New church dwarfs largest Mao monument

CHANGSHA, China — Sweeping heavenward like an enormous glass-and-metal ski jump, a new Protestant church dominates the crumbled earth, freshly planted trees and unfinished water features of a suburban park under construction in Changsha.

About 260 feet tall and topped by a cross, the Xingsha Church is bigger even than the biggest statue of Mao Zedong in China, which is just 3 miles west of here.

On Tangerine Island, in the broad Xiang River, the massive granite head and shoulders of the revolutionary leader rear up as if surveying the world. But at 105 feet, the sculpture is less than half the height of the church.

That disparity, in the city where Mao spent his youth and first embraced politically radical ideas, has infuriated his most fervent admirers across China.

Sensing an ideological challenge to their hero — who founded the People’s Republic in 1949 and denounced Christianity as a tool of foreign imperialism — thousands of Mao’s “red” fans reached for their smartphones and computers this year and charged into verbal battle against this defilement of sacred ground.

They railed against the church’s size and symbolism, saying that building it in a public space was a misappropriation of resources in the officially atheist state.

“Going for Christianity in a big way damages our nation’s ideological security,” wrote Zhao Danyang of the website Red Morality Think Tank, in a typical post when the furor erupted in February.