Forgive us their trespass

China | Western evangelicals are plotting an apology to China for 150-year-old imperialist abuses. Critics wonder, how do you make up for the past? | Mark Bergin

For evangelical minister Gaetan Roy, promoting amicable relations between Westerners and the people of China is more than a vocation; it's a marital vow. A native of Canada who now lives in Germany, Roy is married to a Chinese woman, an arrangement he says requires ethnic reconciliation every day.

Such domestic realities may help explain Roy's passion for international appeasement. His familiarity with Chinese culture and popular attitudes convinces him that much of China still harbors bitterness for the West's role in its bloody history. Acting on that conviction, Roy drafted what he terms a "Road to Reconciliation" initiative, aiming to gather 50 prominent delegates from Europe and the United States to apologize formally for the 150-year-old Opium Wars and the resulting political climate that produced such massacres as the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Uprising.