Understanding authority from Rome to Beijing

As geo-political tensions between China and the West rise, K.K. Yeo explores authority and religion in China, finding complex questions and nuanced answers.

K.K. Yeo

K.-K. Yeo, a diaspora Chinese, lectures widely in majority world including China on cross-cultural understanding of civilization and religion.

Haidian Christian Church

Is the West Christian and China Confucianist? Or is the West secular and China communist? Binary understanding of our world in conventional terms, such as East versus West, or the sacred-secular divide, is superficial and confusing. Given the biases, divisiveness and, at times, toxic geopolitical reality today, the topic of government and Christianity in China today is more complex than meets the eye. A much better option is a meaningful cross-cultural perspective that enables constructive conversation, while honoring different contexts and nuanced understandings.

Does it surprise you that, an atheist, and at times anti-religion, ‘party-state’ China is the world’s largest Bible printer? Christianity in China has existed since the seventh century when the Syrian Church of the East had rigorous cultural, religious, and commercial exchanges with many nations as far as those in East Asia. Recently the regime in China has become concerned about the growth of the Christian population that might be outnumbering the Party’s members. There has been the suppression of believers, burning of crosses, and demolition of churches across the country. The Communist Party eliminated the State Administration for Religious Affairs in 2018, and the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party now has direct control on all religions.

Does it surprise you that, an atheist, and at times anti-religion, ‘party-state’ China is the world’s largest Bible printer?

Churches in China exist in a harsh reality similar to that of first century Roman Empire, so they inevitably find the teaching of St. Paul in the Bible to be of great interest. Chinese Christians have long had nuanced responses to their government. The house church remains committed to love Christ only - rendering to God the things that are God’s, and only then would they render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. This ‘separation of religion and government’ position (preservation of religious freedom from government intrusion) is considered to be politically subversive to the authoritarian rule of the Party. Therefore, the house churches have long distanced themselves from politics, while acknowledging that their Christian behaviour, such as loving their neighbor as a religious duty, is ‘the best politics’ for nation building.

By contrast, the Three-Self Patriotic churches—and also the current Vatican-China agreement on the appointment of Chinese bishops—do not find a serious discrepancy in loving Christ and the communist state. They seek to work with the government primarily in the matter of social welfare but have range of mixed views on the scope of combining patriotism with Christian belief. To maintain no or minimum separation of government and religion is becoming more and more challenging as the government centralises its control of all aspects of national and personal lives.

Christians in China are asking harder questions than those in churches outside China.

Can a Christian church adopt a state ideology or become a member of the Communist Party to support Christian identity and social harmony in China?

Are church attendance and participating in church activities politically subversive?

And what does it mean to say that ‘Jesus is Lord’ in that land?

I remember teaching at Peking University and seeing the students debate a scenario in the Bible in which the Thessalonian crowd was charging the apostle Paul and his colleague Silas for contradicting the decree of Caesar, for ‘saying that there is another king named Jesus’. Paul was surely preaching neither about insurrection nor subversion of the Roman Empire. However, Roman audiences then, and Chinese crowd or government today, are more likely to have perceived the belief in ‘Jesus as Lord’ as a political threat.

A case in point concerns Wang Yi, the pastor of the Early Rain Church in the city of Chendu, who preached Jesus as the Lord of lords - thus implying that the current political ruler is subsumed under Jesus Christ. Yi was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2018 ‘for inciting subversion of state power’. Cardinal Joseph Zen, a 90-year-old Catholic bishop in Hong Kong, was arrested in 2022 for criticizing the Vatican’s unwise deal with China, and for being an advocate of democracy in Hong Kong.

Christians in Hong Kong are treading similar water regarding their religious faith clashing with the politicized perception of such faith as treason, such as in the Umbrella Movement or the Occupy Central with Love and Peace that protest the will of the Chinese Communist rule in Hong Kong.

Can a Christian church adopt a state ideology or become a member of the Communist Party to support Christian identity and social harmony in China?

Using the teaching of St Paul in his letter to early Christians in Rome as a resource, the Chinese argue that he encourages these Roman Christians to critically reflect on government power so as to bring all nations to obedience of God’s justice. The popular reading of Paul as asking Roman Christians to ‘be subjected to the governing authorities’ for the reason that ‘for there is no authority except from God’ is a weak English translation. To the Chinese church, Paul admonishes Roman Christians to ‘subject themselves to the governing authorities’, and that is not a passive submission but a voluntary involvement as good citizens in the process of bringing about change to their government. The Chinese church sees that Paul challenges government politics, first by stating the principle that, ‘it is not an authority if not from God’, i.e., ‘unless from God’. In other words, there may be some governing authorities that are not appointed by God, thus begging the question: how does one know if governing authorities are from God and those not from God?

It seems that Paul is not concerned about whether a government or the head of state is Christian or not. What matters to Paul is not what the government says but the way the government or the head of state acts in accordance to the following principles:

Rulers are not to terrorize good conducts and good citizens; the rule of law is meant to approve the good-doers and punish the evil-doers;
Rulers are ‘ministers’ of God for the common good of the people, even though Roman Empire has its mythic origin from Jupiter, a Roman god;
Rulers are ‘worship leaders’ of God as they administer collected taxes not for their own concentration of power, but for the dignity and flourishing of the citizens, thus realizing God’s compassionate justice on earth, promoting the welfare of the city.

