The Church in China: Praise amid Persecution

The church in China is unknown to Westerners. Visitors on conducted tours see closed church buildings with the crosses removed. In Peking they may go to a Protestant church service, but diplomats and tourists, with only a handful of Chinese worshipers, attend. Sometimes visitors meet Bishop K. H. Ting, a leader of the government-sponsored “Three Self Movement,” which disappeared during the cultural revolution. Bishop Ting seems to speak for the government on Christian affairs. He always reminds Western visitors of the evils of missionary imperialism, and stresses that Christians are not interested in using church buildings of the past. He speaks pessimistically about the future of Christianity in China. He expects the church to decrease in numbers. Yet he says that there are groups of Christians meeting in Chekiang, and insists that there is no shortage of Bibles.

After such tours, foreign visitors often write enthusiastic reports about the new Chinese society. A Christian who had been teaching for many years in a Chinese university told me that many reports written by foreign visitors are translated from English and published in the Peking newspapers. He and many of his friends are extremely critical of those reports. They would agree with a senior China watcher who said, “There are two Chinas: the mythological China and the real.” To understand the real China and the true situation of the church there, we must turn to those who have lived in its society and who have experienced the hardships through which the Chinese church has passed during the last twenty-five years.

There are Christians in China who continue to proclaim the Gospel. Their faithful witness presents a challenge to the church throughout the world. Although the church in China has no buildings, no set time of worship, no paid ministers, and none of our ecclesiastical organizations, it possesses a spiritual vitality often lacking among Christians who have not suffered for their faith.

There are three sources of current information about the church in China. The most detailed descriptions are from people who have lived in China and have recently come to Hong Kong. A second source consists of people who visit friends and relatives on the mainland. During the 1977 Chinese New Year holiday 130,000 residents from Hong Kong crossed the border into China to visit their families. Third, there are letters from Christians in China to their friends in Hong Kong. Since the 1976 arrest of the four radical political leaders, the atmosphere in China seems more relaxed and Christians are writing more freely.

Conditions vary greatly throughout China. In some areas there are few Christians and little opportunity for fellowship with other believers. A couple from such an area told me of frequent interrogation and constant surveillance, which made it difficult to meet with other Christians. But they know of other Christians in their area and spoke highly of one brother who had witnessed boldly and suffered greatly. These Christians admit that material conditions have improved since the Revolution. But the mental sufferings since then have been great.

I know a Christian woman who along with her husband was able to fellowship with only one other Christian family. She told me of her sorrow during the cultural revolution when the authorities seized her books, including her Bible. Later many of the books were returned—but not the Bible. It was regarded as “superstition.” Too late she realized that she had memorized only the twenty-third Psalm. But in spite of great pressure she maintained her faith. When she was about to leave the mainland, officials asked if her thinking had changed. She replied, “If I said yes, then I would be untrue to myself and untrue to you.”

Yet, I have met Christians from several districts where the church seems much stronger and where small house meetings are more common.

On special occasions large numbers of Christians gather secretly to study the Scriptures and worship the risen Lord. A resident of Hong Kong with a very large family still in China went to visit his relatives, almost all of them Christians. After spending some days with them he was detained for questioning. But when he returned to Hong Kong he praised God for the working of the Holy Spirit in the district he had visited. Last year many people were baptized there and large numbers of young people were seeking Christ. Young people are warned that it is not enough just to express belief in the Christian message; they must be prepared to count the cost of discipleship and live a life of obedience and submission to the Saviour. Although the times and places of meetings are constantly shifted, from time to time leaders are arrested and sent to labor camps. Recently, a large group had been caught meeting. All of them were sent to have their thinking corrected by hard labor. On another occasion people at a large meeting strongly sensed the presence of the Spirit of God and the love of Christ. At the end of the meeting five men rose to their feet and announced that they had been sent to make arrests. But they had been so moved by the meeting that they too wanted to believe. They were told to kneel and confess their sins and receive the gift of salvation in Christ. For several hours I listened to stories of courageous witness and of answers to prayer as people were healed and delivered from attacks of evil spirits. Here, I thought, is a church much like that of the first century. I remembered how the early church after a time of persecution was built up. And to commemorate the Saviour’s death, young Christians often will get up in the middle of the night to meet secretly around the table of the Lord.

