In China, they’re closing churches, jailing pastors – and even rewriting scripture

In late October, the pastor of one of China’s best-known underground churches asked this of his congregation: had they successfully spread the gospel throughout their city? “If tomorrow morning the Early Rain Covenant Church suddenly disappeared from the city of Chengdu, if each of us vanished into thin air, would this city be any different? Would anyone miss us?” said Wang Yi, leaning over his pulpit and pausing to let the question weigh on his audience. “I don’t know.”

Almost three months later, Wang’s hypothetical scenario is being put to the test. The church in south-west China has been shuttered and Wang and his wife, Jiang Rong, remain in detention after police arrested more than 100 Early Rain church members in December. Many of those who haven’t been detained are in hiding. Others have been sent away from Chengdu and barred from returning. Some, including Wang’s mother and his young son, are under close surveillance. Wang and his wife are being charged for “inciting subversion”, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

Now the hall Wang preached from sits empty, the pulpit and cross that once hung behind him both gone. Prayer cushions have been replaced by a ping-pong table and a film of dust. New tenants, a construction company and a business association, occupy the three floors the church once rented. Plainclothes police stand outside, turning away those looking for the church.

One of the officers told the Observer: “I have to tell you to leave and watch until you get in a car and go.”


[img]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible#img-2[/img]
Wang Yi, pastor of the Early Rain church, who was arrested and detained three months ago, along with his wife. Photograph: Early Rain/Facebook


Early Rain is the latest victim of what Chinese Christians and rights activists say is the worst crackdown on religion since the country’s Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong’s government vowed to eradicate religion.

Researchers say the current drive, fuelled by government unease over the growing number of Christians and their potential links to the west, is aimed not so much at destroying Christianity but bringing it to heel.

“The government has orchestrated a campaign to ‘sinicise’ Christianity, to turn Christianity into a fully domesticated religion that would do the bidding of the party,” said Lian Xi, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, who focuses on Christianity in modern China.

Over the past year, local governments have shut hundreds of unofficial congregations or “house churches” that operate outside the government-approved church network, including Early Rain. A statement signed by 500 house church leaders in November says authorities have removed crosses from buildings, forced churches to hang the Chinese flag and sing patriotic songs, and barred minors from attending.

Churchgoers say the situation will get worse as the campaign reaches more of the country. Another church in Chengdu was placed under investigation last week. Less than a week after the mass arrest of Early Rain members, police raided a children’s Sunday school at a church in Guangzhou. Officials have also banned the 1,500-member Zion church in Beijing after its pastor refused to install CCTV.

In November the Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church was shut for the second time in three months. “The Chinese Communist party (CCP) wants to be the God of China and the Chinese people. But according to the Bible only God is God. The government is scared of the churches,” said Huang Xiaoning, the church’s pastor.

Local governments have also shut the state-approved “sanzi” churches. Sunday schools and youth ministries have been banned. One of the first signs of a crackdown was when authorities forcibly removed more than 1,000 crosses from sanzi churches in Zhejiang province between 2014 and 2016.

“The goal of the crackdown is not to eradicate religions,” said Ying Fuk Tsang, director of the Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “President Xi Jinping is trying to establish a new order on religion, suppressing its blistering development. [The government] aims to regulate the ‘religious market’ as a whole.”

While the CCP is officially atheist, Protestantism and Catholicism are two of five faiths sanctioned by the government and religious freedom has been enshrined in the constitution since the 1980s. For decades, authorities tolerated the house churches, which refused to register with government bodies that required church leaders to adapt teachings to follow party doctrine.

As China experienced an explosion in the number of religious believers, the government has grown wary of Christianity and Islam in particular, with their overseas links. In Xinjiang, a surveillance and internment system has been built for Muslim minorities, notably the Uighurs.

Xi has called for the country to guard against “infiltration” through religion and extremist ideology.

“What happens in Xinjiang and what happens to house churches is connected,” said Eva Pils, a professor of law at King’s College London, focusing on human rights. “Those kinds of new attitudes have translated into different types of measures against Christians, which amount to intensified persecution of religious groups.”

[img]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible#img-4[/img]
Catholics wait to take communion during the Palm Sunday mass at a ‘house church’ near Shijiazhuang


There are at least 60 million Christians in China, spanning rural and urban areas. Congregation-based churches can organise large groups across the country and some have links with Christian groups abroad.

