The recently concluded fourteenth Congress of the Communist Party of China confirms that the country is moving toward a form of “social capitalism” that party cadres no doubt believe will lead their country into greater affluence than ever before. “Nei jin wai sung” a commonly used four-character phrase, best describes the reforms: economic release, political tightening.
But not all of China’s citizens are basking in the prospect of economic prosperity. What is not amplified in the international press is the fact that China remains politically entrenched in policies that repress individual freedoms. Most Chinese Christians would say that 1992 ranks as one of their more difficult periods since the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976.
For Wang Wai Yee (her name has been changed to protect her identity), a young Christian woman arrested September 8 for attending a house-church meeting, the economic reforms are meaningless.
After spending 12 exhausting days in a filthy prison cell, the days and nights marked by endless hours of interrogation, she was finally allowed to return home.
Some 120 believers arrested together with Wai Yee that fateful day in the village of Guo Fa in Central China, were reportedly beaten, intimidated, and threatened by Public Security Officers, who attacked the group en masse. Wai Yee was fortunate, considering that most of her fellow Christians may remain in detention for months—simply for having attended an unregistered church service.
When Wai Yee returned home in mid-September, it was to a house she barely recognized. The authorities had stripped her home bare of all her belongings. Furniture, clothing, blankets, and cooking utensils were gone. Items deemed of little worth had been carried outside and burned, as were her Bible and Christian books.
Wai Yee was left with little more than the frame of her house and the clothes on her back. But she told an interviewer that she believed the church would recover. It was not the first police raid the fellowship had endured, and it most certainly would not be the last.
The Persecution Gets Worse
Today China’s churches are teeming with reports like Wai Yee’s. A new chapter of the Chinese church is being written with accounts of great courage in the face of mounting persecution. Regrettably, most individual accounts will probably never be known outside of China. But those that do filter out confirm that persecution continues to be an undeniable reality for millions of Chinese Christians.
In the past year, authorities have launched a significant and widespread crackdown on unregistered house churches, resulting in hundreds of arrests and numerous reports of Christians being intimidated, harassed, and beaten.
Most Chinese Christians worship in house churches, although there is a network of officially recognized churches. But because of government restrictions on how those churches are managed, most Christians opt to worship under the cloak of secrecy, where they are free from official interference and control.
Many international observers argue that China’s economic reforms are essentially a ploy by the Chinese Communist party to consolidate control over a disillusioned society.
“What indications do we have that things are any better?” asked Lesley Francis, director of Overseas Missionary Fellowship’s Hong Kong-based China Study Department. “Persecution has increased, leftist political control is still in force, and, in many respects, China is worse off sociopolitically than it was three years ago.”
According to Ross Paterson, British author and director of Chinese Church Support Ministries, nowhere is the growing repression more evident than in China’s religious arena.
“There is no doubt that the situation [facing] the church in China has significantly deteriorated in the past year,” Paterson said. “The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, the historic changes in Eastern Europe [in the late 1980s], and the equally historic events in Russia in 1991 have led to a clampdown in China, which makes many Chinese Christians live nearer to the Cultural Revolution than to a post-Marxist China.”
In February, provincial directors of the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) met in Beijing behind closed doors to discuss national religious policy. During the course of their meetings, the RAB directors reportedly formulated a plan that called for the closure of unregistered religious meeting points throughout the country and a wide-scale crackdown on itinerant evangelists.
Since then, many provincial and district governments have issued their own directives, encouraging party cadres to monitor church affairs more stringently and to restrict or eliminate house-church activities.
Elsewhere in China, the signs of a government crackdown are irrefutable. According to church leaders, up to 50 Christian meeting points in Beijing were forced by authorities to close between January and June. In mid-March, 30 house-church members were reportedly arrested in Suzhou, Jlangsu Province, for conducting “illegal religious activities.”
In late April, up to 80 unregistered church leaders and lay workers in Queshan County, Henan Province, were arrested and held for several months. In June, authorities in Chang Zhi, Shanxi Province, raided an “illegal” house church, lashing out at worshipers with electric batons and arresting 12 church leaders.
While repression appears to be primarily targeted at churches remaining outside the state’s religious system, some church leaders from the “official” church, the government-sanctioned Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), have also faced harassment. In September 1991,some 300 Public Security officers massed around a registered church in Datong, Shanxi Province, and broke up a service.
After being ordered to evacuate the church, worshipers watched in horror as authorities razed the building with bulldozers. When church leaders protested, they were curtly told by an official that the building’s location was too prominent for their liking. To this day, the church remains a mass of rubble.
Problems From Within
According to the Hong Kong-based Chinese Church Research Centre, a recently completed unpublished survey by the State Statistical Bureau indicates there are 63 million Protestants and 12 million Catholics in China today.
This figure far exceeds previous estimates of the China Christian Council and Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, which officially claim there are 5.5 million Protestants and 3 million Catholics.
Christianity’s rapid growth, however, has clearly outstripped the church’s ability to disciple its new converts. High levels of illiteracy among rural church members and a lack of theologically trained teachers have given rise to a dangerous upswing in the number of indigenous heretical movements.
