Source: Religion News Service
http://www.religionnews.com/index.php?/rnstext/chinese_students_find_new_home_and_new_faith_in_us/
The baptismal pool at the Boulder Chinese Baptist Church was filled with water as a small woman dressed in a white robe, inched down the stairs.
“This is Sister Wang Shuang,” Pastor William Fu, a Taiwan native, said in Mandarin to his mostly mainland congregation. “She came to our church last September from Chicago. Thanks for God’s grace, she is willing to become his child.”
Clutched in the pastor’s arms, Wang was immersed in the water. Applause arose from the audience as they sang, “What a joyful day. Oh God, please wash away my sins.”
It was a moment Wang had never anticipated when she first arrived in the U.S. six years ago from her native Guangxi province, where generations had been immersed in the official government gospel of atheism.
“In two days, I will have my 29th birthday,” she said in her testimony, “but I got reborn today.”
In the three decades since the end of the Cultural Revolution, during which houses of worship were destroyed and missionary workers expelled, there has been a surge in Chinese students and scholars like Wang adopting Christianity in the U.S., says Purdue University professor Fenggang Yang.
Wang’s Boulder Chinese Baptist Church (BCBC) is one of about 1,000 Chinese churches scattered across the U.S., by Yang’s estimate. The Southern Baptist-affiliated congregation only has between 50 and 55 registered members, and nearly all came from mainland China. Most are computer engineers in their 30s and 40s, and Pastor Fu notes that 11 have Ph.D.’s and 29 have master’s degrees.
To be sure, Christian groups have been proselytizing to all varieties of international students on college campuses, but according to Yang, Chinese students are some of the most receptive.