Rice Christians

As a callow youth your faithful correspondent used to hear spoken, by those of the atheistic persuasion, denigrating comments about Christian missions in pre-revolutionary China, and the term of "rice Christians" being used as descriptions of those Chinese who became Christians. The idea of a rice Christian was that during famines in China the Chinese would go to the Christian missions to get rice stored in those missions and either pretend to be Christians to get the rice, or that they would get rice only after having formally converted to Christianity.

I don't know how true these stories are. Not very, I suspect, especially in the case of China Inland Missions.

But consider the fact that there are very few instances of non-Christians being forced to convert to the True Faith since the Crusades. Hawaiians may have been bothered by missionaries, drunks on Skid Row may have to put up with a sermon and a prayer to get a meal and a bed from the Salvation Army and a Burmese may listen to a Christian missionary in order to get a new shirt, but in no case has a knife been held to the throat of an innocent, Buddhist, Mohammedan or pagan to make that person embrace Christ. ... On the other hand, Steve Centanni and his cameraman, during their captivity, were forced to convert to Islam. Mr. Centanni states, after his release, that he still has high regard for Islam. One wonders whether the poor man has learned nothing while being threatened and tied up in a garage. And one wonders if he has ever reported stories denigrating Christian missions and "rice Christians."