c. 1997 Religion News Service

HONG KONG _ A light rain was falling outside Hop Yat Church, but the Christians arriving for a Sunday morning service soon filled every pew in the two-story sanctuary.

As 500 worshipers, accompanied by a white-robed choir, boomed a Cantonese rendition of “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” their voices drifted out the open doors and into the residential street.

“We’re not afraid of the changes,” Elizabeth Wong, a lifelong Hong Kong resident, said minutes before the Church of Christ in China service began. “The faith is how you face change. We don’t worry about the politics. It’s a spiritual reaction.”

Three months after this former British colony reunited with mainland Communist China, worship services continue unfettered. Religious leaders say it’s business as usual and the Chinese government, true to its word, has kept hands off in this unusual place where East meets West.

However, the peaceful transition here coincides with public criticism in the United States of China’s crackdown on religious freedom elsewhere. In July, the U.S. State Department released a report on religious freedom accusing China of suppressing underground Christian groups. This fall, Congress is expected to vote on the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act, which would create a White House office to monitor foreign oppression. The bill’s sponsors name China as a key offender.

The attacks have exasperated those who argue more can be accomplished through negotiation and by praising the quiet revolution in religious freedom they say is blossoming on the mainland.

“In no way do I excuse the problems in that country, but in the church and in society, most Chinese will tell you that relative to what they lived through up until 10 years ago, this is like paradise,” said Sister Janet Carroll, a former missionary in Taiwan who heads the U.S. Catholic China Bureau, an educational organization based at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J.

Religious groups still must register with the Chinese government, but many experts say those who follow this requirement are being awarded increased freedom.

Catholic Bishop John Tong Hon, one of Hong Kong’s most important religious leaders, sounded an optimistic note at a July panel discussion held on the island. Although clergy members in government-sanctioned Catholic churches are forbidden to pay public allegiance to the pope, Tong said 90 percent of their congregants look to Rome for guidance.

“Luckily in our days, times of greater tolerance, Catholics in China have been allowed to pray for the pope openly,” Tong was quoted by Ecumenical News International as saying.

Others dispute the degree of tolerance, pointing to a crackdown on underground churches in the past 18 months.

“Right now in Hong Kong there is a very vibrant Christian community involved in all kinds of social outreach, none of which is permitted in China,” said Nina Shea, director of Freedom House’s Puebla Project on Religious Freedom. “You can’t establish Catholic hospitals or Protestant-run soup kitchens. All that is threatened.”

Hong Kong’s 500,000 Christians, about half of them Roman Catholic, are clearly a minority of the 6.3 million residents, but they play an integral role in the new Special Administrative Region. Churches run half the high schools, 40 percent of the elementary schools and countless social service agencies.

Yet the Chinese government, aware of religion’s role in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, is hostile to Western interference. More than a century of colonial domination by Western powers _ and questionable relationships between missionaries and colonial oppressors _ created a wariness of the Western church in China.

For several decades after they seized power in 1949, the Communists crushed organized religion. Catholics and other Christians who refused to cooperate with the state were imprisoned, tortured and killed.

In the past decade, however, as the Communists moved toward a more capitalist economy and citizens were permitted freer movement, the government has given religious leaders a wider berth. Approximately 10 million Catholics and a larger number of Protestants are estimated to be worshiping in the nation of 1.2 billion. Buddhism is enjoying a resurgence, and mainland temples are crowded with worshipers.

Self-imposed control may be a problem, according to the Rev. Lee Ching Chee. Lee is associate general secretary of the Church of Christ in China, a 25,500-member denomination and one of the largest Christian groups in Hong Kong. She also is vice chairwoman of the Hong Kong Christian Council, the region’s most influential ecumenical religious organization.

“Most people in Hong Kong, including church people, are quite comfortable with the new government,” Lee said. “After the changeover some people were expecting explosions, but nothing happened.”

Optimistic about China’s future, Lee nonetheless has noted a reluctance by fellow clergy to criticize the government. There was less participation this year, for example, in an annual vigil for Tiananmen Square protesters killed in 1989.

“I’m not afraid they will clamp down on us,” Lee said. “I’m afraid we will keep our mouths shut ourselves, and the churches will become social clubs where people come on Sunday to meet and sing.”

Carroll said China’s new openness has in effect invited scrutiny of its policies toward religion.

“Having been excluded for 40 years, critics are looking only at what is wrong,” she said. “Critics must look at what the Chinese people lived through with interminable patience to understand their conviction that eventually they will triumph.

“Religious experience has grown to such a point in China that most of us feel there is no way (for the government) to put the genie back in the bottle.”

MJP END CHAMBERS