In China, they’re closing churches, jailing pastors and rewriting scripture

China’s Communist party is intensifying religious persecution as Christianity’s popularity grows. A new state translation of the Bible will establish a ‘correct understanding’ of the text.

 By Lily Kuo in Chengdu

Rush hour in the centre of Chengdu, home to the Early Rain Covenant Church, which has just been closed. 

In late October, the pastor of one of China’s best-known underground churches asked this of his congregation: had they successfully spread the gospel throughout their city? 

“If tomorrow morning the Early Rain Covenant Church suddenly disappeared from the city of Chengdu, if each of us vanished into thin air, would this city be any different? Would anyone miss us?” said Wang Yi, leaning over his pulpit and pausing to let the question weigh on his audience. 

“I don’t know.”
Almost three months later, Wang’s hypothetical scenario is being put to the test. 

The church in south-west China has been shuttered and Wang and his wife, Jiang Rong, remain in detention after police arrested more than 100 Early Rain church members in December. 

Many of those who haven’t been detained are in hiding. 

Others have been sent away from Chengdu and barred from returning. 

Some, including Wang’s mother and his young son, are under close surveillance. 

Wang and his wife are being charged for “inciting subversion”, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.
Now the hall Wang preached from sits empty, the pulpit and cross that once hung behind him both gone. 

Prayer cushions have been replaced by a ping-pong table and a film of dust. 

New tenants, a construction company and a business association, occupy the three floors the church once rented. 

Plainclothes police stand outside, turning away those looking for the church.
One of the officers told the Observer: “I have to tell you to leave and watch until you get in a car and go.”

Wang Yi, pastor of the Early Rain church, who was arrested and detained three months ago, along with his wife. 

Early Rain is the latest victim of what Chinese Christians and rights activists say is the worst crackdown on religion since the country’s Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong’s government vowed to eradicate religion.
Researchers say the current drive, fuelled by government unease over the growing number of Christians and their potential links to the west, is aimed not so much at destroying Christianity but bringing it to heel.
“The government has orchestrated a campaign to ‘sinicise’ Christianity, to turn Christianity into a fully domesticated religion that would do the bidding of the party,” said Lian Xi, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, who focuses on Christianity in modern China.
Over the past year, local governments have shut hundreds of unofficial congregations or “house churches” that operate outside the government-approved church network, including Early Rain. 

A statement signed by 500 house church leaders in November says authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to hang the Chinese flag and sing patriotic songs, and barred minors from attending.
Churchgoers say the situation will get worse as the campaign reaches more of the country. 

Another church in Chengdu was placed under investigation last week. 

Less than a week after the mass arrest of Early Rain members, police raided a children’s Sunday school at a church in Guangzhou. 

Officials have also banned the 1,500-member Zion church in Beijing after its pastor refused to install CCTV.
In November the Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church was shut for the second time in three months. “The Chinese Communist party (CCP) wants to be the God of China and the Chinese people. 

But according to the Bible only God is God. The government is scared of the churches,” said Huang Xiaoning, the church’s pastor.
Local governments have also shut the state-approved “sanzi” churches. 

Sunday schools and youth ministries have been banned. 

One of the first signs of a crackdown was when authorities forcibly removed more than 1,000 crosses from sanzi churches in Zhejiang province between 2014 and 2016.
“The goal of the crackdown is not to eradicate religions,” said Ying Fuk Tsang, director of the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “Xi Jinping is trying to establish a new order on religion, suppressing its blistering development. [The government] aims to regulate the ‘religious market’ as a whole.”
While the CCP is officially atheist, Protestantism and Catholicism are two of five faiths sanctioned by the government and religious freedom has been enshrined in the constitution since the 1980s. 

For decades, authorities tolerated the house churches, which refused to register with government bodies that required church leaders to adapt teachings to follow party doctrine.

Members of the Early Rain Covenant Church pray during a meeting in their church before it was shut down in December 2018.

As China experienced an explosion in the number of religious believers, the government has grown wary of Christianity and Islam in particular, with their overseas links. 

In East Turkestan, a surveillance and internment system has been built for Muslim minorities, notably the Uighurs.
Xi has called for the country to guard against “infiltration” through religion and extremist ideology.
“What happens in East Turkestan and what happens to house churches is connected,” said Eva Pils, a professor of law at King’s College London, focusing on human rights. 

