Chinese Political Theology: Protests in Blood Letters, Freedom, and Religion in China Today / Peng Yin

For the Life of the World / Yale Center for Faith & Culture

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"There were a lot of people with moral courage to resist, to protest the communist revolutions, but few of them had the spiritual resource to question the system as a whole. Many intellectuals really protested the policies of Mao himself, but not the deprivation of freedom, the systematic persecution, the systematic suppression of religion and freedom as a whole—the entire communist system. So I think that's due to Lin Zhao's religious education. It's very helpful to have both moral courage and spiritual theological resource to make certain social diagnosis, which, I think, was available for Lin Zhao. So I would think of her as this exceptional instance of what Christianity can do—both the moral courage and the spiritual resource to resist totalitarianism." (Peng Yin on politically dissident Lin Zhao)

What are the theological assumptions that charge foreign policy? How does theology impact public life abroad? In this episode, theologian Peng Yin (Boston University School of Theology) joins Ryan McAnnally-Linz to discuss the role of theology and religion in Chinese public life—looking at contemporary foreign policy pitting Atheistic Communist China against Democratic Christian America; the moving story of Christian communist political dissident Lin Zhao; and the broader religious, philosophical, and theological influences on Chinese politics.

Show Notes

• Religion’s role in Chinese political thought.
• Thinking beyond Communist Authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism.
• American foreign policy framed as “good, democratic” US versus “authoritarian, atheistic” China.
• Chinese Communist party borrowing from Christian Utopianism
• Sole-salvific figure: Not Christ, but the Party
• Chinese Communism is a belief, not something that is open to verification. It’s not falsifiable.
• Did the communist party borrow from Christian missionaries?
• Communist party claiming collective cultivation over Confucianism’s self cultivation.
• History of religious influence in Chinese political thought
• Religion’s contemporary influence in Chinese public life
• Lin Zhao, Christian protestor.
• Lin Zhao as “exceptional instance of what Christianity can do: both the moral courage and the spiritual resource to resist totalitarianism.”
• “New Cold War Discourse”
• Chinese immigration influx after 1989 Tiananmen Movement.
• Inhabiting a space between two empires.
• “God's desire for human happiness is not simply embodied in one particular nation in an ambiguous term.”
• The nexus of democracy, equality, and theological principles
• Historical impacts of religion in Chinese public life—particularly in Confucianism and Buddhism and eventually Christianity
• Peng reflects on his own moral sources of hope and inspiration—which arise not from the State, but from a communion of saints.

About Peng Yin

Peng Yin is a scholar of comparative ethics, Chinese theology, and religion and sexuality. He Assistant Professor of Ethics at Boston University’s School of Theology. He is completing a manuscript tentatively entitled Persisting in the Good: Thomas Aquinas and Early Chinese Ethics. The volume explores the intelligibility of moral language across religious traditions and rethinks Christian teaching on human nature, sacrament, and eschatology. Yin’s research has been supported by the Louisville Institute, Political Theology Network, Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, and Yale’s Fund for Gay and Lesbian Studies.

A recipient of Harvard’s Derek Bok Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Yin teaches “Comparative Religious Ethics,” “Social Justice,” “Mysticism and Ethical Formation,” “Christian Ethics,” “Queer Theology,” and “Sexual Ethics” at STH. At the University, Yin serves as a Core Faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and as an Affiliated Faculty in Department of Classical Studies and Center for the Study of Asia. In 2023, Yin will deliver the Bartlett Lecture at Yale Divinity School and the McDonald Agape Lecture at the University of Hong Kong.

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Peng Yin & Ryan McAnnally-Linz
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, & Tim Bergeland
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give