladeshi scientists say.

Sediment flows from the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers have layered parts of the country with as much as 20 kilometres of sand and mud, masking until now the extension of the same fault line that triggered the 2004 Sumatra tsunami and killed 230,000 people.

Researchers say a major earthquake risk could be building under Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely populated nations.

“The fault is entirely in the sub-surface,” said Michael Steckler, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of a paper published this week in Nature Geoscience. “It’s been suspected but we haven’t had the data to prove that [the pressure] is actually been building up.”

Data collected since 2004 by Professor Steckler’s team has found that a juncture between major tectonic plates in the region is locked and loading up with stress.

Measurements found convergence of tectonic plates at the rate of 13-17 mm per year “on an active, shallowly dipping and locked megathrust fault”, the paper said.

That build-up has the potential to trigger major shifts in land and also an earthquake with a magnitude of between 8.2 and 9.

“We can see the strain building up, we can see the motion of the plates but we can’t estimate when something might happen,” Professor Steckler told Fairfax Media, adding that the build-up had been going on for at least 400 years and perhaps as long as 2000.

“It would certainly be one of the largest [recorded quakes],” he said. “I suspect it might be at the lower end [of the 8.2-9 scale], but I can’t rule out a really large one.”

Scientists can’t tell when the next major quake will strike nor where the rupture in the fault will be the most severe. However, Bangladeshi’s location mostly on the river delta of the giant Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta makes the bulk of its 160 million population particularly vulnerable, should a large one occur.

Professor Steckler said a 250 kilometre by 250 kilometre region–including the capital, Dhaka, a megacity with a population of 15 million–is of significant risk.

This area is home to about 140 million people, and sits atop deep sediment that could liquefy in many places in the advent of a big quake. Whole buildings and infrastructure could sink into the sand and soil.

Buildings might “not even break, but literally fall over because the soil loses solidity”, he said.

Syed Humayun Akhter, from Dhaka University, said the capital could become “totally a dead city … it will be really devastating”.

“All the natural gas fields, heavy industries and electric power plants are located close to potential earthquakes, and they are likely to be destroyed,” Dr Akhter said. “In Dhaka, the catastrophic picture will be beyond our imagination, and could even lead to abandonment of the city.”

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