Persecution of Christians in China: this line from the story below is telling: “’We were looking forward to listening to sermons after the church was reopened following a long break,’ a congregation member remembered. ‘But all of them praise Xi Jinping. Isn’t this Communist Party faith? If this goes on, what’s the point of our religion?’”
This is part of the Chinese government’s all-out campaign to drain Christianity of its power and alter its teachings so that it becomes just another vehicle for Communist Party propaganda. The government is attempting to eradicate any form of Christianity that does not become a party mouthpiece.
There is a small number of Orthodox Christians in China. In fact, Holy Orthodoxy in China predates this war on Christianity. It has a three-hundred year history in China, with the first Orthodox Christians coming into the country in 1685. In the 1980s, the Chinese Orthodox Church began to experience a revival. Pray that it not be snuffed out. The Order of Saint Andrew, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, requests once again that the Chinese government end these repressive measures, grant official recognition to the Chinese Orthodox Church, and give full religious freedom to all the Christians of that nation.
See ChristianPersecution.com’s previous coverage of China and its war on Christianity here.
“Clergy Ordered to Promote the Communist Party in Sermons,” by Ye Ling, Bitter Winter, October 22, 2020:
Six months after churches across China were closed to prevent the coronavirus spread, some were allowed to reopen only if they pledged to sing praises to the government. More and more believers found the content of sermons becoming increasingly politicized.
Following President Xi Jinping’s call to curb food waste in China, the Two Chinese Christian Councils of Quanzhou, a prefecture-level city in the southeastern province of Fujian, demanded all Three-Self churches in September to integrate the president’s ideas on the matter into their sermons, so that “the policy reaches everyone in society.”
Clergy members had to become creative to implement the order. Some even integrated the president’s words into the Biblical story about Jesus feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish.
A Three-Self church pastor from Shengzhou, a county-level city in the eastern province of Zhejiang, was told in July to promote to his congregation the so-called “street stall economy”—Premier Li Keqiang’s call to the jobless to help revive the economy by opening vending stalls. In the spring, officials also instructed the church’s clergy to preach to the congregation that Americans brought the coronavirus to China.
A pastor from another Three-Self church in Shengzhou told Bitter Winter that government officials increasingly supervise sermons’ content, making clergy members anxious and uncomfortable. They know that the religious venues refusing to praise the government would be suppressed even more.
“This is how the government sinicizes Christianity,” another Shengzhou pastor commented….
“We were looking forward to listening to sermons after the church was reopened following a long break,” a congregation member remembered. “But all of them praise Xi Jinping. Isn’t this Communist Party faith? If this goes on, what’s the point of our religion?”
“The CCP hopes to spread its propaganda with our help and test if we obey the government,” a Three-Self clergy member from Fujian Province commented. “They want to control Christianity because it grows most rapidly in China.”
