Change: Hannah Nation on Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State From a House Church Movement by Wang Yi in China

Transcription

Welcome to the world of Difference Podcast.

I'm Lori Adams Brown, and this is.

A podcast for those who are different and want to make a difference. Welcome to our new Change series,

where we're going to be talking about all kinds of changes, big and small, scary and easy. And our first guest

on today's show is Hannah Nation, who has edited a book that's just been released with University Press. It

is called Faithful Disobedience writings on Church and State from a Chinese house church movement. And

some of you may remember in the news, a few years ago, Wang Yi, who is a House church leader in China,

was arrested and incarcerated after an act of civil disobedience from something he wrote that was a threat to

the Chinese government. This book is bringing for the first time to English readers his writings, some of his

sermons, and we're getting to see into the theology of many of the House church leaders in China. So

whether you're a public theologian, a private theologian, or are interested in intercultural studies and

international relations and history, what's unfolding in China, some of it can be now read by English speakers

in this book. And Hannah did spend some time in China herself, but we are benefiting from having translators

that she's also helped edit this book and put it together. So a little bit about Hannah is that Hannah serves as

the center for House Church Theology's managing Director, and she's a graduate of Covenant College and

received her Master of Arts in Church History from Gordon Commonwealth Theological Seminary. As a

student of Missions and World Christianity, she is very inspired by the what's going on in China, this historical

movement, and the privilege of witnessing a new chapter in church history unfold across China. She's written

for Christianity Today, the Gospel Coalition, Plow, and has edited several books, including this one, Faithful

Disobedience Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement. This is going to be a

very interesting conversation. Whether you're interested in China, whether you're interested in what's going

on in countries like this where there isn't a freedom of religion and there are subversive kind of movements

going on at the grassroots level, or whether you're just interested in the politics and the history of how it's

unfolding. This conversation today is going to talk about some of the big changes that are happening kind of

behind the scenes in China that we're getting to read in English for the very first time. Welcome to today's

show, Hannah Nation.

Hello, Hannah. And a very warm welcome to the A World of Difference podcast today.

Hi. Thank you for having me.

You're welcome. Well, I'm so excited to get into this incredible book that a lot of people have been excited to

get their hands on, and I'm excited to have my hands on it as well. It's super exciting to be able to read some

of the things that you've helped put together here and faithful disobedience. And we're going to get into that

in a little bit, but first I wanted you to tell us a little bit more about yourself there in Pittsburgh and who is

Hannah Nation?

Well, I am from Pittsburgh. I consider myself a Pittsburgh native, although I wasn't born here. Basically, my

extended family is all from Pittsburgh, really good Pittsburgh. But my parents were living in Illinois when I

was born, and we didn't move here until I was ten. I've lived a lot of different places. I have a hard time

keeping track of how many cities, but it's something, it's more than ten, close to 20 cities across three

continents, europe, North America and Asia. And that really spans my whole life from birth on. My dad is an

academic and they started having kids early, so we kind of went along with him as he followed his career

path. But anyways, yeah, Pittsburgh is home. I love Pittsburgh. I currently live here with my husband Trey

and our two kids. We have two daughters, Verity, who's five, and Clemens, who's three. They are very, very

energetic and very, very opinionated, and we have a lot of fun with them.

Yeah, so that's me.

I've worked with in ministry with or to China and Chinese communities, really my whole adult life. And yeah,

who I am here in Pittsburgh.

I love it.

It's always so amazing to meet people who've lived in a lot of other places because there's always just an

instant connection for people who love the diversity and different cultures and languages and just the world.

So that's what we're all about here. So obviously way to get into it with you today. But not only do we want to

talk about books that authors write or thought leaders and kind of what they're bringing to the table, but I

think that people's own personal journeys as to what led them to write what they're writing or talk about what

think that people's own personal journeys as to what led them to write what they're writing or talk about what

they're talking about is always so important to know. So what started your interest in China specifically?

