Free Republic

Chinese officials issued warnings to hundreds of churches that no child is allowed to enter a church or attend religious services, even with their parents. Four regional governments began notifying churches of this new ban against children participating in religious activities as early as mid-August, according to Daily Mail. Hundreds of churches in China’s Zhejiang province received notices that not only banned children from entering churches, but also threatened that any believer caught taking a child to church “will be dealt with severely,” according to a report from Vision Times.

“The government won’t approve it, but the question is if they’ll shut it down.”China, the world’s rising superpower, is experiencing an explosion of faith. The decades of anti-religious campaigns that followed the 1949 communist takeover are giving way to a spiritual transformation—and among the fastest-growing drivers of that transformation are unregistered churches. Once called “house” or “underground” churches because they were small clandestine affairs, these groups have become surprisingly well-organized, meeting very openly and often counting hundreds of congregants. They’ve helped the number of Protestants soar from about 1 million when the communists took power to at least 60 million...

In the lead-up to a major summit on religion, the Chinese Communist party is preparing intensified restrictions on Christian churches, according to the Party’s official newspaper on religious issues, Zhongguo Mingzu Bao. This latest announcement follows on a series of government measures meant to intimidate Chinese Christians, such as arbitrary detention of Christian clergy and the closing of churches. According to a Reuters report, under President Xi Jinping, China is conducting the worst domestic crackdown on human rights in two decades and much of this is against Christians. Nearly 1,000 rights activists were detained last year alone—almost as many as...

More than 1200 crosses have been torn down by authorities in the past two years sparking anger and street protestsChristian leaders – including an 89-year-old bishop – have taken to the streets of eastern China to protest against an “evil” campaign to remove crosses that many see as a coordinated Communist party attack on their faith. Activists say more than 1,200 crosses have been stripped from churches in Zhejiang province since the government initiative began in late 2013. There has been a spike in such actions in recent weeks. On Friday, around 20 Catholic clergy staged a rare public demonstration...

A Chinese province where authorities have forcibly removed hundreds of rooftop crosses from Protestant and Catholic churches has proposed a ban on any further placement of the religious symbol atop sanctuaries. The draft, if approved, would give authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang solid legal grounds to remove rooftop crosses. Since early 2014, Zhejiang officials have toppled crosses from more than 400 churches, sometimes resulting in violent clashes with congregation members. They have said the crosses violate building codes, but critics say the rapid growth of Christian groups have made the ruling Communist Party nervous.“The authorities have attached great...

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...

China will construct a "Chinese Christian theology" suitable for the country, state media reported on Thursday, as both the number of believers and tensions with the authorities are on the rise. China has between 23 million and 40 million Protestants, accounting for 1.7 to 2.9 per cent of the total population, the state-run China Daily said, citing figures given at a seminar in Shanghai. About 500,000 people are baptised as Protestants every year, it added. "Over the past decades, the Protestant churches in China have developed very quickly with the implementation of the country's religious policy," the paper quoted Wang...

Jeremy Lin's rise to fame has received the attention of many Chinese Christians, and inspires those who face religious persecution in their Communist homeland. Jeremy Lin is not Chinese – his family identifies themselves as Taiwanese – yet he has captured the heart of many people in mainland China, including Christians who are often times persecuted. The Chinese government attempts to control religious practices in China, requiring churches to register and overseeing religious education. It also approves of less than 25 Protestant seminaries and Bible schools with less than 10 full-time employees. Even the Christianity of China's latest hero is...

(Unbelievable!!) On the sixth day of the sixth month of the year 2006 we gathered to pray, worship and celebrate communion together in our home in Beijing with Chinese and foreign brothers and sisters. We desired to seek ways to help mobilize the Chinese Church for Great Commission work. We wrestled with many questions: How does God want to use Pioneers in China to serve in the sending out of Chinese missionaries? What role can we have? Are we needed? The response came from our Chinese brothers who said, “We need you to ‘pu lu xian feng’ ”—to go ahead...

Although today is the dawn of the Chinese New Year, most people are unaware that Chinese Christians are gearing up to be the world's most potent missionary force. China? Christians? Sure enough. For decades now they've had plans to evangelize the Muslim world that lies along the old Silk Road route. This could be one of the most ambitious missionary enterprises in 2,000 years of Christianity. No national church has amazed the world as much as that of the Chinese. From 1 million at the time of the Communist takeover in 1949, it's grown to 100 million followers, a breathtaking...

Nairobi (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Chinese companies are building churches in Africa for all the various Christian denominations, taking over a job in the past occupied by Europe, and more recently by U.S. companies. At the Basilica of the Holy Family in Nairobi, for example, the Zhongxing Construction company is building a new building for the offices of the archdiocese of Nairobi. "We worked with them previously, and we had a positive experience. We held a public competition, and they presented the best offer," said an official of the diocese. In the past, countries that sent missionaries to Africa also...

Many of China's churches are overflowing, as the number of Christians in the country multiplies. In the past, repression drove people to convert - is the cause now rampant capitalism? It is impossible to say how many Christians there are in China today, but no-one denies the numbers are exploding. The government says 25 million, 18 million Protestants and six million Catholics. Independent estimates all agree this is a vast underestimate. A conservative figure is 60 million. There are already more Chinese at church on a Sunday than in the whole of Europe. The new converts can be found from...