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"We pray that a Chinese Martin Luther King will arise from the church in China," say Christian leaders of the new Human Rights Protection Movement (HRPM).

These lawyers, pastors, journalists, and human rights leaders across China are trying out the strategies of the historic American civil rights movement, using litigation, media publicity, and nonviolent protests.

Fan Yafeng, an influential constitutional scholar in Beijing, says, "We are seeing the intersection of law and religion in China. More and more Chinese public intellectuals say that only Christianity can provide a solid foundation for the rule of law in China."

Inspired by examples of American civil rights activists, such as the freedom riders of 1961, HRPM members travel at a moment's notice to fight injustice and defend villagers thrown off their land, persecuted believers of any religion, and the human rights of all.

Four years ago, the Human Rights Protection Movement began with about 24 members. Now there are 300. HRPM lawyers are official legal counsel for the Chinese House Church Alliance, established in 2004 to represent 300,000 members of smaller independent churches. The lawyers also represent older house church networks. The demand for legal services is high. On average, they receive 30 requests per week.

In the beginning, Chinese church leaders were wary of the civil rights movement. The older generation believed suffering silently for Christ was more ennobling than actively opposing injustice.

Older leaders were more likely to emphasize a Bible-only approach that viewed scholarship as worldly. Fan recalls that in 1997 his church in Beijing ordered him to read only the Bible and to cease his academic work on the comparison of other religions with Christianity.

The older attitudes were reinforced when the officially sanctioned Protestant Three Self Movement sent out pastors five years ago to preach that unquestioning loyalty to the government and its religious policies was God-ordained. But recently, the top deputy in the State Administration of Religious Affairs office told Christianity Today that religious believers have a right and a duty to oppose civil injustice.

Three things have happened to influence thinking among Christians about human rights.

• More civil rights leaders became Christians or at least sympathetic to issues of religious freedom. For example, one Beijing lawyer grew interested in Christianity as he dealt with church clients. He wondered what gave ordinary people such confidence. As he became more involved in freedom-of-religion cases, the lawyer says, "I found light in ordinary Christian faces. I came to realize that Jesus is the origin of justice." Every week now, the lawyer fasts "for myself, the church, and justice."

• The leaders in the civil rights movement became leaders in local churches. They planted new congregations in regional capitals. About a dozen of these churches now exist, and they emphasize human rights.

• These churches sent out emissaries to other churches, recounting the lessons of their legal protection of peasants that could be applied to religious freedom cases.

Christians developed other resources. Li Baiguang, a Christian legal scholar, translated a book on Protestant Huguenots under French persecution. He and others prepared materials for family church presses like the Hubei Family Church Press, Light of Life, Sparrow Press, and Gwangzhou Pastors Press.

Li traveled to ten provinces to help farmers and churches. Li is preparing a book and video on how Christians can defend their legal rights. "The churches had a reaction of endurance and prayer for those who persecute them," the scholar says. "I told them they also need to stand up for their legal rights."

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September 2006, Vol. 50, No. 9