A Church in Crisis Weeps and Prays

By Richard N. Ostling

China's government clamps down on a Christian revival

The first reports of trouble were confined to Henan. Foreign visitors to that central China province said that more than 200 Protestants had been arrested last year by the national police. The victims were leaders of so-called house churches: unauthorized gatherings, usually in private homes, of Christians. Some of those arrested were released within days, but others are still being held.

Since the Henan arrests, similar accounts of persecution have begun to spill out from nearly half of China's provinces, as well as Shanghai, its largest city. The operator of a small retail business tells a foreigner on a train in central China that several dozen house-church leaders are under arrest in the city of Xian. Says the businessman: "All we can do is pray and weep for them." A Protestant writes a letter telling of public notices posted in Fuyang, west of Shanghai, ordering Christians not to share their faith beyond that city or to listen to short-wave Gospel broadcasts. A woman evangelist, one of 130 house-church leaders from Henan province who are in hiding, tells a foreign visitor that police hung her father by his hands and beat him in an attempt to find out her whereabouts.

The hundreds of arrests, occasional incidents of torture and other forms of harassment since mid-1983 constitute the first sweeping crackdown against Christian activity since the Communist regime instituted a measure of toleration in 1979. The repression is aimed especially at a zealous Protestant revival occurring among the unsanctioned house churches, which are in increasing conflict with the government-approved Protestant organizations. Only last week, for the first time, a government newspaper confirmed the existence of a Protestant revival "fever."

Among Roman Catholics, tensions have arisen from a split between the "Patriotic" church bodies, which obey government demands to reject all ties with the Vatican, and an underground group that remains loyal to the Pope. Hundreds of priests roam the countryside offering clandestine Masses. In the past year, dozens of these clergymen have been jailed, along with Bishop Peter Joseph Fan, 76, of Baoding, who was sentenced to ten years for ordaining underground priests.

Before Mao's takeover in 1949, all churches operated freely, often with foreign missionaries in control. The Communists expelled the missionaries and forced Protestants and Anglicans to dissolve their separate denominations and unite under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (T.S.P.M.), which was founded in 1954. The name signified that the government-sponsored churches were "selfsupporting, self-governing, self-propagating," and thus free of any foreign influence. A similar Patriotic Catholic Association, begun in 1957, broke with the Vatican.

Churches were able to function, under tight supervision, until all religious groups were banned during the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath (1966-76). Even the T.S.P.M. vanished. Thousands of clergy and church members were shipped to labor camps, and perhaps hundreds were executed. But underground Protestantism not only survived but grew into the house-church movement.

The T.S.P.M. was revived by 1980 under the leadership of Nanjing's Bishop Ding Guangxun, 68, a former Anglican. His T.S.P.M. has had an uphill struggle in seeking to regain control of Chinese Protestantism, a battle complicated by a woefully small number of church buildings to accommodate worshipers. The T.S.P.M. estimates there are 3 million Protestants in the country, about the same number as the official count of Catholics. But the respected Chinese Church Research Center in Hong Kong claims that house-church members swell the Protestant total to 30 million or more. Privately, some Chinese officials say the figure is closer to 20 million.

Asked about the arrests of underground Christians, Ding contends it is "false" that noncooperation (with the T.S.P.M.) is treated as a crime. Despite that assertion, an arrest warrant posted last year in Henan province lists just that charge against a house-church Christian. The warrant also provides a rare glimpse into the work of a single house-church evangelist. The warrant says the evangelist "deceived" 400 people into converting to Christianity, 100 of them in a single evening, and on another occasion "disturbed the social order" with a rally at a sports field. Such documents show that evangelism is a crime, even though China's latest constitution pledges that "the state protects legitimate religious activity."

Despite the tensions, long-range prospects for unity are better among Protestants than Catholics. Pope John Paul, for his part, has made friendly overtures and is prepared to go to great lengths to reach an accommodation. Vatican officials indicate the Pope would be willing to accept the 41 Patriotic Catholic bishops, whom the Chinese installed without papal approval. He would also probably agree to withdraw the Vatican's diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. But neither the Peking regime nor the Patriotic Catholic hierarchy shows any interest in negotiating. .

With reporting by DAVID AIKMAN, Bing W. Wong