The Rise of Christianity in China

The state’s response to this resurgence of faith is an escalating campaign of repression

As he stood in the hot sun and watched a dozen earth movers smash through the walls of the Sanjiang church, Mr Dai felt a great sadness and also fear – for himself and for the future of his fellow Christians. “There were so many police blocking the road and surrounding mountains. They had cut off power to the whole area and blacked out mobile phone coverage and they were trying to stop anybody coming near,” he says.

By pretending to be part of the demolition crew, Dai managed to get through the outer cordon of riot police and huddle with a small group of believers on a hillside watching the massive building collapse under the onslaught. “Words can’t express how traumatic it was,” says the devout Christian, who had travelled from another parish to join members of the congregation trying to protect the church. “I just kept thinking of Jesus’s words – ‘They know not what they do’ – they don’t realise it but they will surely be judged by God.”

The demolition of this towering Protestant cathedral on the outskirts of the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou on April 28 2014 marked the spectacular launch of a government campaign to curtail the fastest-growing religion in nominally atheist China. There are now about 100 million Christians in the world’s most populous nation, eclipsing the 86.7 million-strong membership of the ruling Communist party. According to western intellectual tradition, modernity is supposed to bring secularisation but in modern Communist China it has been accompanied by an extraordinary rise of religions formerly banned as “opiates of the masses”.

Perhaps most surprising, given its status as a “foreign” religion and its close association with an earlier era of gunboats....

Maryknoll-in China.—Four years ago the writer was associated with two brilliant and enthusiastic young clerics in the academic organization of the Venard Apostolic School at Clark’s Green, Pennsylvania. This was the first offshoot of the firmly-rooted foundation on the banks of the Hudson, whose marvellous growth has no human explanation, whose apostolicity is a source of wonderment to those in other lands who know little of the spirit of faith which is so characteristic of American Catholicism. Today these former associates are busy harvesting in far distant lands and garnering souls for Christ in the mission field set apart by the Holy See for evangelization by the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America. One of these associates, Father James Edward Walsh, of Cumberland, Md., is pro-Vicar of the Maryknoll Chinese Mission; the other, Father Frederick C. Dietz, is head of the “parish” of Shuitung, in the Province of Kwongtung. In addition, sixteen other missionaries, most of whom were former students of the writer, are at work in Yeungkong, Kochow, Tungchan, Pingham, Tongon, Sanhui, and Watnam, laboring earnestly and fruitfully as apostles. Maryknoll at Ten—a breezy little volume by Father Kress—tells the story of the growth of the pepiniire during its first decennial; that singularly appealing monthly, The Field Afar, records its progress; and the “Knollers” in China regularly keep us informed of their mission activities. Their letters are most valuable contributions to the history and literature of Catholic Foreign Missions. Six “Mission Sisters of the Third Order of St. Dominic”—a Maryknoll foundation—recently arrived in China; for the present they are domiciled in Hongkong, where they will remain a year studying Cantonese and becoming conversant with the habits and customs of the Orient. Next year they will proceed to the mission centers to open schools, nurseries, and hospitals in sections to be designated by the Maryknoll Superior, who is now in China “spying out the land.”

The following letter lately received from Father Dietz, to which he has appended his Chinese “visiting card,” will interest even those who have never given a thought to the noble cause of Foreign Missions:

. . . I have found the Cantonese language very interesting. It has no alphabet but represents each word by a special character, of which there are about 40,000. A knowledge of four or five thousand suffices for all ordinary purposes. As represented by our letters each word is a monosyllable. Several sounds like “sz” and initial “ng” are strange to us and dfficult to acquire at first. The only real double consonants are “ts” and “kw,” which accounts for the fact that the Chinese cannot pronounce many of our English words without interpolating vowels. For stick they say see-tick and Po-luk-lin for Brooklyn. Each word has its proper tone, consisting sometimes of a gliding rise or fall. There are nine different tones with as many variations. A change of tone produces a complete change of meaning. According to the tone used, “foo” will mean either husband, bitter, trousers, to verify, a married woman, or father. You can easily imagine what ludicrous mistakes we sometimes make, but after patient drilling we finally “get the habit.” Chinese has one grand advantage to offset all these difficutics; it has no grammatical inflections whatever. There is no “rosa, rosae” to be laboriously learned as in our college days, and that is certainly much to be grateful for. The thought idiom is simple but from our point of view very funny at times. “What is the fare to Hongkong?” would go like this: “Down Hongkong must give how much water-legs, eh?”

What is China like? I think I can give you a fair idea by mentioning some of the things that give it its local color and then adding what it has not, leaving your imagination to do the rest. The distinctive features of China are: little or no police, constant interprovincial wars, pirates and bandits; pagodas and wayside shrines; ancestral tablets of stone with their burning joss sticks in every home or shop; firecrackers to frighten away devils or lend solemnity to an occasion; musical instruments of great variety but indescribable sounds; interesting junk and sampan dwellers; so-called rice-wine, strong enough to knock out Dempsey in two rounds; and, above all, bamboo. Everything is carried on bamboo poles; bamboo is used for building bridges, docks, scaffolding, and shacks, for poling junks, for an infinite variety of baskets and crates, for conducting water, for sustaining mosquito curtains, for trellises, for mats, for clothes-lines and almost everything. Barring a few modernized cities like Canton, China has no sewerage or piped watersupplies (and hence no shower-baths except of the sprinkling-can variety); no autos, street-cars, or traffic cops; no horses, wagons, or baby-carriages; no milk, butter, ice or ice-cream; no pies, pianos or telephones; and no daily dreadfuls with full-page comics. Many of the larger cities have electric light, telegraph, imported canned goods, and, last, but not least, beer, wine, and liquors in great variety. Victrolas, movies, and Bolshevism are on the way. Of course, I speak only for South China; the north differs in many respects.

It is said that the more one sees of the Chinese the better he likes them. I have found this true in my experience. They have their gross faults, but what more can be expected of pagans? On the other hand they manifest as a class certain natural virtues. They are hard-working and thrifty, fond of water (but not for drinking), good-natured, peace-abiding, extremely patient, and have a fine sense of humor. The children are very attractive in appearance and manner. Chinese Christians cannot do enough for their “Spiritual Father” on his visits and it’s always the same story of “Go away slowly, come back quickly.” They seem happy to frequent the Sacraments whenever occasion offers. To hear a congregation of several hundred “singing” out their prayers is certainly touching and edifying. . . .

The Catholic Historical Review, Volume 1; Volume 7, page 568...

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