aims to regulate the ‘religious market’ as a whole.” “President Xi Jinping is trying to establish a new order on religion, suppressing its blistering development. “The goal of the crackdown is not to eradicate religions,” said Ying Fuk Tsang, director of the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. One of the first signs of a crackdown was when authorities forcibly removed more than 1,000 crosses from sanzi churches in Zhejiang province between 20. Sunday schools and youth ministries have been banned. Local governments have also shut the state-approved “sanzi” churches. The government is scared of the churches,” said Huang Xiaoning, the church’s pastor. But according to the Bible only God is God. “The Chinese Communist party (CCP) wants to be the God of China and the Chinese people. In November the Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church was shut for the second time in three months. Officials have also banned the 1,500-member Zion church in Beijing after its pastor refused to install CCTV. Less than a week after the mass arrest of Early Rain members, police raided a children’s Sunday school at a church in Guangzhou. Another church in Chengdu was placed under investigation last week. A statement signed by 500 house church leaders in November says authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to hang the Chinese flag and sing patriotic songs, and barred minors from attending.Ĭhurchgoers say the situation will get worse as the campaign reaches more of the country. Over the past year, local governments have shut hundreds of unofficial congregations or “house churches” that operate outside the government-approved church network, including Early Rain. “The government has orchestrated a campaign to ‘sinicise’ Christianity, to turn Christianity into a fully domesticated religion that would do the bidding of the party,” said Lian Xi, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, who focuses on Christianity in modern China. Researchers say the current drive, fuelled by government unease over the growing number of Christians and their potential links to the west, is aimed not so much at destroying Christianity but bringing it to heel. Photograph: Early Rain/FacebookĮarly Rain is the latest victim of what Chinese Christians and rights activists say is the worst crackdown on religion since the country’s Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong’s government vowed to eradicate religion. Wang Yi, pastor of the Early Rain church, who was arrested and detained three months ago, along with his wife. Wang and his wife are being charged for “inciting subversion”, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. Some, including Wang’s mother and his young son, are under close surveillance. Others have been sent away from Chengdu and barred from returning. Many of those who haven’t been detained are in hiding. The church in south-west China has been shuttered and Wang and his wife, Jiang Rong, remain in detention after police arrested more than 100 Early Rain church members in December. “I don’t know.”Īlmost three months later, Wang’s hypothetical scenario is being put to the test. In late October, the pastor of one of China’s best-known underground churches asked this of his congregation: had they successfully spread the gospel throughout their city? “If tomorrow morning the Early Rain Covenant Church suddenly disappeared from the city of Chengdu, if each of us vanished into thin air, would this city be any different? Would anyone miss us?” said Wang Yi, leaning over his pulpit and pausing to let the question weigh on his audience.
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