LONDON, October 9 (Compass) -- Dramatic developments are expected in China's religious policy in October and November that will appear to offer an olive branch to underground Catholics and house church Protestants. But two Shanghai-based house church leaders warn, "This olive branch – though significant -- could have many thorns, and may be painful to grasp."
According to well-placed sources, China's leaders are planning two major propaganda offensives concerning religion this fall. News of the first has already leaked out -- an October 14 conference of Catholic scholars in Beijing to mark the 400th anniversary of Matteo Ricci's mission to China with a reciprocal celebration in Rome. Greetings from the pope will include an apology for Catholic wrongdoing in China, presumably in exchange for Beijing's recognition of a role for the Vatican in overseeing the Catholic Church in China. This would have the potential to unite the 10-million underground Catholics with the five-million-member government-run Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which has not been permitted to maintain relations with the Vatican. Eventually, the Vatican is expected to sever links with Taiwan.
Protestants are not to be left out, however. In mid November at a high level religious affairs work conference, Premier Zhu Rongji will introduce new national regulations governing all religious activity in China, which will include for the first time a formal "embrace" (tuanjie) of non-TSPM Protestants.
Normally the government brands any group as "illegal" that refuses to join the official Protestant church, the 13.3-million-member Three Self Patriotic Movement, consigning the 30-70 million Protestants in autonomous churches to the status of an underground church. But this may be about to change. Though few have seen the secret draft regulations yet, one source said, "Though quite restrictive, the redeeming quality is that the non-TSPM stream of Protestants will gain some legitimacy, and will be given encouragement to register independently of the TSPM."
Sources have made clear that Bishop Ding Guangxun's controversial war against evangelicals within the TSPM has already been called off. Said one source, "Orders have come from the highest level to discontinue the 'theological construction campaign.'" The dean of Nanjing Theological Seminary, Ambrose Wang, has already been told to retire Ding's writings from the curriculum.
The two-year campaign to make Chinese theology more socialist brought great resistance from the mainly evangelical pastors within the TSPM, disdain from Chinese religion scholars and great disgust overseas at the coercive methods used. But another source said, "The campaign is over, but it will be allowed to just wither away. Ding's books will be pulled from Three Self bookshelves, but no announcement will be made that it was a mistake."
"Take time to evaluate these changes," warned a Shanghai house church pastor, "because if the government genuinely wants to offer the house churches the hand of friendship, why have they not been in touch with us to see what we want?"
He added, "I know of no house church leader consulted by the government about these changes." Some house church leaders fear that the inducement to register may be a means of isolating diehard house church communities, which would then be singled out for "Falun Gong style persecution."
The religious affairs work conference in November will be attended by all members of the Politburo, and its purpose is to unveil and explain the new national regulations to govern all religious activities in China. These regulations will complement earlier detailed regulations governing foreign religious activities in China. They are also to be distinguished from 1994 national regulations and subsequent local regulations, which focused purely on venues, i.e. congregations and their organization.
Critical to the draft regulations will be the arrangements for registering independently of the TSPM. Reacting to this development, Dr. Carol Lee Hamrin, China scholar and former analyst at the U.S. State Department, said, "Until we actually see the wording of the regulation, it is hard to know quite what to say. On the one hand, if the house churches are to be given a welcome at the government's table on their own terms, this is positive; on the other, if the terms of registration require house churches not to conduct evangelism outside specified areas, then many house churches, whose very identity is evangelism, simply will not register, and they could be more vulnerable as a result."
Dr. Hamrin added, "This possibility underscores the importance of the response by the various religious bodies in China, both recognized and autonomous. Society is no longer just a passive recipient of government policy. For example, what if the house churches decided to register en masse? They would instantly become the vast majority of Protestants. And what if the TSPM churches encouraged local officials to register other groups and refused to be involved either with guarantees or vetoes?"
The fear expressed among some China watchers is that the changes are just another phase of the "nei jin-wai cong tactic" -- internally tight and externally relaxed. Could it be that China is wishing to embrace the house churches, offering them the chance to register in order to exert more control over them now that they have been lured to the surface? Or worse, to pretend to offer such generous terms of registration so that house churches who refused to register could then be safely branded as criminal cults, and dealt with in the same draconian fashion as the government just dealt with Falun Gong members?
Regardless, these changes in process have at least three roots.
One comes from the government's shock in 1994 when far more house churches than expected responded to a registration drive. The Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) responded negatively to the interest, repressing many that sought legitimacy and putting others on an indefinite wait-list.
Second, the government is genuinely confused about the staggering church growth, particularly on the Protestant side. Said one source, "Senior-level Party officials are appalled that there may be millions of underground Christians running around the countryside that they have absolutely no influence over, and they foresee another Taiping Rebellion if they do not get more control fast."
A third source, according to Dr. Hamrin, is that recent hard-line religious policies linked with RAB director Ye Xiaowen have badly backfired. Last year's ordination ceremony of CPA Catholic bishops was boycotted by many other bishops loyal to the pope, and froze once again the Beijing-Vatican reapproachment. Ding's heavy-handed campaign within the TSPM has alienated younger Chinese church leaders and important foreign evangelical contacts.
Few house church leaders are aware of any changes in the immediate future, but three of them interviewed gave a guarded response. One house church leader from southern Henan province was skeptical of the possibility of registering independently from the TSPM.
"Some government leaders have claimed for a while that this is possible, but the fact is that the system requires us to obtain permission from a TSPM pastor first with which to approach the Religious Affairs Bureau – this would require a major shift to change," he said.
Another house church leader from Shanghai fretted over the conditions for registration. He said, "The trend in China is for more control, not less, and I think if we were asked to register, there would be lots of regulations we could not subscribe to, for example, committing ourselves not to evangelize outside a 'fixed' area."
The third house church leader was cautiously positive: "It may be that the government realizes they cannot criminalize millions of house church Christians any more, and there would definitely be an enormous appetite for registration if the conditions were right and the restrictions not too burdensome."
Changes in regulations, however, are meaningless without a context of implementation. It will be months before it can be judged exactly how the changes are being applied, or even if they are applied at all. Time – not headlines and fanfare -- must be allowed to decide whether these changes will be genuinely good for the church in China.
Copyright 2001, Compass News Direct.