Abstract
The Global Times cited a Peking University study which found that there were 26 million Protestants in China in 2012. 1 Researchers treat reports on Christianity in China as a jigsaw puzzle which requires putting together small pieces in order to obtain the whole picture.
Travellers and missionaries as well as Chinese Christians have their own views on Christian life in China. In order to obtain unbiased information, it is insufficient to read only the newspapers and official publications on religions or to rely only on visitors’ accounts of the local churches. First of all, as a latent rule, mainland newspapers do not report any religious news. 2 Church visitors have their own agenda, and their views on the church–state relationship might not conform with the government’s policy on religion.
Gerda Wielander in her book Christian Values in Communist China overcomes problems of providing unbiased information on Chinese Protestants by going between the government-monitored sector of Protestants, for example, the Open Church which is administered by the Three Self-Patriotic Movement, and the non-government-monitored sector (the House Church).
Wielander’s discussion first deals with how Christian values have influenced Chinese society. Then the author makes use of Christian values as a springboard to discuss the proliferation of Chinese Protestants, their charitable activities, their online communications, their publications, as well as the activities of Protestant intellectuals and their legal and political involvement. Wielander provides a very comprehensive and unbiased discussion on the current development of the Protestant Church in China.
There are detailed investigations on activities sponsored by churches related to the Three Self-Patriotic Movement. For instance, the foreign-funded Amity Foundation in Nanjing and Huiling in Beijing (pp. 73–6) – the two biggest Christian organizations – have closely cooperated with the government with regard to charity (especially for the mentally disabled) as well as cultural activities. However, Christian values are not mentioned in their mission statement.
Discussions on the non-government-sanctioned activities of Protestants are very valuable indeed. Online publications such as Love Banquets (爱宴), The Ark (方舟), Olive Branch (橄榄枝) and Covenant and Law (约与法) are evangelical and educational Christian literature, and these are edited by returned Christian intellectuals from overseas (mainly from the United States) who have a mission. Some of these Christian intellectuals consciously carry out their ‘bridging function’ to evangelize China (Chapter 6). These magazines provide a wide perspective for educational purposes. Articles range from explaining Christian doctrines to the simple and less educated Christians in rural areas, to offering advice to pastors to help them become better preachers and leaders, to discussions on social awareness and social justice including legal justice and democracy in the context of the Bible.
The author explains the self-imposed responsibility of Christian intellectuals as follows (p. 124): There is uniform agreement among Christian intellectuals that it is their duty as Christians to bring their belief into society at large and to do what they can to spread Christian values and the gospel.
This cohort of Chinese Christian intellectuals is committed to spreading Christian values and the gospel message in an atheist society. Some of them believe that Christian values are behind the spiritual embodiment of their democratic movement and the building of a civil society (pp. 125–8). Even though they belong to a very small minority among the conservative Christian majority, Christian intellectuals are vulnerable to suppression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government. It is because they are in a whirlpool of clashing ideologies: between atheistic Marxist-Leninism plus Mao Zedong Thought and religious idealism. Christian intellectuals are very much against the Party’s policy on religious freedom. 3 Even in the era of modernization spearheaded by Deng Xiaoping, Ye Xiaowen, head of the Religious Affairs Bureau, stated that the strategy behind implementing the religious freedom policy was to eliminate the influence of religions in the socialist regime. 4
With gentle and light strokes the author paints a very mild picture of government suppression of the publications and the political and legal activities of these Christian intellectuals. Some of these non-conformist Protestants have even gone into exile (pp. 125–6). More discussion on the CCP’s policy on religious freedom would have yielded a three-dimensional picture showing the interactions among the three major players in China, that is, government, society and Protestants. It is the CCP’s policy on religion which causes major problems in the relationship between Chinese Protestants and their motherland. As such, this factor cannot be neglected. However, all in all, the author’s patient work in putting together pieces of information in this jigsaw puzzle deserves our respect and gratitude.