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<\/a>Open letter from the Christian Council of Zhejiang. Click to enlarge.<\/p>\nYC: What\u2019s the current situation like?<\/p>\n
L: Things are very different now from before. Resistance is much more widespread and difficult to suppress. Resistance used to be isolated and focused on a particular church. Now, with this campaign of total demolition, everyone feels like this is no longer simply about tearing down crosses. It\u2019s not merely about symbols\u2014they want to attack your beliefs. Everyone feels like this is the beginning of a deeper repression, where they first do away with your symbols and then attack at a deeper level, destroying your internal organization, your doctrine, your church finances, even your pulpits.<\/p>\n
For example, no matter whether you\u2019re a \u201cThree-Self Patriotic Church\u201d (church sanctioned by the government) or a \u201chouse church,\u201d no one discusses government policies or regulations on Sundays. Now, they want us to take time during our Sunday worship to let religious-affairs officials talk about religious policies and regulations from the pulpit. This has led to extremely fierce opposition\u2014no one\u2019s willing to allow this.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t like this before. At worst, you\u2019d see the Chinese government cultivate a group of people within the church to act as its proxies, and the things they wanted publicized tended to be some government policies, like aligning moral education with official ideology. But you cannot tamper with doctrine or turn pulpits over to religious-affairs cadres. There\u2019s even resistance to this from inside the \u201cThree-Self churches.\u201d<\/p>\n
YC: Over the last few days I\u2019ve seen an open letter from the Christian Council of Zhejiang (\u6d59\u6c5f\u7701\u57fa\u7763\u6559\u534f\u4f1a). They seem extremely upset. What do you think of their announcement?<\/p>\n
L: There are a few different reasons behind this. The vast majority of crosses torn down are from \u201cThree-Self\u201d churches. The government set up these \u201cThree-Self\u201d churches to bring churchgoers into their \u201cUnited Front.\u201d But the authorities have stopped using the relatively flexible methods they\u2019d always used in the past, so the official churches feel they\u2019ve gone too far. For one thing, the authorities\u2019 actions aren\u2019t in line with the Communist Party\u2019s own religious policies. For another, many Christians complain about the official churches, which makes the official churches feel that they\u2019ve lost their ability to function as a \u201cbridge\u201d between the faithful and the government. It\u2019s become impossible for them to convince church members. They feel that if they don\u2019t speak out, they\u2019ll lose all credibility.<\/p>\n
YC: I saw one report that after the Zhejiang Christian Council published its open letter, the government confiscated its official seal. I find the government\u2019s arrogant and insulting behavior simply hard to believe. They treat churches with absolutely no respect, like a violent master towards a lowly slave. So it\u2019s little surprise that they act in this barbaric manner, tearing down crosses and violating the religious rights of Christians.<\/p>\n
You said a moment ago that the resistance of Christians is now more difficult to suppress. What form is their opposition taking and how is it being expressed?<\/p>\n
L: It takes many forms. Many churches have people join hands to form a \u201chuman wall.\u201d We also call this the \u201csnail strategy,\u201d where we stick to a place just like a snail. There\u2019s also the \u201choneybee strategy,\u201d where a bunch of people gather together and pester them. They typically come at night to carry out the demolition, so if you pester them for several hours they get tired and leave. Those churches that have been able to protect their crosses have done so through these methods.<\/p>\n
YC: Oh, some have succeeded in defending their crosses?<\/p>\n
L: Yes, quite a few have been protected.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also the strategy of piling up stones to block the road leading to the church. This is used quite often in rural areas. The more rural a place, the stronger the resistance. I saw a photo of one \u6e29\u5dde\u5341\u5b57\u67b6_\u77f3\u5934location where they even demolished a bridge to block the demolition. There\u2019s also a lot of banners and loudspeakers. Many places in the Cangnan plains (\u82cd\u5357\u5e73\u539f) have been broadcasting legal-education recordings from loudspeakers toward the people who come to tear down the crosses\u2014things like: \u201cArticle 36 of the Constitution of the People\u2019s Republic of China guarantees its citizens freedom of religious belief. There is no legal basis for what you police are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
YC: Are you seeing armed police or SWAT teams these days?<\/p>\n
L: Yes, especially SWAT police. Armed police were deployed at Sanjiang, but now you don\u2019t see them much. When the resistance is not so fierce, they use private security guards.<\/p>\n
Churches don\u2019t have protest experience, so their organizational capacity is rather weak. This is because for several decades, churches have responded to various threats through avoidance, non-resistance, and passive retreat. Now, they\u2019re defending their crosses and there\u2019s no way to escape. Several hundred churches have hired lawyers to sue local officials. Some are calling for the removal of Xia Baolong. Someone proposed that an image of Xia Baolong be made with a cross drawn over his face. Pastors and believers also use social media to broadcast latest development and photos of the scenes. A single post can get reposted tens of thousands of times in a single day if it doesn\u2019t get censored immediately. As soon as it gets censored, another gets put up again and reposted tens of thousands more times. There are many ways of protesting. We\u2019re mobilizing the imaginations of our fellow believers.<\/p>\n
YC: Are any churches that had their crosses torn down putting up new ones in their place?<\/p>\n
L: Lots of them. They put up new crosses right after they\u2019re torn down.<\/p>\n
YC: What do you anticipate will happen next?
