| “We’re just seeing the level of control ratchet up by the government and the pressure against the Church get higher and higher.” Outcome of Strict Religious Laws The Chinese government implemented restrictive religious laws earlier this year requiring religious groups to get government approval for all religious activity, even in personal homes or in the pursuit of theological degrees. Chinese President Xi Jinping (Photo courtesy of Foreign and Commonwealth Office via Flickr under Creative Commons: http://goo.gl/PzfP8U) President Xi has suggested that religious groups do not conform well to Communist ideals and are therefore a threat to the government. He has pushed for religions to become more “Chinese-oriented.” Additionally, China dropped presidency term limits in February — the same month that stricter religious laws were implemented — which means Xi is now allowed to maintain his position as president indefinitely. Nettleton says now with Christian persecution increasing, “It does seem to be connected to that. You know, we talked about that earlier this year when those laws came into effect. Okay, what does this mean? And the answer at that time was, ‘We don’t know yet. We will see how these laws are implemented.’ I think what we’re seeing is this is how they are being implemented. The Communist party, the Chinese government wants utter and complete control of all religious expression, all religious gatherings within the entire country and they are not satisfied with anything less than that.” Note: in 2010 the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life estimated over 67 million Christians in China, of which 35 million “independent” Protestants, 23 million Three-Self Protestants, 9 million Catholics and 20,000 Orthodox Christians. Code for blog Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. |
| Tweet Donate Share Code for blog Really ‘Seeing’ the Elderly this Christmas Lyndsey Koh Elderly adults who require home healthcare suffer from depression rates at 13.5 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Senior hospital patients aren’t far behind with 11.5 percent experiencing depression. It’s easy for the elderly to feel forgotten and overlooked ... Since you are here… …we do have a small request. More and more people visit Orthodoxy and the World website. However, resources for editorial are scarce. In comparison to some mass media, we do not make paid subscription. It is our deepest belief that preaching Christ for money is wrong. Having said that, Pravmir provides daily articles from an autonomous news service, weekly wall newspaper for churches, lectorium, photos, videos, hosting and servers. Editors and translators work together towards one goal: to make our four websites possible - Pravmir.ru, Neinvalid.ru, Matrony.ru and Pravmir.com. Therefore our request for help is understandable. For example, 5 euros a month is it a lot or little? A cup of coffee? It is not that much for a family budget, but it is a significant amount for Pravmir. If everyone reading Pravmir could donate 5 euros a month, they would contribute greatly to our ability to spread the word of Christ, Orthodoxy, life " s purpose, family and society. Donate Also by this author " Chinese Christians face Persecution Unprecedented in Their Lifetime Lyndsey Koh Those older than the Millennial generation can remember extreme Christian persecution in China during the Cultural Revolution. Mao… " Ethiopia and Eritrea Celebrate new Peace; What will it Mean for the Gospel? Lyndsey Koh East Africa (MNN) — The recent peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea is being widely celebrated by their people. However,… " Supreme Court Ruling on Pregnancy Centers Encourages Pro-Life Movement Lyndsey Koh USA (MNN) — Last week saw a major victory for pro-life advocates. The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor… |
| So you see, both in the holy Hebrew people, a people beloved by God, and in the pagans who did not know God, there was preserved a knowledge of God – that is, a clear and rational comprehension of how our Lord God the Holy Spirit acts in man, and by means of what inner and outer feelings one can be sure that this is really the action of our Lord God the Holy Spirit and not a delusion of the enemy. That is how it was from Adam’s fall until the coming in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ into the world. St. Seraphim of Sarov Lou Shibai, The Peaks of Huangshan Mountain. Bishop Symeon Du of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church in Shanghai. (See p. 437.) Foreword Today, when thirty thousand people in China are becoming Christians every day – a number unprecedented in the history of the world – a growing number of people in the West are turning away from their Christian roots and becoming interested in ancient Chinese religion. Why is such a reversal taking place? Clearly, it is because many Chinese are now finding a true experience of Christ in the face of religious persecution by the communist government, while churches in the affluent, free West are losing an awareness of the essence of Christ and His teaching. In modern Western society, many people turn away from the Christianity of their formative years because they find its truths smothered under an unreal kind of religiosity. They see that the people in the churches are not changing and becoming better, but rather are comforting themselves and each other in their unregenerate state. They find that the spirit of the Western churches is, at its core, little different from that of the world around them. Having removed from Christianity the Cross of inward purification, these churches have replaced a direct, intuitive apprehension of Reality and a true experience of God with intellectualism on the one hand and emotionalism on the other. In the first case, Christianity becomes something that is acquired through rote learning, based on the idea that if you just get the words right – if you just memorize the key Scripture verses, intellectually grasp the concepts and repeat them, know how to act and to speak in the religious dialect of your particular sect – you will be saved. Christianity then becomes a dry word-based religion, a legalistic system, a set of ideas and behaviors, and a political institution that operates on the same principles as the institutions of this world. |
