In October 2018 Pastor Wang Yi (46) asked the congregation of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu if their city would miss them if they suddenly disappeared. He was challenging them with the question, ‘would people notice?’ ‘Do we make an impact on our city?’
Sadly, his words seem prophetic. For three months later Pastor Wang and his
wife were taken into detention, more than a hundred members were arrested, many
had to go into hiding, and others were expelled from the city. Pastor Wang remains in prison.
Pastor Wang had a high
profile. In 2004, he was listed among
the 50 most influential public intellectuals in China. In 2006, he met President George W. Bush at
the White House. He and his church were
willing to criticise the communist government.
His church annually commemorated the Tiananmen Square Rising of 1989. Not all evangelical churches were seen as
been so political.
Experts say that the
church in China is experiencing its worst crackdown since Mao’s Cultural
Revolution (1966-76). Let’s begin at the
beginning and see how things came to this.
The
History of Christianity in China
Christianity seems to
have first appeared in China in the seventh century. However, it did not take root until the
sixteenth century. Then it was reached
by Jesuit missionary called Matteo Ricci who established a mission in
1601. For more than a hundred years the
Jesuits were tolerated by the emperors and even welcomed to the imperial court to
show their western technology and artistic knowledge. Then, following a series of papal edicts in
the late eighteenth century that banned many Chinese customs, the Qing emperors
banned Christianity and introduced the death penalty for anyone found sharing
their faith.
The man who founded Chinese Protestantism was a British missionary named Robert Morrison. He arrived in China in 1807. He began translating the learning Chinese and translating the Bible, activities that were punishable by death. Morrison was also a translator for the British East India Company. After the Opium Wars (1839-1842) the British signed a series of treaties with the Chinese whereby they exerted influence in China. Included in these were provisions made for missionaries to be able to reach the Chinese. Yet after twenty-seven years of missionary work Morrison could only count twenty-five converts. Even by 1900, after a century of missionary effort by thousands of missionaries the numbers of evangelicals in China was barely a hundred thousand.
When communism took over
in 1949 there were about eight hundred thousand evangelicals and three million
Catholics (in a country of 540 million).
Karl Marx, the founder of Communism called religion the opium of the
people. Mao Zedong was a revolutionary
leader who became Chairman of the Communist Party. He sought to eradicate religion. In particular there was a crackdown in Mao’s ‘Cultural
Revolution’ (1966-76).
After Mao’s death there
was an easing of restrictions on religion.
Since the 1980s, China’s constitution claims to grant religious freedom
to five religions—Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism. This constitutional freedom is freedom of
belief but not of practice. Though these
five religions are officially tolerated, they are heavily restricted and
monitored.
Christianity
in China
There is no common word
for Christianity in Chinese.
Protestantism is referred to a ‘New Christianity’. It is also called the religion of Jesus. Catholicism is called the religion of the God
of heaven. They are treated as two separate
religions.
The Chinese Catholic
Church is forced to operate independently from Rome. It is controlled by the Chinese Patriotic
Catholic Association, which answers directly to the Communist Party. There are also underground Catholic churches.
Protestantism is divided
between the state-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement (Three-Self Church)
and the independent ‘House Churches’. In
the current crackdown even Three-Self Churches are being closed.
The Three-Self Patriotic
Church is patriotic in the fact that its first allegiance is to the People’s Republic
of China. The three selves are self-governance,
self-funding and self-propagation. In
other words, it is not connected to foreign influence. In the past the Three-Self Patriotic Church
has banned books like Revelation and parts of Daniel whose apocalyptic portions
could be taken in a political manner.
In recent decades the house churches (which meet in a variety of buildings) were tolerated, but this has changed under the Xi government. Over the past few years local governments have closed down hundreds of the unofficial congregations. Authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to fly the Chinese flag, barred children from attending and mandated the singing of patriotic songs. In Beijing the 1,500-member, Zion Church, was banned when the refused to install CCTV that would have led to government monitoring.
In the larger cities there are also some international churches. People are typically asked to show their passports at the door to ensure that no local Chinese can attend. These international churches often meet in the buildings of a Three-Self Patriotic Church. There are also international churches that meet secretly.
Crackdown
under President Xi
Chu Yanquin is a pastor
at the Zhongyuan house church. This
church started in a hotel on the outskirts of Beijing in 2004. The churches two dozen members are mostly
political activists who experience constant harassment and surveillance by the
authorities. Chu had been a protestor in
the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy rallies.
The experience had left him disillusioned and traumatised. This contributed to his turning to Christianity
in 2003. He is an example of the sort of
convert that particularly concerns the Xi government.
Until recent decades the
sort of people who were becoming Christians were not seen as a political
threat. In the 1980s, 8 out of 10
Christians lived in rural areas. The
converts tended to be predominantly uneducated, poor, elderly women. However, nowadays new Christians tend to be
based in the growing cities and are increasingly well-educated and influential men
and women. This sort of person tends to
demand their human rights and freedom.
They are also the type of person the modern Communist Party relies on. Christianity is China is a great response to
the western understanding, which believes that as countries modernise they
become less religious.
Whereas Mao wanted to
eradicate religion, President Xi wants to control it. The government pursues ‘thought reform’ to
show that the Bible’s teaching actually teaches socialism. He wants to turn Christianity into a
domesticated religion that would support the Communist Party.
The destruction of the building
of a registered church in Wenzhou in 2016 stands at the beginning of the latest
crackdown. A former missionary explained
that while house churches in the area had been harassed for years and suffered
persecutions and restrictions, this was the first time that a registered church
in the area had been affected. The local
government claimed that this demolition was due to the building not having proper
planning permission. A sign on the way
into the town reads, ‘Demolition with fairness, demolition with righteousness, illegal
structures must be demolished.’ Apparently,
it was not just the building’s size that had concerned the communist party
secretary in the area, but the cross on the building. Other churches in the area have been told to
lower or remove their crosses.
Christian
offshoots
Falun Gong has received a
lot of attention in recent years. It is
not a Christian offshoot but has its roots in Buddhism and Taoism. It’s leader now lives in the USA. It was banned as in 1999.
In 2013 Zhang Fan (29)
and her father Zhang Lidong (55) were sentenced to death for the brutal murder
of a woman in a McDonalds outlet in eastern China after the woman refused to
join them in worshipping with the ‘Church of Almighty God.’ This is an apocalyptic group that goes by the
name ‘Eastern Lightening’. It has
millions of followers who believe that Jesus has already come back to earth as
a Chinese woman and lived in central China until recently. The group also considers the communist party,
which it calls the ‘Great Red Dragon’, to be its mortal enemy, and tells its
followers to fight and slay the demons.
China has a long history with Christian offshoots. The Taiping rebellion (1850-1864) remains one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, leaving more that twenty-five million people dead (a recent study suggests that this number might have been as many as seventy million). This rebellion against the Qing dynasty was led by Hong Xiuquan, who claimed to be a Heavenly King and younger brother of Jesus Christ.
Conclusion
Despite all the
difficulties facing the church in China, a Professor Yang of Purdue University
says, ‘the current suppression and the campaign of demolishing churches,
pulling down crosses and throwing people in prison won’t significantly slow
down the growth in believers. If
anything, it actually adds fuel to the fire of Christian revival in China.’
Note: For life stories of missionaries in China it would be worth looking at Hudson Taylor and Lottie Moon.
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