 See
See the China Christian Counter at:
CBTS - China Missions Martyrs
The members of
Chapel-by-the-Sea Baptist Church are concerned
with the Missionaries and Martrys
that suffer and struggle while bringing the Word of God
to the Chinese People. We believe that all Christians,
World-Wide, need to be made more aware of the sacrifice,
dedication and determination of the Missionaries and People
of China to freely worship our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.
US
Commission on International Religious Freedom
- The Chinese
government continues to engage in severe violations of religious
freedom in 2004. Government officials
retain tight control and restrict the activities of all
religious communities. Religious leaders and laypersons
continue to be harassed, detained, and tortured due to their
religious belief. The government increases its persecution
of the unregistered Roman Catholic Church, which pledges to
follow the Vatican. There are currently at least 20 Catholic
bishops under arrest, including Bishop Su Zhimin, who has
been in prison since 1970s. In 2004, the repression
of Christians escalates in Hebei, Fujian, and Heilongjiang
provinces where many were arrested, including 12 priests
attending a religious retreat.
- Conditions for
unregistered Protestant groups have worsened in 2004.
Protestant Christians who refuse to register with the
Government (the State Administration for Religious
Activities, formerly known as the central Religious Affairs
Bureau) have been harassed and detained. The government
closed places of worship and have cracked down hard on house
churches in various parts of the country. At least 100
pastors were arrested in 2004 in Heilongjiang, Hubei,
Xinjiang, and in Henan Province. In September 2003, house
church leader Zhang Yinan was arrested with 100 Christians
in Nanyang and was sentenced to two years of
"re-education" through labor. In August 2004,
house church activist Liu Fenggang and others were sentenced
up to three years in prison for sending information of
Christian persecution to organizations in the United States.
There is a report of a Christian in Guizhou died from
torture by the police. She was arrested for distributing Bibles.
In 2003, in Zhejiang, local officials demolished a few
unregistered churches and claimed that the destroyed
churches were not zoned for religious activities.
- In November 2004, the
Chinese government issued a new set of regulations on
religion. The government claimed the new laws were issued to
protect the rights of religious adherents. The new
provisions allow religious groups to provide social services
locally and receive financial support from foreign religious
institutions; however, Party officials will have more
control over religious activities and citizens who refuse to
register with the official religious organizations will be
fined and penalized.
- The Chinese government
suspended the official US.-China
Human Rights Dialogue (2006), which has religious
freedom as a top agenda item in March 2004 after the US.
decided to introduce a resolution against China at the UN
Commission on Human Rights. The resolution was a result of
"Chinas failure to meet the commitments made at the
U.S.-China Human Rights Dialogue in December 2002."
Since 1999, the Secretary of State has designated China a
"Country of Particular Concern" under the
International Religious Act for particularly severe
violations of religious freedom.
What You Can Do:
- Pray for the Christians of
China that they may be protected from harm
and that the Christian message may be heard and received by
all. Pray especially for the security and
well being of the underground house church leaders who are
currently in prison for their faith.
- Write a respectful letter
to one or more of the government officials listed below.
Express your continuing concern for the safety and well
being of the Christian community in China. Request
information about what steps the government is taking to
ensure their protection and freedom to practice their faith
as laid out in the UNs Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and other international human rights documents.
- Contact the elected
national officials (Senators,
Congressman etc.) for your area as well as the U.S.
State Department and express concern for the well being
of the Christians in China asking them to make an inquiry
into their status.
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One of the major points of contention about the Chinese
missions, and about the missionary movement in general,
regards the development of independent native churches.
Since the beginning, Chinese and foreign critics have
accused the 19th-century Christian missionaries of keeping
the native churches dependent on the mission boards in
Britain and the U.S. for financial support and clerical
leadership alike. In some cases, the criticism is
warranted, but much can be attributed to jingoism
and xenophobia on the part of succeeding Chinese
governments, and in the West to ideological rejection of
perceived Victorian
era priggishness and paternalism. The survival of the
Christian movement through such upheavals as the Boxer
Rebellion, the Japanese occupation, and the Cultural
Revolution suggests that most of this criticism is
unfounded. This topic is addressed repeatedly in the
journal of Dr. Nathan
Sites, a missionary who served in Fukien (Fujian)
province from 1861 until his death in 1895. Dr. Sites,
like many other missionaries, argued and labored for the
creation of a strong and independent Chinese church. In
this effort, he ordained many of the earliest native
Christian ministers, most famously a former Confucian
scholar by the name of Sia Sek Ong. After his ordination,
Rev. Sia toured the United States, where he was feted with
honorary degrees and an audience with President Grover
Cleveland.
(Sites, Sarah Moore (1912). "Nathan Sites: An Epic
of the East." New York: Revell.)
Popularity and Indigenous
Growth (1900-1925)
The opening of the twentieth century ushered in what
has been called Christianity's Golden age in China. It was
a period of transition for both the church and the nation.
China moved from Qing dynastic rule to a warlord-dominated
republic to a united front of the Guomindang and Chinese
Communist party in league against warlords and
imperialism. Christianity enjoyed unprecedented popularity
for two decades. Variety within the Protestant community
increased; conservative, evangelical societies
strengthened their presence; the social gospel approach
gained momentum, and Chinese formed their own faith sects
and autonomous churches.