\nL: Believers are manufacturing a large number of crosses out of both wood and acrylic glass. They say, \u201cGo ahead and tear down the crosses. We can\u2019t fight you, so we\u2019ll put crosses on our cars and hang them from our homes. We\u2019ll put them up on the side of the road or on a mountaintop. We\u2019ll put up crosses all over.\u201d It\u2019s not easy to put a large cross back up on the roof of a church. You need to hire many experts and spend tens of thousands.<\/p>\n
YC: In its open letter, the Zhejiang Christian Council says that there are more than 2 million Christians in Zhejiang.<\/p>\n
L: That\u2019s a very conservative estimate. There are over a million in Wenzhou alone. Wenzhou is unlike large cities like Beijing or Shanghai. It\u2019s mostly made up of small towns, and there are churches everywhere. Each of these places of worship has hundreds of people. Even churches in remote areas have over a hundred people. It\u2019s rare to see churches with fewer than a hundred people.<\/p>\n
YC: Can you tell me about the social background of Christians in Wenzhou? For example, what sort of people join your own church? What\u2019s their level of education, occupational background, and so on?<\/p>\n
L: There are all sorts of people and people of all ages. There are many who are in business and many are intellectuals. We also have a lot of elderly people. There are also many Christians among the ranks of civil servants.<\/p>\n
YC: Do they come to church openly?<\/p>\n
L: Of course they do! But now they\u2019re encountering great difficulties. I have a friend\u2014a university professor\u2014who resigned because of unbearable pressure. They used all sorts of different means to threaten him. Many of the doctors and nurses at the Wenzhou Medical College and its affiliated hospitals are Christians, and they too have come under pressure. There are also many Christians among middle-school- and primary-school teachers. They\u2019re also well represented in early-childhood education, where Christians have an advantage because they learn to dance and play the piano in their churches from an early age. Now, however, kindergartens are refusing to hire Christians. It wasn\u2019t like this before.
\nThere are also a lot of young people who are Christians, and each church will have a youth fellowship organization. There are also summer fellowship camps for students, attended by dozens from a single church and several hundreds from a parish\u2014all young people.<\/p>\n
YC: I have another question. Given that this campaign to tear down crosses has become a focus of international attention, do you think the campaign is the work of the provincial government? I don\u2019t see how it can be.<\/p>\n
L: We\u2019ve been having quite a heated debate on this point recently. There are two opinions. The first\u2014mainly made up of people from the south\u2014believes that this is the work of the central government, something either being led or condoned by Xi Jinping. The second view is held primarily by northerners, who believe this is a local action. This includes people overseas in Hong Kong and North America\u2014those who study religion and research government-church relations mainly think this is a local action. But here in the south, people inside the church have a hunch that this is the work of the central government.<\/p>\n
YC: This north-south division you describe is within the clergy, right?<\/p>\n
L: It also includes people within institutions, university researchers, and public intellectuals.<\/p>\n
YC: When it comes to tearing down crosses, is any distinction being made between Catholic churches and Protestant churches?<\/p>\n
L: No. All are seeing their crosses torn down.<\/p>\n
YC: Which is more predominant in Wenzhou, Catholicism or Protestantism?<\/p>\n
L: There are more Protestants, but Catholicism is quite strong, too. There are two main streams of Protestant Christians in Wenzhou. The two earliest originated with the United Methodist Free Church and the China Inland Mission, now known as the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF). Both came originally from Britain. These account for the two main denominations of Protestant Christianity in Wenzhou. There is also the Church of Seventh-Day Adventists, as well as the Christian assembly churches, similar to the Church of the Brethren. All four of these denominations are seeing their crosses torn down, without any distinction.<\/p>\n