“In many rural areas, the churches are growing quickly, but the people are often uneducated peasants, with backgrounds steeped in folk religion, ancestor worship, Buddhism, and the occult,” said China expert Anthony P. B. Lambert.
Acute shortages of Bibles and Christian literature have only compounded the problem. While Bibles in simplified Chinese script are now more readily available through the China Christian Council’s Nanjing-based Amity Press, the number published annually falls far short of the actual need.
It is unlikely that China’s political climate will allow the church to address such needs effectively while the Communist party’s octogenarian leadership remains firmly in power. The order in which the old men of Chinese Marxism are phased out of party leadership may have a profound effect in determining the future of the country. Who or what will follow remains an enigma, even to the most experienced China-watchers.
By Andrew Wark, News Network International, in Hong Kong.
Ghana
Churches Must Register
Authorities in Ghana have recommended 957 religious groups for registration under a decree by the country’s military leaders that Ghana’s mainline Protestant and Catholic churches have denounced.
Known as the Religious Bodies (Registration) Law, the decree was passed in 1989 and requires religious groups to submit constitutions, lists of trustees, statements of assets, and pastors’ salary information to the ruling Provisional National Defense Council. While 1,736 religious groups had submitted applications as of September 10, mainline Protestants in the Christian Council of Ghana and the Roman Catholic Church have refused to comply, arguing that they are already legally registered under the Trustees Act of 1962.
The issue is deadlocked with both the government and the mainline churches until next year when a civilian government will be installed. The government has yet to confront violators with the possible fines and 12-month jail sentences. According to News Network International, the mainline churches are indicating they will agree to register if acceptable terms are reached, rather than attempt to change the law.
Update
Southern Baptists Mend European Fences
After several days of heated negotiations, officials of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board (SBFMB) have signed an agreement with representatives of the European Baptist Federation (EBF) in a move intended to mend strained relations between the groups. The approval last month of the agreement marks one year since tensions culminated in the sudden withdrawal of funding by the SBFMB of the EBF’s only international seminary.
The SBFMB unanimously approved the Hamburg Agreement, a document that outlines principles for resolving tensions between itself and the EBF’s 38 affiliated national unions. The guidelines call for a commitment to “continuous communication, ongoing dialogue and regular review regarding work and common concerns.”
The agreement also stipulates that the EBF’s continuing work with Southern Baptists affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a group that opposes the denomination’s fundamentalist wing, will not “adversely affect” relations with the SBFMB.
Relations were marred last year when the SBFMB voted to divert $365,000 in funds from the Baptist Theological Seminary in Ruschlikon, Switzerland (CT, Nov. 25, 1991, p. 56). The move, which was prompted by concerns that the seminary’s theological stance was too liberal, was reaffirmed in December, despite urgings to reverse the decision from a host of Southern Baptist and European Baptist leaders (CT, Jan. 13, 1992, p. 52).
Though EBF trustees approved the Hamburg Agreement on October 14, disagreement arose at one point over whether SBFMB officials had apologized only for the negative results of the decision or for the decision itself. Skip Smith, chairman of the trustees’ Europe committee, apparently cleared the matter when he said the Foreign Mission Board “deeply regret[ed] the grief, anguish, and frustration brought about by [its] action.”
Ivory Coast
Critic’S Writings About Famous Pastor Okayed By Government Officials
A missionary author threatened with censorship after revealing possible doctrinal deviations of one of Africa’s fastest-growing churches has been cleared of all charges by the country’s Interior Minister and police chief.
Victor Bissett, an independent Australian missionary, was first questioned by the secret police on July 3, just days after releasing a book that details a doctrinal controversy surrounding Dion Robert’s Protestant Baptist Works and Missions Church. The book alleges doctrinal flaws in Dion’s teaching, which Bissett claims are derived from Jehovah’s Witnesses material (CT, Oct. 5, 1992, p. 58). Though evangelicals feared that Bissett would be quietly expelled by authorities, the issue was laid to rest after a September 1 meeting between Andre Kouadio, chairman of the Federation of Evangelicals of Ivory Coast (FEIC), and Minister of Interior Emile Bombet. Attorney Michel Kokra, who represented Bissett on behalf of the FEIC, said the original investigating officer’s demand for censorship was “totally illegal.”
The Abidjan police chief, who met with Bissett a few days before the issue was dropped, reportedly encouraged him and said, “In continuing to write such things, don’t expect people to throw any flowers.”
People And Events
Briefly Noted
Awarded: The Religious Freedom Award, to Russian Orthodox priest Gleb Yakunin by the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Yakunin is a member of the Russian Parliament and a former prisoner of conscience.
Appointed: J. B. Crouse, as president of OMS International. Crouse, most recently director of the OMS work in South Korea, succeeds Edward Erny.
Elected: John Reid, as chairman of the executive committee of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. Reid succeeds Leighton Ford, who held the position for 16 years.
