Christianity in China – Amity Press

We watched a video in church a week ago which claimed Christians were now able to worship freely in China. The video showed multi-million dollar churches built with government help, and a massive printing facility (Amity Press), producing bibles primarily for distribution within China.

This didn’t seem entirely correct, as it contradicts what we have been told for years regarding religious freedom within China.

It is hard to be sure about the accuracy of any information coming out of a communist country like China, but further investigation suggests:

• Amity Press may be owned by the Communist government.
• Amity Press only supplies bibles to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM, the official government-approved church of China, the big churches shown in the video).
• House-church members who buy these bibles from TSPM bookstores may be tracked down and forced to join the TSPM. If they refuse they may be arrested, beaten or worse. I hear the house churches may call the Amity bibles poison-snake bibles.
• TPSM pastors are only trained in government-approved seminaries, where they are taught Marxism and liberal theology.
• The TPSM cannot teach some doctrines which the government considers unacceptable, including the second coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead (removing the heart of Christianity, see 1 Corinthians 15:12-14).
• There appears to have been a crack-down on Christians in the lead-up to the Olympics.

It is hard to know the accuracy of the information I have just written. It is hard to know the accuracy of any information coming out of China. We need to be very careful not to just believe one source of information but actually read around and try to find the facts. This is extremely vital in this case as much of the money to set up Amity Press has been sent from the West.

If these accusations are correct, then the donations of Western Christians have been used to help persecute Christians in China. If these accusations are incorrect there is a lot of false information going around the place.

We know that China has no qualms about faking things in an Olympic opening ceremony (the singing young girl, the footprints, and the children from different ethnicities), and there are questions around their honesty in sport too. There is even more motivation for them to fake information about religious freedom. No Western Christian (like those producing the video we were shown) would be likely to deceive others about Christianity in China – all of us would be horrified about the way Christians are treated there. But the Communist party is perfectly capable of escorting visitors closely and ensuring they see just what the Party wishes them to see, and so fool both them and us.

We need to be very careful where we donate money, to be sure it is used for God’s work. But more importantly, we need to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters in China and around the world. We are so free in this country that we become complacent, and forget how hard life is for Christians in other countries. We also need to pray for honesty in China.

For more information check out:

Billion Bibles

Voice of the Martyrs

Three Self Patriotic Movement on Wikipedia