Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord.
--Book of Haggai, 1:8
Dispatches from the Middle Kingdom say that 60 million Christians live on mainland China. And at least half of them worship in unregistered churches.
Why only half? Why does any church register with Beijing? If the Red Chinese have your church's name, your church might share the fate of Golden Lampstand.
Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi province, where 50,000-plus Chinese Christians worshipped, was razed to the ground last week. The People's Armed Police--which isn't much of the people, aren't protectors of the public, but are damn sure armed--set explosives in the church's underground sanctuary and destroyed the building. You can find the footage on the Internet.
President Xi Jinping's government has been destroying churches, or at least removing offending steeples and crosses, in a campaign to discourage Christianity. It's a subversive religion, Christianity, teaching that there are more important things in this world than government and The Party. Besides, communist authorities get nervous when folks start to look to a different Authority on any matter.
The state media, which is the only kind the ChiComs allow, says the building's destruction was a part of a "citywide campaign to remove illegal buildings" and said the Christians therein "secretly" constructed the building and didn't have a permit.
But the church was no secret. The government has been clashing with worshippers there since at least 2009, when police rounded up anybody with a Bible. So the government decided the easiest course was to level the building. And it didn't take marching around it for seven days and blowing trumpets, either.
But something tells us the plan won't work. Any more than the plans of 1,000 apparatchiks have worked when it comes to discouraging Christians over the centuries.
Here's a lesson for President Xi's government, which isn't nearly as clever as we've sometimes allowed:
If history has taught us anything, it's that Christians don't need buildings, steeples, pews or government permission to worship. From the dawn of the religion, when Rome treated them far worse than modern Red China, these people have found a way to find their way. And become a light for others.
It's almost tradition with Christians, going back to at least Paul and Silas singing in their prison. For the lesson on what happened with those two characters next, we refer President Xi to Acts 16.
Editorial on 01/20/2018