News

China: Churches must replace Ten Commandments with Xi quotes

September 28, 2019

Here is more about China’s war on Christianity. The Chinese government is in the midst of an all-out campaign to turn Christianity into a weak religion that is entirely subservient to the Chinese Communist Party, and that doesn’t teach anything that would lead Chinese people away from Communist Party dogma. This is a matter of grave concern for Orthodox Christians in China and all other Christians as well. The Chinese Orthodox Church is in a vulnerable position, as it is not one of the Christian groups recognized by the Chinese government.

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.

“China orders churches to replace Ten Commandments with presidential quotes,” Barnabas Fund, September 20, 2019:

Churches in China’s central province of Henan have been forced by the authorities to take down the Ten Commandments and replace them with quotes of President Xi Jinping, according to a Bitter Winter report.

Every state-registered “three-self” church and meeting venue in one county of Luoyang, a prefecture-level city, received an order to remove the ten Biblical commandments from display as part of the authorities’ on-going campaign to “sinicise” (make Chinese) Christianity.

Some churches that refused to obey have been shut down and other congregations have been told their members will be “blacklisted”, meaning the travel, education and employment options of Christians will be restricted by the authorities.

A pastor from a state-registered church told Bitter Winter that the replacement of the Ten Commandments with excerpts from Xi Jinping’s speeches was the latest in a series of moves against churches, which have included the enforced replacement of crosses with the national flag, and the installation of surveillance cameras to monitor congregations and religious activities….