Christianity a Threat to Chinese National Security, Xi Jinping’s Government Determines
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – “Christianity’s Enormous Harm on China’s Security” is the title of the most recent seminar held by party officials of the Chinese communist party, which took place in Henan last month amidst Xi Jinping’s campaign to assimilate all Chinese house churches into the communist-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM).
According to credible sources, the seminar is part of a wider effort, also begun in April, to “dismantle the scale [of unregistered churches], dissolve the organization, and dismiss the church,” International Christian Concern reports.
Called “Return to Zero,” the recent initiative by China’s government, which increasingly sees Christianity as an uncontrollable foreign threat, has meant an ultimatum to convert or perish for Beijing’s Zaidao Church, a branch of the China Gospel Fellowship (CGF) network of house churches, which received an ominous visit from government officials on April 23rd that portends further harassment and likely shutdown.
Shouwang Church and Zion Church were the other two major Beijing house churches that the Chinese government has attempted to commandeer since September. Early Rain Covenant Church, whose Pastor Wang Yi published a Christian manifesto of civil disobedience against the government leading to his apprehension on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” was a third casualty of the unregistered church movement.
In 2016, Xi Jinping’s government began its program of “Sinicization,” which entailed a five-year plan to make Christianity conform to the tenets of Chinese communism and nationalistic ambitions.