Pastors such as Wang of Early Rain are especially alarming for authorities. Under Wang, a legal scholar and public intellectual, the church has advocated for parents of children killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake – deaths many critics say were caused by poor government-run construction – or for families of those affected by faulty vaccines. Every year the church commemorates victims of the 4 June protests in 1989, which were forcibly put down by the Chinese military.

“Early Rain church is one of the few who dare to face what is wrong in society,” said one member. “Most churches don’t dare talk about this, but we obey strictly obey the Bible, and we don’t avoid anything.”

Wang and Early Rain belong to what some see as a new generation of Christians that has emerged alongside a growing civil rights movement. Increasingly, activist church leaders have taken inspiration from the democratising role the church played in eastern European countries in the Soviet bloc or South Korea under martial law, according to Lian. Several of China’s most active human rights lawyers are Christians.

“They have come to see the political potential of Christianity as a force for change,” said Lian. “What really makes the government nervous is Christianity’s claim to universal rights and values.”

As of 2018, the government has implemented sweeping rules on religious practices, adding more requirements for religious groups and barring unapproved organisations from engaging in any religious activity. But the campaign is not just about managing behaviour. One of the goals of a government work plan for “promoting Chinese Christianity” between 2018 and 2022 is “thought reform”. The plan calls for “retranslating and annotating” the Bible, to find commonalities with socialism and establish a “correct understanding” of the text.

“Ten years ago, we used to be able to say the party was not really interested in what people believed internally,” said Pils. “Xi Jinping’s response is much more invasive and it is in some ways returning to Mao-era attempts to control hearts and minds.”

Bibles, sales of which have always been controlled in China, are no longer available for purchase online, a loophole that had existed for years. In December, Christmas celebrations were banned in several schools and cities across China.

“Last year’s crackdown is the worst in three decades,” said Bob Fu, the founder of ChinaAid, a Christian advocacy group based in the US.

In Chengdu, Early Rain has not vanished. Before the raid, a plan was in place to preserve the church, with those who were not arrested expected to keep it running, holding meetings wherever they could. Slowly, more Early Rain members are being released. As of 9 January, 25 were still in detention.

They maintain contact through encrypted platforms. On New Year’s Eve, 300 people joined an online service, some from their homes, others from cars or workplaces, to pray for 2019. Others gather in small groups in restaurants and parks. One member, a student who was sent back to Guangzhou, said he preaches the gospel to the police who monitor him.

The church continues to send out daily scripture and posts videos of sermons. In one, pastor Wang alludes to the coming crackdown: “In this war, in Xinjiang, in Shanghai, in Beijing, in Chengdu, the rulers have chosen an enemy that can never be imprisoned – the soul of man. Therefore they are doomed to lose this war.”





https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible

JESUS WILL ALWAYS BE LORD FOREVER AND EVER , no matter what.

In Obi's China?

post=75876202:
JESUS WILL ALWAYS BE LORD FOREVER AND EVER , no matter what.

Lord to those who are eternally his slaves. Free men do not need Jewish blood to reach God.

Well done China. All your Oyedepos and Adeboyes are engineers. No wonder you are building our bridges and railway, and airport, and pencils, and phones, and .....


China is God o...

Again, JESUS IS LORD FOREVER AND EVER!

Comments loading ��

I'm proud of the Chinese. A country determined to rule the world someday.

Religion has already dragged us below 6 feet in Africa, while university students in advanced countries engage in research even at undergraduate levels, our students are busy starving themselves and asking a useless God to use them, some do nothing but speak in tongues every evening, anytime I look at them, my hate for religion grows stronger.

We cannot reach the level of U.S, China, Russia and other top countries simply by buying their products and employing their scientists and engineers for that would only enrich them .

My emphasis has always been on education, if you ask an average Nigerian about the best schools we have in the country he'll start listing those mediocre schools where the school environment is like a palace and the pupils pay millions per annum and then ask him the best University he'll begin with these over hyped Christian schools before coming down to list the first generation public universities.

This schools can never make Nigeria scientifically advanced, what they can do is train you on how to work in the best companies in the world and which is what most Nigerians are doing. Government really need to establish Gymnasiums and invest heavily in basic sciences. It is by doing this that we can become a powerful nation and not by worshipping a useless God created by our slave masters.

post=75876335:
Again, JESUS IS LORD FOREVER AND EVER!

We understand you have been brainwashed into Christianity but that should never stop you from thinking. Not just thinking, but thinking without fear in your mind.

