China: Targeting shepherds to damage the flock

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China | 16 May 2019

Communist authorities do not always target pastors with violence, reported UCA News on 30 April 2019; in the long term other means can be more effective and damaging.‚ Thomas Muller, persecution analyst at World Watch Research, comments: "Violence usually attracts international attention and is hence either avoided by the Communist Party or is reserved only for high-profile leaders of large churches who have become too outspoken. As UCA News reported - focusing on Catholic congregations - it is much more effective to simply make leaders of state-approved churches sit examinations and sift them by including political and ideological questions as is currently done in Henan Province. Equally damaging is the requirement that church staff sitting the examination need to be under 60 years of age and have an academic degree. This excludes most of those who were old enough to have been hardened by experiences of persecution during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). It is hardly a coincidence that Bitter Winter reported on 28 April 2019 that similar tests have also been introduced for the Protestant Three Self Patriotic Movement in Henan Province."‚ Thomas Muller continues: "Henan Province is home to a large Christian population, including three major house-church networks. Whatever happens in Henan will have consequences for Christians throughout China. The Communist Party seems to have adopted a two-fold strategy: On the one hand it goads the churches it controls deeper into accepting Party ideology; on the other hand it deprives the churches it does not control - the house-churches - of places to meet and tries to split them up into more controllable chunks."