“Those kinds of new attitudes have translated into different types of measures against Christians, which amount to intensified persecution of religious groups.”
There are at least 60 million Christians in China, spanning rural and urban areas. 

Congregation-based churches can organise large groups across the country and some have links with Christian groups abroad.
Pastors such as Wang of Early Rain are especially alarming for authorities. 

Under Wang, a legal scholar and public intellectual, the church has advocated for parents of children killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake – deaths caused by poor government-run construction – or for families of those affected by faulty vaccines. 

Every year the church commemorates victims of the 4 June protests in 1989, which were forcibly put down by the Chinese military.
“Early Rain church is one of the few who dare to face what is wrong in society,” said one member. “Most churches don’t dare talk about this, but we obey strictly obey the Bible, and we don’t avoid anything.”
Wang and Early Rain belong to what some see as a new generation of Christians that has emerged alongside a growing civil rights movement. 

Increasingly, activist church leaders have taken inspiration from the democratising role the church played in eastern European countries in the Soviet bloc or South Korea under martial law, according to Lian. 

Several of China’s most active human rights lawyers are Christians.
“They have come to see the political potential of Christianity as a force for change,” said Lian. 

“What really makes the government nervous is Christianity’s claim to universal rights and values.”

Catholics wait to take communion during the Palm Sunday mass at a ‘house church’ near Shijiazhuang.

As of 2018, the government has implemented sweeping rules on religious practices, adding more requirements for religious groups and barring unapproved organisations from engaging in any religious activity. 

But the campaign is not just about managing behaviour. 

One of the goals of a government work plan for “promoting Chinese Christianity” between 2018 and 2022 is “thought reform”. 

The plan calls for “retranslating and annotating” the Bible, to find commonalities with socialism and establish a “correct understanding” of the text.
“Ten years ago, we used to be able to say the party was not really interested in what people believed internally,” said Pils. 

“Xi Jinping’s response is much more invasive and it is in some ways returning to Mao-era attempts to control hearts and minds.”
Bibles, sales of which have always been controlled in China, are no longer available for purchase online, a loophole that had existed for years. 

In December, Christmas celebrations were banned in several schools and cities across China.
“Last year’s crackdown is the worst in three decades,” said Bob Fu, the founder of ChinaAid, a Christian advocacy group based in the US.
In Chengdu, Early Rain has not vanished. 

Before the raid, a plan was in place to preserve the church, with those who were not arrested expected to keep it running, holding meetings wherever they could. 

Slowly, more Early Rain members are being released. 

As of 9 January, 25 were still in detention.
They maintain contact through encrypted platforms. 

On New Year’s Eve, 300 people joined an online service, some from their homes, others from cars or workplaces, to pray for 2019. 

Others gather in small groups in restaurants and parks. 

One member, a student who was sent back to Guangzhou, said he preaches the gospel to the police who monitor him.
The church continues to send out daily scripture and posts videos of sermons. 

In one, pastor Wang alludes to the coming crackdown: “In this war, in East Turkestan, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man. Therefore they are doomed to lose this war.”

The Just War

Steve Bannon: 'We're going to war in the South China Sea ... no doubt' 
By Benjamin Haas In Hong Kong
Steve Bannon: ‘We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years. There’s no doubt about that.’

The United States and China will fight a war within the next 10 years over islands in the South China Sea, and “there’s no doubt about that”.
At the same time, the US will be in another “major” war in the Middle East.
Those are the views of one of the most powerful men in Donald Trump’s administration, Steve Bannon, the former head of news website Breitbart who is now chief strategist at the White House.
In the first weeks of Trump’s presidency, Bannon has emerged as a central figure.
He was appointed to the “principals committee” of the National Security Council in an unusual move and was influential in the recent travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, overruling Department of Homeland Security officials who felt the order did not apply to green card holders.
While many in Trump’s team are outspoken critics of China, in radio shows Bannon hosted for Breitbart he makes plain the two largest threats to America: China and Islam.
“We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years,” he said in March 2016.
“There’s no doubt about that. They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face – and you understand how important face is – and say it’s an ancient territorial sea.”
China says the entire South China Sea falls within its territory, with half a dozen other countries maintaining partially overlapping claims.
China has built a series of artificial islands on reefs and rocks in attempt to bolster its position, complete with military-length airstrips and anti-aircraft weapons.
Bannon’s sentiments and his position in Trump’s inner circle insure a military confrontation with China, after secretary of state Rex Tillerson said that the US would deny China access to the seven artificial islands. 
Bannon is clearly wary of China’s growing clout in Asia and beyond, framing the relationship as entirely adversarial, predicting a global culture clash in the coming years.
“You have an expansionist Islam and you have an expansionist China. Right? They are motivated. They’re arrogant. They’re on the march. And they think the Judeo-Christian west is on the retreat,” Bannon said during a February 2016 radio show.
On the day Trump was inaugurated, China’s military warned that war between the two countries was a real possibility.
“A ‘war within the president’s term’ or ‘war breaking out tonight’ are not just slogans, they are becoming a practical reality,” an official wrote on the website of the People’s Liberation Army.
Aside from conflict between armies, Bannon focused on his perception that Christianity around the world is under threat.
In one radio show, Bannon focused heavily on China’s oppression of Christian groups.
“The one thing the Chinese fear more than America … they fear Christianity more than anything,” he said.

