By Christopher C. Simpson, Op-ed contributor Wednesday, November 05, 2025This photo taken on May 22, 2013 shows Chinese Catholics, who belong to an “underground” church which is not recognized by the Chinese government, arriving to attend a mass in Donglu, Hebei Province. | AFP via Getty Images/MARK RALSTON
The United States sits under relentless scrutiny. In Europe, in Asia, and even from within its own borders, America has become a global dartboard — criticized, written off, mocked for its “outdated Christianity.” The headlines insist she is fractured beyond repair, but here’s what the news will never tell you: Christians in hostile territories are praying for the United States, not against her, with tears of love for the American faithful.
I was in Macau to strengthen marketplace leaders from across Asia when I saw them arrive — wave after wave of believers crossing the border from mainland China. The largest contingent. No cameras. No fanfare. Just professionals with unshakable resolve in their eyes. They moved with the quiet confidence of people who have already died to themselves. They didn’t walk like tourists. They walked like envoys of a Kingdom no regime can authorize, and no party can stop.
After I finished teaching, one of them approached me. I’ll call her “Edith.” She’s been laboring in marketplace ministry for over a decade, mentoring executives, discipling women and building the church behind closed doors. She gripped my hands, tears already forming. “We look to America,” she said. “To keep being bold for Christ.” Then came the sentence that rearranged me: “Please, tell them we’re not their enemies. Tell the Americans that we love them. The government here does not speak for us.”
She wasn’t finished. And in a way that would unsettle the cultural elites, she told me she loves the current U.S. administration — for praying publicly, for speaking the name of Jesus without apology, for refusing to treat faith like a liability. “That kind of clarity,” she whispered, “gives us courage.”
She wasn’t talking politics. She was talking about bloodline.
The news follows nations. Heaven follows disciples. And history is being written through a family that the headlines do not even see.
Months later, I was in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, another communist nation. A place where faith is policed rather than celebrated. And yet, there it was again. Life. Underground. Rising like a blade of green through concrete. A local doctor led me through back streets to what is now the first Christian bookstore in the country. No branding. No business plan. Just light burning quietly in a place where darkness is cheaper. In a back room, I found a wall of blue binders.
One of them with four letters written in pen: CBMC. Our marketplace ministry. Hidden. Preserved as a part of the Christian history of Vietnam. Reverently guarded. This was not an office. It was an archive of the faithfulness of God — so the testimony would not die. Ours was just one binder, but full of fruit: business owners discipling engineers, CEOs mentoring founders before launch day, prayer whispered over spreadsheets before trading hours.
From Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi, the Gospel has been running across supply chains and startup corridors. Economics has become the riverbed of revival. The very commercial system the enemy has worked so hard to enslave us with has become the vehicle by which Christ is entering places pulpits will never reach.
This is what many American Christians still have trouble seeing: there is a vast, radiant, global church moving beneath the border walls that politics and news headlines construct. Millions of believers, living under regimes that publicly curse the United States, do not see Americans as enemies. They see you as family. Kin. Same Spirit. Same Savior. Same future. They do not envy American freedom. They pray you will not waste it. Your internal chaos does not scandalize them. They are watching for your courage. I’ve looked directly into the eyes of Gen Z believers across the planet — and I promise you — if my own children sat at their tables, whether in Shanghai or Moscow, they would feel no friction. Only family. Their plea — again and again — is never for protection. Never for money. “Tell them we’re not their enemies. Tell them we love them.”
This is not a call to be naive about global threats. Evil is real. Regimes persecute. But governments are not the same as people. And people are not the same as the people of God. This is not some fragile remnant, clinging to survival. This is not a dying minority, fading out of history. This is the greatest unreported reality of our time. There is a living church in places we only ever hear about in crisis language — and they are more awake, more faithful, and more full of love for America than we are prepared to believe.
So, if you are a believer in the United States, lift your eyes. Your faith has been noticed. Your boldness — when it is real — is already strengthening churches you will never see. Your freedom is not envied; it is interceded for. You are not isolated. You are not the last ones holding the line. You are part of a roaring family that heaven has woven across the earth. And that family is moving — through airports and boardrooms, export routes and tech corridors — preaching Christ where pulpits don’t fit but their voices ring true.
Edith didn’t ask for sympathy. She asked for solidarity. She asked us to see clearly; to remember what the news refuses to. “Tell them we’re not their enemies.” So I am. Because flesh and blood are not as divided as governments. The Church is not as small as it looks.
And despite the volume of the culture all around, the Kingdom is doing just fine.
Christopher C. Simpson is President & CEO of CBMC International, a Christian marketplace ministry founded in the United States in 1930 and now equipping business and professional leaders to advance the Gospel in more than 90 nations. A former U.S. Marine Corps officer and retired Senior Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service, he has spoken in over 40 countries on faith and leadership in the public square.
