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 L: Rev. Eric So, interpreter, director of Hong Kong Christian Literature Council M: Mr. Lin Jian Xin, Deputy Director of RAB in Guang Zhou City R: Rev. Li Jia Mu, Chairman of Guang Zhou Christian Three-self Committee |
The recent series of verbal attacks between China and Western countries on various issues including religious activities in China, has caused many to feel the reality of the gaps of understanding on human rights between the two sides. In China there is a level of government involvement in religious activities, seen by some people as governmental surveillance or control. Others say the governmental policies are in place for the legal protection of the churches-official registered churches. The Chinese Religious Affairs Bureau, RAB, is in charge of religious activities on the local governmental level as well as the national level. The Asia Lutheran received a recording of an Asia Region - World Association for Christian Communication meeting with Mr. Lin Jian Xin, RAB deputy director of RAB of Gaung Zhou City. The following article is compiled from excerpts of the meeting. |
Maybe you have heard reports from outside China which deal with cases of religious persecution. These are only individual cases. I think that the foreign media may sometimes use such individual cases to try to describe a comprehensive situation to their subscribers. Our National leaders have said again and again, that the policy of religious freedom is a long-term policy. It is our national policy, and the Communist party is making efforts to put it into practice. It is not just a temporary or short-term policy. It is not decided by any individual; it is decided by the present situation and by the will of all of the people in China. The policy of religious freedom is for both believers and non-believers, so that both can be protected and have the right to make their own decision about any religious belief or non-belief.
Under the policy of religious freedom, there are two principles. The first principal is that religion should be separated from politics. The second, that religion should be separated from education. And one additional principal is that we desire that all religious communities be self-governing, self-administrating and self-propagating-the three-self principles. Our desire is that, under these three-self principles, all churches in China can belong to the Chinese Christians themselves. We do not follow a so-called galienation policy.h China is striving to be more and more open; we know that the world economy also seems to be going in the direction of more globilization. So, as a governmental department, we support all Christian organizations and communities in mainland China to maintain overseas connections with an attitude of mutual respect-we encourage them to explore dif-ferent channels to build those connections.
We are a national department which deals with religious affairs, and we won't interfere with any international connection between churches. At this moment, I can't say, 'OK, I give you permission to do as you want.' I think that the normal channel is through the local Council of Churches in China or perhaps through their national offices in Nanjing. Any international Christian connections will go through the Nanjing office, to develop relationships between the China Christian Council and other Christian councils throughout the world.
As far as I know, since the 80's the CCC has been developing and building up very good connections with overseas Christian councils; they have also become members of various national ecumenical organizations. Also I know that our CCC in Guang Zhou has excellent theological scholars. I really feel that in the past, under the leadership of the CCC, they have made excellent achievements in church development, pastoral work, and in building up their own operations. I have been told that they conduct very thorough research in the field of social work-as can be seen by their excellent accomplishments. I have found that all of the Christians in mainland China, or the majority of them, are patriotic, and they are devoted to their faith. They really maintain a good testimony in their society as well as giving themselves to social issues. I think they have a really satisfactory religious life, And also, within mainland China, different religions are mutually respected. Of course, since China is so big, I can't say that the entire country has the same level of achievement, but that is our situation here.
Government departments, like other departments, face many difficulties. The main reason for the difficulties is the inadequacy of facilities, knowledge, skills, and education. Policy is not really the cause of many difficulties. Religious policy is set by the national body, not the provincial. The responsibility of the provincial government is to implement it.
The development of religions is not our mission. Every religion has its own policy for development. Our main task is to support and protect all the benefits of the different religions under the national policy. And we do our best to coordinate between the religions and the social communities. What we are doing is to coordinate between the five major religions in Guang Zhou city. We are trying to act equally towards each of the different religions. We can't place special emphasis on Christians, or on Buddhists. We have to conduct ourselves equally among the different religions. Our actions toward the religious groups-whether we are being fair or not regarding a certain religion-should be evaluated according to whether we have been doing it legally, under the constitution or not.
Up to now, we don't have use of the mass media by religious bodies. I think, however, that the question is related to China's history. The traditional culture of mainland China is Confucianism. The religious concepts of the majority of Chinese people is pantheistic, and ancestor worship is also a deeply-seated concept among the Chinese. In the 4000 years of Chinese history no one religion can claim to have dominated China as a national religion, and none of the major religions ever became the governing power of mainland China. I think that under such traditional cultural influences in their history, the majority of the Chinese people do not really consider themselves to be a member of any one major religion. For example, sometimes they will worship the god of the Buddhists, and maybe the next day they will turn to worship another god-Taoism. I don't think that religion is a major factor in Chinese society. If we were to let religion use the mass media to reach the public, the question would be gWhat kind of people will make up the majority of the audience?h Maybe the majority of the audience doesn't have any beliefs. Also there is no clear emotional sense of belonging to one religion or another. I'm just speaking on the national level...in some special cases, for example if Islam or Buddhism is the religious majority in a province, maybe some provincial TV station will provide religious programming...maybe.
A religious belief is an ideology, a metaphysical matter. Since we are a socialist country, Communism is the major ideology of the governing party. I personally don't think there are conflicts between religious beliefs and Communism. I think that Communism deals more with political practice and social development, while religious beliefs deal more with an individual's personal faith-religion places more emphasis on that level. From the past governing experience of the Communist party, especially over the past 20 years, we have found that, although we have differing ideologies, as a governing party, we can coordinate different beliefs, groups, and people, bringing them together in a common direction for the development of our country, and to gain a common understanding among one another.
Compared with other religious organizations, such as the Buddhist, or Islamic organizations, the CCC is valued highly in society. They play a major influential role compared with other religions. One of the reasons for this is their excellent work in the establishment of churches. At this point, they have 12 churches and 12 family worship meeting places. This is quite a good development compared with other religions-in terms of reclaiming and rebuilding churches after the cultural revolution. That has been one great achievement by the Christian councils here. The size of the churches is quite large. And the construction of the church buildings is good; and they have good administration. They also have good training for middle-aged and young church workers. The training work of the Christian Council is far ahead of other religions.
In this city, they have the AGAPE Christian social service center. And nearly every local church also provides some other service to the community. Nearly all of the local churches, whenever they find there's a need in the society, they will try to gather the congregation to support the social needs. For example the relief work after the big flood from last year. As far as I know, nearly every church participated-and that means all 24 church gathering places. Almost all of them have young church workers. And the young church workers are coming to play more important roles in the church. For the past 10 years there's been a big problem with the gap between the elderly church pastors and their successors. It seems to have been overcome in the past five years, and it's becoming even better.
As far as activities to promote inter-religious activities, we have a meeting two times every year, something like a consultation, with the leaders of the different religions. We started these annual consultation retreats ten years ago. We don't hold these consultations in a place like this office, but we'll go to a remote area such as a recreation center. We think the religious leaders have already committed themselves so much to the service of their religions so we felt it best not to stay here, but to find a place-for example a country club, hotel, or some other beautiful place-where they can relax, feel more comfortableca place where they can share openly with each other.
Every consultation has a theme. For instance, one recent one was gThe Inner Development and the Inner Administrations of Religionh-how they can maintain and how they can manage their body better. The subtitle of that was gAdministration, and training of successors,h and we used this as an opportunity to listen to other people, other religious people as to how they conduct their own administration, and how they train their younger successors. 
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