It was honestly kind of a fluke.

Maybe not a fluke. It was unexpected.

Until my college years, all of my overseas exposure had been across the other ocean in Europe. Let's see, I

was a freshman, and two things happened that coincided and really sparked my interest in China. The first

thing was that a bunch of my classmates who were a year ahead of me went and taught English in China for

the summer, and they came back and just had a lot of stories and just a lot to share about their experiences.

So I was hearing a lot. And then the other thing that happened back home was that my dad had a Chinese

grad student who was exploring Christianity and exploring faith and ended up converting and becoming a

Christian and being baptized and just knowing her, interacting with her family was just really eye opening and

really amazing. So those two things were going on in my life, and I was also a history major in undergrad,

and so I think I just had I was always really interested in things that felt big or kind of consequential. And I

was really inspired by things that I was hearing about the growth of Christianity across mainland China and

what was taking place in the churches there. And I wanted to see the Great Wall. That was definitely a part of

it. I definitely was like, I really want.

To say that I've seen the Great Wall. I.

Applied to go and teach English myself the next summer, and it's hard to go, I think, to China for the first

time, especially with as limited exposure as I had had prior to going without, just being really blown away by

both how many people are there and how old the culture is. And I think I just was really impacted by just what

China is and everything that it kind of represents in our world and in the world's history, and just kind of got

hooked. So I came back and didn't really necessarily think I would stay involved for the next 20 years, but

here I am. But that's how it started.

Wow. Yeah. Incredible. My daughter, we were living in Singapore for ten years, and all three of my kids

ended up taking Mandarin as a part of their international school experience in elementary school. But I

remember my daughter was the most fascinated with China. Just like even in kindergarten, she came back

and she's like, Mom, I want to see the Great Wall. And China is so amazing and they're so ancient. Even just

little five year olds can have this awe and wonder about China. And she's to the state still never been. And

when Kovac clears up more, maybe that will happen at some point. But yes, having lived in Asia for 20 years,

so many people end up being fascinated with China and the Chinese culture, and it's so ancient. Like Egypt

so many people end up being fascinated with China and the Chinese culture, and it's so ancient. Like Egypt

and China, their cultures just go way back. There's a lot to take in. There's nothing you could put in one

single book that would encompass all of that. But I do really appreciate this book, Faithful Disobedience, and

how it does bring in a much needed conversation around what is actually happening that's hard to you hear

whispers of it. You meet people even in Singapore that have been incarcerated and come out, things like

that, and yet this book has done such a good job of helping us understand a little more deeply what is going

on in a particular part of what's happening in China. So maybe tell us a little more about what the thesis is of

Faithful Disobedience.

Yeah, well, the book is a collection of writings from a well known house church pastor named Wang Yi, and

there are writings from other pastors in there as well that he's connected to, but wangi is a really fascinating

writer and thinker, and it's possible that people listening to this have heard of him before. He was quite

prominent in the news in 2018 and December of 2018 because he was very prominently arrested. It was a

very large scale operation or kind of conflict showdown between the authorities and his church. And it was

widely covered. And part of that had to do with a statement that he had written and released, and it was

translated for people all over the world to read. It's called my Declaration of Faithful disobedience. And really,

Wangi's main point, I think, that he cares a lot about is essentially this question of what is the church's

highest allegiance or what is the church's highest love, you could say, and how does that influence the way

churches interact with their authorities and not just their governing authorities, but the broader culture around

them? And I think even though he's speaking to a Chinese audience most of the time, a lot of what he has to

say is very applicable for people all over the world. I think everyone struggles to understand or to know what

their ultimate loyalties are and whether that's in countries with a lot of freedom or whether that's in countries

with a lot of religious restrictions. These are very human problems that we all have in common. And so when

he talks about how conflicts of church and state are not just these kind of theoretical things, they have to do

with our hearts and.

The idolatry that we face and the.

Temptations that we face, I think there's a lot that people can resonate with and really engage with in his

book and with what he's talking about.

