Many of China’s Christians attend underground churches

At an underground church service in China, you pray as quickly as you can - and hope the police do not come running in, reports Jeremy Reynalds, correspondent for ASSIST News Service.

BBC News reported that at the end of an alleyway in the north of Beijing, 40 Chinese Christians gathered in a small classroom. At the beginning of the service, they bowed their heads and prayed.

Their priest, Zhang Minxuan, stood in front of them. Twenty years ago he was a barber with no interest in religion. Then he got into trouble with the Communist Party and was jailed. After that he became a Christian.

Since then he has led an underground church and been detained numerous times.

“One day, God will bring our church out of the darkness and into the light,” the BBC reported he told his flock. Their eyes shone back at him.

“I will pray for the government no matter how much they persecute me,” Zhang told the BBC. “In the end I believe that God will convert them. I will never give up my relationship with God - no matter what happens.”

The BBC report said that underground Christians make the Chinese Communist Party nervous.

There are millions of them and they worship wherever they can - often in private homes. They do not want to be controlled by Beijing, so they refuse to sign up to the state-sanctioned church.

The party is nervous about any organization that does not pledge its loyalty to the state.

Jail Sentence

At his home in Beijing, BBC News reported that Cai Zhuohua reads from the Old Testament.

In his living room, next to an old television set, there was a stack of Bibles. Cai, a Christian since he was a teenager, is another leader in China's underground Christian movement. The BBC reported that Cai was too nervous to allow the BBC to meet his congregation - in case the police identify them from the reports.

The BBC reported that a few years ago Cai had 10,000 bibles printed and delivered to fellow underground Christians. For this, the Communist Party jailed him for three years.

“I need to spread Christianity,” he told the BBC, “and I need to print the Bible and distribute it to fellow believers - but I'm stopped from doing this.”

Bible Factory

The BBC reported so that made what they found in the southern city of Nanjing very surprising.

China has its own Bible makers - the Amity Printing Company.

Every day the firm prints off around 9,000 Bibles. But the factory is only allowed to supply bibles to the official state-approved church - not to the underground church. However, the BBC reported, the pages coming off the presses don’t seem to have much of an impact on the workers.

“I haven't read the Bible and I don't believe in Christianity," Zhang Guohong, who's been working at the factory for 14 years, told the BBC.

He added, “I have flipped through the book, but I am here to work. There is no time for me to read it.”

Amity printed its first Chinese Bible in 1987. Since then the company has been getting bigger and bigger.

The BBC reported that in Feb. 2008, Amity will move to a new site which will be able to make a million Bibles a month. That may make it the world's largest Bible factory. That is quite something for the godless, Communist state.

“Perhaps it's God's humor,” Peter Dean, Amity's production advisor, told the BBC, “but we are printing millions of Bibles here. We have printed 41 million Bibles for the churches in China, they are distributed out through this gate, and into the networks of churches in China.”

Official Church

The BBC reported that China’s state-approved churches are popular

Some of the Bibles end up at the Xishiku Catholic Church in Beijing, part of China's official, state-sanctioned religious establishment.

In the Catholic church, the bishops are chosen by Beijing, not the Vatican. Everyone in China, the BBC reported, answers to the Communist Party - no one has to hide or worry about getting arrested.

On Sundays, hundreds of worshipers come to celebrate early morning mass. Three services are held - there are no spare seats at any of them. This is the kind of official Christianity that the Chinese government tolerates, the BBC report said.

The rule is simple, the BBC report commented. If you are loyal to the Communist Party, you can pray and you can worship as much as you like. The government wants its Christians in the state-approved church where it can see them and control them.

But Christianity is growing beyond its control, the BBC said. One day soon, Christians may even outnumber Communists.

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[01/03/2008]

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