God Is Doing a Great Work in China, Carey Says After 12-day Visit
Episcopal News Service. October 5, 1994 [94165]
At the conclusion of his 12-day visit, Archbishop of Canterbury George L. Carey said that "God is doing a great work in China and I am heartened by all that I have seen."
Citing the purpose of his trip "to listen and learn, to encourage fellow Christians in China and to return with a more informed view of the situation," Carey said in a final statement issued September 22 that the rest of the Christian world had much to learn from the Chinese who have shaped a post-denominational church.
During his visit to four major cities Carey said that he "sensed a search going on at all levels of society, but particularly among the intellectuals and the young, for an authoritative basis for morality." He added that it was clear to him that the Chinese church "has an important contribution to make to the quest for an ethical basis for the community and the individual."
Carey also addressed criticism that his visit did not challenge the Chinese government's implementation of its policy of religious freedom. He said that he was able to speak with government leaders about the general situation and several specific cases. He pleaded that violations of the policy "be seen against the general background of great encouragement for the Christian Church. In the main, religious toleration is a reality. The church is growing and that growth is generally unimpeded." Carey did admit, however, that the picture is "uneven." The Chinese Christian Council (CCC), representing the officially recognized churches in China, received "well over 500 complaints which ranged from property issues to reports of violence against church members and the unlawful use of detention without trial."
The government's requirement that all places of worship be registered has also stirred controversy in China and abroad. "It is quite clear that the official stated policy of the government is not to interfere in the internal affairs of the church but rather to protect the people's right to exercise their faith within the confines of the law," Carey said in his statement. He added that he was told that the registration was not "an attempt to control or limit the church." Yet he quoted his host, Bishop K.H. Ting of the CCC, who said recently that the implementation of the government policy must be "carefully monitored."
Chinese church leaders also discussed with Carey the difficulty in obtaining land to build new churches and the slow return of church property earlier seized by the government. The archbishop said that he looked forward to the day when the former Anglican Cathedral in Shanghai, for example, would serve once again as a center of Christian worship.
The church in China is experiencing some growing pains. It emerged from a period of persecution during the Cultural Revolution of the early 1970s and has grown dramatically in recent years. From a handful of churches in 1979 there are now over 8,000 churches open and another 20,000 "meeting points," often called house churches, and a membership estimated at over five million. The Catholics in China are completely separate with an estimated membership of about four million.
"The Chinese Church is beginning to look beyond itself, to see what it can give to and receive from the worldwide church," Carey said in a September 27 column in the London Times. As others seek to form a "fresh partnership" with the Chinese church it must be sensitive that such efforts "are not driven by the desire to export forms of culturally inappropriate Christianity into a church which is now truly indigenous," Carey said in his final statement.
One "excellent example of the style partnership" Carey would like to encourage is the production of Bibles by the Amity Printing Press in Nanjing. During his visit, the press announced that it had printed eight million Bibles since it was established with international cooperation in 1986 -- over 2.2 million this year alone.
While demand continues to exceed supply, Carey is among those who have argued against efforts to smuggle Bibles into China, contending that such activities "may well be damaging to the long-term cause of Christianity" because it contributes a "general nervousness" about the role of Christianity in society among government leaders.
"We need to understand the complex and often precarious world in which Chinese Christians live," Carey wrote in the Times column. "We must not make their lives more difficult through irresponsible actions or statements." Among the things the Chinese can teach others is "humility as we listen to the story of their faith, forged through suffering." The Chinese "have known what it means to be arrested, vilified and tortured for their faith. Yet that faith still strikes with an integrity that no one who has met them can doubt."
![[thumbnail: Carey Reports 'God Is Doi...]](/e-archives/ENS/photographs/thumbnails/94165_thb.jpg) |