Newsweek: The New China (2024)

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Missionaries Flock to China

Expelled by Mao, missionaries are flocking back to China. That'sfine with Beijing.

By George Wehrfritz
and Lynette Clemetson

The children are dressed in their Sunday best when "Grandma Jane" arrivesat the orphanage in rural Xinmi County. All 16 of them -- girls in summerdresses, boys in pressed shirts -- race out of their cramped apartments to meether. Jane Marcum hugs and kisses each one, bantering in broken Mandarin aboutnew haircuts and schoolwork. Together they enter the House of Hope. "When wefound Wenwei, he had no smile, no joy," the orphanage's ebullient foundersays about one of her charges. "His ears were frostbitten, and he had soresin his mouth." Now he has a home and a future.

Three young monks in Jingzhen sweep temple grounds -- cleaning the temple is a pre-dawn chore in daily routine. (Greg Baker/AP)

Until 1994 Marcum, now 58, taught high-school biology in Mound City, Kans.Then one day "God told me to move to China," she remembers. A self-described"spiritual Christian," she took early retirement, told her husband and twogrown children she'd see them during summer holidays and journeyed to Henanprovince, where friends introduced her to Xinmi officials. Within threeweeks, they had established the House of Hope. The whole operation costs lessthan $10,000 a year. Donors include Catholic nuns, a Baptist Sunday-schoolclass from Missouri and the Wall Street Christian Church in Kansas, whichgives $100 a month earned from a communal wheat field.

When the United States and China established diplomatic relations in 1979,President Jimmy Carter asked Deng Xiaoping to reopen Christian churches,print Bibles and welcome back foreign missionaries. Deng granted the firsttwo requests. China's state-approved "patriotic" churches (both Catholic andProtestant) have since opened more than 37,000 churches and "meeting places"and have printed more than 22 million Bibles. Underground "house churches,"illegal congregations that refuse to register with the government, alsothrive despite periodic crackdowns. Critics in the United States accuse Chinaof persecuting Christians. But by some estimates, 50 million Chinese havebeen baptized since the late 1970s. Now it seems Beijing has quietly andunofficially granted Carter's third wish.

Chinese place incense before their temple. (AP)

Not since Mao Zedong declared American missionaries "spiritual aggressors"and expelled them 50 years ago have so many foreign Christians worked inChina. Missionaries are still officially forbidden in China, andproselytizing is technically illegal. Nonetheless, more Christian activistsare entering China openly. By some estimates, 10,000 foreign Christianworkers now live in the country, more than half of them Americans.

Behind this change is economics: Beijing's rules no longer count for muchin the cash-strapped provinces. As reformers unravel the socialist safetynet, local leaders must find new ways to finance basic services like schoolsand health clinics. "Few local authorities will put bureaucratic hurdles inthe way of... Christians who appear with bags full of money," writesdevelopment expert Nicholas Young in the China Development Briefing, abimonthly newsletter.

It's all a question of tactics. Hong Kong Christian Council member PhilipLam went to China in 1993 to propose Project Nehemiah, a plan to rebuildchurches. At first, authorities bristled. "Nehemiah?" asked one official. "Ishe a foreigner?" Lam explained that Nehemiah was an Old Testament prophet,but that didn't help. Finally, Lam dropped the name Nehemiah. Authoritiesgave the OK. "You have to understand their sensitivity," says Lam.

Even after a half century of official atheism, some of the old missionarylinks remain. The small town of Hequ, in Shanxi province, counts a missionaryas one of its local heroes. Peter Torjesen, a Norwegian evangelist, shelteredwartime refugees until the Japanese dive-bombed his mission in 1939, killinghim. For that sacrifice, local communists proclaimed Torjesen a "people'smartyr." In 1990 they invited his American offspring back to Shanxi to unveila monument to their patriarch. Grandson Finn Torjesen, then a missionary inIndonesia, attended with 15 relatives and met Shanxi's vice governor. "Youare the picture of an old Chinese family, three generations gathered to honoran ancestor," the official said. "We want your kind of people back in China."

