Just like President Obama’s first state visit to the People’s
Republic of China, the mid-November 2009 visit of a delegation
of international church leaders to the state-approved church in
China began in Shanghai and ended in Beijing. Obama’s visit was
heavy on diplomacy, but he did raise some general concerns about
human rights and religious freedom. Shockingly, it was the
church delegation from the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) that
remained silent on that subject.
Press releases from the church delegation could have passed
for White House/State Department media statements. Written in
glowing terms, the WEA’s statements were free of criticism of
the Chinese Communist regime’s persecution of religious
believers and other human rights abuses. One release noted how
the WEA delegation was “warmly received” by the State
Administration for Religious Affairs, the Communist regime’s
ministry for monitoring and controlling churches. Another said
that they had developed a “warm and open relationship of
dialogue” with the state-approved China Christian Council. What
was missing in the delegation’s reports was mention of any
meetings with the vast majority of Chinese Christians that
worship outside the confines of state-approved churches. In
fact, the reports failed to even mention the existence of
China’s 80 million or more house church Christians.
It has long been true that the left-leaning World Council of
Churches (WCC) ignores vast swaths of the world’s persecuted
Christians while “prophetically” defending the “victims” of
America and Israel. They have more often seen Christians –
particularly evangelical ones who insist embarrassingly on
sharing their faith – as the persecutors, not the persecuted.
But the WEA delegation, which met with China’s state-approved
churches, and only state-approved churches, is part of
an international organization created to give “worldwide
identity, voice, and platform to more than 420 million
evangelical Christians.” Yet eighty million Chinese house church
Christians, evangelical Christians, were left without identity,
voice, or platform in the WEA’s China report.
While
meeting in Shanghai with the national leadership of the
China Christian Council and the National Committee of the
Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in
China (TPSM), the WEA praised the “health and vibrancy” of the
Chinese Church. The official church in China has experienced
impressive growth in recent years. As many as 20 million
attend the official Protestant churches and another 10 million
the state-approved Catholic Church. Still, many would question
whether or not “healthy and vibrant” accurately describes a
church whose members are resigned to existence under strict
government control, and in which participation by children under
the age of 18 and certain topics for sermons are forbidden.
Bob Fu, a human rights activist and former prisoner of faith
in China, was shocked by the one-sided statement from his fellow
evangelical Christians. Fu, the founder and president of China
Aid, an advocacy and humanitarian relief organization,
responded that while “there are true brothers and sisters
leading faithful lives who attend the state churches,” the WEA
statement’s “failure to mention 80 million faithful Christians
who are clearly the majority of Chinese Christian population and
meet in house churches and rented offices, has compromised the
cause of the suffering church in China.” Fu added that “faithful
house church prisoners who number in the thousands are grieved
by WEA’s statement.”
Even as WEA and Chinese church officials were discussing
pastor training, seminary development, and the “integration of
evangelism and social services,” Chinese Communist authorities
were
cracking down on Shanghai’s two thousand-member Wangban
Missionary Church. China Aid reported that local government
authorities had “launched a city-wide man-hunt for the members
of Wangban Church” to prevent any embarrassing encounters when
President Obama arrived in Shanghai. The previous Sunday,
November 8, every church attendee had been interrogated and
fingerprinted, and then on November 12, police had evicted the
church members from their building. But the resilient Wangban
Church members continued to meet outdoors in spite of threats of
arrest and the detention of the pastors. Perhaps this might be
considered healthy and vibrant?
Among the agencies the WEA visited in Nanjing was the famous
Amity Printing Company, the only government-approved
printing press for Bibles. The WEA delegation effused over
Amity’s “significant Bible printing operation,” but according to
China Aid, Bibles printed by the Amity Printing Press are only
available for sale at TSPM bookstores in urban areas.
Christians from rural areas are forced to travel thousands of
miles to the nearest TSPM bookstores, and then are only allowed
to buy a single Bible in one purchase. Many house church members
have engaged in significant Bible printing operations of their
own, but Bibles and other religious materials printed outside
the government-sanctioned system are illegal. When discovered,
printers are frequently arrested and their presses destroyed.