YC: Can you say a few words to explain a bit about the differences between \u201cThree-Self\u201d churches and \u201chouse churches\u201d?<\/p>\n L: There isn\u2019t too much difference in terms of doctrine. The government once wanted to change a core doctrine of the \u201cThree-Self\u201d church, namely the \u201cdoctrine of sola fide\u201d (or \u201cjustification based solely on faith\u201d). House churches and \u201cThree-Self\u201d churches all insist on this doctrine.<\/p>\n K.H. Ting (\u4e01\u5149\u8bad), a bishop recognized by the government, once proposed a doctrine of justification based on love. They wanted to change the doctrine in this way but were unsuccessful. Also, house churches don\u2019t tailor their ethical guidance to official ideology. The second difference is that clergy in the \u201cThree-Self\u201d church are appointed and approved through official channels, while those in the house churches are not.<\/p>\n YC: Aren\u2019t all of the churches that had their crosses torn down \u201cThree-Self\u201d churches? Can \u201chouse churches\u201d be so large?<\/p>\n L: In Zhejiang, many house churches employ roundabout ways to build similarly large church buildings.<\/p>\n YC: I\u2019ve heard people call Wenzhou \u201cChina\u2019s Jerusalem.\u201d I\u2019ve seen so many extravagant church buildings in photos. Can you explain briefly why Christianity is so flourishing in Wenzhou and in Zhejiang? First, am I correct in this judgment? Is Christianity particularly flourishing in Zhejiang?<\/p>\n L: It\u2019s true. Missionaries from countries like Great Britain, the United States, and other countries began proselytizing in Ningbo (\u5b81\u6ce2), Hangzhou (\u676d\u5dde), Wenzhou, Taizhou (\u53f0\u5dde) back in the 1880s and became long-term settlers here. So, there\u2019s a historical source for Christianity in Wenzhou. From early on, Wenzhou\u2019s trade with the outside world was very developed, and this is another important reason.<\/p>\n There is a strong practical and utilitarian flavor to the religious belief of people in Wenzhou. If I\u2019m engaged in business or any other enterprise, I want to seek the blessings of God. If someone goes into business, he seeks the prayers and blessings of people in his church. After giving birth, you seek the prayers and blessings of the church so that your child may do well in school.<\/p>\n So, when Wenzhou merchants go to do business in Beijing, Shanghai, or other large cities, they immediately set up their own places of worship and devote at least one night a week to worship. As long as there are people from Wenzhou, there will definitely be a church for them. There are also a large number of Wenzhou Christians living overseas in places like Paris, Rome, New York and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n When people from Wenzhou make money and become prosperous, they voluntarily donate fund to build big churches. Once people rode bicycles; now they all drive cars. When they come to church they need places to park, so of course churches need to expand. In the past, when it was hot people fanned themselves to keep cool or installed electric fans; now you definitely need air-conditioning. People\u2019s standard of living has improved, and church buildings also need upgrading. Why should churches be any different from government buildings in that respect?<\/p>\n YC: I notice that nearly all the crosses that have been torn down from churches in Wenzhou are red. Why is that?<\/p>\n L: This is a meaning being expressed there. Christianity has encountered several decades of repression in China. In the 20 years from 1958 to 1978, China banned Christian worship and Christians were all forced underground. Life was extremely difficult for Christians during those years. They had to gather secretly, hiding in the mountains or in other places where nobody went. There were no place to purchase the Bible, so they hand-copied it and shared with each other. If you got caught, they would confiscate your Bible.<\/p>\n Everyone was very happy when Hu Yaobang (\u80e1\u8000\u90a6) lifted the ban on religious belief in 1978. Older Christians shed so much blood and so many tears for their faith. They didn\u2019t care much about or have a deep understanding of theology, but when they built churches they insisted that the churches be taller than their houses and that the crosses should stand up tall. What they were expressing is this: In the past, we weren\u2019t free; now we want to show that our churches exist. So the crosses were built very tall and kept illuminated at night with a red light. The church is a city upon a hill. Christians are the light of the world. We want to shine in all directions.<\/p>\n Yaxue Cao (\u66f9\u96c5\u5b66) edits this website. Follow her on Twitter @YaxueCao. By Yaxue Cao, published: July 29, 2015 Y … Continue reading <\/a>
\nCATHOLIC CLERGY, LED BY BISHOP ZHU WEIFANG (\u6731\u7ef4\u65b9), PROTESTING IN FRONT OF THE GOVERNMENT. PHOTO FROM WEIBO.<\/p>\n
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