| Those older than the Millennial generation can remember extreme Christian persecution in China during the Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong, Former Chairman of the Communist Party in China, banned all religious activity with horrific consequences. After the revolution ended in 1976, persecution started to go down. However, this year, The Voice of the Martyrs’ Todd Nettleton says Christian persecution in China has gotten worse again. Much worse. “What we’re seeing in China is an increase in the level of persecution against house churches — or family churches as they call them — as well as registered churches.” Control and the Communist Party These believers have been asked to replace their cross. (Header photo, photo, caption courtesy of ChinaAid) Nettleton explains, “As always with the Chinese Communist party leadership, the issue is control. The issue is where is your first loyalty? Is it to the Communist party? Or is it to Jesus Christ? If it’s to Jesus Christ, then you’re seen as a threat. You’re seen as dangerous to the Communist party leadership, so they are doing what they can to exert control and ultimate authority by the Communist party.” Reports are coming out about Chinese churches being forced to take down crosses and display Chinese flags and pictures of Chinese President Xi Jinping. Last month, 34 house churches in Beijing released a statement detailing the harassments they received at the hands of government officials. Churches — even registered ones — have been forced to close in multiple provinces. Some congregations have been required by local government authorities to ban children from attending. VOM shares a good relationship with ChinaAid as both ministries seek to encourage and advocate for the persecuted Church in China. Bob Fu, the president of ChinaAid, recently visited VOM’s offices and Nettleton says he shared this update from a Chinese pastor: “The authorities came in [the pastor’s church] and said, ‘We’ll allow your church to continue meeting, but in order to do so, we want to put a facial recognition camera on your platform facing out at the congregation so we can monitor who is coming to church and who is here every week.’ The pastor flatly said, ‘No, we’re not going to do that,’ and the authorities said, ‘Okay, well then you can’t meet anymore.’ |
| Mitrophan Chin – Most Orthodox believers that are online are mostly converts and are usually self-motivated in seeking out the truth. They usually post anonymously to various online religous message boards to ask questions about the Orthodox faith. In the physical world, many times they would be drawn by the beauty of some of the restored Orthodox churches in China and would travel to visit such former churches like the St Sophia in Harbin or they may be curious and go seek out the existence of any former Orthodox church buildings that may have survived the destruction caused by the Cultural Revolution and ask around if there are any cradle Orthodox believers in the vicinity. Since mainstream Chinese media lacks coverage of Orthodox concerns, the web site also provides a much needed international and domestic Orthodox newsfeed in Chinese. Religioscope – Are there also other Orthodox websites in Chinese? Mitrophan Chin – The parish website of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Taiwan is also in Chinese, but uses traditional Chinese characters which are different from what is taught in mainland China which uses simplified characters, introduced by the Communist government to combat illiteracy among the vast Chinese population. The Holy Trinity parish is under the pastoral care of the Metropolitanate of Hong Kong and South East Asia, and His Eminence Metropolitan Nikitas has given his blessing to allow the use of their Chinese Orthodox material from their site to be hosted on Orthodox.cn in Simplified Chinese catered to the mainland Chinese audience. Religioscope – And what are your next projects for the development of the website? Mitrophan Chin – One of the next projects includes the Chinese translation from the original Russian accounts of the 222 confessors and martyrs of the Chinese Orthodox Church who fell victim in Beijing in 1900, drawn from the archives and first published in the January 2000 issue of Chinese Messenger (Kitajskij Blagovestnik) the official Russian language magazine of the Study Group on Orthodox Affairs in China organized by Department for external church relations of Moscow Patriarchate. The Chinese translation of the accounts can be sponsored with a dedication to the health or in memory of loved ones noted on the bottom of each sponsored page, as a means to compensate our translators. These accounts have been recently translated for the first time into English and can be read at http://www.orthodox.cn/history/martyrs/. |
