20 May 2018

Confusion in Reporting on Christianity in China


This CNN story includes a short video which juxtaposes the official state sanctioned Catholic Church (CPCA) with the underground movement. The same state of affairs exists within Protestantism with its Three-Self Patriotic Churches (TSP) and its underground.


There are crackdowns taking place with restrictions being placed on literature and architecture. In recent years there's been Western media (and particularly Christian media) coverage of Beijing tearing down crosses and in some cases demolishing buildings, episodes which stir outrage in the West and spur on Evangelicals to call upon the US State Department to get involved... an erroneous policy which only further identifies Christianity with Western Imperialism.
The Beijing government is bestial and evil. While it is no longer Communist in any way shape or form it represents an authoritarian form of capitalism and increasingly a form of Neo-Confucianism. Beijing especially under Xi Jinping seeks to reassert its historical role in dominating the East Asian/Pacific Rim and the portals to Central Asia. It does not seek military conquest but rather a commercial and cultural hegemony and the US Empire and its satrapies and allies are clearly in its way. In addition to nations like South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand, the US also has a historical relationship with the Vatican, an entity with several million followers located inside the Chinese state. Though official ties were only established under Ronald Reagan the US Deep State has worked hand-in-glove with the Vatican since the end of World War II. And of course many Evangelicals voluntarily collaborate with the US government. These combined factors in addition to China's history with orthodox and unorthodox forms of Christianity, give Beijing reason to be cautious if not suspicious.
For the leadership in Beijing, history is their guide and one need only look to the humiliations of the 19th century and the role played by missionaries to advance the causes and agenda of the Western empires to understand their caution. Missionaries were perceived as agents of transformation, working in concert with the imperial powers. An unorthodox form of Christianity emerged in the 19th century that was syncretised with Chinese folk belief producing the Taiping Rebellion which ranks among the bloodiest wars in history. Eventually the Western powers became involved and helped to defeat the uprising, saving the Qing Dynasty but placing it further under the control of the West.
Both the Boxers of the early 20th century and the later Communists under Mao were particularly determined to eradicate Christianity, which to them was the West's beachhead, a dangerous force that threatened not only Chinese religious life but its very culture.*
This is why China in the liberalising period of the post-Mao era allowed formal religion to return but established 'patriotic' churches which are committed to the Chinese State and subject to its laws and supervision. In the United States most churches voluntarily register in order to receive tax breaks. Abandoning the teaching of the New Testament they allow the state to influence their polity and fiscal policy in order to receive benefits (that sometimes amount to subsidies) from the IRS. Many do this under the auspices of the Christo-American heresy, the false belief that the United States is or was somehow constituted as a Christian nation. This belief which is without warrant in terms of both history and the Scripture is held by the majority of Evangelicals and Confessionalists and while they would balk at registering their churches in nations like China or Russia, they will happily comply in the United States. In China, registration is mandatory and utilised specifically for monitoring the activities and membership of these groups.
In China the underground churches are already outside the law and all activities are illegal. When the media covers a 'crackdown' it is almost always referring to the official state sanctioned 'churches', members of the Protestant TSP and Catholic CPCA organisations. The underground is always by definition... outlawed and subject to the criminal code.
These official groups have already admitted that they are under Beijing's regulatory authority and while they may take issues with practical issues and the culture of the bureaucracy, any ideological protests are unwarranted. How can they protest when they have already admitted that Beijing holds all the cards? How can they protest government dictates when they have already granted that their right to exist rests in the power of the state?
If they accept that the state has the power to legitimise their gathering, worship and content, then how can they complain of the state restricts the selling of books or changes policy with regard to building codes?
Only now is this reality beginning to dawn on church leaders in places like the United States. Some are trying to challenge state restrictions on speech for non-profit corporations (which is technically and very tellingly what these churches are) and yet if they're going to function as political organisations then they need to register as such... and that means a different game when it comes to taxes and financial reporting.
The Churches in the West have erred and this distorted thinking continues to mar coverage of the church in China. Some leaders have realised that by registering as 501c3 Non-Profit Organizations they have allowed the state to have a window into their finances and the potential to sanction their speech and programmes. Many churches, schools and ministries have built financial empires that would face devastation if suddenly subjected to normal corporate and property taxation. Their fiscal models are built upon the special exemptions they receive from the US tax code.
Underground churches do not exist as legal entities. This is the model of New Testament Christianity and was the model for the Church during the pre-Constantinian era. Various underground bodies functioned during the Middle Ages, all outside the sanction of the Catholic states which dominated the period. Sadly the Reformation represented an appropriation of these underground bodies and due to a massive capitulation, the heirs and descendants of the Medieval Underground largely sold out, abandoned their principles and embraced the new Protestant Constantinianism or Sacralism.**
We could learn something from the brave underground Christians in places like China. In this regard they are actually closer to the spirit of the New Testament.
Such models are disreputable to the bourgeois churches of the West. For that matter we could say they react in the same way when it comes to Biblical Christianity but that is a larger topic beyond what is being considered here.
I am not suggesting that the professing Christians of the official churches aren't to be pitied when they face a crackdown but at the same time were they to follow the lamb and take up the cross they would live under a permanent regime of persecution.
This same is true in the West though few have learned it and few will hear the message. I continue to hope that more Christians will think through these issues and break with the official denominational bodies and return to New Testament Christianity. But clearly we're not there yet.
And certainly we must pray for the underground churches in China.
*There are ironies of course. Mao in many ways was far more destructive than any Christian missionaries. In his bid to retain power he launched the Cultural Revolution which not only sought to wipe out any remnants of Western religion and intellectual influence but also pursued the destruction of much that was traditionally Chinese. This was part of his pseudo-narrative regarding the abysmal failures of his Great Leap Forward. And as far as destroying 'religion' it could just as easily be argued that Mao was establishing a new religion in his cult of personality. Far removed from anything Marxist, the new religion of Maoism used some Marxist terms and concepts but in reality was a form of emperor worship and the re-establishment of serfdom. Mao like Stalin were little more than 'Red' emperors.
** An event I call the Second Constantinian Shift. To be fair not all proto-Protestant groups were determined anti-Constantinians. The various and quite widespread Waldensian factions certainly were but groups like the Lollards and Hussites were divided on these points. In some cases there were different factions and in other instances a case could be made for historical development. In some cases Sacralist thought appears to have been abandoned allowing a more principled separatism to take hold.

1 comment:

  1. The double danger is, from one side, the role of the state and, from the other, the basic operations of cults. Of course, a cult represents mutations of all that is good, but there is a reasonable fear that if left to themselves, without oversight from bureaucratic inspection and police power, churches would run wild. Of course, this problem is mainly due to a number of non-biblical, but rampant factors, namely clericalism, ecclesiology, and bourgeois expectations. However, I sometimes wonder if there has been an accidental strategy-of-tension, where the moral failings of CREC or megachurch implosion drive people to think the state is needed counterweight. But its funny that all the malignant ecclesiastical organizations depend upon some sort of dominionist mandate (whether its political or more strictly cultural).

    I guess models of ecclesiology, whether explicit or functional, really dictate these problems. If you think of a church organization as a non-profit, an NGO, a social club, a brand, or as the civil religion/national cultus, then you're rigging yourself for failure.

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