Buddhism Spreading Rapidly in Australia and China
(1) In Australia, while Christianity declines, Buddhism grows rapidly.
It's official. There are now more Buddhists in Australia than Baptists.
What is both undisputed and expected is that all main Christian denominations are in continued decline, with significant desertion from Anglican and Uniting Church denominations and, to a lesser extent, Roman Catholicism.
In 1996 just under 200,000 people identified themselves as followers of the Buddha. That number has since risen to 360,000, outnumbering Baptists by more almost 50,000.
The president of the Baptist Union of Australia, the Rev Tim Costello, said yesterday that the figures were not surprising.
"The Christian churches' failure to deal with sexual abuse has enormously damaged their credibility, and that's where I think Buddhism has gained the edge," he said.
"Buddhism is personal, not collective, it doesn't have a heavy institutional framework - at least not in Australia - so on the surface it's probably much more appealing today.
"And there has not been betrayal of trust, which has happened with the clergy."
This is from the Buddhist Fellowship website.
It is a report from the 'The Sydney Morning Herald', by Kelly Burke, Religious Affairs Writer, June 18 2002.
http://www.buddhistfellowship.org/buddhism_grows_rapidly.htm
(2) Buddhism making a comeback in China.
One aspect of the supreme leader's (President Jiang Zemin's) thinking is never mentioned in public. According to highly connected sources, the 76-year-old veteran communist is a frequent worshipper at Buddhist temples and shows a strong personal leaning towards the ancient religion, though it is unclear whether he would yet call himself a Buddhist.
This places Mr. Jiang among a growing number of Chinese - some say 100 million of the country's 1.3billion people - who show some affiliation with Buddhism, a religion introduced from India nearly 2000 years ago but suppressed after the People's Republic was set up in 1949.
"A few years back, declaration that you were a Buddhist would earn you criticism," said one leading Chinese scholar of Buddhism, who asked not to be named. "After the opening-up drive and the reform, the official monopoly on belief is no longer in force. There is less suppression."
The signs are everywhere. Temples are being restored and reopened, and people come to burn incense and say prayers before Buddha images. More young people are shaving their heads and donning the yellow or grey robes of monks and nuns.
The revival is being quietly encouraged by the authorities, at the same time as they crack down on religious or mystical trends seen as potentially subversive of their monopoly on power.
Just this week it emerged that yet another leader of the underground Roman Catholic Church, Bishop Wei Jingyi of Qiqihar, in north-eastern Heilongjiang, had been arrested, while 15 members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement were jailed for between four and 20 years in Jilin for putting the group's videotapes on local cable television networks.
Yet at a military-run hotel in Beijing, about 400 abbots, monks and lay Buddhists were meeting for an occasional national convention of the Buddhist Association of China, one of the five officially sanctioned organizations (including for Catholicism, other branches of Christianity, Islam and indigenous Daoism) through which Beijing permits and controls religious activity.
"The Government's attitude towards Buddhism is more tolerant," said the scholar. "This is partly because it is so closely incorporated into Chinese culture - in everything from architecture to language - it is inseparable. But also because itt pposes less of a threat to the Government. Buddhism advocates peace and benevolence and seldom takes violent form, and it has fewer connections to authority outside China compared to other religions such as the Catholics to the Vatican."
This is from the Buddhist Fellowship website.
It is a report from the 'South Melbourne Herald' by Hamish McDonald, September 21 2002.
http://www.buddhistfellowship.org/buddhism_making_a_comeback_in_china.htm