MathsEconomics:


We understand you have been brainwashed into Christianity but that should never stop you from thinking. Not just thinking, but thinking without fear in your mind.

A fool says in his heart that there is no God.

post=75878059:

A fool says in his heart that there is no God.

Is that the quote they're using to keep your mind on darkness and superstition? Who even wrote that statement down in the Bible? It could be the wicked Romans that wanted to conquer the world with Christianity and resulted to hate speech when their doctrines were rejected by Asians. It could also be the Council established in AD325 to establish a figure called Jesus as the son of their God.

Even if there's a God. Common sense assures me that this God can never write such Childish statement down in his book.

Proverbs 26:4

Then surely this is the beginning of the end though the end has not yet come. Rev 5,6,7,8,9.
God's word is real; truly heaven and earth shall pass away but His word would never pass away.

This is what happens when atheists take control of your country. They establish atheist states, then begin their campaign to eliminate religious life. Their hatred of religion is real.

This is very good news.

Close all the churches

MathsEconomics:
I'm proud of the Chinese. A country determined to rule the world someday.

Religion has already dragged us below 6 feet in Africa, while university students in advanced countries engage in research even at undergraduate levels, our students are busy starving themselves and asking a useless God to use them, some do nothing but speak in tongues every evening, anytime I look at them, my hate for religion grows stronger.

We cannot reach the level of U.S, China, Russia and other top countries simply by buying their products and employing their scientists and engineers for that would only enrich them .

My emphasis has always been on education, if you ask an average Nigerian about the best schools we have in the country he'll start listing those mediocre schools where the school environment is like a palace and the pupils pay millions per annum and then ask him the best University he'll begin with these over hyped Christian schools before coming down to list the first generation public universities.

This schools can never make Nigeria scientifically advanced, what they can do is train you on how to work in the best companies in the world and which is what most Nigerians are doing. Government really need to establish Gymnasiums and invest heavily in basic sciences. It is by doing this that we can become a powerful nation and not by worshipping a useless God created by our slave masters.

Love this !! But I will replace God with Jesus. I don't think God is to blame for all this confusion.


1000 Likes

frosbel2:
This is very good news.
Close all the churches

The Churches are all going into oblivion soon but TRUE Christians will remain!
The Apostle John in the Bible book of Revelation foretold that Religion will be exterminated and burnt with fire completely. Revelations 17:16
The wild beast mentioned refers to the worldly governments or authorities{Revelations 17:12} note that this have been the one time partner COMMITTING sexual relations with this prostitute! Revelations 17:2
Take note of the prophesy of Daniel when he wrote that the King of the North{Asians} will lay a siege, this is indicating that the idea to exterminate religion will start from Asia! Daniel 11:15-17 But later this Asian force taking his stand against religion will also become history himself! Daniel 17:16
So it has been WRITTEN in the same whiteman's book my friend,that Religion will later become history.
But to fully grasp the next thing to follow,you need to found out the TRUE Christians because it is ONLY them that the understanding of all these prophesies are given.Note that even Daniel the one asked to pen it down wasn't granted the understanding of this SACRED SECRETS instead Daniel is told "go and rest{die} but when the time comes to share the goodies you will be remembered{resurrected}! Daniel 12:8-13
This means that those who will be granted the full understanding of that prophesy will live in much later times!
So whoever has ears let him go in search for the TRUE Christians and they will teach him/her all of these!

frosbel2:
This is very good news.
Close all the churches

And close the door of opportunities for crazy people to hold political posts.

HellVictorinho:

And close the door of opportunities for crazy people to hold political posts.

So how do you expect people to evaluate that.
Moreover i thought what the world today is trying to practice as system of government is called DEMOCRACY.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti once described it as the DEMONSTRATION of CRAZY people! So how are you going to remove the CRAZY people from what rightfully belongs to them.

HappyPagan:

Lord to those who are eternally his slaves. Free men do not need Jewish blood to reach God.

Happy Pagan is one of the free men.

When man worship idols, they tell it what to do and they reason that the "god" is in the statue.....so they believed, so it continued...

Little did man know that the demon lives in him and controls him... Man was scammed, an idolater thinks he is in control....

(The Holy Spirit does not posses a man by this method... You have to be willing and must meet the requirements)

Back to Happy pagan, he holds that there is no God and blaspheme his name at will.... He thinks he is free, that he is in control of things....

Little did he know, that such believe is a delusion from the wickedness of evil, from a powerful demon who seeks to dissociate man from his maker.