David Yonggi Cho, pastor of the world’s largest church in Seoul, South Korea, as head of the World Pentecostal Assemblies of God Fellowship. Cho, who succeeds J. Philip Hogan, surprised the Christian community recently by changing his name from Paul to David. Cho said the change signified his new heart for the reunification of the Korean Assemblies of God and of North and South Korea.
Rubén “Tito” Paredes, Peruvian theologian and anthropologist, as general secretary of the Latin American Theological Fraternity, succeeding theologian Rene Padilla, who held the post for eight years.
Negotiated: A signed peace accord between Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano and Renamo rebel group leader Afonso Dhlakama, on October 4, ending Mozambique’s 16-year-old civil war. The Christian Council of Mozambique, main partner to the Mennonite Central Committee, was instrumental in bringing the two parties together by initiating and pursuing peace talks.
Los Angeles
Korean Church Rises To Post-Riot Challenges
For the city of Los Angeles, recovery from last spring’s riots is taking many forms. Beyond the physical rebuilding of burned-out businesses, relationships and trust between ethnic groups that also suffered damage must be repaired. For Korean-Americans and African-Americans, who have shared a deep hostility, the need for reconciliation is crucial.
From the start, the Korean-American church has been at the forefront of recovery efforts from the riots. “During the riots, the Korean churches were among the first groups to help people of all races who suffered struggles caused by the riots,” said Hyo Pai, Christian education pastor at the Philadelphia Korean Church.
Korean-American Christians are a force in Los Angeles, with 170 churches concentrated in the metropolitan area. Of the estimated 300,000 Korean-Americans in the Los Angeles area (the largest Korean-American community in the nation), 71 percent attend a church, according to a poll in the Los Angeles Times.
Bitter Memories
Korean-Americans have bitter memories of seeing their years of hard work go up in smoke; the estimated $800 million in damages in the riot area included 800 Korean-owned businesses that were destroyed.
But for African-Americans, the images are of vigilante Korean shopkeepers shooting at suspected looters from the rooftops of their businesses and of perceived disrespectful treatment at the hands of these shopkeepers.
Said Pai, “The churches are a key group to heal these wounds and help the building up of the community.” For instance, church leaders have formed the Association of Korean-and African-American Churches to encourage dialogue and integration. Leaders have also planned activities to help the two groups understand each other.
One such activity, a cultural exchange festival, took place at a South-Central Los Angeles park in September. Korean-and African-Americans shared their cultures through entertainment and food.
On a smaller scale, Pai’s church has hosted choirs from African-American churches, and those churches have reciprocated. Says Pai, “As far as the churches are concerned, we do not have barriers or walls.”
But work remains. “We have to help our people understand each other, through cultural exchange and dialogue,” he says.
And Pai admits, “There are scars still remaining.” But as the churches take the lead in healing the community’s wounds, Korean-and African-American Christians believe they can build an atmosphere of trust.
By John Carvalho in Los Angeles.
Church And State
Americans United Shifts Strategy
An activist group long dedicated to shoring up the barricade between church and state may be shifting its strategy.
“We want to vigorously protect the right of people to practice their religious faith,” says Barry Lynn, the new executive director of the Maryland-based Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSCS).
Lynn, formerly legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, admits that AUSCS has litigated almost exclusively against any government support for religious groups. However, he says that recent Supreme Court decisions outlawing certain religious practices, plus the uncertainty of an election year, have brought church/state relations to a crossroads.
“We’ve litigated more on the ‘establishment’ side, but that’s where the greatest threat has been,” Lynn says. “This organization must take seriously both ends of the religion clause” of the First Amendment.
But critics who charge the group with a rigid view of the Establishment Clause say Lynn’s ACLU background probably will bring more hostility to expressions of religious faith.
Robert Dugan, public affairs director for the National Association of Evangelicals, says Lynn’s appointment “signals that Americans United will maintain its absolutist stance” on church/state issues.
David Wagner, director of legal policy for the Washington-based Family Research Council, says AUSCS will continue to oppose any expression of religious belief “that could in any way be attributable to government.”
Prayer in public schools and government vouchers for private education, for example—both opposed by the ACLU—will continue to be targets of litigation by AUSCS, officials say.
Indeed, with school-choice initiatives in about two-dozen states, opposition to the measures is likely to dominate the group’s agenda. AUSCS is working actively with the ACLU and the National Education Association to defeat federal and state choice proposals, particularly those that offer tax breaks or vouchers that can be used toward parochial schools.
It is not a new crusade. AUSCS was founded in the 1940s, largely as a response to growing Catholic influence in public affairs and conflicts over religious instruction and church sponsorship of schools. Some evangelical groups were initially active in the organization, and some Southern Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists are still involved.
The First Amendment’s treatment of church/state relations is the hinge on which all arguments seem to swing. The amendment on the one hand explicitly forbids the establishment of a state church, and on the other protects religious groups from government interference. Strict “separationists” argue that government is prohibited from assisting religious groups or appearing to support them in any way; “free-exercise” advocates view the First Amendment as “a shield to support religious liberty, not a sword to banish God from the public square,” says Dugan.
By Joe Loconte.
