The Underground Church

Prayer at a church meeting.

Before the takeover of Mao Tse-Tung in 1949, churches operated freely, often with foreign missionaries in control. The Communists expelled the missionaries and forced Protestants and Anglicans to dissolve their denominations and unite under the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), founded in 1954. “Three-self” originally coined in 1851 by Henry Venn, founder of the Church Missionary Society, described a policy adopted by mission groups to build indigenous churches on the mission field. In 1950, however, the “three-self” slogan became political. The Chinese Church was to dissociate itself from all “imperialist” contact and submit to the direction of the Communist Party. A similar Patriotic Catholic Association, begun in 1957, broke with the Vatican.

When the Communist government organized the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) to control religion, the TSPM was the RAB’s instrument to direct Protestant affairs. All churches came under TSPM control. Surveillance was ordered for all religious leaders. Detailed files were kept. By 1958, the government had a tight grip on every church. Christian leaders who refused to submit to the TSPM were publicly accused and imprisoned.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), all religious groups were banned. Even the TSPM vanished. Thousands of clergy and church members were shipped to labor camps. Hundreds were executed. But underground Protestantism survived and grew into the house-church movement.

“….shut down all house church meetings and arrest house church leaders and traveling evangelists.”

By 1980, the TSPM was back, under the leadership of Nanjing Bishop Ding Guangxun, a liberal theologian and former Anglican.

The TSPM decides what buildings can be used for church services, which pastors can preach and what areas can be traveled to spread religion. Church activities are restricted to Sunday services. No mid-week meetings. No Bible studies. No gatherings in private homes. Religious activities are outlawed outside of church buildings. No one under 18 may be evangelized or baptized. Members are allowed no contact with overseas church groups and forbidden to read foreign Christian literature, listen to foreign Christian tapes or tune in to gospel radio broadcasts. Most of all, the State is the head of the Church.

The TSPM recently asked the Public Security Bureau to shut down all house church meetings and arrest house church leaders and traveling evangelists.

Bishop Ding also started a theological reconstruction campaign among the official seminaries. The purpose is to change the focus of teaching from justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ to justification by love in doing good deeds. Under the guidance of TSPM and the State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA), religious messages are to be made “compatible with socialism.” Pastors are discouraged from preaching about Jesus’ divinity, miracles or resurrection, so that believers and non-believers can be united together to build a prosperous Socialist China.

As a result, more and more believers abandoned TSPM churches and began meeting in their homes. Most Christians are now in house churches. They preach, worship and evangelize, risking the loss of jobs and homes, arrest, imprisonment, torture and death (link to Religious Persecution in China_Testimonies.txt)”the world was not worthy of them” (Hebrews 11:38) “and the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47).

By TSPM estimates, China currently has 16 million Protestants and 3 million Catholics. But Ye Xiaowen, Director of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA), claimed behind closed doors in 2006 that the combined total is closer to 130 million.

Because members of unregistered churches must meet secretly in abandoned buildings, woods, even caves “and because their numbers grow exponentially (some estimate 35,000 daily)” their need for prayer, Bibles and training is desperate and virtually insatiable.

In the midst of a new program of modernization, Communist government and religious officials want the outside world to believe that China has religious freedom. And in fact the Chinese Constitution declares that “The state protects legitimate religious activities.”

The reality, however, is terribly different.

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