Yes, absolutely. I can think of many nations that I come to mind that I've lived in and also haven't lived in, but

maybe have traveled in where this conversation is very relevant, not the least of which is the one we're both

sitting in right now. Maybe we'll talk a little more about that in a minute. But I first wanted to just sort of ask,

what would you say are the main contributions that this book is making into the scholarly community?

Because I know it is deeply theological, and so it's important to note that.

Yeah, well, the main contribution that it makes is that it really is the first book like this from a Chinese house

church writer. The voices of the Chinese house churches have been very hard to access, especially if you

don't read or speak Chinese. For example, all of Wang Yi's writings are available in Chinese online today. If

you're literate Mandarin, you can easily find his writings. But for the rest of the world, for those who don't

read Chinese, it has been very hard to really know what the Chinese church house churches are saying. And

so if you just went on to Amazon or a library catalog and you typed house church or house church theology,

chinese house church theology. You might find several books written by academics or by scholars about the

churches and about what they're doing. But it'd be very hard to find their actual words and their actual

writings. And so this is one of the first books like this where we've been able to translate and publish writings

from a very prominent pastor and make them available for a more global audience. But I think beyond that, I

would say his main contribution is in my opinion, I think one of the main contributions is this is really.

Writing that.

Comes from a perspective that we haven't really had in the church. State debates so far in the sense that so

much of our church and state theology has been written by Western theologians who come out of the

heritage of European Christendom, maybe American kind of reactions to European Christendom. But this

really is an engagement of.

The whole church and state question from someone who stands pretty far outside of that tradition. He's very

influenced by Western political theory and he's read very widely and a lot of both Reformed and Baptist

church and state theology. But in terms of his actual cultural situation and the way that he's engaging these

things, he's a very different perspective than what you would pick up if you were picking up something that

came from a Western author. Part of that is because of who he's writing to. China is by and large an

atheistic, secular state and culture. And where it's not, it's very much influenced by Eastern religions and

confucian thought. And so just the kind of the thinking partner, so to say, that he's interacting with are very

different. But I think, in my opinion, I think this is again, it might seem like this makes it very different from

something we can engage with. But I think we have more in common with someone like Mongi than we

probably would realize, partially because he lives in a modernized, globalized, urbanized world not too

dissimilar from the cities we live in. He lives in a world where technology and the digital spaces very much

dominate our cultures and our way of thinking. And so even though he's in China, even though it's a different

perspective, we probably have more in common than we might think we do.

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. So much of the global cities of the world have so much in common. Even

if the governments are different, there's always nuance to every city. Every city feels slightly its own. But the

diversity of that, and even in a place like China, it really is so similar. And for somebody to profess faith in

Christianity as part of the global church, even though the governments can have different responses yeah,

it's so important for us to listen, though, to the voices who particularly in this situation, have been silenced for

reasons of language translations and all that. But in addition, just being incarcerated is definitely thing. But I

reasons of language translations and all that. But in addition, just being incarcerated is definitely thing. But I

wanted to kind of tap into a little bit of something you alluded to, which is I guess the question is what

perspective does this work bring to the kind of decolonization conversation that's going on in Christianity?

And obviously China has a different experience of colonization, for example, than like India or other places

might have. But how does this speak into that?

Yeah, this is something as I was wrapping up the project was thinking about a lot because they wanted to

make sure that I helped situate his writings. And I found myself thinking I'm not entirely sure how to situate

him in terms of that question because one of the fascinating things about China, especially the Chinese

churches, is that so much of the debates in the Chinese churches in the early 20th century were around their

relationship to the Western churches. And such a big part of.

Just.

The creation of modern Chinese Christianity, whether that is the house churches or whether that's the state

churches was a desire to separate and come out from the authority and the influence of Western missionary

movements and Western denominations. And so it's interesting because I think in many ways you could say

that all theologizing in China from the maybe 1950s on just to kind of come.

