Friends of the Church in China
Church and Society in China
Chinese Christians are a very small minority group within Chinese society, making up only one to
two percent of the overall population. They also live in a country governed by an atheist
Communist party which, until very recently, had little time for religion and which actively sought to
curtail it in political campaigns of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Chinese Christians and other religious
faiths suffered at that time. As churches slowly closed throughout the country in the 1950s and
60s some Christians practised their faith in
private. During the Cultural Revolution era
(1966-1976), when the policy of religious
freedom was suspended altogether, Christians
met together in secret. When religious freedom
was reinstated in 1979, Christians finally
emerged in to the open again. They began to
devote much of their attention to simply setting
up the church through re-claiming church
property, building new church buildings, printing
bibles and training church workers.
As an often misunderstood and sometimes
persecuted minority group within Chinese
society, Chinese Christians have tended to
become inward-looking, not getting too involved in affairs outside the church. This had been reenforced by a fairly conservative theology which encouraged Chinese Christians to draw a line
between believers and non-believers and to concentrate on personal salvation and church affairs
while neglecting social outreach to the wider Chinese society.
In recent years, both Catholic and Protestant churches have started social welfare programmes on
a small scale which have sought to engage Chinese society by identifying needs and trying to
address these in some way. This has mostly been done through organisations such as the Amity
Foundation, Jinde Charities, and also a number of smaller regional church-related social service
agencies. Some individual churches have also started their own small-scale projects too, such as
opening up kindergartens, retirement homes and
small clinics attached to the church. However, many
Chinese Christians still do not see this work as
Christian work or a necessary part of their faith life.
Groups involved in social outreach have to spend a
lot of time educating believers about the need for
such endeavours. To this end, the Protestant China
Christian Council set up its Social Service
Department in 2002 with the aim of encouraging
more Chinese Christians to serve those in need in
society.
Chinese society is undergoing tremendous transition
because of the many and rapid changes taking place in China at this time. Over the past couple of
decades, China has experienced remarkable economic growth. Many urbanites find themselves
materially better off than ever before. However, early economic growth had not been accompanied
by social, moral or ethical development, and many feel that society is becoming greedier, more
corrupt, divided and unstable as a result of all the dizzying changes. Some have been damaged or
hurt by unemployment, lack of universal health care, or have been victims of greed, corruption or
crime. Others feel unsettled and uneasy as they search for something to believe in and a meaning
in life beyond material comforts and money.
The Chinese government is concerned about growth and development leading to instability and
unrest and initiated a campaign in 2006 to build what it calls a harmonious society. Since that
time, the Communist party itself has issued statements which recognise that religion can and
Friends of the Church in China
should have a positive role to play in promoting such harmony in society. This is quite a
turnaround for a government which once taught that religion was the “opium of the masses” and
that religion would eventually disappear in the advanced stages of socialism. The new rulings are
a watershed for faith groups in China, and it gives Chinese Christian groups much more room to
play an increasingly active role in Chinese society today.
The Jiangsu Christian Charity Fund is a partnership between the Amity Foundation and the
Jiangsu Christian Council to promote social service development within the Jiangsu Christian
community. In doing so it hopes to enhance the positive role that Protestant churches play in the
development of China’s civil society.
A few years ago a young post-doctoral
economics student at Beijing University
published an essay in the Chinese edition of
Esquire magazine called “God is my CEO”.
In
the essay, he argued that the move to a
market economy can teach people not to be
lazy but it cannot teach people not to lie or
harm one another, and that this is the danger
facing Chinese society today. The writer
argued that churches can fill a lot of the
ethical and moral voids left by market
economic reforms, promoting values such as
mutual respect and trust, equality between
rich and poor, and good stewardship of newly-acquired wealth. Similarly, the editor of Beijing
Review as early as January 2006 wrote an editorial asking whether or not China needed religious
education these days. He saw China as a society “short on compassion and love” and labouring
under “grinding spiritual impoverishment”, Religious education was as a possible means by which
Chinese society might lift itself out of its current moral and ethical decline.
The challenge for Chinese churches is how to
respond to such interest and openness towards
religion these days. Many Chinese Christians,
especially in the countryside, are poorly
educated and have a limited understanding of
their faith. They desperately need good
ministers with solid training in theology to help
them articulate what they believe to those
outside the church. And many Chinese
Christians still need convincing that having any
kind of involvement in society around them is
even necessary. More and more
congregations, especially in China’s bigger
cities, are spending thousands on building
impressive, new state-of-the-art church buildings which certainly stand out and remind the local
community of a Christian presence in their midst. Recent disasters like the 2008 Wenchuan
earthquake in Sichuan province have elicited generous responses from Catholic and Protestant
congregations across the country to assist the victims in financial and other ways.
www.thefcc.org
11.2009