The Chinese Communist Party cannot altogether eliminate traditional religions, which compete with and threaten the worship of itself and of the Dear Leader. So it tries to take over religious institutions. The methods include forcing churches to set up centers for pushing party propaganda—Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and the like—and to incorporate Dictator Xi’s speechifying into their sermons.
The CCP is also starting to formally train or indoctrinate preachers so that they know exactly what to parrot from the pulpit and will do so obediently (“China trains politically correct Protestant pastors,” Radio Free Asia, July 30, 2024).
Senior pastors from 100 major churches across China attended the [July 8 to July 12] training event [shown above] in the southern city of Guangzhou on “deepening the sinicization” of church practices earlier this month, the official website The Protestant Church in China reported….
The Communist Party now requires all religious believers to love their country as well as their religion, and claims that patriotism is a part of those religions….
John Lin, a Christian house church preacher who fled China to the United States last year and who uses a pseudonym for security reasons, said the “strict governance of religion” is an extension of Xi’s tenet that the party should control every aspect of people’s daily lives.
Lin says the CCP sees Christianity as a means of Western colonization and is determined to sever any connection between the churches of China and the churches of the West. “Because if people are connected to the universal church, they could lean towards some of the universal values”: democracy, freedom, rights.
Churches in China may operate without being subject to periodic state raids if they belong to the Three-Self Patriotic Association, thereby demonstrating loyalty to the state and submitting themselves to thoroughgoing oversight. Radio Free Asia says that of China’s 68 million or so Protestants, 23 million belong to Three-Self churches, and most of the country’s nine million Catholics also belong to “state-sponsored organizations.”