Once the separation is done, the demon takes full control BECAUSE SUCH DEMON NOW HAS A LEGAL GROUND TO POSSESS SUCH INDIVIDUAL.

I can say with all certainty that, happy pagan, and people who are like him, are in great bondage.

They think they are free, whereas, they have been blinded by delusion, and held in captivity of the mind.

Control the human mind, and you control all his entirety.

TATIME:
So how do you expect people to evaluate that.
Moreover i thought what the world today is trying to practice as system of government is called DEMOCRACY.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti once described it as the DEMONSTRATION of CRAZY people! So how are you going to remove the CRAZY people from what rightfully belongs to them.

.
Democracy is just a system of government.
I'm talking about the system of practicing whatever political abracadabra!!!!!
Politicians/Public officials or officers/Whoever matters politically should be certified as completely sane before,during and after the process of getting whatever powers.

Churches have been closed since the apostles slept in the Lord.

Unfortunately, for the kingdom of darkness, the gates of hell shall not prevail against the CHURCH.

The church is the individual , not the building.

Gates of hell are the owners of hell, of whom the devil is chief.

He works through men to frustrate the church... But he wont prevail.

The bride will soon be with the Lord....

....and then after, the world will wish she was around for the level of atrocities and raw evil manifestations that will prevail .

The Holy Spirit keeps evil at bay because of the church.

Once she is gone, Apollyon and the beast shall have their full time to work on the children of evil.

Come quickly, Lord.

HellVictorinho:
.
Democracy is just a system of government.
I'm talking about the system of practicing whatever political abracadabra!!!!!
Politicians/Public officials/Whoever matters politically should be certified as completely sane before,during and after the process of getting whatever powers.

OK! And who are those that will issue such certificate? Imagine a world that is totally free from religion,where
*homosexuals as in gays
*lesbians
*bestialists
*transgenders
*crossdressers
And so on has equal rights since there is no WRITTEN document to stipulate what should be termed as sanity or insanity {right or wrong} so far everyone is well dressed without any MIND~CONTROLLING technique or institutions.
Do you think it would be that easy to screen some individuals as insanes. For instance imagine likes of Bobrisky or Denrele Edun publicly declaring their intentions to become Nigeria's President.
Don't forget that they also have uncountable fans that will vote for them as their own personal CHOICE. Does this so called Democracy has any stringent rules to bar such persons apart from religiously inclined manipulators?
I'm having the feeling that the ONLY reason why such people have been segregated is RELIGION,otherwise they're supposed to be free to come and serve in public offices as Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, Policemen & women Soldiers, Teachers, Lecturers, and the rest.

HappyPagan:
Well done China. All your Oyedepos and Adeboyes are engineers. No wonder you are building our bridges and railway, and airport, and pencils, and phones, and .....


China is God o...

What are you as a pagan or atheist doing? Must it be the Adeboyes and Oyedepos who you claim are only reaching out to non existing God?

MathsEconomics:
I'm proud of the Chinese. A country determined to rule the world someday.

Religion has already dragged us below 6 feet in Africa, while university students in advanced countries engage in research even at undergraduate levels, our students are busy starving themselves and asking a useless God to use them, some do nothing but speak in tongues every evening, anytime I look at them, my hate for religion grows stronger.

We cannot reach the level of U.S, China, Russia and other top countries simply by buying their products and employing their scientists and engineers for that would only enrich them .

1, What have less religious ones among our students researched? That's one.

2, why is one of the two major religion always having better result educationally? The pattern is consistent across all regions, so why?

3, Why are church dominated regions where people pay tithes and offering always not the region housing the poorest?

4, what did our religion-less forefathers achieve in absence of religion?

Please answer these questions directly and let's see what you have against Christianity (A. K. A. Religion)... lol

Wow this is so heart breaking and astonishing. These are Christians who are actually being persecuted but are still bent on preaching the gospel. Seriously this kind of news still shows that the world is afraid of Christianity as it was in the time of the apostles. We pray God will send them a Paul to help establish the gospel more in China. Thank you Jesus.

Really and the Nigeria public schools teach us how to not work in big companies? Why the hate on Christianity. Why are you atheist so angry that Christians are brainwashed. There something like freedom of religion and believe but yet you guys make it seem as religion is the worst in the world. Seriously

MathsEconomics:
I'm proud of the Chinese. A country determined to rule the world someday.

Religion has already dragged us below 6 feet in Africa, while university students in advanced countries engage in research even at undergraduate levels, our students are busy starving themselves and asking a useless God to use them, some do nothing but speak in tongues every evening, anytime I look at them, my hate for religion grows stronger.

