This article appeared in The American
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What is God doing in China? The economic miracle of this emerging
superpower gets well reported, but its more mysterious and some say
no less miraculous spiritual development is far harder to
chronicle. However, after recently spending five weeks on a
prisons, pulpits, and public speaking tour of eleven cities and
five countries in the Asia Pacific region, beginning in Sydney,
Australia, and ending in Shenzhen, your High Spirits columnist is
willing to try his hand at reading the latest tea leaves.
No statistic or conclusion is entirely reliable in the opaque
and complex world of China-watching, but four clear trends are
emerging. The first is a spectacular growth of Christian believers
in China attending both the official and underground churches. The
second is a recent rapprochement between the Catholic Church and
the Chinese authorities. The third is a massive evangelistic and
prayer support drive from Christians in the surrounding region for
their Chinese brothers and sisters. The fourth is the intriguing
new initiatives undertaken by the Department of State
Administration for Religious Affairs in Beijing. Combined, these
developments suggest growing government acceptance of religious
participation in Chinese society, even though Western-style
tolerance and religious freedom are still a long way off.
These trends are remarkable in themselves, given that less than
40 years ago Christianity appeared unlikely to survive in China. At
the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, Chairman
Mao expelled the last of the old Western missionaries and
ruthlessly persecuted what remained of their dwindling flock, which
numbered less than half a million. Yet four decades later, there
are at least 30 million regular churchgoers in the country (the
official government estimate); probably over 50 million (the
consensus figure among statisticians at Western embassies); and
quite possibly around 100 million (the number proclaimed by
underground church pastors, who say they are recruiting at the rate
of 20,000 converts a day).
Whatever the statistics may be, I saw enough of official and
unofficial church life during my recent visits to Shenzhen,
Beijing, and Guangzhou to know that the spiritual vitality of
ecclesiastical China is reflected in an astonishing rate of
growth.
There used to be a view amongst Protestants that the officially
authorized church, which bears the Orwellian name of the Three Self
Patriotic Movement, did not preach authentic Christianity to its
small congregations of elderly faithful, who were about as
theologically alive as a geriatric ward of Episcopalians. Not
anymore. In Shenzhen, a Southern frontier boomtown with a
population of 10 million and an average age among its citizens of
26, there are now at least 500 official churches and an equivalent
number of so-called “third churches,” which are unofficial yet
tolerated by the authorities. All are packed with youthful
believers flocking to hear good biblical preaching of the
Gospel.
The same pattern can be seen in Beijing. In that city I have a
Chinese friend who is assistant pastor of a church that was
“underground” when I visited it two years ago, in the sense that it
was kept under regular police surveillance. These days my friend
tells me that his church has doubled in size and is now “above
ground,” since the police have gone away and the services are
advertised to all comers. “We make no trouble and we attract many
intellectuals,” says this pastor. “It has been accepted by the
party that we are here to stay.”
The inevitability of permanence and growth in China’s Catholic
community has also been accepted by Beijing’s Department of State
Administration for Religious Affairs (DSARA). According to Bishop
Joseph Zen Zi-Kun of Hong Kong, Pope Benedict XVI has recently
authorized a series of informal talks between his representatives
from the Rome-based Community of San Egidio and the DSARA to
explore the possibilities of restoring diplomatic relations between
the Vatican and Beijing. One condition of such normalization would
have to be assurances from Beijing that human rights violations
against Christians would cease. This raises the issue of Beijing’s
wish to differentiate between official religions and “cults” — a
code word that in Communist-speak can apply to anything from an
up-country Baptist church to Falun Gong, the mystical breathing
exercises movement with alleged links to Taiwan.
What troubles the hardliners in Beijing about such so-called
cults is not their theology but their organizational powers. Any
unauthorized group, cult, or church that can organize the gathering
together in one place of a few hundred single-minded people (in
Falun Gong’s case a few hundred thousand) is liable to get
ruthlessly suppressed. Even in the case of well-behaved worshippers
these suppressions can get extremely nasty, as the best-selling
book The Heavenly Man by the underground church pastor Brother Yu
has recorded.
However, as the new outward-looking China enjoys its World Trade
Organization membership and prepares to host the next Olympics, it
does not want to be pilloried in the global media for persecution
of Christians. So instead it is becoming nicer to mainstream
Protestants, Catholics, and even to its home-grown “third
churches.”
Perhaps sensing the evangelistic opportunity that the improved
conditions within China for church growth are now offering,
Christian organizations and churches all around the Asia-Pacific
region are engaged in energetic long-term work to build bridges of
support and understanding within China.
I GAINED SOME INSIGHTS into this gathering network because my
speaking tour was organized by two Christian ministries that have
active China-friendly outreach policies. One was Alpha, whose
“Introduction to Christianity” courses have been taken by 7 million
people around the world. They include tens of thousands of Chinese
speakers in places like Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. This year
the first Alpha conference in China took place in Shanghai.
Another groundbreaking conference that I attended in Shenzhen
was jointly organized by Charles Colson’s ministry, Prison
Fellowship. The subject of the conference was Criminal Justice
Reform with special focus on Restorative Justice. Our agenda was an
exchange of ideas between academics and prison professionals. In
terms of spiritual or political content we were only at the
equivalent stage of the ping-pong diplomacy that preceded Richard
Nixon’s opening to China. Yet two or three years ago it would have
been unthinkable that Christian ministries like Alpha or Prison
Fellowship could be holding conferences in Chinese cities with
distinguished Chinese participants. So the tea leaves are
moving.
Perhaps the most intriguing tea leaf I came across was in
Singapore. My hosts were the leading Christians of that remarkable
city-state, and they were buzzing with fascinating revelations
about their previous visitor two days earlier. He was a
high-ranking Communist party official from Beijing, Mr. Ye Xiaowen,
the director general of State Administration for Religious Affairs.
What had Mr. Ye Xiaowen been doing amongst Christians in Singapore?
I asked. “He came here with a delegation to take part in our
seminar with the title ‘Seek the Welfare of the City’ (Jeremiah
29:7),” was the surprising answer. “He wanted to find out how we
had integrated Christians and other faiths into our society, and
how as fellow Chinese we had balanced the issues of church and
state.”
In China it can take years, sometimes generations, before a tea
leaf turns into a trend. Yet my reporter’s and ex-politician’s nose
tells me that the leadership of China is doing no more than bowing
to the inevitable. For if China really does have a fervent
churchgoing population that is approaching ten percent of the
actual population, the Maoist options of marginalizing Christians,
let alone suppressing them or persecuting them, are not going to
work. So as the old Tammany Hall saying goes, it will be a case of:
“If you can’t beat them, join them.” If that happens in China the
most appropriate verse of Scripture will be Psalm 65, verse 13:
“The Lord’s valleys shall stand so thick with corn that they shall
laugh and sing.”