Many Christians from a particular area are in prison or labor camps. A Christian woman has a brother-in-law who has been in a labor camp for many years; his thinking had not changed. To someone who sympathized with her, she said, “Do not be sorry. How else could the people in the labor camp hear about the Lord Jesus?” I must emphasize that those who are arrested are not charged with being Christians. According to the constitution there is freedom of religion. People are free to believe or not to believe. They are free to have a personal faith and free to attack the faith of others. But in practice Christians are not free to propagate their faith, which the government regards as a superstition. Since the holding of illegal meetings is strictly forbidden, those who are caught taking part in an illegal gathering are accused of being reactionary and anti-revolutionary. Many people who come from known Christian families find themselves on a blacklist and are discriminated against in many ways. Despite the hardships and dangers of a courageous Christian witness, the church continues to grow. When a Christian woman died, about 1,000 people attended her funeral. Authorities hesitate to interfere with funeral services, so the dead woman’s faith in Jesus could be proclaimed and the risen Saviour praised.

Shortly before my wife and I left Hong Kong a young man who had formerly served as a red guard described how he had come to know Christ. He had traveled to Peking and other parts of China during the cultural revolution. Although he had come from a Christian family, only when he returned to the city after a period of work in the country did he become a Christian. His home town has more freedom than in other places, and a number of groups meet regularly. With thousands of Christians in that city, there will be a group meeting in some home almost every evening. The elderly have little difficulty when they worship in small family groups. Young people have more of a problem. Some young Christians have been arrested and shipped to labor camps for short periods. But the Christians in that city are better organized than in most areas. Young people are divided into district groups and attend leadership-training sessions. They usually do not take Bibles to such meetings, since an official interruption would endanger their copies of the Scriptures. Before the meeting, the leader will write out the passage to be studied and make carbon copies. Thus after the study of each book of the Bible every person has his own handwritten copy. What is happening in that city may be happening on a smaller scale in other places. A man from a city some distance away from that young man’s home visited him and saw his Bible. Immediately he asked if he was a Christian. Hearing that he was, the visitor confessed that he too believed and held a meeting in his home.

Faith is often spread by reports of people being healed in answer to prayer. Once when a member of a Christian family was sick a large group of Christians gathered to pray. They were interrupted by Communist officials who asked them what they were doing and who told them that it was illegal to have such a gathering. They ordered the group to disperse. One of the officials, who had arrested a number of Christians, inquired further into their activities. On being told that in time of trouble or sickness Christians prayed for each other, he asked if they would be willing to pray for him. He had cancer. The Christians agreed. The official was healed and converted. Later he was arrested.

A young Christian man from another city described how difficult it was to have regular meetings. Yet he had a broad knowledge of the Scriptures. When I asked him how he knew the Bible so well, he told me of visits to other Christian homes to study the Bible with fellow believers. Christians in that particular city love and support each other. Although there was no organized church, believers tithed their money and were always ready to help needy Christians.

When Chinese Christians visit their mainland relatives, they find it difficult to contact Christians outside their immediate circle of family and friends. Some people can visit their relatives’ homes. Others, whose family members live in areas closed to visitors, have to meet their relatives in hotels. One of our friends visited Christian relatives who had suffered much during the cultural revolution. She was warned not to speak freely in the hotel room and to avoid any sensitive matters when the children were present. Visitors must realize that when they talk to people other than their own families those persons will probably be questioned later. Christians often take with them one or two copies of the Bible and perhaps a book such as Streams in the Desert, which is in much demand. Usually customs officials will alllow people to pass with one or two Bibles, but an elderly Chinese woman had her Bible thrown to the ground and described as superstition.

Although the message of the Gospel is carried by Christian radio broadcasts, it is impossible to estimate how many people are able to listen. A Christian was encouraged to meet a girl on a train who said she had become a Christian through listening to a broadcast. Another visitor learned of a family of new Christians who were being strengthened through Christian broadcasts.

During the last few months letters from Christians to friends in Hong Kong have contained more references to their faith than in the past. A young woman wrote: “My time for studying is very limited. I hope you will pray for me and ask the Lord to give me intelligence and wisdom, also to open my heart to understand his Word. It is very precious and we should carefully study it in order to have understanding.” An old man, rejoicing in the Lord, closed his letter with these words: “Whether old or young, the most important thing is to be God’s servant and carry out his will throughout one’s life. No matter at what time or in what place, we must always be prepared to meet God.”

No one knows how many Christians there are in China today, but we have ample evidence to make us confident that scattered in many parts of that land are small groups of Christians who worship the living Lord. We can learn new lessons of faith from Christians in China and we are responsible to take part in a ministry of intercession. “Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth” (Isa. 62:6–7).

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

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