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Justin Welby ponders landmark China tour to see explosion of Christianity

Justin Welby ponders landmark China tour to see explosion of Christianity
Archbishop of Canterbury facing diplomatic tightrope after invitation from Communist authorities to visit China to see 'harmonious coexistence'

By John Bingham
Religious Affairs Editor
THE TELEGRAPH
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Dec. 14, 2014

The Archbishop of Canterbury is considering a landmark visit to China amid signs that the communist economic superpower is on course to become world's "most Christian" country within a generation.

China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming extended the invitation during a meeting with the Most Rev Justin Welby and his wife Caroline at Lambeth Palace last month.

Despite decades of repression in the officially atheist country, Christianity has seen spectacular growth there in recent years.

If it continues at the recent pace, the number of believers in China is expected to overtake that of the US within 15 years and then outstrip those in countries such as Mexico and Brazil soon thereafter.

But the prospect of a visit at the behest of the communist authorities, just months after claims of a new crackdown on some strands of Christianity, would place the Archbishop on a diplomatic tightrope.

Although China publicly espouses religious freedom, Christians are only officially meant to attend state registered churches, including both a "patriotic" brand of Catholicism, which answers to the Communist party and is not directly linked to the Vatican, and two larger protestant umbrella groups.

But much of the most dramatic growth in recent years is believed to have taken place within a network of effectively underground house churches without official recognition or control.

Chinese officials in the UK are said to be enthusiastic about the prospect of the Archbishop, the leader of third biggest Christian community in the world, visiting the country.

The Chinese Embassy in London underlined the significance of a possible visit by taking the step of announcing on its website that the Archbishop had been invited, even though no official offer has been extended.

A notice on the website pointedly praises relations between the Church of England and the two state-registered protestant groups, the China Christian Council and National Committee of Three-Self Patriotic Movement.

It adds that Archbishop Welby had been invited "to witness the harmonious coexistence of different religions and ethnic groups" in China.

Lambeth Palace declined to comment on the possibility of a visit to the communist country, adding only that there had not yet been an official invitation.

Dramatic photographs of the demolition of the newly built Sanjiang megachurch in Wenzhou, despite thousands of Christians forming a human shield around its entrance, was widely seen as evidence of a major new crackdown on Christianity in the province of Zhejiang.

Officials rejected those accusations, alleging the church had violated building codes but it was only one in a series of incidents pointing to a clampdown.

In practice the relationship between the Communist authorities and Christian churches is more complex.

In the last five years there are said to have been almost 5,200 new churches built or completely renovated not only with the approval of the authorities but usually with state funding -- a rate of three new churches a day.

Within that time there have been around 2.5 million baptisms within the officially sanctioned churches, with almost 3,000 new church elders trained and 4,300 seminarians graduating including in three new Christian seminaries.

One UK Christian leader with close links to China described the relationship as part of a "dance" between the Chinese population, attempting to manage rather than halt the explosion of Christianity.

"There is one foot on the gas and one on the brake," he said.

The embassy announcement explains that Ambassador Liu briefed the Archbishop China's religious policies and the discussions at the plenary session of the Communist Party Central Committee in October on the "comprehensive advancement of the rule of law".

"This includes appropriately handling religious and other social issues according to law and promoting the harmonious development of interfaith relations," it explained.

The prospect of the Archbishop, who has just completed a marathon tour of the 38 provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion, visiting China would not in itself be unprecedented. In 1994 the then Archbishop George Carey spent a fortnight in China. His successor Dr Rowan Williams also visited the country in 2006.

But the invitation to Archbishop Welby comes at a time of growing international focus on the suppression of Christians around the world, fuelled by persecution in the Middle East, and of high profile tensions between religious leaders and the Chinese authorities.

Perhaps most notably in recent weeks, Christian clerics including the Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen have emerged as major figures in the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. Cardinal Zen has spoken publicly of being prepared to face jail for the cause.

The tensions were also on public display this weekend after it emerged that Pope Francis had chosen not to meet the Dalai Lama in Rome where the Tibetan exile is attending a summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners. The Vatican is thought to have been keen to avoid further inflaming relations with Beijing for fear of provoking trouble for the country's Catholic community.

Although Christianity was first introduced to China in the 7th Century, it failed to take root despite several attempts to spread the religion in the following centuries.

By the 19th Century the conversion of "China's millions" became a cause celebre among Victorian Christians, who poured resources into groups such as the China Inland Mission founded by the James Hudson Taylor. But it suffered from its connection with colonialism and was seen as a "foreign" faith.

Under communism it rebranded itself as a "patriotic", more authentically Chinese movement but during the Cultural Revolution years the faith appeared to be on the brink of extinction in China.

Since the late 1990s, as China's economic transformation gathered pace, a renewal movement within the official churches was coupled with an explosion in house churches.

Estimates of the number of Christians in China today vary between 60 million and 120 million, which would suggest as many as one in 10 of the population are already believers.

It has been predicted that by 2030 there could be almost a quarter of a billion Christians in China making it the biggest Christian population in the world.

END

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