Christians' horror as churchgoers beaten and jailed for putting crucifix by home in China

Twenty Christians have been beaten and jailed for hanging a cross outside their home in China.
By KATIE MANSFIELD

Public security officials stormed the property in central Henan province after a crucifix was seen outside.
An eyewitness, described the scene in Nanle as “miserable” as officials beat the Christian homeowner before turning on other Christians coming out of the property.
Zhang Mingxuan, a pastor and president of the Chinese House Church Alliance, told China Aid: “It is against the national constitution and laws for house church believers to be beaten by Nanle County Public Security Bureau.
Churchgoers have been beaten and arrested in China

“A lot of problems have been caused because the public security bureau personnel control, attack and persecute Christianity in Henan. I hope the international community will pray for them.”
As chaos broke out in Nanle, officials in Xinjiang, raided a Christian couple’s house following reports a cross was displayed inside the property.
The couple, who run a house church, were detained alongside a woman visiting their home.

Officials attack a Christian woman in China

The Chinese Communist Party has been accused of cracking down on religious freedom

China Aid, who identified the couple as Dai and Li, say the couple and woman were taken away by police.
Dai has since been released but his wife and their guest remain in jail.
Officials reportedly confiscated other religious items from the couple’s home in north western China.
It comes as China’s latest regulations on religion come into force.

The crackdown has forced Christians to worship underground

The Chinese Communist Party has been accused of cracking down on religious freedom with the laws which restrict worship.
Xi Jinping’s despotic regime has banned Christians from praying, singing hymns, removed crosses from buildings and arrested people for attending worship.
Christian charities have reported scenes of violence, Christians being arrested, sent to labour camps and tortured.
The crackdown has forced Christians underground and has left a deal between the Vatican and China on the brink of collapse.
Catholics in the secretive state are divided between the official state Church, which heavily monitors sermons and teachings, and those who attend ‘underground Churches’, which run illegally away from the eyes of Xi Jinping’s Communist government.
It has led to an underground movement where bishops are unofficially elected without authorisation from the Chinese Communist Party or the Vatican.
Francis has previously declined to intervene.
In an unusual move, the Holy See released a statement this week warning underground Catholics not to take matter into their own hands.
It comes amid growing expectation the Vatican and the Chinese government are close to an agreement on the ordination of bishops as China still insists it has the authority to appoint bishops independent of the Holy See.

China Seeks Tighter Grip in Wake of a Religious Revival

By IAN JOHNSON

Ethnic Lisu heading to a Christian church in April in Fugong, in Yunnan Province. The Chinese government is expected to enact regulations tightening its oversight of religion in the coming days.

BEIJING — The finances of religious groups will come under greater scrutiny.
Theology students who go overseas could be monitored more closely.
And people who rent or provide space to illegal churches may face heavy fines.
These are among the measures expected to be adopted when the Chinese government enacts regulations tightening its oversight of religion in the coming days, the latest move by Xi Jinping to strengthen the Communist Party’s control over society and combat foreign influences it considers subversive.
The rules, the first changes in more than a decade to regulations on religion, also include restrictions on religious schools and limits on access to foreign religious writings, including on the internet. 
They were expected to be adopted as early as Friday, at the end of a public comment period, though there was no immediate announcement by the government.
Religion has blossomed in China despite the Communist Party’s efforts to control and sometimes suppress it, with hundreds of millions embracing the nation’s major faiths — Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Taoism — over the past few decades.
But many Chinese worship outside the government’s official churches, mosques and temples, in unauthorized congregations that the party worries could challenge its authority.

