You’re about to start your weekly prayer meeting.
It’s a quiet, relaxed time to gather and pray after enjoying a meal together. Tonight the number of people at the meeting has almost doubled. Unfortunately, this isn’t due to a sudden success in your outreach ministry; instead, some people are being followed by members of the secret police.
Sighing, you get down extra plates and work out how you can stretch the meal to serve them too.
This was a meeting described to us by a member of Tree of Life Church in China – and this isn’t the only time it’s happened. The church was founded in the 2000s and has a thriving outreach to the local community, something which has made the church a target for increasing official harassment. This is just one example of the government’s growing infringement of human rights, especially freedom of religion.
‘Throughout church history, when there has been more suffering, there has also been more grace. Christ is with us in persecution’
-Tree of Life Church’s pastor
Churches under pressure across China Zion Church, one of the largest unregistered house churches in Beijing, was shut down in September following months of pressure from the government. In January 2017 Pastor Yang Hua of Living Stone Church, Guizhou, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, having been detained since December 2015. He was released from prison on 19 June 2018 after completing a two and a half year sentence. According to friends and supporters, he is suffering from several health problems and is in urgent need of medical care.
Another leader at Living Stone Church, Pastor Su Tianfu, was sentenced to one year in prison suspended for two years, ‘We can cry with those who cry. We believe in peaceful protesting and pursuing justice peacefully and joyfully’ A member of Tree of Life Church with a further six months of ‘residential surveillance’, following his trial on 26 April 2018. Both pastors were also fined over USD 1 million for collecting ‘illegal’ donations from members of the congregation. Pastor Su Tianfu and Pastor Yang Hua have filed several appeals on the basis that the money was voluntarily donated by church members and was only used to fund church activities. All their appeals have failed.
To be a Christian is to rebel against social problems with the power of the resurrection’
-Tree of Life Church’s pastor
New regulations introduced by the government this year have heightened this pressure on both unregistered churches and those that have registered with the government-sanctioned ‘Three Self Patriotic Movement’. Police have forced congregations to sing patriotic songs in their services instead of hymns, and youth activities have been effectively banned. There are also draft regulations on what you can share online. In this climate, the courage of churches like Tree of Life and their pastors is needed more than ever.
Uyghur Muslims
Christians aren’t the only ones suffering: in Xinjiang Province, Uyghur Muslims are experiencing a brutal crackdown under the guise of national security. Baby names the government sees as having extremist connotations (such as Saddam and Medina) have been banned, as has the wearing of beards and veils in public.
Over one million people, mostly Uyghur Muslims, have been sent to ‘re-education’ camps for reasons such as having the messaging app WhatsApp on their phone, having a family member abroad, or praying in public; and their families are under constant surveillance. Disappearances can happen at any time, for any reason.
Once in the re-education camp they have no access to lawyers, and often their families aren’t told where they’re being held or when they’re being released. The conditions are terrible, unsanitary and overcrowded, and prisoners report being beaten if they disobey the guards.
In response, many Uyghur Muslims have stopped displaying any outward sign of their faith at all and have completely broken off contact with their overseas relatives, heightening their already intense feelings of fear and isolation.
Image credit: Chinese Catholics worship at the government-sanctioned North Cathedral of the National Patriotic Church in Beijing July 1, 2007. (Reuters)