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Introduction
the Church and Asia

At the end of the twentieth century, Asia not only poses a significant challenge to fulfilling the Lord's charge to take the restored gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, but also offers great opportunities for spreading the gospel in a vast area extending from Karachi, Pakistan, to Tokyo, Japan. The inhabitants of China, India, Pakistan, Japan, Indonesia, and South Korea number more than three billion people. For The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the magnitude of bearing witness in these lands and in the rest of Asia-comprising 56 percent of the world's population all told-is staggering.

Asia is the seat of many great ancient cultures and religions. The world's five greatest religions were born there, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Asia is also the oldest and greatest center of Christian missionary activity. Those of us who are steeped in Western tradition are surprised to learn that during the first few centuries of Christianity, the most successful dissemination of the gospel was to the East, not to the West. The Apostle Thomas evidently took the gospel to India, and by the third century a community of Syrian Christians was established along India's Malabar Coast. During the seventh century, Nestorian Christians established a thriving church in China. Since the age of discovery, Roman Catholic and, later, Protestant missions covered most of the lands of Asia. Latter-day Saints owe gratitude to the valiant men and women who have translated the Holy Bible and who have taken their versions of Christianity as well as literacy and medical and social services to many of Asia's peoples.

Asia has been the least fertile (with the exception of the Muslim areas) of all the major Christian missionary fields of the world. Africa, Europe, the Americas, and Oceania have all been more productive of Christian converts. Although the foregoing areas are all nominally Christian, in all of Asia only the Philippine Islands (more than 90 percent Christian) is a Christian nation. The other somewhat successful areas of Christian evangelization are South Korea (35 percent Christian), Indonesia (10-12 percent Christian), Taiwan (5 percent Christian), and Vietnam (9.8 percent Christian). Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the three most fruitful areas of Christian success, were never fully converted to the so-called higher religions-Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism-before Christian missionaries arrived there. Ten percent of the Korean people remain Shamanists (followers of diviners), but a much higher percentage are influenced by such thinking. In Indonesia the major pockets of Christian success have occurred where the people were still animists. Because the Roman Catholic Spanish subjugated the Philippines before Islam spread far into that land, most Filipinos moved directly from tribal religions to Catholicism. On the other hand, the people in lands where the great religions hold sway have not easily converted to Christianity. In China before 1949, there were more than four million Christians, but they totaled only 0.7 percent of the population. Between 1.4 and 2.5 percent of the Japanese, 1 percent of the Thais, and 2.61 percent of the Indian people are Christian today. The established higher religions of Asia have not easily yielded to Christianity in general nor to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.1