Flipping through the channels the other night, I ran across PBS's "Frontline". They featured Christianity in China. Titled Jesus in China, it looked at the relationship between the "house church" (underground) movement and the communist government. While Christian brothers and sisters are beginning to see daylight in the form of less restrictions from the government, they still deal with the specter of living in a police state.
Among the more interesting thoughts from the program:
“They’ve tried to catch me several times, but they never succeeded because God protects me.” says Wang Guiyan, who runs [a house] church. “Christianity is freedom. But Chinese Christians, they still have restrictions. They are not completely free.”
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In case after case, the Chinese government gives a variety of reasons other than faith to arrest local house church leaders. Sometimes, they demolish the house churches altogether. But the government’s attempts to control the underground church have largely failed to diminish their faith.
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“The gap is becoming larger in China between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless,” he says. “I believe only Jesus, and not the communist party, can save this country and its people.”
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At the most recent Communist Party congress, President Hu Jintao made an historic move, adding the word “religion” to the party constitution for the first time. He urged party leaders to strike what he called a harmonious balance between church and state.
But not everyone trusts the party’s new friendly face toward religion. Fan Yafeng, a lawyer specializing in religious freedom, tells Osnos that the government’s acceptance of Christianity is strategic.
“To control the Chinese society, the government sometimes chooses to be lenient and sometimes tough,” he says.
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