We cannot reach the level of U.S, China, Russia and other top countries simply by buying their products and employing their scientists and engineers for that would only enrich them .

My emphasis has always been on education, if you ask an average Nigerian about the best schools we have in the country he'll start listing those mediocre schools where the school environment is like a palace and the pupils pay millions per annum and then ask him the best University he'll begin with these over hyped Christian schools before coming down to list the first generation public universities.

This schools can never make Nigeria scientifically advanced, what they can do is train you on how to work in the best companies in the world and which is what most Nigerians are doing. Government really need to establish Gymnasiums and invest heavily in basic sciences. It is by doing this that we can become a powerful nation and not by worshipping a useless God created by our slave masters.

TATIME:
OK! And who are those that will issue such certificate? Imagine a world that is totally free from religion,where
*homosexuals as in gays
*lesbians
*bestialists
*transgenders
*crossdressers
And so on has equal rights since there is no WRITTEN document to stipulate what should be termed as sanity or insanity {right or wrong} so far everyone is well dressed without any MIND~CONTROLLING technique or institutions.
Do you think it would be that easy to screen some individuals as insanes. For instance imagine likes of Bobrisky or Denrele Edun publicly declaring their intentions to become Nigeria's President.
Don't forget that they also have uncountable fans that will vote for them as their own personal CHOICE. Does this so called Democracy has any stringent rules to bar such persons apart from religiously inclined manipulators?
I'm having the feeling that the ONLY reason why such people have been segregated is RELIGION,otherwise they're supposed to be free to come and serve in public offices as Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, Policemen & women Soldiers, Teachers, Lecturers, and the rest.

I'm talking about the insanity that involves mismanagement of political powers and government funds to the extent of leading a nation towards quantum ridiculousness as a geographical reality.

HellVictorinho:

I'm talking about the insanity that involves mismanagement of political powers and government funds to the extent of leading a nation towards quantum ridiculousness as a geographical reality.

It's like you don't get it do you?
This is Nigeria,and there are two main religious groups apart from the native deities. So how do you think we're going to quarantine the insanes if you and i never agree on a form of standard?
For your information,China has one common form of worship before they were colonised so it is easy for them to stop both two religion that seems like aliens to them, they first quarantined Muslims and now the Churches. But Nigeria has diverse traditions and customs that has totally gone into extint,so how do you think morals could now be standardised? Moreover most of our youths knew practically nothing about our cultures,they're all brought up with the mentality of the western world so will you now start teaching them to go back to the old deities that has been long forgotten?

TATIME:
It's like you don't get it do you?
This is Nigeria,and there are two main religious groups apart from the native deities. So how do you think we're going to quarantine the insanes if you and i never agree on a form of standard?
For your information,China has one common form of worship before they were colonised so it is easy for them to stop both two religion that seems like aliens to them, they first quarantined Muslims and now the Churches. But Nigeria has diverse traditions and customs that has totally gone into extint,so how do you think morals could now be standardised? Moreover most of our youths knew practically nothing about our cultures,they're all brought up with the mentality of the western world so will you now start teaching them to go back to the old deities that has been long forgotten?

Religion is not the only matter that matters to the matter of "Nigeria".

MathsEconomics:

Is that the quote they're using to keep your mind on darkness and superstition? Who even wrote that statement down in the Bible? It could be the wicked Romans that wanted to conquer the world with Christianity and resulted to hate speech when their doctrines were rejected by Asians. It could also be the Council established in AD325 to establish a figure called Jesus as the son of their God.

Even if there's a God. Common sense assures me that this God can never write such Childish statement down in his book.

It is one of them. Some others say the god will send non believers to hell. All of that keeps the believers in check lest they enter hell. A hell or a god nobody has evidence of except what some man like them says.

HellVictorinho:

Religion is not the only matter that matters to the matter of "Nigeria".

So you are not certain that without religion Nigeria's case is settled. The TRUTH is without Religion Nigeria will BURN within few months!
WISDOM is not just thinking that something should be scrapped without thoroughly weighing things from both sides. FALSE religion is the problem so what intellectuals need to sought out is what are the utterances of each religious group,then meditating on the detriment such teachings could do to the progress of our economy and society in general. That is what China is doing now but they will soon pay dearly for it because scrapping religion COMPLETELY will not solve their problem rather it will degenerates into a much more disastrous end!