Up with a date has really been somewhat of an internal conversation and less of a conversation with the

Western powers.

In the Western world.

And in some ways this is one of the legacies of the Communists coming to power is that because they did so

effectively cut off the churches from outside influence, so much of Chinese theology has been able to really

develop on its own and kind of develop without this outside direction. Now, that's not to say they aren't

reading other thinkers or outside thinkers and streams of theology. But one of the really important things to

understand with Wang Yi is that he's always speaking to his own government. So much, for example, of post

colonial thought and post colonial theology has to do with theologians speaking to outside forces that are

involved in their country and involved in their society and outside authorities, whether historical or present.

But what makes Wang Yi really interesting is he's speaking to his own authority. He's not speaking to an

outside authority. And so there's a lot of what he says that kind of brings to mind themes and a lot of post

colonial theology. But it's different because the ideas that he's in conflict with are very Chinese. The

authorities that he's in conflict with are Chinese. And so I suggest in the closing of the book that probably one

of the best ways to think about him is to think of him as a postcolonial theologian. Because he's in a different

of the best ways to think about him is to think of him as a postcolonial theologian. Because he's in a different

generation, so to say, of Chinese theological thinking where the concern is not so much outside forces and

outside influences, but it's internal. It's concerned with, internally his own Chinese culture, his Chinese

authorities and their identities. But in connection to that, I think it's really important to state that he's very

concerned about the global reality of the church and so much of what China's authorities, what they feel

concerned about with regards to not just Christian religious practice, but any religious practice in China is

affiliation with outside religious organizations or identities, really. And so one of his big reasons for protest or

for disobedience is because he's very committed to understanding the global nature of the church and saying

that a church isn't the true church if it's just a Chinese church and it has no global identity and no ability to

connect with the global reality of the Kingdom of God.

I really appreciate his perspective on that. I think a culture as ancient as Chinese culture, a nation as large

and as powerful as China, and due to the nature of how restrictive the government is on issues such as

Christianity itself, it would be very easy to be very insular in one's own interpretation because of just the large

beast that it is. Right. So I really appreciate his perspective and the global nature of his heart toward it. Many

of us have probably heard that we would hear this often in Singapore, that there were often church house

church believers in China that were showing a lot of concern about what they were seeing in the west and

America in particular, and praying for America, and it's moving as a US. Citizen, even living abroad, all of the

suffering they were going through that they would be willing to pray for our nation. But I think that sometimes

Americans can get shocked as to how they're praying. Sometimes I would hear it's like they're praying kind of

like we're coddled and we're soft. And that's not helping with Christianity. And it's all true is a shock to some

people. But yes, my experience in the global church is, yes, that is a concern, having grown up in Venezuela,

in house churches and among a lot of poverty, having lived in Indonesia under Islamic law. Like, the

experience of Christianity in different contexts such as those does give you great concern for the celebrity

pastors and the fog machines and how that experience can feel so lacking in a certain way. We do

appreciate the prayers. Definitely the United States needs them, and I do appreciate that we can pray for one

another in different parts of the world and that he brings that into the conversation. I think it's very important. I

would love to know what his perspective is in your opinion, as you've read through his writings on

nationalism and maybe even synchronism as it relates to the struggles the global church works through.

Yeah, he has a lot of strong things to say on the topic, and there's a lot to chew on in.

His writings on nationalism.

