When did the crackdown begin?
Religious repression has intensified across China since President Xi Jinping took office in 2013. The brutal crackdown on minority Muslims in the northwestern region of Xinjiang—where mosques and madrasas are being demolished and more than 1 million Uighurs have been detained in re-education camps—has sparked international outrage. But the Communist Party’s assault on faith is not limited to Islam. Authorities have used the world’s distraction over the coronavirus pandemic to accelerate an ongoing campaign against Christianity. Officially atheist, the party sees adherence to any faith, particularly those with foreign origins such as Christianity and Islam, as a threat to its dominance. So Xi has embarked on the “sinicization” of religious practice, ordering Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian leaders to integrate Chinese communist thought into their belief systems. The party wants people “to love the motherland and their faith,” says You Quan, head of the body that oversees ethnic and religious affairs in China. Sinicization has resulted in thousands of churches and mosques being shuttered and razed; those that remain fly Chinese flags.
How is Christianity practiced in China?
For decades, Chinese Catholics and Protestants have been divided between those who attend state-sanctioned churches—in which clerics are appointed by Beijing—and those who attend so-called underground churches. About half of China’s 12 million Catholics worship in the underground churches loyal to the Vatican. To try to heal that schism, Beijing and the Vatican struck a deal in 2018 that gave Chinese authorities the right to recommend new bishops and the pope the power to approve or veto them. Beijing has exploited that agreement by refusing to name bishops to half of China’s 98 dioceses, while pressuring priests to adhere to party regulations, saying that the Vatican pact means that the pope commands them to do so. Portraits of the Virgin Mary have been replaced by portraits of Xi, and priests have been compelled to incorporate Xi’s sayings into their sermons.
What about Protestant churches?
Protestantism is China’s fastest-growing religion, and so is especially worrisome to Xi. The state-registered church, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, claims some 39 million adherents. But at least another 40 million are thought to worship in underground “home churches”—pushing the share of Chinese who are Protestants to nearly 6 percent, about the same as the membership of the Communist Party. Beijing is determined to control the faith. Online bookstores have been banned from selling Bibles as authorities prepare a new Mandarin translation that some fear
Eradicating Falun Gong
The Chinese government has identified “five poisons” that threaten its rule: pro-democracy activists, Taiwanese nationalists, Tibetan dissidents, Uighur separatists, and Falun Gong—a spiritual discipline that mixes traditional qigong with New Age philosophy. Founded in northeast China in 1992 by former trumpet player Li Hongzhi, Falun Gong (“law wheel practice”) promises salvation to those who study Master Li’s texts and practice a regimen of gentle physical movements. Li attracted some 70 million followers in a matter of years, a level of popularity that worried the Communist Party. It banned Falun Gong in 1999, labeling the movement an “evil cult” and arresting tens of thousands of adherents. Human rights activists say thousands were killed and had their organs harvested for transplant. Falun Gong practitioners who fled to Hong Kong, where they could practice freely, fear a sweeping new security law imposed on the city by Beijing could now be wielded against them. “It is a hanging knife over our heads,” said Ingrid Wu, a Falun Gong spokeswoman.
■■ A Maryland family calmly had lunch with a bear after it nonchalantly wandered over to their picnic table, sat down, and began helping itself to their food. Kaitlyn Nesbit, 29, admitted she was “scared to death” even while a male relative suggested they bring the female bear some peanut butter and even playfully tapped her on the nose. “It’s not my fault if she scratches you,” Nesbit said to the man in a video shot by other family members. The bear ate and left.
■■ A rare earthquake in North Carolina brought Scripture to life for frightened churchgoers. A lector at the outdoor Sunday mass at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church had just reached a Bible passage in which the prophet Elijah intoned, “After the wind there was an earthquake—but the LORD was not in the earthquake,” when the magnitude 5.1 quake shook the building. Father Cory Catron, pastor of a nearby Catholic mission, said the quake “made for good homily material.”