Churches outside China read Paul on government politics based on their assumed cultural context of Christian values. Yet, the Chinese church’s courage and humility to ask hard questions for themselves is an enlightening conversation. For those outside China, a cross-cultural and global understanding of government and religion can shed light on the promotion of a robust public life.

The one thing the new Archbishop can offer the world

How an unlikely argument between the Pope and Madonna points the way for the new Archbishop of Canterbury

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

The archbishop crowns the king.

The Catholic News Agency is a news outlet whose Instagram account posts warm pictures of the Pope, Catholic saints and so on, with heart-warming, if a little anodyne, quotations. A week or so ago, it sparked one of the most unlikely social media spats in recent times - an argument between Madonna (no, not the Virgin Mary) and Pope Leo himself.

With the announcement of Sarah Mullally as the 106^th Archbishop of Canterbury, this debate may have something to say to her as she moves from London (where I knew her well and worked with her as a fellow bishop) to Lambeth.

The CNA had posted a picture of a smiling, waving Pope Leo with the caption: “My priority is the Gospel, not solving the world’s problems.” It referred to an interview in which the Pope had said: “I don’t see my primary role as trying to be the solver of the world’s problems… although I think that the Church has a voice, a message that needs to continue to be preached, to be spoken and spoken loudly.”

The comments below were predictable, ranging from “This is a God-inspired pope!” to “The pope is irrelevant’ – and much worse. But among the 2000 or so comments was one by Madonna herself: “The whole point of teaching and learning the Gospel is to inspire people to love one another and make the world a better place. Not just with words but with actions, which is exactly what Jesus did. I am truly disappointed by this.”

Madonna has always had an odd relationship with the Catholic Church, and this was not the first time she has engaged with Pope Leo (or his predecessor Francis for that matter) online. But the story still went viral.

So - back to soon-to-be Archbishop Sarah.

She certainly faces a challenging inbox - divisions among Anglicans over sexuality that threaten to tear the Anglican Communion apart; safeguarding scandals; the ructions that being a female Archbishop will raise for traditionalists within the Church of England and with the Catholics and the Orthodox; the rise of Christian Nationalism, criticism of the Church’s commitment of £100m for reparations for slavery, not to mention the continue decline of Anglican congregations around the country.

So what should her priorities be as she starts her role?

I must confess I’m on Pope Leo’s side in this one. Unsurprisingly, the scholarly Augustinian Pope is a better theologian than the singer of ‘Like a Prayer’.

Pope Leo went on to say: “The values that the Church will promote in dealing with some of these world crises don’t come out of the blue, they come out of the Gospel. They come from a place that makes very clear how we understand the relationships between God and us, and between one another. Going back to the very basic things of respecting one another, respecting human dignity: where does that human dignity come from and how can we use that as a way of saying the world can be a better place, and we can treat one another better?”

It is the job of politicians – not the Church - to work out the precise policies and mechanisms that will deliver a better society. Yet of course that begs the question: what does ‘better’ mean? And that is where the church does have something to say.

Pope Leo’s point is that if the Church does make political interventions, they have to arise strictly from the very heart of its own faith. Christian leaders shouldn't get too involved in detailed policy recommendations, but they can outline their vision of what a good life together looks like, based on the story of the gospel itself.

The one thing that the church has to offer the world is Jesus - in other words, the remarkable, world-shattering belief that God the Creator entered human history, like an author stepping on to the stage of his own play. Yet he did it in the most unexpected way possible, without fanfare, simply showing a radical, determined, self-giving love, dying an excruciating death at human hands and rising from death as the first sign that death is nothing to be afraid of because it has been beaten once and for all.

To believe that is weird. It changes everything – life is not a search for wealth, friends and success but for holiness and wisdom. It is not a search for self-fulfilment but a radical turn away from self-centredness to a growing love for God our Maker. The poor not the wealthy are the ones who matter. We are held in the hands of a God whose love for us is endless. The universe is not impersonal and silent but pulses with love. Evil is a force trying to undo everything that God has created. Death is just the gateway to something far better for those who believe.

Tom Holland put it like this this: “If you're a Christian, you think that the heart of the entire fabric of the cosmos was ruptured by this strange singularity where someone who is a God and a man set everything on its head.”

And paradoxically, it is by focusing on that extraordinary message, that the Church can play its part in helping unravel some of the other problems, whether in the Church or the world.

Pope Leo was right. And maybe this is the advice for our new Archbishop: don’t start out by trying to change the world. Start with the gospel. It’s all we have to offer. Teach it, remind the church and the world of it. Use imagination, creativity, social media – whatever.

You may end up solving the world’s problems, you may not. The early Christians didn’t march on Rome, petitioning Caesar for new laws on migration across the empire or fairer treatment for slaves. They simply lived out their faith, creating communities that included everyone, worshipped Jesus and excluded idolatry. They taught, learned and lived the gospel. And eventually the world was changed.

So our new Archbishop will and must talk about immigration, assisted dying, poverty and other political issues, but she must make sure it’s always rooted in something Christian. Or as St Paul put it: “Proclaim the message, whether the time is favourable or unfavourable. Always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.”

And let the rest of us encourage her in doing that as well as she can.

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