China wants to make its Christians more Chinese

IN 1867 AN English missionary, James Hudson Taylor, wrote a letter home defending his policy of encouraging fellow preachers in China to wear Chinese robes and the Manchu-style pigtail. By dressing in Western garb, he argued, they risked giving the impression that becoming a Christian meant becoming a foreigner. Taylor’s concern was justified. Such was the scorn for those who embraced the faith that, long before the Communist Party seized power in 1949, people used to say, “One more Christian, one fewer Chinese.” Officials in China still mutter this phrase today.

In the 1950s the party began cutting Chinese Christianity’s links with foreign churches and requiring believers to worship only in government-authorised venues. Eventually all religious activity was banned and brutally crushed. A few years after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, restrictions were partially relaxed. This led to an explosion of Christian worship, much of it in small “house churches” with no official links. Protestantism grew especially fast, as did its foreign connections. Foreign missionaries, often working as teachers, poured back in. Now, in an effort to reassert control, China is trying once again to “sinify” Christianity. It will prove tougher than in Mao’s day.