c. 1998 Religion News Service
JIADIAN, China _ The presses are humming at the Love of Christ printing plant in this industrial suburb of Shanghai.
One line is spitting out 1999 calendars depicting such scenes as Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Another turns out the monthly magazine of the China Christian Council. A nearby warehouse stocks Christmas cards and Sunday school materials.
“This is freedom, freedom, religious freedom,” shouts plant supervisor Xu Minghan over the churn of machinery. “We can print anything we need!”
Yet in the industrial town of Zhengzhou, 400 miles away, Zhen Shuqian is suffering, not celebrating.
Zhen, the leader of the Fancheng Christian Fellowship, kneels on the floor, his head touching the carpet. He moans in prayer, trying to decide whether he should be among the first to publicly challenge a government with a long track record of crushing its dissidents.
“We have been persecuted for so long,” he prays. “Do you want us to speak out now? Just guide us. We have been so careful, but we still get arrested. We don’t know why.”
Xu Minghan, with his printing plant of freedom, and Zhen Shuqian, with his prayers to stop persecution, illustrate how China’s Christians are polarized into two camps regarding their relationship with the government.
Few would dispute that, compared with the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when all religion was outlawed, this is a golden age of religious freedom. Official religious leaders point to the existence of 10 million Protestants, 14 times the number when the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. Twenty million copies of the Bible have been printed since 1980, and 8 million copies of the Chinese New Hymnal have been distributed.
“Americans cannot imagine what is happening today in terms of China’s religious policy,” said Xu, the printing plant supervisor and vice president of East China Theological Seminary, which is adding buildings to accommodate a waiting list of students. “We can’t even imagine what has happened in the last 20 years. There is more and more freedom for us.”
Yet Zhen and other underground Christian leaders said it isn’t religious tolerance that’s increasing in China but oppression.
For the first time, several of these leaders have decided to speak out, agreeing to have their pictures taken and names printed in the Western media. They say the rest of the world must know about their suffering, even though emerging from the underground could send them back to jail.
These underground Christian leaders describe lives as fugitives. They say they stay a step ahead of authorities only by moving from house to house, never sleeping in the same bed four nights in a row and keeping in contact with believers through cell phones. They speak of campaigns of harassment, scores of arrests and jail terms that routinely include torture with the dreaded “dian bang,” or electric stick.
Why is one group of Christians satisfied and the other oppressed?
The answer lies in the way these two groups respond to the Chinese government’s profound need to control.
The Chinese government demands authority over nearly every aspect of citizens’ lives, from family planning to the stock market. This control is more political and social than religious, but it clearly includes religion. Each church must register with the Religious Affairs Bureau, which, along with local authorities, governs church activities in ways that vary widely from place to place.
Behind churches’ choice to register or resist lies a profound philosophical and theological divide.
The official, or “registered,” churches have agreed to comply with government orders. They see it as a practical matter, irrelevant to their spiritual lives. In philosophy and approach, these churches resemble mainstream Protestant denominations in the United States.
Members of the underground, or “house church,” movement refuse to register on the grounds that doing so requires submission to a government hostile to unbridled Christianity. They cite biblical passages that, in their interpretation, command them to resist such earthly authority.
Nearly all the dissidents fall under a theological umbrella that in the United States would be called evangelical, emphasizing a belief in an intimately personal relationship with a God who requires them to spread “the good news.” Some of the evangelicals are also charismatic, emphasizing physical healings and other modern-day miracles. The Chinese government prohibits this type of religious expression, calling these groups “cults.”
These underground Christians say they have at least as many believers as the official churches and possibly many times more. Many compare their underground movement to the dynamic first-century church described in the Bible’s Book of Acts.
A similar divide about registration exists among Catholics, with about 4 million attending government-approved churches. Because submission to a foreign entity is forbidden, these churches have no official ties to the Vatican.
No one knows how many attend underground Roman Catholic churches, which maintain allegiance to the pope. But human rights organizations have reported that several of the movement’s priests and bishops have been jailed.
The roots of this theological divide about registration reach all the way to the United States, influencing Christian thought and U.S. foreign policy from both sides.
Nine years after the massacre in Tiananmen Square, the United States’ relationship with the world’s No. 2 superpower and increasingly vital trade partner is as complex as ever. The State Department reports that China, though improving, for years has had problems allowing religious freedom. Still, the United States has not imposed sanctions as it has on countries guilty of similar human rights violations.
