China's Secret Christians

In Foochow last February, five Chinese Christians were arrested and paraded in dunce hats through the city streets. The incident was related to TIME Correspondent David Aikman in Hong Kong by two overseas Chinese missionaries who had been visiting the coastal province of Fukien. While such a tale of public humiliation is hardly extraordinary, the reason for it was. The missionaries reported that an underground Chinese Christian community numbering more than 1,200 has grown up in Foochow over the past five years. If the story of the Foochow revival is indeed basically true, it signals that the Christian faith can still spark enthusiasm in a land where Mao's revolution has tried to snuff it out.

When the Communists took over in 1949, there were roughly 4 million Roman Catholics and Protestant Christians in China, 13,000 missionaries, and a widespread Christian influence in schools and universities. In a 1950 speech, Premier Chou En-lai promised religious freedom, and the country's 1954 constitution guaranteed it. Faith, nevertheless, soon became heavily politicized. Chinese Christians were cut off from foreign-mission boards and, in the case of Catholics, from Rome.

Then came Mao's Cultural Revolution. The churches that had been allowed to stay open were turned into workshops and warehouses, and a concerted campaign was mounted to convert the remaining religious Chinese --both Christian and non-Christian--to the fervor of Maoism. But pockets of ideological resistance seem to remain.

Besides the missionaries who visited Foochow, other travelers speak of finding groups of underground Christians in many villages and cities. In Shanghai, according to one account, the prayer groups are nurtured by "Bible women" --lay ministers who took over pastoral leadership after the male leaders were arrested. How many Christians are there in China now? Generous estimates range from 1 million to 2 million.

Radio Evangelism. The stories of Christian revival are feeding the hopes of evangelistic organizations that have never given up on getting their message back into the mainland. Some groups, such as the Far East Broadcasting Co., have contented themselves with longdistance radio evangelism. F.E.B.C.

beams the gospel into China in five Chinese dialects from powerful transmitters in Manila, San Francisco, and on South Korea's Cheju Island.

Other organizations have concentrated on printing and trying to send thousands of Bibles into China. The best way to reach the mainland so far seems to be through visiting overseas Chinese, who are sometimes allowed to take several Bibles with them into the country.

In preparation for any possible breakthrough in the effort to get many more Bibles into China, various evangelistic organizations are translating the Scriptures into new Chinese versions. A group named Asian Outreach has already printed a version that employs the simplified Chinese characters adopted under Mao.

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