The family returned in 1993, establishing an outpost for theColorado-based Evergreen Family Friendship Service, a nonprofit humanitariangroup. Volunteer physicians and teachers train "barefoot" village doctors andscreen rural children for illnesses. "We're here to live in the community,learn the language and do what the community wants us to do -- but asChristians," says Torjesen. David Vikner has a similar family story. The sonand grandson of Lutheran missionaries, he fled the communist takeover as atoddler but later returned. Twice. In 1982 he taught English in Wuhan untilsuspicious officials asked him to leave. "They thought I was a spy," he says,laughing. Seven years later, he became president of the United Board forChristian Higher Education in Asia, a nonprofit established in 1922 to unifymissionary colleges in China. Since re-establishing links with the mainland,the board has worked with more than 100 Chinese universities, spending nearly$15 million. "We do not evangelize," Vikner says.

Why the disclaimers? Traditional stereotypes portray missionaries asopportunists who rode in on foreign gunboats and turned famine victims into"rice Christians." Missionary health clinics and orphanages created afolklore about demons who "took blood from poor people and killed babies,"says Zhuo Xinping, a religion specialist at the Chinese Academy of SocialSciences. Little wonder that although today's Christian charity work iswithout question a form of missionary activity, few Christians use the term.They stick to job descriptions like doctor, engineer, project director.

"Teacher" is the most popular. The majority of foreign teachers working inChina today are sponsored by Christian organizations. The Amity Foundation, anonprofit Christian charity established under the state-sanctioned ChinaChristian Council in 1985, now has more than 150 American instructors spreadacross the country. Amity's guidelines admonish them to express their faith"through service rather than proselytization." Yet many teachers bend, ordefy, the ban on evangelism by sharing the gospel with curious students on aone-on-one basis or inviting them home for Bible study. "When the group gottoo big for my apartment we started meeting in the fields," confides ateacher now living in China.

Christian teachers are having such success that religious groups arestepping up recruitment efforts. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, forexample, runs an Internet ad seeking applicants for a program called TEAM(Teaching English as Ministry). The ad says the job is "the most 'hands on'type of ministry that is available for foreigners." Insists a churchspokesman: "We don't permit overt evangelism."

Beijing isn't blind to evangelism, overt or otherwise, but its strategy isto regulate missionaries and tap them for resources. For that reason, manyChristians outside the country worry that it is too easy for localauthorities to skim money from donations and that cooperating solely withofficial religious organizations weakens the underground church. "Everyonemust do what God tells them to do," says a Hong Kong Pentecostal ministerwhose followers smuggle Bibles into China and evangelize in rural areas. "Idon't criticize those other efforts, but we're giving people the word of Godin the way we feel is best."

Some Christian organizations are trying to have it both ways with "twotrack" China strategies. They advocate both official cooperation andclandestine assistance to unregistered house-church congregations. Last year,the Southern Baptist Convention faced a mutiny when missionary directors inEast Asia proposed abandoning covert programs in China. After intense debate,the Baptists decided to keep their two-pronged approach. Beijing, which hadfollowed the debate on a Baptist Web site, promptly cut all ties with theconvention.

While Western Christians bicker over strategies, ChineseChristianity -- official and unofficial -- is growing rapidly as people searchfor spiritual meaning in a post-Marxist society. Down a winding dirt road onthe banks of the Mekong River, the Jinghong Church in China's southern Yunnanprovince is bursting at the seams. "Jesus is all the world to me," thecongregation sang at one recent service as latecomers crowded in. The churchholds three services every Sunday to accommodate a flock that is fastapproaching 2,000. With funding from the Hong Kong Christian Council, thecongregation hopes to build a new church this year. Local authorities arehappy about the plan, because the new building will double as a lay trainingfacility and community-service center. Elder Yu Di, a spirited preacher whor*built the congregation from a five-member underground church that met inher home in 1987, says the church has grown by testing the limits. "Before,there was no freedom for us. [The government] said Christianity was a foreignreligion," she says. "Now we can say our God is a universal God."

Chop by Chinatown Art Gallery

© 1998 by Newsweek, Inc.

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