Last month Congress enacted a law, signed by President Clinton, requiring the administration to take action against countries that engage in a pattern of religious persecution. People who support the underground churches strongly supported the legislation.
By 7:15 a.m. on a recent Sunday in Beijing, outdoor chairs await an overflow crowd at Chongwenmen Christian Church in Beijing. This is China’s largest registered Protestant church, which President Clinton visited in June.
By 8:30 a.m. the sanctuary is full, and worshippers spill into an outdoor courtyard equipped with a sound system and video monitor. When the service begins at 9:30 a.m., more than 2,500 people have jammed into every seat in and around the church.
Li Peiying, a 34-year-old seminary graduate and pastoral assistant, said that 10 years ago, only 300 people attended on an average Sunday.
“They come here to seek God,” she said. “They now have enough necessities for living, for work. They have their material things, yet they’re not satisfied. They aren’t spiritually satisfied. They’re looking for faith.”
As a registered church, Chongwenmen complies with Decree No. 145, “Regulation Governing Venues for Religious Activities,” written in 1994.
Human Rights Watch/Asia says these requirements effectively squelch the free practice of religion. In a 1997 report, the human rights group said that by requiring registration, the government can block the selection of clergy, supervise financial affairs, veto building programs and restrict social welfare and other projects.
Publication of Bibles, religious books, magazines and other materials is subject to government scrutiny, as are seminary students. Proselytizing among those younger than 18 is forbidden. Sermons can be checked for content.
Messages about the Second Coming of Christ, Judgment Day and the biblical account of creation are to be avoided, as are sermons questioning government policies, such as the limit of one child per family.
Li dismisses such Western human-rights reports. She said ministers can preach as they please, to whomever they please. She conceded there is no proselytizing outside church property but said with such booming attendance, there is no need for it.
“The government doesn’t interfere with this,” she said. “This church is as free as Christian churches in the United States.”
What about reports of imprisoned church leaders?
“It’s a rumor,” she said. “Nobody was put into prison. Maybe during the Cultural Revolution, but I have never heard of this thing now.”
People in the underground churches, however, said imprisonment is still a reality. And as recently as Tuesday (Nov. 11), news reports from China said more than 140 members of underground Protestant churches had been arrested in what dissidents said is a new crackdown on unregistered worship.
Zhang Rongliang said he’s been arrested three times.
Zhang has no printing plant, church building or seminary. What he does have, he said, is an underground flock of 10 million uncompromising believers.
In August, Zhang and 11 other house-church leaders met in a large upper room of a two-story house just outside Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. The 12 men and women believe they represent at least 15 million Christians scattered throughout the country.
Almost all of these leaders are peasants with no formal training. Their motto is “Prison is our seminary.”
Religious groups inside and outside China claim huge numbers of members for such underground congregations _ as many as 80 million. According to the evangelical Christianity Today magazine published in the United States, as many as 20 million people are involved in spinoffs from a single underground stream, the Born Again Movement.
The Chinese government has labeled the movement a cult. It does have some unusual beliefs, such as encouraging new converts to weep for three days seeking forgiveness of their sins.
Underground leaders take great offense at the cult charge. On this day, after much discussion and prayer, the house-church leaders decide to speak jointly and openly about their lives and their worries.
Zhang, 47, emerged as the group’s spokesman. He said he travels by train and van to solve problems among his far-flung congregations, never staying in one place for more than four consecutive nights and always keeping his cell phone at his side.
He said he’s been on the run since February 1994, when he was released after spending 14 days in a labor camp on a charge that he held unauthorized religious meetings with foreigners.
In 1990 he was imprisoned for 14 months on a charge that he was a counterrevolutionary. He said he was in a labor camp from 1967 to 1974 after being accused of fomenting “counterrevolutionary activities under the guise of religion.”
During the course of a day, the leaders wrote a document and asked two American journalists to present it to the world. The document asked the Chinese government to establish a dialogue with the house churches and to present a clear definition of what it considers a cult. It was the first time such underground leaders have come together to try to express themselves openly to their government and to Westerners.
A peasant farmer who was once a communist, Zhang doesn’t see himself as a counterrevolutionary or any kind of threat. Christians, he argued, make good Chinese citizens because they are honest and hard-working.
“Tell the government,” he said, “that we are their good friends, not their enemies.”
DEA END O’KEEFE