I mean, the long and short of it is he's very condemning of it. And he essentially believes, as well as I

understand, that nationalism is always at its heart synchronistic. That any time where the church is complicit

in something that does not keep Jesus and Jesus alone as the head of the church or as on the throne of

power in this world, then we're talking about a synchronistic movement, a synchronistic reality. And I think

this is where his ability to talk about nationalism as a matter of the heart is really important. And this is not

just Wang Yi, you know, this is not unique to him. There are this is a theme common to other pastors in the

just Wang Yi, you know, this is not unique to him. There are this is a theme common to other pastors in the

house churches and they're very bold in saying that. Well, in asking kind of rhetorically, you know, who do

you love the most and where is your highest allegiance in this life? And I think they they really view things

like persecution and, you know, the malignment of the world as a time for us to examine our hearts and to

ask ourselves where our allegiances are. I think one of the most powerful things this is not in the book, but

this is from just my work with house church pastors over the years. They frequently talk about times of

persecution and times where they are facing the authorities as opportunities for they themselves to examine

their own hearts and to repent themselves of their idols. And I think that is just like a paradigm shifting

thought for an American. I think we from day one, it's just in our DNA to think of times that the world is

against us as a time to either lean into defending our rights or a time to think, gosh, we need to do better to

make the world like us. And I think not that we should have a combative role. Wangi is crystal clear that we

are not to have a combative world role with the world, but rather that persecution is a time for us to repent of

our own idols, repent of our own sins, and then to see it as an opportunity to share the good news of Jesus

with those who are listening to us as they persecute us. They commonly talk about persecution as an

apologetic moment. It's a time to testify to who God is and what salvation means when you are being

attacked by an enemy. There's a lot in the book that has been really helpful for me personally as the topic of

nationalism becomes more and more of a big topic in the American church. And I think there's a lot in there

for us to consider. I think for most Americans, the idea of persecution is probably the thing that they most fear

or they're most anxious about. And I don't think that we should be cavalier in saying, oh, it doesn't matter if

persecution comes. No one should seek persecution, no one should look for it. But there's so much we can

learn from brothers and sisters around the world about how do we act when the world is against us and what

do we need to believe in order to endure it? What is it that will make us different from the world if persecution

comes? And, yeah, Wang Yi has so much to say on that topic.

Yes, I'm excited for people to read this because it boots on the ground. It's somebody who's experiencing it.

It's not a theory. It's not somebody in an academic institution who is removed from the reality of what this

actually means to walk through. And there's a beauty in that. And being a full on practitioner at the same time

as being a theologian. And also, it's very consistent with what we know from even our experience in

Singapore and Indonesia of meeting people from the House Church movement in China and the whole often

called the jail cell, their seminary, a chance to learn. This was something we saw in Russia and different

things under the USSR as well. And I think that persecution is such a big conversation. If you're in China, I

could imagine, and you're largely isolated from a Western interpretation of the scriptures, and you're just

reading about Acts and the apostles, their posture toward being arrested by their own people in their own

synagogues. Where they grew up arresting them, which has to be a whole next level thing for the preaching

of the gospel and their attitude of considering it pure joy. There has to be something else going on. We're

recording this just after having celebrated Dr. King's birthday this past weekend. And a lot of people read the

letters from a Birmingham jail every year. I do, too. And there's something that can happen in a jail cell where

you're asking for the disobedience, the civil disobedience that Dr. King asked for, that also Wing is asking for.

And I think there's a consistency for people in the global church to read the Scripture in its purest form that

really when Jesus got angry, it was at religious people. It was at people who were it wasn't so much the

government. It's like he expected almost that, but it's finding a common humanity and a softness toward that,

toward the government at times. And then really, the anger was for the people who should almost know

better. Like, you're calling yourself a religious person that you worship God, and yet you're acting very

different. So, yeah, I think noticing where Jesus's anger came out and where it didn't and his posture, it

seems like when I hear what he's saying wang Yi, it's more consistent with that. It also reminds me of when

we were in Indonesia, some of our national partners were arrested under Islamic law for they were working in

community development projects. But kind of like there's an invisible line. You're not sure quite when you hit

it, you know, when you get arrested that you just did.

Right.