| In Beijing the Orthodox priests were called lamas, and an Orthodox archimandrite was called ta lama (great lama). As time went on the Albazinians intermarried with the Chinese, and their descendants soon became indistinguishable from the Chinese populace. These descendants remained firm in their Orthodoxy. In succeeding decades the Orthodox mission in China was hindered owing to political problems which arose between Russia and China. Preaching to the Chinese was restricted. Nevertheless, from ten to forty Chinese converted to Orthodoxy each year in Beijing. Some of these early converts became iconographers, adorning the church in Beijing with Orthodox icons painted in Chinese style. In 1858 the political climate changed. With the treaty of Tientsin the right of residence was granted to Christian missionaries. This began a new period for the Chinese Orthodox mission. Archimandrites and priests who came from Russia translated and printed the New Testament, Psalter and Orthodox services in Chinese, thus laying the foundations for a native Chinese Orthodoxy. Preaching of the Gospel extended beyond Beijing, to Tung-tingan, where a church was built and many Chinese villagers became fervent Orthodox Christians. Churches were also opened in Hankow and Kalgan. 783 2. Priest Mitrofan Chang In 1880 the first native Chinese Orthodox priest, Fr. Mitrofan Chang (Chang Tzi-tzung), was ordained by St. Nicholas Kasatkin, Bishop of Tokyo. Fr. Mitrofan’s acceptance of the priesthood was an act of heroism, for at that time it was more dangerous and difficult to be a Christian than at any time in Chinese history. Anti-foreign and anti-Christian sentiments had grown strong in China in reaction to the colonial expansionism of European powers during the second half of the nineteenth century. Outbreaks of violence would occur, resulting in the deaths of foreigners and Chinese Christian converts. When he became a priest, Fr. Mitrofan said that he knew his end «would not be pleasant». He and his people were being constantly put to the test, being branded «devils second class», better only than the «foreign devils». |
| The Chinese are one of the most tradition-conscious peoples. Up until the coming of communism, the Chinese were doing things that they had been doing all the way back to Confucius; and Confucius said they were doing these things all the way back to the third millennium B.C. The whole outlook on life remained basically the same, and whenever there was a dispute, they would appeal to antiquity. " This is the way it was done in ancient times; we can’t change it.’» 790 Eastern Orthodoxy, with its uncompromising adherence to the original, unadulterated Christian path and its unbroken, unchanged transmission of Christ’s teaching from apostolic times, thus resonates with the Chinese mind. Secondly, Eastern Orthodoxy’s depth of teachings on the inner spiritual life, drawn from two millennia of mystical experience of the saints, can meet the ancient Chinese spiritual teachings on their own ground. Modern Western Christianity cannot do this. Orthodox Christianity alone can understand, appreciate and embrace the profound realizations of the genuine Chinese sages of the past, beginning with Lao Tzu, and separate these from what Lao Tzu called «sidetracks from the Way» in Chinese religion and philosophy. Moreover, Orthodox Christianity alone can open to the Chinese the greatest mysteries and the final end of the life in Christ: deification through total infusion of the Light of Uncreated Teh. In 1981 Fr. Seraphim, speaking of the ancient orthodox tradition of China, said, «If Christianity could have managed to get inside this tradition somehow and become a part of it, it would have worked, for the soul of the Chinese people would have been very well disposed to it». 791 With people coming to Christ as never before in the history of China, at a rate of more than ten million per year we see today the fulfillment of Fr. Seraphim’s wish. While love for Christ is evaporating from decadent Western civilization, it is blossoming in China. The Far East is far outpacing the West not only in the number of new Christians, but also in its sacrificial witness of Christ before the modern world. The Chinese people, who speak the oldest surviving language in the world, are connected to a noble and profound ancient culture. Now that so many are finding Christ the incarnate Tao, their next step is to connect themselves with the ancient tradition preserved in the Christian East, where they will find the most pure image of Christ and the most powerful means of acquiring His Grace. When this occurs, the noetic Jesus Prayer, enshrined in the inner temples of many Chinese hearts, will rise like incense to Christ. May the present book serve as a stepping-stone in this process of discovering, connecting and ascending. Appendix Two: A Letter of Hieromonk Seraphim Rose to a Spiritual Seeker |
