IS CHINA ABOUT TO BECOME “THE LARGEST CHRISTIAN
NATION IN THE WORLD”?
By Paul Merkley.
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In the months leading up to the election of Donald Trump as President, just one year ago this month, some commentators associated with “Christian media” sought to persuade us that Donald Trump, as President, would prove a champion of Christian faith. When interviewed by these same types, he stepped up and made the right noises about his faith. (“A Born-Again Donald Trump? Believe It, Evangelical Leaders Say,” New York Times,” June 26, 2016.) But then again, so did Barack Obama.
In this same Christian company, Trump’s visit to China last week was seen as a test of his commitment to the persecuted Christian people of China. Trump’s predecessors, beginning with George H.W. Bush, had pioneered this cause – if not vigorously, at least to the point of giving hope of a new day for Chinese Christians. But the issue of freedom of religion did not figure at all in the public statements of Presidents Trump and Xi during or after their conference. The same must be said of the American President’s visit to Vietnam, in the following week. (“In Danang, Vietnam, Trump Makes a Friendlier American Landing,” New York Times, November 9, 2016.) In a word: it was all about trade.
Many who had supported Donald Trump in 2016 had been drawn to him by the promise of “getting tough with China” – the slogan he proposed against the tumult of complaints that China had unfair advantages in trade. But many hoped and many also prayed for President Trump to take up the cause of those imprisoned and otherwise punished for their Christian faith. Nothing of the sort happened; so far as I can find, there was no reference at all in Trump’s published remarks to the theme of freedom of religion in China.
Significantly, the only recent article that my web-server directs me to on this theme is from an Israeli author and newspaper: Ariel Cohen, “Persecution of Christians in China at Record High,” Jerusalem Post, April 27, 2015. From the point of view of the worldwide church the good news is that (as Cohen reports) “scholars estimate that by the year 2020, Christians in China will exceed the number of Christians in the United States, thus making China the largest Christian nation in the world.”
For the time being, however, Chinese Christians are experiencing record levels of persecution from their government. Ariel Cohen suggests that “the rapid increase in the number of Christians in China over the past decade has triggered a unique sense of crisis within the CPC [Chinese Communist Party]” It is not merely that more people are professing a religion which the officially atheist Party despises, but “as the Christian faith continues to grow in China so does the number of Chinese citizens who embrace rule of law, oppose totalitarian governance, and support the expansion of civil society …. [For this reason,] as the Christian population grows in China, the government has issued various campaigns to persecute home churches and public churches in China, reportedly harrassing, abusing, arresting , and in many cases, sentencing pastors and church members to prison.” Our major news media have shown no interest in this major story about the real-life situation of one-quarter of the world’s population. By contrast, the Christian Broadcasting Network, presented a recent report under the title “Brave Chinese Christians Still Attend Underground Churches Despite Risk of Persecution.”
It’ no secret the Chinese government isn’t all that fond of Christianity. They’ve taken aggressive steps to “contain” growth, including rezoning and demolishing churches. One woman, the wife of a pastor, defiantly stood in front of a bulldozer that was about to demolish their church.
It plowed over her and they buried her alive. (CBN.com, March 13, 2017.)
The best evidence we have is that approximately 100 million (out of a total population officially reported as 1,382,494, 824) are worshipping the God of the Christians in “underground churches” – and, in doing so, rejecting the legitimacy of the “traditional” churches who operate under license from the atheist-government of China. It was said in the first centuries of the church that “the Blood of Martyrs is the Seed of the Church and so it may be in China, where punishments of the leaders of the free churches has always been a fact of life and where membership is growing dramatically today.
Even as President Donald Trump walked about in the Forbidden City the Christian human rights organization China Aid is reporting a 300 percent increase (since 2013) in abuse and persecution against Chinese Christians. Literally thousands of self-described Christians have been shut up forcefully, while the authorities are busily tearing down some churches and removing crosses from many others. Yet the best-informed scholars in this field tell us that by 2030 the number of Christians in China will exceed the number living in the United States. These same authorities tell us that “the rapid increase in the number of Christians in China over the past decade has triggered a unique sense of crisis within the CPC. As the Christian faith continues to grow in China, so does the number of Chinese citizens who embrace rule of law, oppose totalitarian governance, and support the expansion of civil society.” The authorities have responded predictably to this challenge – that is, by persecution, harassment and imprisonment.
Simultaneously, China’s political system is becoming more authoritarian than ever. At the recent Chinese Communist Party Congress, televised in real time around the world, we got to see the name of the current President, Xi jing-ping engrossed in the Constitution, in the same terms as was that of Deng xiou-ping in his time – virtually, a lifetime appointment. (Rather like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe — until the day before yesterday!)
China is not exceptional as a place where Christianity is enduring persecution and growing at the same time. The same is true (with qualifications) of most of Latin America, Africa, and the Far East. As noted: the refusal of our Western media to report these truths about Christian faith in China and around the world is in line with their basic unwillingness to concede that Christianity is alive and well and growing globally. That resistance to fact ultimately traces to the contempt for Christian faith that our media elites learned in our colleges and universities.
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The Bayview Review 