China's Growing Church

Now 70 million strong, China's rapidly growing urban church finds ways to work with the Communist government.

By Rob Moll

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Jesson Tian is a graduate student in Beijing working on a master's degree in agricultural biology. After graduation, Tian hopes to discover new ways to make China's farms more fruitful. But he's already learned a thing or two about harvests and fruit—of the spiritual kind.

In China, just as elsewhere, college students are exposed to things their parents wouldn't approve of. For Tian, who was raised an atheist, that thing was Christianity. During his sophomore year, a friend introduced Tian to Jesus, and since he became a Christian, Tian shares his faith wherever he can, including to American students studying abroad.

Tian grew up in Confucius's hometown, where his father was a Communist Party member and his parents were both strict atheists. Like his father, Tian became a Party member when he left home to attend college. He's now in charge of recruiting new members to the local Communist Party.

While he studies plants and agriculture, Tian is also sowing the seeds of the gospel in this fertile country of 1.3 billion people. Students in China are among the most eager to hear about Christianity. In the country's universities, some young people start to question the competitive materialism of China's growing middle class. Also, as China develops economically, students and intellectuals are looking for a model in the West, where many discover Christianity is a major cause of its political and economic success. A third reason many students become Christians is the huge number of English teachers who share their faith through friendships and one-on-one interaction.

While Tian has turned away from his atheistic roots, he hasn't given up his Party affiliation. In fact, Tian says over soup in a Beijing restaurant, he often tells people he is a Party member before he tells them about Jesus. "I think they will trust me more," he says.

Tian is not alone. Indeed, one pastor who oversees churches totaling 400 people in the city of Guanzhou said that "quite a lot" of his members are also members of the Communist Party.

New 'underground' church

While China has opened economically over the last 30 years, it has also experienced a profound spiritual awakening. Though once a place where its leaders declared that God was not only dead but also buried in China, Christians have since learned to thrive. In the early 1970s, there were an estimated 3 million Christians (Catholics and Protestants); today, conservative estimates number Christians at 70 million, while other figures are as high as 130 million.

To American eyes, the face of the Chinese church has long been that of a rural villager meeting secretly, avoiding arrest at the hands of Communist officials. While the perception was accurate and in many ways still is, it is no longer the only face of China's unregistered (sometimes called "underground") church.

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Originally published in: Today's Christian, 2008, July/August, Page 21

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