Persecution of Christians in China: the Chinese government is in the midst of an all-out campaign to turn Christianity into a weak religion that is entirely subservient to the Chinese Communist Party, and that doesn’t teach anything that would lead Chinese people away from Communist Party dogma. This is a matter of grave concern for Orthodox Christians in China and all other Christians as well. This story concerns a house church, but Orthodox Christians are in no less precarious position.
Holy Orthodoxy in China predates this war on Christianity. It has a three-hundred year history in China, with the first Orthodox Christians coming into the country in 1685. In the 1980s, the Chinese Orthodox Church began to experience a revival. Pray that it not be snuffed out. The Order of Saint Andrew, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, requests once again that the Chinese government end these repressive measures, grant official recognition to the Chinese Orthodox Church, and give full religious freedom to all the Christians of that nation.
For previous ChristianPersecution.com coverage of the persecution of Christians in China, see here.
“CCP Suppresses Any Form of Christian Evangelization,” by Ye Jiajia, Bitter Winter, October 27, 2019:
For Christians, one of the most important activities in practicing their faith is sharing the gospel. But not in China, where it is prohibited.
A member of a house church in Zhengzhou, the capital of the central province of Henan, never expected that she would be surveilled and arrested because of a gospel leaflet.
On July 8, a stranger called her, asking to share the gospel with him because “there were problems in his family.” The woman has earlier put her phone number on a gospel leaflet distributed in the church, so she didn’t find the call very suspicious and decided to meet the stranger along with one of her fellow churchgoers.
When the two believers came to the agreed place, more than a dozen officers were waiting for them, and they were taken to the local police station for questioning about their church and the printing of gospel leaflets.
The woman was released the same day, but she became the target of surveillance: officials from her residential community office visited and telephoned her repeatedly, inquiring about her belief in God and warning her not to attend any religious gatherings. One evening, at 11 p.m., some officials came to her home to investigate the religious belief of her family members.
The house church believer has learned the hard way that in the current atmosphere of religious suppression, it is perilous to give out one’s phone number in places of worship. “The government now thoroughly inspects churches. Even if we print some leaflets and take a risk distributing them, we dare not leave any contact numbers,” a preacher from a house church in Zhengzhou explained to Bitter Winter.
