Christianity in China to overwhelm atheist beliefs

IT IS said to be China’s biggest church and today, on Easter Sunday, thousands of worshippers will flock to this Asian mega-temple to pledge their allegiance — not to the Communist Party, but to the cross.

The 5 000-capacity Liushi church, which boasts more than twice as many seats as Westminster Abbey in London, and a 63m crucifix, opened last year, with one theologian declaring it a “miracle that such a small town was able to build such a grand church”.

The £8-million (R17.6-million) building is one of the most visible symbols of communist China’s breakneck conversion, as it evolves into one of the largest Christian congregations in the world.

“It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence,” said Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor who was admiring the golden cross above Liushi’s altar in the lead up to Holy Week.

“If everyone in China believed in Jesus then we would have no more need for police stations. There would be no more bad people and there- fore no more crime,” she said.

Officially, the People’s Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied.

Christian congregations, in particular, have rocketed since churches began reopening when communist leader

China destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon

Mao Tse-tung’s death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution. Less than 40 years later, some believe China is poised to become not just the world’s number one economy, but also its most numerous Christian nation.

“By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon,” said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University in Indiana and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule.

China’s Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared with 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would be likely to put China ahead even of the US, which had about 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline.

By 2030, China’s total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, and place it above Mexico, Brazil and the US as the largest Christian congregation in the world.

“Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this,” he said. “It’s ironic — they didn’t.

“They actually failed completely.” —