Often such contraband is confiscated in the process of a
police raid on a house church. For example, on September 13,
2009, officials confiscated all of the Bibles, cell phones, and
money of church members when they
raided the Fushan branch of the 50,000-member Linfen Church
and its associated Good News Shoe Factory in Shanxi province.
Police beat up and injured several dozen church members and
arrested a number of the church leaders. They destroyed property
to such an extent that church members compared the scene to the
2008 Wenchuan earthquake. China Aid says the local emergency
room “was instructed by anonymous authorities to withhold
treatment and prohibit blood transfusions for the injured church
members.” One week after the WEA’s China visit, ten of the
Linfen Church leaders were sentenced to long sentences in prison
and reeducation-through-labor camps.
The last stop in the WEA delegation’s China visit was
Beijing, where they met with local church leaders and government
officials. The WEA stated that it “had gained some new
perspectives on the church in this complex and huge nation.” But
they may have gained a more realistic perspective on
Christianity in China if they had been
singing in the snow with the thousand members of Beijing’s
Shouwang House Church, who were locked out of their rented
worship space by the authorities on November 1. Forced to hold
worship services outdoors in Haidian Park, the church members
continue to meet – even during snowstorms. Interestingly, on
November 15, authorities concerned about their exuberant witness
told the church that they must meet indoors because of
President Obama’s visit. For that one Sunday they were allowed
to meet inside a theatre in the northeast part of the city
before being relegated to the streets once again.
The WEA might also have gained a more realistic perspective
if they had been at the Beijing home of Christian human rights
attorney Jiang Tianyong. On November 19, Jiang was arrested and
his wife beaten in front of their seven-year-old daughter as
they left to take the girl to school early that morning. Jiang
had angered Chinese authorities by coming to Washington, DC and
testifying on behalf of another Beijing human rights
attorney, Gao Zhisheng. Gao has been held and tortured,
whereabouts unknown, since February 4, 2009. Other human rights
attorneys, activists, and house church leaders in Beijing have
suffered similar experiences. Blind human rights activist
Chen
Guangcheng has been imprisoned since March 2006 for exposing
120,000 forced abortions that took place in one year in Shandong
Province. And in 2009 over 22 Christian human rights attorneys
lost their law licenses.
Although the TSPM church has a small presence in China’s
autonomous regions, the WEA delegation did not venture there.
But some of the Chinese authorities’ harshest punishments have
been meted out to Christian converts from Islam in Xinjiang. Of
particular concern is the case of
Alimujiang Yimiti, a Uyghur Christian convert from Islam.
Because of his Christian conversion, Alimujiang was illegally
detained and held in prison for two years with no trial for
“subverting the national government.” This charge, which usually
applies to Uyghur insurgents who resist the Han Chinese presence
in Xinjiang, is punishable by death. On December 7, 2009
Alimujiang was sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment on the
false charge of “leaking state secrets.” He has not been allowed
even one visit from his family, including his wife and two
little boys, aged three and nine.
In reality, none of these incidents would come as a surprise
to the WEA delegation. They are well aware of the challenges and
suffering faced by China’s house churches. But according to
their press release, church officials with whom they met
“greatly value international partnerships that respect the
mission and calling of the national church” and the WEA is eager
to partner with China’s national church, even at the cost of
ignoring China’s house churches.
“While we affirm WEA’s sincere intentions to serve the Church
. . . the WEA’s public statement about their visit with TSPM
leaders and Chinese government leaders has contributed to a
misleading assessment about the true situation of the church in
China,” Fu
declared in his response to the WEA released on December 18,
2009.
Proverbs 27: 6 says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”
Fu’s words may not be comfortable for the WEA, but they are true
and they are meant for the good. Likewise, the WEA would do more
good for China’s state church by speaking out against the
injustices inflicted on the house churches. Helping the state
church to face the truth would show respect for the mission and
calling of all of the Church in China.
