Friday, March 05, 2004
Christianity blossoms in China
With church pews packed beyond capacity, many Christians had nowhere to worship but at home. Secretive "house churches" operate throughout the vast country.
But last month, Chinese authorities announced groundbreaking for two churches in Beijing, the first to be built in the capital since the Communist Party took power in 1949, according to the state-run People's Daily newspaper.
Why is the officially atheist Communist government suddenly building churches?
"That's quite simple: the 2008 Olympics," said the Rev. Chan Kim-kwong, a historian of religion in China. "Everything started two years ago when Beijing got the Olympic games."
Although the Olympic summer games will last only two weeks, Chinese leaders are acutely aware that the impression the city will make on the world will last much longer. The Chinese Catholic Church, which is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, plans to build a large national seminary in Beijing and has been giving language training to its clergy so they can celebrate Mass in German, French and other languages, Chan said.
"It's not just the games," he said. "It's the image of Beijing as an international city, an open, modern city."
Christianity has been growing rapidly in China. Official figures put the number of Protestants at 15 million and Catholics at 10 million. Tens of millions more Christians, including Roman Catholics loyal to the Vatican, belong to unauthorized churches.
Decades of political turmoil, intensified in recent years by jarring social changes and unbridled economic development, have frayed much of traditional Chinese culture.
"There is spiritual longing in society," said Gao Ying, a minister at the Chongwenmen Church in Beijing who has a degree from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. "There are young people, intellectuals, seeking meaning."
Unless a church is registered with the state, as is the 5,000-member Beijing Gangwa Shi Christian Church, it's officially considered illegal. While many "house churches" are tolerated, their leaders are occasionally jailed.
The Rev. Yu Xinli, head of the Beijing Christian Council, said there are 700 to 800 house churches in the city, largely because the official churches are too full to accommodate all the worshippers. Beijing has nine Protestant churches for 40,000 followers, and attendance is growing at a rate of 1,000 a year, he said. There are at least 40,000 Chinese Catholics in Beijing and about 15 churches.
"Nowadays, on Sundays, some churches have to give five services a day to meet the needs," Yu said.
Compass Direct, a California-based Christian news service that reports on worldwide religious persecution, said last month an internal Chinese government survey found at least 3,000 unregistered churches in Beijing. Most had congregations of about 20 members, with churches dividing when they reached 70 to avoid detection by authorities.
"It was not news to Beijing, but maybe they were not aware of the extent of it," said Chan, who is also an executive of the Hong Kong Christian Council, which operates independently of religious authorities in Beijing.
One group they are not likely to lure are overseas returnees. Many young Chinese who worked or studied abroad are returning home and, increasingly, they're coming back as Christians. For the most part, they find the state-approved churches too old-fashioned, Chan said.
"Those are well-to-do people," he said. "They have connections. You don't touch them. I know there are many Christians there. They don't go to [government] churches. They meet in those big villas with chauffeurs."
The specter of a growing population of well-connected Christians — in sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom that the rising religious tide is concentrated in the countryside — is one that surely vexes the Chinese government.
Both Catholic and Protestant churches were extensive landowners before the Communist Party came to power. The decade-long Cultural Revolution saw much of their holdings shuttered, confiscated and nationalized. By the early 1980s, Chinese authorities eased their restrictions and the churches got some of their land back.
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