You would think Washington Post columnist Max Boot knows the basics about China, but his latest column gives me doubt. That column on atheism and politics posits: “Most of China’s 1.4 billion people have no religious affiliation, and fewer than 7 percent are monotheists. Is there any reason to believe that China is a less moral place than the United States, where 70.6 percent profess to be Christians?”
Well yes, Max, I would suggest there are many reasons to believe so.
Boot’s argument is that moral political leadership and atheism are more natural partners than moral political leadership and religion. But China utterly defeats that contention.
Most obviously, China’s majority atheism is not defined by citizen choices. Rather, it is defined by a Communist Party which educates its citizens to view religion as antithetical to patriotism. Yes, some religious worship is tolerated in China, but it is very closely monitored by the state. Nor is religious worship an easy choice in a nation where absolute fealty to the party is a necessity for social mobility.
There’s a terrible irony to Boot’s argument here. After all, as attested by Xi Jinping’s brutal subjugation of more than 1 million Muslims in western China, religion is the great victim of political authority in China. But the ideological connection point between China’s anti-religious governance and its broader authoritarianism cannot be discounted here. At its most basic level, religious worship is an act of individual freedom in companionship with other individuals. But such freedom is repugnant to the Chinese communists. In China, it is the state, not the individual, which is the rightful master of destiny.
So, yes, Max, there is much reason to believe China is a less moral place than the United States.
For Boot’s argument to work, the U.S. government would have to be throwing atheists into re-education concentration camps, teaching children that atheism is unpatriotic, and limiting opportunity to those of religious faith. I don’t see that happening. Do you?