And they were actually beaten up by a mob, and one of the women had, like, a major bNation injury, weren't

sure she was going to make it, but they spent their time in the jail sharing their faith with people. And that

kind of you experience these kind of things, and it's beautiful. It's hard, and I don't want to minimize it, but

there is a level that people can get to within faith to understand who you're against and who you're not. And I

love the consistency of how he's bringing that out. What do you think that we can actually learn from? He

was a part of this early reign congregation that I was reading about as well. What can we learn from his

congregation as a community that might be somewhat, I don't know, surprising or different than what a

Westerner might expect out of a house church in China? Or do you think there are myths and stereotypes

that need to be cleared up that people don't often know about?

Yeah, well, a lot of the house churches in China are much larger than people think generally. I think when we

think about house churches, we still kind of have maybe an idea that's closer to their reality from maybe 30

or 40 years ago. Meeting in individual homes, trying to be very secretive, not wanting your neighbors to know

you're there for sure. There are parts of China where that is still the case. I don't want to say that there's

nowhere where that's the reality, but I do think the house churches had a stretch of relative openness,

especially during the early two thousands up until 2018. What year are we in? And so, you know, they

endured a lot of very harsh persecution from the 1950s, really through the parts of the 1980s. But then kind

of from a point in the 1980s up until 2018, there was kind of just this increasing openness and increasing

laxness about it. And what resulted was just this huge, massive boom of Christianity across China in 2018.

Your very typical house church, probably in a city house church in a city may have still met in a private

building, private home, but more likely than not, they rented space for themselves. Often that space is an

apartment, but the entire apartment is used as a church. Or there were even many churches that met in hotel

like conference spaces or even owned property like Early Nation. And so Early Nation would be on the larger

end of the spectrum. They had over 500 people attending weekly on a property. They had started multiple

different Christian schools. There's just a lot going on. But in 2018, just a new reality began in China. There

were new religious regulations that were put into place, and persecution has increased. And so it's rare today

to find a congregation as large as Early Nation, because many of them have broken up into smaller

congregations. But the varying degrees of openness are still true, and. I would say no house churches in

China today really are anything like they were back in the 20th century. They desire to be found by their

neighbors. They desire to be actively serving in their cities. They want to be the church. They want to be a

blessing to their cities. Maybe kind of one of the takeaways from early Nation itself, and I think this is again,

helpful as an American to think about, is that this is a church that grew to over 500 people, was able to have

sizable property. They started so many different initiatives in terms of Christian education, social

engagement, serving acts of service and mercy, so many different things. And this is a church without any

political rights whatsoever. And so I think one of the big takeaways for me with regards to the Chinese health

political rights whatsoever. And so I think one of the big takeaways for me with regards to the Chinese health

churches generally is just that God is not dependent on political rights to grow his church. Do political rights

help? Yeah, I think often they do. Are they important? Yeah. I'm not going to go out and give up what I think is

an important part of America and American life. That being said, God doesn't need those things in order to

grow his kingdom. His kingdom grows however he wants it to grow, and it is Him who will grow it, not our

political powers and the rights that they do or don't give us. And I think the Chinese church is just such a

huge testimony. I think it's grown. I have to go back and look at the statistic, but it's like a 60 fold growth from

the time the Communists came to power in 1950 until today. And that's all been done purely by the work of

the Holy Spirit and people faithful to evangelism and to the church. It was not done with power. It was not

done with political freedom or political rights. It was done because the Holy Spirit has moved. And that should

be a huge encouragement to us. Again, I think so many people in America are very afraid right now, and I

think fear should not be our response, that we can look and see what God has done around the world in the

face of great opposition, and there's not a need for us to fear because God has done amazing things.

Wow.

Yes.

Amen.

That's the altar call moment we're going to.

It's a great way to end it. I love that that's our conclusion of all of this. I do think so many of us around the

world have a lot of admiration for the boldness in the House church in China and so much to learn. And that

question about our heart, like, where is our allegiance? Is such a relevant one for any citizen of any country

today, especially the one we're sitting in now. What a great way to end. So how can people find you in this

book?