Tu Shouzhe, a Protestant lay leader, standing on the roof of his church in Muyang, Zhejiang Province, last year, hours after government workers cut down its cross.

A draft of the new regulations was published in September, several months after Xi convened a rare leadership conference on religious policy and urged the party to be on guard against foreign efforts to infiltrate China using religion.
“It could mean that if you are not part of the government church, then you won’t exist anymore,” said Xiao Yunyang, one of 24 prominent pastors and lawyers who signed a public statement last month criticizing the regulations as vague and potentially harmful.
The regulations follow the enactment of a law on nongovernmental organizations that increased financial scrutiny of civil society groups and restricted their contact with foreign organizations in a similar way, as well as an aggressive campaign to limit the visibility of churches by tearing down crosses in one eastern province where Christianity has a wide following.
But the rules on religion also pledge to protect holy sites from commercialization, allow spiritual groups to engage in charitable work and make government oversight more transparent.
That suggests Xi wants closer government supervision of religious life in China but is willing to accept its existence.
“There’s been a recognition that religion can be of use, even in a socialist society,” said Thomas Dubois, a professor at the Australian National University in Canberra.
“There is an attempt, yes, to carve out the boundaries, but to leave a particular protected space for religion.”

Uighur men performing Muslim prayers in September in the far western region of Xinjiang. The rules include restrictions on religious schools and limits on access to foreign religious writings, including on the internet.

Although the governing Communist Party requires its 85 million members to be atheist, its leaders have lauded some aspects of religious life for instilling morality in the broader population and have issued directives ratcheting back the hard-line attacks on religion that characterized the Mao era.
Over the past decades this has permitted a striking religious renaissance in China, including a construction boom in temples, mosques and churches.
Christianity is widely considered the fastest-growing faith; there are as many as 67 million adherents now, at least half of whom worship in unregistered churches that have proliferated across China, sometimes called underground or house churches.
The new regulations are more explicit about the party’s longstanding requirement that all religious groups register with the government, and the most vocal opposition so far has come from Protestant leaders unwilling to do so.
“These regulations effectively push house churches into taking on an illegal character,” said Yang Xingquan, a lawyer who is one of the signatories of the public statement.
“This is very clear.”
Many Christians contend that government-approved churches are tools of the state, as sermons are vetted to avoid contentious political and social issues and clergy are appointed by the party rather than congregants or, in the case of the Catholic Church, the Vatican.

Mosques in Linxia, in Gansu Province, last year. The rules pledge to protect holy sites from commercialization, allow spiritual groups to do charitable work and make government oversight more transparent.

The new rules call for more stringent accounting practices at religious institutions, threaten “those who provide the conditions for illegal religious activities” with fines and confiscation of property, and require the many privately run seminaries in China to submit to state control.
Other articles in the regulations restrict contact with religious institutions overseas, which could affect Chinese Catholics studying theology in the Philippines, Protestants attending seminaries in the United States, or Muslims learning at madrasas in Malaysia or Pakistan.
Overseas churches and activists with ties to Chinese Christians have been scathing in their attacks on the new regulations.
In its annual report on religious persecution released on Wednesday, China Aid, a group based in Texas, said they violated the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religious belief.
The regulations also say for the first time that religion must not harm national security, which could give security services in China greater authority to target spiritual groups with ties overseas.
Chinese officials have already banned residents from attending some religious conferences in Hong Kong and increased oversight of mainland programs run by Hong Kong pastors, raising fears within the city’s vibrant Christian community.
For traditional Chinese religions such as Buddhism and Taoism — which are practiced by 300 million to 400 million people and which the party views more favorably — the regulations appear intended to address a different problem: crass commercialization.
Temples are often forced by local governments to charge entrance fees, which mostly go to the state and not the place of worship.
About 600 people were recently detained at Mount Wutai, a Buddhist pilgrimage site in a northeastern city, for posing as monks to hustle money by fortunetelling, begging for alms and performing street shows, the state news media reported.
The new regulations say spiritual sites should be “safeguarded” from tourism and development.
The rules also require local governments to decide on applications to build houses of worship within 30 days and to explain denials in writing.
Scholars caution that it is unclear how strictly the regulations will be enforced, noting that local officials have often tolerated and sometimes encouraged religious activity that is formally illegal, including house churches.