Bush spitting in faces of Chinese Christians... again

When he goes to Beijing for the opening of the Olympics over a week from now, George W. Bush will "worship" at a church there, it's being reported.

Now for the part of the story that the Bush Administration doesn't like to talk about...

The "church" that Bush will attend is no doubt going to be one of the state-approved churches that the communist government of mainland China keeps under its control. It will not be a congregation of believers who are free to worship as they best understand the leading of the Holy Spirit. They cannot even appoint their own leaders for their churches: the Chinese government determines who are the pastors and other officials, even installing its own priests for the supposedly "Catholic" churches there.

(By the way, Bush did the same thing almost three years ago and I wrote about it then, too.)

The church that Bush will be going to will be one that puts loyalty to the Chinese government far ahead of loyalty to God.

Meanwhile, some estimate that 40 million Christians in China are worshiping at underground "house churches", beyond the sanction of the government there. They do so at the risk of being arrested, imprisoned, and perhaps far worse.

Those are the believers that our supposedly "Christian" President should be standing in solidarity with. And it would be ridiculous to suggest that Bush attend a service at an "unofficial" church and risk the lives of its congregants. But by announcing that he will attend one of the state-sponsored churches, Bush is gesturing his approval of goverment-controlled religious worship. It would have been better if he had the guts to say "Nope, I'm not going to go in for this farce. You officials in Beijing need to let these people worship God according to their conscience, not your policy."

But then, since when did Bush ever have the guts to do something like that, anyway?