Yeah, you can find me on social media. I'm Hannah Nation. Online, I think. I'm Hannah Nation nation. You

can most importantly find I work for the center for House Church Theology, I'm our managing director and we

are working diligently to share the voices of the Chinese house churches in the global church community. So

you can just go to Housechurchtheology .com or just look for House churchtheology on all social media

platforms and you can find us. It's really great to get on our newsletter because we always have a lot coming

out. We have a lot of more exciting projects coming up. And for the book, you can find it anywhere books are

sold, so it's from IVP. You can find it on their website and you can also find it, of course, on Amazon or

Barnes and Noble or anywhere that you buy books.

Barnes and Noble or anywhere that you buy books.

We will link all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Hannah has been

a real honor.

Thank you for having me.

Such a thought provoking conversation with Hannah. And I really do hope that you get your hands on this

book because it's such an important resource for any of us who are trying to understand what is going on

socially, religiously, politically, and just sort of in this grassroots movement of unregistered house churches in

China that we hear about and we read about. Those of us who don't speak fluent Mandarin now in English

can have writings that help us understand from the perspective of these incredibly brave and passionate and

well read and people who have studied the scriptures and understood them in their own context and are

giving a theology that is so rich from the environment of a rapidly growing number of churches. People who

are starting to really engage with the scriptures and their lives are being changed. And I think that whether

you are a person of faith or whether you embrace Christianity or Judaism or any other religion and you have

any scriptures that you read or not, whether you're an atheist or agnostic or just any kind of spirituality. This

is definitely the kind of book that helps you understand from the spiritual perspective of people who are living

very different than probably most people that are listening to this podcast that are English speakers. And at

the same time, it is just really a fascinating movement on just a cultural level, just from a perspective of

intercultural studies, just from a perspective of history to see what's happening, understanding even just the

political philosophy of how this is changing in a grassroots level, what's happening in China. Obviously, it

deals with some things related to international relations because as she mentioned in the episode, Wang Yi

was incarcerated and that made news in the west. And so there's political ramifications that this book helps

us see. But for the most part, a lot of us English speakers have seen that from a very Western perspective.

And this is exciting to just get the perspective of the people themselves that are experiencing it. And that's

kind of as we begin this change series, it's exciting to see some people bringing change like this, people

willing to give up their freedom to just walk around freely in society and be incarcerated for the kind of

change that Wang Yi is hoping to bring in a peaceful way. And also, it changes us when we read the

perspective of people who are reading maybe the very same scriptures that we are reading in English or

Spanish or French or Indonesian or whatever other language you speak. Because I know many of you out

there in the world on the overall Difference podcast, community speak multiple languages and a lot of

polyglots out there. But for many of us, reading the scriptures in English or hearing the perspective of what's

been going on in China from another language perspective, this is a chance to see something translated, but

from their own words, which is a much closer read to what's actually in their own minds. And I think some of

the greatest changes in our world happen when we open our minds to perspectives of other people hearing

as directly from the source as we can. So if you're interested in what's going on in China, this very large

nation that has an incredible ancient history and is a big superpower in the world today, even politically, and

even in the west, here in the United States, we don't often read or hear news where China is absent. China

is still a big player in even what goes on here politically in the United States. So as we look at this book and

as we read it together, I would love to hear I'm holding it here in my hands right now and have not read it

cover to cover yet, but I've read large parts of it and it's such a fascinating read. Never really read a

cover to cover yet, but I've read large parts of it and it's such a fascinating read. Never really read a

perspective like this. It's very exciting to have this kind of book in our hands. I would love to know from you

out there, as you're reading it and engaging with it, how you're being changed, what kind of changes are

coming into your soul, into your perspective, how is your life maybe even changed from what you're reading.

This is really a book. I think that's going to challenge a lot of us in some really good ways, especially around

what she mentioned, some of the conversation about ties between church and state, how expectations in

every country. Is slightly different. And how tied should religion be to the state? And what to do when it isn't,

in terms of practicing your faith? All of those things are up for debate, up for discussion, up for perspectives

on theology and politics wh