Freedom of belief

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Politics

27 June 2023

5 min read

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.

Millions of people are still cold, hungry and naked – will you be there?

The call to justice that echoes from Trafalgar Square to primary schools

Pete Moorey

Pete Moorey is a campaigner for Christian Aid.

A school choir sings in an ornate abbey setting

Twyford School Choir sings in Westminster Abbey.

Dean & Chapter of Westminster.

I’m getting close to my 50th birthday, so I’m prone to nostalgia. My mind wanders back forty years to my primary school days in the early 1980s in a village in Sussex.

Once or twice a week, we’d have school assembly. This included singing hymns. Not something that a shy seven-year-old would usually enjoy. But, in fact, we belted out a series of classics with gusto, accompanied by an almost proficient teacher on an almost tuned piano.

To Be A Pilgrim with its lyrics about fighting giants. All Things Bright And Beautiful and those purple headed mountains. And then our favourite When I Needed A Neighbour with the opportunity to scream out the words “I was cold, I was NAKED!” at top volume, cheekily looking at your classmates as you asked, “Were you there?”

The thing about those hymns was that the lyrics stuck. Not just now, decades on, but even back then. And so when a teacher in assembly started to talk to the school about the famine in Ethiopia or the hurricane in the Caribbean, you began to think “Is that my neighbour?” And when your church encouraged you to deliver envelopes door to door to raise money for Christian Aid Week, you asked yourself “Was I there?”

Of course that was the intention of those songs. The story of When I Needed A Neighbour is bound up with the history of social justice movements in the UK and in particular the organisation I work for, Christian Aid.

Christian Aid was founded in 1945 by the British and Irish churches, who felt convicted to do something to tackle the refugee crisis and poverty sweeping across Europe following the Second World War.

By the late 1950s, it was running Christian Aid Week - a big charity appeal to tackle global poverty long before Live Aid or Comic Relief. And as Christian Aid reached its twentieth anniversary in 1965, this annual fundraiser was a big deal.

Such a big deal in fact, it decided to launch the fundraiser in Trafalgar Square by running a Beat & Folk Festival. You can find an old newsreel of the occasion on YouTube. Nelson’s Column is surrounded by thousands of young people listening to the Christian equivalent of Peter, Paul and Mary and getting fired up about global injustice.

For the occasion, the then Christian Aid area secretary for London, Brian Frost, decided that a new song needed to be written. And so he approached the modern hymn writer of the moment, Sydney Carter. Two years early, Sydney had written his most famous hymn Lord of the Dance.

Brian was of that era when Christians were at the heart of the anti-apartheid movement and committed to ecumenical action. And so combining this passion for social justice and the folk song mastery of Carter - When I Needed A Neighbour was born.

As Christian Aid marks its 80th anniversary, we revisited this classic. When you watch the newsreel of an early performance in 1965, you quickly realise its folk credentials. It’s not just the fact that it’s being sung by marvellously hirsute men, it’s also there in the folk melody, guitar accompaniment and sung refrains.

A year later Sydney Carter would record an EP that included Lord of the Dance which featured the folk royalty of Martin Carthy on guitar. For folk aficionados, you’ll know him as one of the English folk music greats - married to the incredible Norma Watterson and father to Eliza Carthy. For those less familiar with the genre, he was also an important inspiration for Paul Simon and Bob Dylan - yes, him off A Complete Unknown.

There’s no evidence that Martin appeared on When I Needed A Neighbour but I think his involvement a year later confirms that the song sits firmly in the Sixties folk music boom. To young ears, it would have been hip. To older ears, perhaps scandalous.

How do you reimagine such a classic as When I Needed a Neighbour, 60 years on from its birth - and now 80 years into Christian Aid’s history? Especially at a time when we witness our global neighbours in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, the DRC, and more wondering if - in the face of conflict and humanitarian disaster - anyone is there.

We started with the lyrics. In 1965, Sydney Carter captured something of the simplicity of the issue at hand. People are cold, hungry and in need of shelter. And there’s something that each and every one of us can do, in our common humanity, no matter who we are, whatever our creed, ethnicity or background.

Within a few years of the song being written however, Christian Aid had a lightbulb moment - it wasn’t enough for us to respond to emergencies around the world. Not enough also to work with communities on long term economic development. No, if are to live out God’s call to act justly and to love mercy, then we needed to be part of movements tackling the unjust structures and systems that result in poverty and inequality around the world.

And so in returning to When I Needed A Neighbour and working with hymn writer Ally Barrett, we have now written new words that act as a call to each and every one of us to be a neighbour by speaking out for justice. This is something that Christian Aid has done throughout our history, calling for action to drop the debt in the 1990s or as one of the first development organisations campaigning for climate justice in the 2000s.

This week we marked our 80th anniversary at Westminster Abbey by recommitting ourselves to God’s call for justice. And this included the Kingdom Choir (who famously sang at Harry and Megan’s wedding) and the Sacred Choir from Twyford Church of England school in London performing a gospel-tinged version of When I Needed A Neighbour.

My hope is that, 60 years on, the song will still carry resonance. In an age when conflicts rage, the climate crisis runs riot and inequality is rife, isn’t it time to answer When I Needed A Neighbour’s call again?

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