| Mitrophan Chin – Vladivostok Diocese has a creative missionary endeavor by actually allowing its church to serve as a one of the tourist sites for Chinese tourists visiting the city. The church has prepared an explanation of the Orthodox Church and its divine services in Chinese which is given to the tour guides to explain to the visitors, and at the end of the tour, the tourists actually get to light a candle in front of an icon of the Chinese Martyrs. Not only tourism but Chinese immigrants outside the Chinese border in Russia have swelled tremendously. They have been seen as a rival economic force in Russia, as evident when the recent Bishop Council of the Russian Orthodox Church brought up this demographic issue with President Vladimir Putin. Putin turned the table around and asked the bishops about the conversion of the Chinese to Orthodoxy, since Orthodoxy has always been universal or catholic, and, furthermore, Putin emphasized that each person’s spiritual state is important. Religioscope – Let’s now come to your website. Orthodoxy in China – http://orthodox.cn – seems to be on its way to become a major ressource for Orthodox material in Chinese as well as for information on Orthodoxy in China. Could you tell us more about the content and purpose of this website? Mitrophan Chin – Orthodox.cn is created to be the portal of everything you will ever want to know concerning Orthodoxy as it developed in China and its environs, and especially where it is today and where it will be tomorrow. Catechetical literature and liturgical texts in classical and modern Chinese are gathered here for easy access for anyone interested in learning more of what Orthodoxy have to offer. Links to various Internet resources and Chinese Orthodox discussion boards are also provided to take advantage of the strength of the Internet in providing a wealth of information and exchange of ideas which no one site can provide. News articles related to Chinese Orthodoxy from Russian language media are translated into English and disseminated to keep the international English-speaking community in the loop concerning missionary activity made from the Russian Orthodox part of the world. |
| With a smile the little boy said, «It is not hard to suffer for Christ». Later that day the Boxers returned and took away Fr. Mitrofan’s wife Tatiana and his sons John and Isaiah, together with Isaiah " s nineteen-year-old fiancée Maria and fifteen other believers. Protasy Chan and Rodion Hsiu, who had not yet been baptized, bore witness that little John, still feeling no pain from the mutilation, went quietly with the Boxers and showed not a trace of fear. All of the prisoners were beheaded. Of Fr. Mitrofan’s family, only his second son, Sergei, survived. He later became an archpriest. The Boxers killed 30,000 Chinese Christians in the summer of 1900, 222 of whom were Chinese Orthodox Christians. Among the Chinese Orthodox martyrs were descendants of the original Albazinian Orthodox in Beijing; Clement Kui Kin, Matthew Hai Tsuan, his brother Vit, Anna Chui, and many others. The Church in Russia immediately proclaimed the Chinese Orthodox martyrs as saints, and instituted special church services in their honor to be performed every year on June 11, the day their martyrdom began. 784 4. The Chinese Orthodox Church after 1900 In the second century A.D., during the first era of Christian martyrdom, the Christian writer Tertullian wrote that «the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church». Such was the case with the Chinese Orthodox Church. After the martyrdoms in 1900, the Church began to flourish as never before. With indemnities paid by the Chinese government, the mission in Beijing was restored. On the site where the martyrs had been slain, a new church was built in their honor in 1903, called «The Church of All the Holy Martyrs», in which were placed the relics of many of them, including St. Mitrofan. Between 1900 and 1915 the number of Chinese Christians in general grew more than threefold. During the same period the number of Chinese Orthodox Christians increased fivefold, reaching 5,587 baptized Chinese. Centers for preaching the Orthodox Gospel of Christ were opened throughout much of China. |
| Today, there are a few hundreds of Albazinian or Russian descent who consider themselves Orthodox that reside in each of the major cities of China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Harbin. Many more are scattered in the western and northern autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia. In all, the most recent Chinese census have recorded around 13,000 Chinese citizens of Russian descent. Religioscope – How did the Church first manage to continue its activities under the Communist government? What happened then to Chinese Orthodox at the time of the “cultural revolution”? Did some type of underground church life continue, insofar we know it? Mitrophan Chin – The Church was required to be independent by Chinese government. Therefore the archbishop Victor consecrated archimandrite Vasily to be the first Chinese bishop of Beijing in preparation to lead the Church to autonomy which was eventually granted in 1957. The Cultural Revolution destroyed most of the Church buildings and many believers were persecuted. Church life was practically eliminated and the believers have to resort to reader services in private homes to continue living their faith. Religioscope – In recent years, there have been attempts by several Orthodox Churches to help Chinese believers. The Moscow Patriarchate has been quite active, including attempts to convince the Chinese government to register the Church. The Ecumenical Patriarchate (Constantinople) has established a diocese in Hong Kong – which is now part of Chinese territory – in 1996, serving South Asia and the Far East. Moreover, priests of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia have also been regular visitors to the Chinese mainland. Those visiting priests have performed baptisms and celebrated liturgies for scattered communities of believers. Would you please summarize those efforts? Mitrophan Chin – Efforts by non-indigenous priests have been hampered, including the recent deportation of an Orthodox priest who was secretly crossing the border between serving the spiritual needs of the Orthodox Faithful in Xinjiang in the western frontiers of China in December 2003. |
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