China: Historical and religious context

In the last fifty years, China's population of 1.3 billion people has seen tremendous political, economic and social change. China's church has also experienced enormous change. Sixty years ago, there were perhaps 750,000 evangelicals in China. Thirty years ago, there were an estimated 3 million. And today, conservative estimates of evangelicals in China range from between 60 and 80 million. This growth, representing one of the largest revivals in the history of Christianity, came in the face of persecution.

Today China is number 13 on Open Doors World Watch List of the top fifty countries where Christians are most persecuted and where religious freedoms are most limited.

Although the Chinese government authorises certain churches (the Protestant Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA)),many followers of Jesus still suffer persecution at the hands of local government officials.

A church born out of persecution

China has a history of religious intolerance dating back to 1949, when Mao Zedong announced the formation of the People's Republic of China. All religious activity was forbidden. Missionaries were forced out and many pastors and leaders were incarcerated in prisons or labour camps. The small Chinese Church went underground. They gathered together to pray and worship, secretly believing God would keep them, whether in life or in death.

This was the birth of the house church movement that continues today. These groups of Christians meet in houses - not established church buildings - and as they are not registered, they are not recognised as legal churches. Many of them are still in effect underground churches.

Pastor Wu echoes the sentiments of many Christians from this time. He says, "Persecution in China is in one way a grace from God. We saw in the early churches that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. That's why now in China there's a great revival. There are pastors who have suffered persecution for their faith, and they are happy to be able to do so for Christ."

Open Doors responds

As the outside world began to hear about the terrible persecution of Christians in the 1970s and the destruction of Bibles and Christian materials, Open Doors was one of the first organisations to respond.

Brother Andrew, Open Doors' founder, began taking Bibles into the country in 1965 just prior to the Cultural Revolution. As the country opened up, Open Doors began to bring in hundreds and then thousands of Bibles - until in response to urgent pleas, Open Doors delivered one million Chinese Bibles by barge, late one evening in 1981, to an isolated beach in China. The Bibles were distributed to every province through a secret network of house church leaders.  

Pastor Huang told us, "One million Bibles changed the church in China. We grew strong on these precious words. And still today, the stories are told of how God touched the hearts of our spiritually hungry church. We understand the value of God's Words!"

The Chinese Church today

Since those days, times have changed and so have the needs of the Chinese Church. Annually Open Doors delivers an average of 4 million Bibles and Christian books to believers, to help strengthen this fast-growing church.

Persecution happens mainly in remote places; in many places there is freedom. Even in rural areas, persecution varies depending on the local police and how the local authorities enforce those policies. In some provinces house church leaders continue to be arrested, often held on suspicion of being members of a cult; but in other provinces they are left alone.

However, even in the presence of uncertainty and sporadic persecution, the church continues to grow, especially in urban areas where the population is rapidly migrating from rural areas for economic reasons. This is a change from the past, when the revival was mainly in rural areas.

As Pastor Li says, "In the cities the government is aware of us. They see us. But we see God's protection. As we grow, we have to move locations because the government tries to control us by making us move from an apartment to another meeting place. The officials claim that people coming and going causes trouble for the neighbours. But we don't know if this is so."

Pastor Wu describes an unwelcome side-effect of recent economic growth in China. "Young people have become more materialistic. That's a great challenge for us. More and more people are working because they want to have more and more money. Sad to say, some of them backslide and stop going to church."

Pastor Chen explains the consequences for the church: "Today our biggest challenge is to introduce the idea of faith in God to young people between the ages of 15 and 30. They have grown up in a spiritual void where materialism is rampant. They're facing emptiness and a loss of faith in Marxist ideology. They are seeking new meaning. The choice is between materialism and religion."