The Chinese government is taking control of churches large and small, clamping down on independent Christians
Li Chengju glared at her prison interrogator as he pressed her to renounce her Christian church and condemn her pastor.
Li, who recounted her detention in a recent interview with The Times, belonged to the Early Rain Covenant Church, which authorities here in Chengdu dissolved late last year as part of a sweeping campaign by the government to rein in the country’s fastest-growing religion: Protestant Christianity.
But by the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, all religion was violently purged. Even the Three-Self Church was not immune, and many of its founders were tortured, sent to labor camps and worked to death. He said that growth has been particularly worrisome to Xi, who became general secretary of the Communist Party in 2012 and Chinese president in 2013 with a governing ideology centered on Communist Party control over all aspects of life.
Eventually, clergy are forced to change their sermons to align with “socialist core values” and paste Communist Party slogans on the walls.
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