Tony Lambert goes behind the headlines of persecution and church demolitions
‘They have gone too far. Countless worshippers are shedding tears of sorrow.’ – pastor in Wenzhou, April 28.
One of China’s largest churches was completely demolished on April 28, sending shock-waves throughout the large Christian community. The last two decades have seen a gradual lessening of persecution. But suddenly a wave of repression has swept through Zhejiang province on the south-east coast which has seen the greatest growth. Zhejiang includes the large Wenzhou area where over one million of its eight million inhabitants are Protestants. Wenzhou has over 2,000 churches – many of them mega-churches built in recent years to contain congregations numbering in the thousands.
Out-of-control growth
The Sanjiang church in Wenzhou took six years to build at a cost of nearly £3 million. As recently as autumn last year local officials were proudly boasting of the church as an architectural marvel in the area. What has caused the sudden change in policy?
For several years academic advisers on religious policy to the Communist Party in Beijing have been warning that the growth of the Christian church in China is out of control. In 2010, in a book I purchased openly in Beijing, they warned that the number of Protestants could top 200 or even 300 million over the next few decades and that something had to be done.
160 million by 2025
Professor Yang Fenggang, a Chinese researcher on religion at Purdue University in the United States, recently published an article in which he claims the number of Protestants in China will reach about 160 million by 2025 and by 2030 the total number of Christians including Roman Catholics (who are a much smaller number, at most 15 million) could total 247 million. ‘By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon’, Professor Yang says. This means China will overtake the US, Mexico and Brazil as having the largest number of Christians – and in the case of China most of them are evangelical.
Patience snapped
It seems that the patience of some officials in high circles has finally snapped. They have stated that the growth of the church is ‘out of control’ and the head of religious affairs stated that the growth of the church was ‘too excessive and too haphazard’.
In April and May a wave of repression spread throughout Wenzhou and then spread to other parts of Zhejiang province. According to detailed reports received by ChinaAid in the United States, 64 churches had been demolished, threatened with demolition or had their crosses removed and destroyed. (ChinaAid, 20 May) A later report from a local Wenzhou pastor claims that on just one day, April 18, crosses were demolished from 50 churches.
The large 2,000-strong congregation at Sanjiang church were assured on 8 April that if they removed the cross and demolished just two storeys of the ten-storey church auxiliary building the main church would remain intact. However, on 28 April, militia sealed off all neighbouring roads and demolished the entire building with military precision. At least six other churches including a Catholic church and a Catholic pilgrimage site have been demolished. At the end of May a mega-church in Ningbo was also razed.
Illegal structure smoke-screen
Internal documentation received by ChinaAid shows that the anti-Christian drive is being cleverly conducted under cover of a genuine three-year campaign to demolish illegal structures throughout Zhejiang. Buddhist shrines and commercial structures are also targeted. However, the documents call for especial attention to be paid to Protestant churches and for officials to be ‘like lions’ in aggressive pursuit of this ‘Three Rectifications, One Strike’ campaign. The Sanjiang church was technically in breach of planning laws by being built much larger than permitted.
But this is a smoke-screen. Chinese have pointed out that many commercial buildings do the same and the paperwork is sorted out later. Also, it now transpires that officials actually encouraged the church to build bigger before the sudden change in policy. One report says that after the demolition, local officials have apologetically offered Sanjiang another piece of land, smaller than that which they built on but bigger than that originally legally granted, in a very Chinese compromise. This seems like added evidence that the present campaign is being orchestrated at a very high level, forcing local authorities, who for two decades and more have had relatively good relations with the local churches, to take action.
There is little doubt that the demolitions could not have been carried out without the green light from Beijing. The Communist Party chief in Zhejiang, who reportedly claimed to be so upset by the large number of church crosses dotting the Wenzhou landscape, is known to have very high connections in Beijing.
Damaging the Party
All this bodes ill for the church. Many of the churches demolished or threatened with demolition are fully and legally registered under the aegis of the government-controlled ‘Protestant Three Self Patriotic Movement’ (TSPM).
The gravity of the crisis has been underlined by the fact that the head of the TSPM flagship Protestant seminary in Nanjing, Chen Yilu, publicly denounced the government’s actions in Wenzhou as ‘crude and hardline’ and warned that the persecution would damage the Party’s image and harm social stability. A little later the national TSPM and China Christian Council issued a statement in milder tones saying ‘it is very improper to demolish crosses – such actions should be stopped immediately’.
It is unprecedented in over 30 years that the TSPM, the officially-recognised Protestant body, should speak out against the government in this manner, and shows that church officials are extremely worried about the situation.
On a knife-edge
News of the persecution has spread like wildfire on social media throughout the Christian community in China. People are praying and wondering whether it will spread. So far the organised campaign appears limited to Zhejiang province.
However, the Communist Party often experiments by trying out new policies in one or two areas before implementing them nationwide. This is what many people fear. Indirectly I have learnt from high academic sources in Beijing and Shanghai, who do research on religion and advise the government, that they believe 2014 is a crucial watershed year. There is an intense struggle behind the scenes between moderates and hardliners in religious policy. This may be part of a much bigger political struggle as the present government seeks to engineer the downfall of the sinister head of security and intelligence operations, Zhou Yongkang. Those in the know report that either persecution will be further unleashed or it will be wound down and things return to normal. Things appear to be on a knife-edge.
The signs to watch for are whether similar ‘building rectification’ campaigns are started in other provinces and churches and crosses begin to be demolished. So far this does not appear to have happened, but it is early days. We must pray that wiser counsels will prevail in Beijing. At a time when China has been rocked by a serious of terrorist atrocities with Islamic extremists killing dozens of people, it appears the height of foolishness for the authorities to alienate the more than 80 million-strong Protestant and Catholic communities who are loyal citizens and engage in a host of activities beneficial to the nation.
An elderly Wenzhou pastor who went through the severe persecution of the Mao days put things in spiritual perspective. ‘When all the churches were closed throughout China this failed to stop the rapid growth of the church.’
Not bricks and mortar
Other Chinese Christians are pointing out that the true body of Christ does not consist in bricks and mortar. Large sums of money hitherto spent on lavish building projects may now be channelled into evangelism, training and social service. Mega-churches can split up into smaller house-churches. Ironically, the government appears to have made a monumental miscalculation. The present persecution, even if it should spread, is likely to encourage further the growth of the church and the deepening of its spiritual life. The keen, younger generation of Christians may now get a taste of the suffering they have learnt about from their parents and grandparents. The demolitions are an outrage and are causing grief to thousands of believers deprived of their rightful places of worship, but God may yet bring great blessing from great evil.
