Christians in China border valley keep sweet faith
Pastor Dale Morgan
Christians in China border valley keep sweet faith*
By Emma Graham-Harrison
Reuters
Wednesday, May 30, 2007; 4:04 AM
GONGSHAN, China (Reuters) - When China's communist army razed his
church, Jesse's grandfather climbed into the forests stacked up above
his valley and carved a hole in the trunk of a tree to hide his bible.
Half a century later the wilderness is retreating but his grandson,
sitting in front of the church and scripture school rebuilt from
scratch, no longer needs it.
His unusual Protestant faith -- which bans smoking and drinking,
celebrates the most sacred communion ritual with honey instead of wine
and calls followers to five singing and dancing services a week -- is
spreading fast.
"I heard the music when I was walking past the church, it drew me in,"
says weatherbeaten farmer He Chunhua, a recent convert and the only
Christian in his family.
"I could not understand the words, but the singing still touched me,"
added He, one of the few believers who do not belong to the Lisu ethnic
minority that dominates the valley near the Myanmar border.
The number of church-goers in Jesse's sparsely populated and poor home
county in southwestern Yunnan province has roughly tripled since a
decade ago to around a modest 6,000.
Each summer, after the snow thaws and remote valleys become accessible
again, the school trains around 50 believers to help strengthen their
own churches and spread the faith.
Students pay around 150 yuan ($20) a month for food, board and tuition,
studying in an area a long day's travel and a world away from the
wealthy, largely atheist cities of the east coast.
Gongshan is tucked into one of the remotest corners of China, where
steep hillsides dotted with huge fronds of bamboo and traditional wooden
Lisu houses plunge down to the raging torrents of the Nu River, whose
name means angry in Chinese.
FIRM ROOTS
Christianity had firm roots in the region and it was a missionary, James
Fraser, who first developed a written version of the Lisu language.
He was one of a string of Catholics and Protestants who headed up the
valley to preach from the late 19th century -- and the Lisu's strict but
musical faith likely reflects the teetotal culture of many evangelist
groups at the time.
But after Mao Zedong's 1949 civil war victory, the valley's churches
were destroyed, bibles burnt or hidden and believers like Jesse's
grandfather had to worship alone for fear of persecution by the
Communist, and officially atheist, government.
"I used to hear him chanting scriptures, at midnight or one in the
morning. I knew it was the Lisu language but still I didn't understand
it. Actually I thought he was a bit mad," Jesse said with a smile.
Everyone in the village of wooden houses with thin walls knew about the
prayers, but the old man had "a strong character and a long knife,"
Jesse said, so cadres left him alone.
With Mao's death and China's gradual opening, the climate for believers
thawed. A group of grey-haired worshippers gathered at Jesse's house for
improvised services and a younger generation was gradually drawn in by
the teaching and singing.
The country now has 40 to 80 million active Christians, experts say,
evenly divided between state-sanctioned churches and underground ones
that meet at members' homes.
Gongshan's church and school, and the growing network of white-washed
chapels strung out along the valley -- many furnished with little more
than planks and a rough table -- are testament to hard work and a more
tolerant government.
CHALLENGES
But although Protestantism is one of five religions officially
sanctioned by Beijing, believers still operate on a precarious basis.
In a post-Mao society where an ideological vacuum has spawned corruption
and eroded ethics, Chinese leaders are wary that religious revival could
be a force for subversion.
A Protestant minister was jailed for three years in 2005 for illegally
printing Bibles. Earlier this year the Protestant vice-principal of a
Chinese Communist Party training school said she was demoted for
organizing a Bible study session.
Despite a full class at the school the church still has room for expansion.
Between Communist Party members, drinkers who can't quit and the simply
uninterested, less than a third of the Lisu in the area are
church-goers, estimates Luke, a teacher at the school who like Jesse
added a biblical name to his Lisu and Mandarin ones.
But he feels no need to compromise their strict faith to attract new
believers.
"We will support people who are ready to become Christians in giving up
drinking, but we cannot baptize them until they stop," said Luke, as
chanting from the makeshift classroom drifted across the church's courtyard.
"Its a way of showing your faith to the outside."