Name: Persecuting the Church of Almighty God as a Xie Jiao in China
Uploaded: 2018-05-10T12:27:43.000Z
Duration: 30 min 45 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Well, you already saw me in the video before,

Basic passive voice

I was invited by the Chinese Anti-xiejiao Association, which is part of the CCP,

together with several other scholars to discuss the definition of xiejiao.

It was very clear that it's almost impossible to come to an agreement about xiejiao

Number one, some 30 years ago, scholars in the West stopped using the word "cult."

The word "cult" is still used, of course,

by the media, journalists, political activists,

The word "cult" disappeared from academic studies 30 years ago.

Because the word "cult" implies a value judgment on groups,

and scholars do not give value judgments.

But there is a second reason. We believe it is wrong to translate xiejiao as "cult."

Cult in the modern sense is a word originating in the early 19th century in Europe,

so it's anachronistic to translate xiejiao as "cult."

has nothing to do with any definition of cult used in Europe

given by the Chinese Supreme Court and the Chinese Procuratorate,

this word doesn't really exist in English by the way, in early 2017,

saying xiejiao are groups deifying their leaders or spreading superstitious fallacies.

Now, nobody who talked about cults in the West in the last hundred years,

because spreading superstitious fallacies is an accusation

Who decides what doctrines are superstitious

So xiejiao has a specific history in China

to ban heterodox groups accused of being against governments

and that, as I said, is from the Ming era.

So I would recommend not to translate xiejiao as cults

When I visited China for this very difficult dialogue with Chinese authorities,

I understood there are three different definitions of xiejiao.

Three-Self pastors will define xiejiao as heretical groups,

groups that do not believe in the traditional Christian theology of Trinity,

traditional Christian ideas about Jesus Christ.

it's a group whose theology we do not like.

Now CCP scholars borrow an old definition of cults from the West

and they define cults as groups using something called brainwashing

was coined by the CIA as a tool for the propaganda against Mao Zedong and China.

Brainwashing as defined by Edward Hunter,

a CIA agent who wrote the first book about brainwashing in China,

brainwashing was something very bad the evil Chinese Communists do.

So, to see the Chinese Communist now using the word brainwashing is

This word did not exist in English language

and was invented in the 50s by the CIA for their propaganda against China.

The third definition is mostly the definition we from the West proposed,

because you have been using it for many centuries,

but the only way to use xiejiao in a non-discriminatory way

is to use it for what I call criminal religious movements.

Of course there are religious movements that are criminal,

but criminal means they have a criminal behavior.

Nobody in a democratic society should be prosecuted for ideas or beliefs,

but clearly, people, religious or not religious, doesn't matter,

can be prosecuted for their criminal behavior.

So what is a criminal religious movement?

And I insisted with the Chinese authorities,

please use a definition of xiejiao as criminal religious movement.

because there is a consensus among scholars in the West

and you should avoid asking the friendly Christian pastors in the Three-Self

what church is heretic, what church is Christian and not heretic,

because secular state cannot use theological criteria to define criminal movement.

Another wrong notion is the one used in Russia.

Russia liquidated this year, they use this word "liquidating,"

banning, putting out of the law the Jehovah's witnesses

and they have a list of another 37 groups they plan to liquidate.

These groups according to Russian Ministry of Justice are extremists.

What is the main criterion to define these groups as extremists?

is a group saying we preach the true religion and the other religions are false.

But this definition applies to many religions,

So this is again a wrong notion of xiejiao.

We cannot say, if a group believes they have the truth,

we may like we may not like, but we cannot say it's criminal,

and it happens very frequently in religion.

So, my definition of xiejiao or criminal religious movement

is a group which, or a religious movement that

either advocates or consistently engages in common crimes

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Persecuting the Church of Almighty God as a Xie Jiao in China

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