weekend detained a further 16 members of Beijing’s Shouwang house church
and placed several more under house arrest, while members of China’s
government-approved churches have gone to police stations to “admonish”
detained house church members, according to a statement issued yesterday
by church leaders.
Of those detained, police held two in
protective custody in hotels, beginning on the evening of June 10, while
another 14 who turned up at Shouwang’s designated outdoor worship site
on Sunday morning were taken away and sent to 10 different
police stations. Of those detained Sunday, 13 were released by
midnight while the last was released the next day.
Police
at Haidian station also locked into a basement three Christians who had
come to visit detained church members, the statement said.
The
church reported that members of government-approved Three-Self
Patriotic Movement (TSPM) churches had in the previous two weeks come to
many local police stations to “educate” and “admonish” detained
Shouwang congregants, urging them to leave Shouwang and join TSPM
churches.
“Half a century ago, this practice failed for
those who have gone before us; they would rather be put into jail for
holding on to their position,” the statement said. “We believe that for
our generation, this practice will fail as well.”
Following
a series of evictions from rented facilities and denial of access to a
property they purchased late last year, Shouwang church in April decided
to meet outdoors as a form of protest against the government’s
restriction of their right to worship.
On
their first attempt to meet in a public plaza in Zhongguancun,
northwestern Beijing, uniformed and plainclothes police arrived in
droves, filming and interrogating bystanders, waving journalists away
and herding church members into waiting buses, according to the China
Aid Association (CAA). Church leaders said 169 people were detained, and
most were then taken to a nearby school where they were fingerprinted
and had their names recorded, The New York Times reported.
Similar
confrontations have occurred every Sunday since, with church members
determined to continue their peaceful protest despite many of the
leadership team, including Senior Pastor Jin Tianming, being confined to
house arrest. All key leaders, including four pastors and three elders,
have been under house arrest almost constantly since April 9, said one
source who spoke to Compass on condition of anonymity.
The
number of people turning up to the outdoor venue has dwindled as members
of the highly educated and influential church face consequences in
their personal lives.
“Some church members have lost their jobs or rented homes or both,” the same source said.
International
media agencies have followed events closely, particularly on Easter
Sunday, April 24, when CNN reported that police had detained at least 36
church members and blocked more than 500 from leaving their homes.
By
early June, police had detained some 300 people. During the same
period, police held many church members under house arrest, preventing
them from traveling to the outdoor venue.
As the weeks
progressed, police officers also asked church members to refrain from
attending Shouwang’s evening prayer meetings, held in a room rented from
the New Tree Church in Zhongguancun.
Toward the end of
May, the church was shocked by the departure of Pastor Song Jun, fellow
minister Jian Lijin, and deacons Ji Cheng and Yuan Yansong, who left
because they disagreed with plans to continue outdoor worship, the
source reported.
Petition for Religious Freedom
While
some house churches also disagree with Shouwang’s approach, claiming
their “confrontation” with the government can only bring harm for house
churches in general, others have chosen to stand in solidarity with
them.
On May 11, 17 pastors or church workers from almost
20 house churches in six Chinese cities delivered a petition to the
National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature, asking that the
keys of Shouwang’s property be handed over to them, and that the
national Regulations on Religious Affairs be dropped and replaced by a
more favorable law governing religious freedom, CAA reported.
Titled,
“It is for our Faith: A Citizen’s Petition to the National People’s
Congress on the Church-State Conflicts,” the petition made oblique
reference to an article entitled, “We do everything for faith,” written
by renowned Christian Wang Mingdao years earlier, defending the church
before Communist officials.
In a recent program dedicated
to Shouwang, Radio Free Asia (RFA) interviewed several of the
petitioners, including Wang Wenfeng of the Wenzhou China Theology Forum.
“I hope the government can see that the Shouwang incident
is not an isolated case; rather, many churches in China want the same
thing,” Wang told RFA. “The most basic request is, ‘Let us meet in
public, and let us register.’
“We Christians have nothing
to hide,” he continued. “At the same time, our faith itself requires us
to be open with non-Christians, society and the state.”
‘City on a Hill’
Shouwang first made global headlines in November 2009, after President Barack Obama visited China. The Wall Street Journal ran
a piece entitled, “The China President Obama Didn’t See,” recounting
Shouwang’s first outdoor meeting in a snowstorm on Nov. 1 after
officials pressured their landlord to evict them from an office space in
northwest Beijing’s Huajie Mansion.
Founded in 1993 as a
simple Bible study in the home of Senior Pastor Jin, the church soon
grew into 10 separate fellowships throughout Beijing. In 2005 the church
made an application for registration, soon rejected by officials. They
then formed an integrated church with a vision to be like a “city on a
hill,” broadcasting the light of the gospel. At this point they began to
rent office buildings for Sunday worship.
The most serious
direct crackdown prior to 2011 came on May 11, 2008, when the armed
forces broke into Shouwang’s Sunday meeting and ordered the church to
stop meeting. The church then realized that government pressure on
landlords was a detriment to its survival and began gathering funds to
purchase its own property.
The church eventually bought
the second floor of the Daheng Science and Technology Tower in
Zhongguancun in late 2010. Officials warned the property developer,
however, not to hand over the keys and pressured the owners of their
then-meeting place, the Old Story Club, not to renew a 2010 lease,
leaving Shouwang “no choice” but to worship outdoors.
Evictions
are not confined to Shouwang or to Beijing; several other large house
churches, including the All-Nations Alliance Church in Shanghai and
Liangren Church in Guangzhou, have resorted to outdoor worship after
being driven out of rented facilities, according to the Rev. Liu Tongsu,
a California-based Chinese pastor and scholar.
“The
‘outdoor’ in the outdoor worship is not a means to an end, but a stand,”
Shouwang’s Senior Pastor Jin stated in a letter issued to church
members on April 23. “It is a stand when we face our Lord of glory and
the authorities … in this period of time it is a worship that is more
precious than any hymn or sermon.”
Cheri Fuller and Cindy Lamb Curry 
Marilyn Hickey 
Charisma Staff