Reaction to the failures of nineteenth century reform
movements and to international humiliation subsequent to
the Boxer
Uprising helped create a readiness for change in
China. Many Chinese assumed that to modernize, China would
have to import and adapt from the West. Since missionaries
contended that Western progress derived from its Christian
heritage, Christianity gained new favour. The
missionaries, their writings and Christian schools were
accessible sources of information; parochial schools
filled to overflowing. Church membership expanded and
Christian movements like the YMCA
and YWCA became popular.
The number of Protestant
missionaries had surpassed 8000 by 1925 and in the
process, the nature of the community had altered.
Estimates for the Chinese Protestant community ranged
around 500,000.
There were also growing numbers of conservative
evangelicals. Some came from traditional denomination, but
others worked independently with minimal support, and many
were sponsored by fundamentalist and faith groups like the
Seventh-day
Adventist Church, the Christian
Missionary Alliance, and the Assemblies
of God. Pentecostal,
charismatic and Millenarian preachers brought a new zeal
to the drive to evangelize the world.
Parochial schools also nurtured a corps of Christian
leaders who acquired influential positions in education,
diplomatic service and other government bureaus, medicine,
business, the Christian church and Christian movements. In
the Christian community, individuals like Yu Rizhang
(David Yui 1882 - 1936), Zhao Zichen (1888-1989), Xu
Baoqian (1892-1944), and Liu Tingfang (Timothy
Liu (1890-1947) stand out. Most were characterized
with liberal theology, commitment to social reform, deep
Chinese patriotism, and acquaintance with Western
learning. Many of these leaders held popular revival
meetings in Christian schools throughout China and, along
with conservative churchmen like Cheng Jingyi (1881-1939),
sparked the drive for greater Chinese autonomy and
leadership in the church.
They became Chinese spokesmen in the National Christian
Council, a liaison committee for Protestant churches, and
the Church of Christ in China (CCC), established in 1927
to work toward independence. Even so, progress toward
autonomy proved to be slow, for Western mission boards
were reluctant to relinquish the power of the pocket book,
which gave them a decisive voice in most matters of
importance.
Adding to the diversity and also to the conservative
trend was the proliferation of completely autonomous
Chinese Christian churches and communities, a new
phenomenon in Chinese Protestantism. Noteworthy was the China
Christian Independent Church (Zhongguo Yesujiao
Zilihui), a federation which by 1920 had over 100 member
churches, drawn mostly from the Chinese urban class. In
contrast was the True
Jesus Church (Zhen Yesu Jiaohui), founded in 1917;
Pentecostal, millenarian and exclusivist, it was
concentrated in the central interior provinces.
Sometimes independence derived not so much from a
desire to indigenize Christianity as from the nature of
leadership. Wang
Mingdao (1900-1991) and Song Shangjie (John
Sung, 1900-1944) were zealous, confident of possessing
the truth, and critical of what they peceived as lukewarm
formalism in the Protestant establishments. They drew on
the revivalism and mysticism of Western "faith
sects" and the Pentecostalism of the True Jesus
Church. During the 1920s and 1930s both Wang and Song
worked as independent itinerant preachers, holding highly
successful and emotional meetings in established churches
and other venues. Their message was simple: "today's
evil world demands repentance; otherwise hell is our
destiny". To this doomsday prophecy, Song added faith
healing. Their premillenial eschatology attracted tens of
thousands of followers set adrift in an environment of
political chaos, civil war, and personal hardship.
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"At
the time of the Communist takeover in 1949, there were
roughly 900,000 Protestants. Today, the Center for the
Study of Global Christianity, which puts out the
much-consulted World Christian Database, says there are
111 million Christians in China, roughly 90 percent
Protestant and mostly Pentecostal. That would make China
the third-largest Christian country on earth, following
only the United States and Brazil.
"The Center
projects that by 2050, there will be 218 million
Christians in China, 16 percent of the population, enough
to make China the world's second-largest Christian nation.
According to the Center, there are 10,000 conversions in
China every day.
"The most
audacious even dream of carrying the gospel beyond the
borders of China, along the old Silk Road into the Muslim
world, in a campaign known as "Back to
Jerusalem." As David Aikman explains in Jesus in
Beijing, some Chinese Evangelicals and Pentecostals
believe that the basic movement of the gospel for the last
2,000 years has been westward: from Jerusalem to Antioch,
from Antioch to Europe, from Europe to America, and from
America to China. Now, they believe, its their turn to
complete the loop by carrying the gospel to Muslim lands,
eventually arriving in Jerusalem. Once that happens, they
believe, the gospel will have been preached to the entire
world.."
-- John
Allen
"I suspect
that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the
downside, and that Christianity will have become a
Sino-centric religion two generations from now. China may
be for the 21st century what Europe was during the
8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past
200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelization. If
this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to
recognize it. Islam might defeat the western Europeans,
simply by replacing their diminishing numbers with
immigrants, but it will crumble beneath the challenge from
the East."
-- Oswald
Spengler
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You may also wish to read the account of missionaries
martyred in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. See the Book:
Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission:
at Google
Books
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