Singing in the Midst of Darkness

SINGING IN THE MIDST OF DARKNESS A report on the house-church movement in China from the China Aid Association

BY BOB FU

As 2007 wound to a close, mulcommunity in China. tiple arrests of peaceful houseIn November Australian church worshipers took place in businessman Daniel Ng and various Chinese provinces.Their his wife were put under house crime? Celebrating Christmas, arrest while their multi-millionan act that had become, without dollar Enoch Biological Science public announcement, a punand Technology Co., Ltd., ishable offense. According to located in Guangdong provsources reporting to the China ince, was shut down and their Aid Association (CAA), China’s assets frozen. According to officentral government had issued cials, Ng was found guilty of a secret order in early December promoting Christianity through that no official media in China the distribution of literature The Chinese government regularly destroys should publically acknowledge not sanctioned by the state. As unregistered churches, like this one in Zhejiang Sheng Dan Jie (Christmas). One an expression of his faith, Ng province that was bulldozed in July 2006.

Christian leader in Shanghai was was indeed in the habit of freely Photo courtesy of CAA. beaten so severely for organizdistributing Christian books ing a Christmas celebration by and periodicals to his employthe PSB that his family members sent him to the emergency ees and members of the community. Government officials room of a local hospital for treatment. view him as a threat to national security, in spite of the fact Persecution of the house church in China is steadily that he has personally poured millions of dollars into the increasing in intensity and scope as the 2008 Olympic Games surrounding impoverished community. Pending their trial, in Beijing draw near. Last June the Chinese government man- Ng and his wife have been denied the right to leave China dated a crackdown on “unregistered religious sites” and “illegal to see their children. They have written an open letter to Christian activities.” In a secret document leaked to the press President Hu Jintao in hopes of an appeal. through CAA by a high-ranking government official, the world In the same month, police officials raided owner Shi Weihan’s learned that the Chinese government planned a systematic, Holy Spirit Bookstore, confiscating books and arresting Shi for nationwide crackdown on the underground house church in “publishing illegal religious literature.” Under current Chinese China in preparation for the Olympic Games. Evidence of this law, only Christian literature that has been approved by the policy is found in the number and geographical sweep of recent state can be printed and sold. A conviction would have meant arrests, the closures of “illegal Christian businesses,” and the up to 10 years in prison, but Shi was released in early January detention of well-known and respected members of the Christian 2008, thanks in large part to pressure from both the international PRISM 2008

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CHINA and domestic Christian community. Such pressure had also led to the Communist Party’s conference on the collective study of religion and religious policy, held on December 18, 2007.

During the conference, President Hu Jintao reiterated his government’s stance on the “implementation of free religious policy.” While the government’s decision in Shi’s case should be lauded, hundreds of similarly charged prisoners still remain

in custody, as in the case of Xinjiang church leader Zhou Heng, who was arrested in August 2007 for receiving “illegally printed” Bibles and who continues to serve an unjust sentence behind bars. Zhou’s case and many others reveal the Chinese government’s inconsistency, especially in those cases that receive little or no international attention.

The September 2007 kidnapping and torture of Christian lawyer Li Heping for his advocacy on behalf of Christian and human rights organizations is another blatant example of the Chinese government’s commitment to crack down on the underground church, as is the massive arrest of nearly 300 house-church leaders in Shandong province in December. A youth summer Bible camp in Yutai province was also closed in August and its leaders arrested on charges of conducting illegal religious activities. Church leaders in Gansu province were detained in May for distributing Christian flyers to Muslims; one pastor was sentenced to 18 months’ detention in October.

In light of these stories and thousands more like them, it is evident that the Chinese government’s touting of religious freedom and tolerance is a mere smokescreen erected for the benefit of the international community, veiling its true intentions to repress and eradicate underground believers in China.

The government’s own document of June 2007 bears witness to the fact that a nationwide crackdown on house churches is in full force.

The Olympic Games will come and go this year, and persecution of the Chinese house church is sure to persist, but hope prevails among Chinese Christians. When asked whether he wanted CAA to publicize news of his Christmas beating and arrest, a pastor in Shanghai replied, “No, because we know there are still thousands of unreached that God has entrusted us to reach out to in this city. My bloodshed on Christmas Eve is not worth mentioning compared to the cause of the gospel.”

It seems we have entered yet another year of revival in China. ■

Freed to Fight for Others Born and raised in mainland China, Xiqiu (Bob) Fu attended People’s University in Beijing and was a leader of the student democracy movement that ended in the Tian’anmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989.

That same year, Fu was led to Christ by an English professor and, by 1992, he was pastoring a house church of 30 students. Several years later, he and his wife, Cai Bochun (Heidi), started a Bible school in a shuttered factory. In May 1996, secret police discovered the school, and both husband and wife were imprisoned.

Not long after their release two months later, Bob was fired from his job as an English teacher at the Beijing School for the Communist Party, and Heidi lost her acceptance to study for her master’s degree. Also, Heidi was pregnant. Chinese law requires women to obtain approval of pregnancy from their work units. Without it, Heidi could receive no medical help and would be forced to abort her baby, even at full term.

God opened a way for them to travel to Hong Kong as tourists at the end of 1996. Once there, they abandoned their group and applied repeatedly for visas to America, knowing that if they were unable to get out in time, they would again be arrested.With the help and prayers of many brothers and sisters throughout the world and the direct intervention of then-President Bill Clinton, the Fu family arrived as refugees in the United States, just three days before the British turned over Hong Kong to Beijing.

Since founding the China Aid Association in 2002, Fu has committed himself to drawing attention to China’s suppression of religious freedom. Learn how you can help at ChinaAid.org.

Bob Fu founded the China Aid Association in 2002 to draw international attention to China’s gross human rights violations against house-church Christians. He has testified before many organizations, including the House International Relations Committee, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the CongressionalExecutive Commission on China, and the UN Commission on Human Rights. Fu is a PhD candidate of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, a visiting professor at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, and editor-in-chief of the Chinese Law and Religion Monitor Journal. Learn more about his story in the sidebar “Freed to Fight for Others.”

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