r>
1 Cruelly BoundOr Free Enough?: Competing Images of the Church in China, 1992-2000 1












Cruelly BoundOr Free Enough?: Competing Images of the Church in China,
1992-2000










Sarah Johnson
April 23, 2003
Dr. Grant Wacker
Religion 293
2

The Problem of Competing Images
It may have been the best of timesor maybe it was the worst of times. Writing
for the Christian Century in September 1997, Robert Evans claimed that religious and
political leaders in the United States exaggerated the extent of persecution in China. He
called for a more realistic assessment of religious persecution and praised the state-
approved Chinese churches for working toward greater religious liberty.
1
The same
month, a Christianity Today headline declared House Church Leaders Flee with
American Help. Chinese house church leaders Bob and Heidi Fu had escaped to the
United States after imprisonment for training pastors and evangelists. According to the
article the Fu case indicates that, despite Chinese government denials, house-church
Christians face centrally coordinated persecution.
2
In the same month, two major
Protestant publications depicted vastly different realities for Christians in China.

Why these different pictures of Christian life in China? One might assume that
the 1997 articles were anomalies, but they were not. Between 1992 and 2000, Protestant
publications consistently divided into two camps regarding Christian persecution in
China. The accounts from mainline publications, such as the United Methodist New
World Outlook or The Christian Century, portrayed a government-tolerated, flourishing
church. Evangelical publications, Christianity Today and Focus on the Familys Citizen
for example, painted a darker picture of on-going and often brutal persecution. Why the
different images of the church in China? The description of persecution in China
reflected the descriptors assessments of the freedom necessary for vital, Christian life.
The imaging of three entities, the official Protestant church, the unofficial house
churches, and the underground Catholic church, demonstrate the role that various 3

understandings of authentic Christian life played in the description of Chinese
Christianity.

Some might argue that political, not religious, motivations accounted for the
differing images of the Chinese church. Congress had to renew Chinas Most Favored
Nation (MFN) trading status every year until it passed Permanent Normal Trade
Relations (PNTR) in 2000. The Clinton administration supported MFN and PNTR.
Conservative Christian leaders such as Charles Colson and Gary Bauer opposed both.
One might suppose that conservatives used their media outlets in order to drum up
opposition to Clinton and China. Conversely, mainline publications might have painted a
rosy picture of the Chinese church in order to justify a policy of a Democratic
administration. Differing images of China were one more chapter in an ongoing political
battle between conservatives and liberals.
Although blessedly simple, this explanation cannot account for the evidence. Not
all evangelicals connected religious freedom and free trade. Gary Bauer and Charles
Colson wanted favorable trade relations predicated on the abolition of religious
persecution, but Pat Robertson and Luis Palau did not.
3
While Focus on the Familys
Citizen downplayed these divisions with evangelicalism, Christianity Today noted them.
Evangelical publications were not, therefore, mouthpieces for a particular MFN stance.
Mainline publications did not enthusiastically lead any MFN parades in their pages
either. The denominational magazines avoided the issue. When it discussed trade
relations with China, the Christian Century rather blandly indicated that economic
sanctions were blunt tools for a delicate issue.
4
Publications on both sides betrayed too
much caution in dealing with the MFN debate to be accused of garnering support for 4

political agendas. Moreover, the fact that some evangelicals and mainliners could agree
on MFN/PNTR and still describe the church in China differently indicates that the images
stemmed from something other than political loyalties.

One might also object that my proposal strips the Chinese of agency. Talk of
imaging makes Chinese lives putty that Americans shape for their own purposes.
Scholars raised similar objections to Edward Saids concept of Orientalism. Said posited
that Westerners constructed the idea of the Orient in order to control it. Critics claimed
that Said deprived Orientals of any role in that construction because he failed to realize
that Orientals used and manipulated Western ideas.
5
Following Saids critics, I assume
that Chinese believers played a role in the imaging process.
6
Religious publications
relied on the voices of Chinese Christians to authenticate their descriptions. When
Americans solicited information the Chinese could give their version of events for
purposes of their own. One cannot argue that the Chinese informants and American
periodicals possessed the same amount of powerthe latter ultimately determined the
imagebut both groups participated in, and perhaps benefited from, the process.
Defining the Churches

Understanding discussions of the church in China requires familiarity with an
acronym-heavy group of terms. Unfortunately, defining terms is itself an imaging
process. It matters whether we define the official church as state-approved, or state-
controlled. While recognizing the prejudicial nature of defining, a sketch of basic terms
will aid navigation.

The first set of terms relates to the official Protestant church. Official
congregations register with the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB), a government entity not 5

controlled by Christians. Members of the official church, as well as the clergy, belong to
the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM). The TSPM is an organization led (at least
organizationally) by a Protestant Christian. It began in 1954, dissolved during the
Cultural Revolution and reconstituted in 1979. The TSPMs stated goal was to make
(and now to keep) Protestant congregations self-propagating, self-supporting and self-
governing (hence the three selfs). Shortly after the TSPMs rebirth, the China
Christian Council (CCC) formed. This organization operates in a manner similar to the
National Council of Churches in America except that it works with multiple
congregations rather than multiple denominations (the official church in China is post-
denominational). For purposes of this paper, the specific differences and tasks of the
TSPM and the CCC are unimportant. Together they oversee the official church and it is
not uncommon that the same people will hold top positions in both. In 1985, the CCC
birthed a third related organization, the Amity Foundation. The Amity Foundation is a
social service organization that, among other activities, prints Bibles and administers
health care in rural areas.

A second constellation of terms concerns the unofficial Protestant churches.
Unofficial churches refuse to register with the RAB and their members do not belong to
the TSPM. These churches have varying names: house churches, underground churches,
unofficial churches. All are to some extent misnomers. Many unofficial churches are
at least according to somefar too large to meet in any house. Some would also argue
that many unofficial churches have no need to go "underground" because their local
governments practice toleration. Unofficial might suggest casual or unstructured, which
might describe a portion, but certainly not all, of the churches. The publications studied 6

use all three names for the unofficial churches and, as they are all equally problematic, I
will follow the lead of my sources except in one case. To avoid confusion, I will reserve
the term underground for the unregistered Catholic Church.

The final set of terms involves this underground Catholic Church and its
corresponding official church. Catholics willing to register with the government formed
the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) in 1954. CPA does not recognize the authority
of the pope and consecrates its own bishops. The underground Catholic Church
maintains loyalty to the Vatican and considers its priest as the only Chinese priests
consecrated in apostolic succession.
7

Areas of Agreement: Not Quite Free to Be Like You and Me

Although mainline and evangelical publications imaged the church, and
persecution of the church, differently during the 1990s, everyone agreed that Chinese
Christians did not enjoy full religious freedom. No publication suggested that the church
in China had the same ability to operate independently of the government as the church in
America. The RAB restricted meeting places and contact with non-Chinese evangelists.
The difference between mainline publications and evangelical publications was not,
therefore, the difference between those who did not believe any religious repression
existed in China and those who believed repression occurred. Discussions of the church
in China occurred in a context in which everyone agreed that the government had denied,
and still could deny, religious freedom. The question, then, was to what degree
repression existed, whom it affected, and whether it prohibited an authentic expression of
Christianity.
Images of the Official Church: Lukewarm Stooges or Christian Servants?