Recently in Religion Category

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times

August 07, 2011

His name is on the lips of the ruddy-cheeked monks, the anxious hotel owners and the intrepid tourists who make their way to this isolated and starkly beautiful town in the mountains of Gansu Province: will he come to Xiahe, as unverified reports suggest, and how long will he stay?

"He" is China's handpicked Panchen Lama, the second-most important religious figure in Tibetan Buddhism, and despite his formidable rank, his presence is not universally welcomed by the faithful in and around the white-wall Labrang Monastery that sprawls into a cavernous valley here.

In recent weeks, as word has spread that he might be coming to study at the monastery, emotions have spiked, as have the numbers of police officers, both uniformed and in plain clothes, hoping to head off trouble in a place where ethnic Tibetans have been unafraid to express their enmity toward Chinese rule.

"Nobody wants him to come, and yet still he will come," said one 26-year-old monk. "We feel powerless."

The main problem is that this Panchen Lama, 21, is one of two young men with claims to the title. The one chosen by Communist Party officials in 1995, named Gyaltsen Norbu at birth, is often referred to by local residents as the "Chinese Panchen Lama." The other is Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who would now be 22, a herder's son who was anointed that same year by the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader.

Most Tibetans are still loyal to the memory of Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, even if he has been missing since Chinese authorities swept him and his family into "protective custody" more than 16 years ago.

"We just hope he is still alive," said Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan essayist and blogger who noted that Gedhun Choekyi Nyima's visage, frozen as a 5-year-old, hangs in many homes and temples. "We are waiting for him."

As Gyaltsen Norbu moves from adolescence to adulthood, Chinese authorities are facing a quandary over how to burnish his bona fides: his standing will continue to suffer if he remains apart from Tibetan monks and the faithful, but officials risk inflaming passions by foisting him on a community that remains deeply suspicious.

In recent years, the Communist Party has tried other means to raise his profile. They named him vice president of the state-run Buddhist association and appointed him to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body that meets annually in Beijing.

But so far most of his public statements have left Tibetans unimpressed. In one typically stolid remark last March, he said, "We live in a society governed by law, while the religious practices fall into the category of social activity; therefore, only by administration according to law can we ensure a stable and harmonious development of religious affairs."

The government bureaucrats who oversee Tibetan affairs have come to the conclusion, one rooted in history, that only a significant stint in a prominent monastery can bolster the Panchen Lama's religious credentials, according to scholars and local religious figures.

"The Tibetans respect good Buddhist practice and accomplishment," Hu Shisheng, a researcher at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said in a telephone interview from Lhasa, Tibet's capital.

The government's struggle to legitimize the Panchen Lama among Tibetans foreshadows the deeper struggle Beijing will face upon the death of the Dalai Lama, when it has said it will name a successor. The Dalai Lama, 76, is still revered on the Tibetan plateau despite years of fierce propaganda that brands him as a troublemaking separatist, even as he insists that he is interested only in genuine autonomy for Tibetans.

Although officially atheist, the Communist Party asserts that only it has the authority to pick top spiritual leaders, who, according to Tibetan theology, are reincarnated from deceased religious figures.

A previous attempt to improve the Panchen Lama's religious standing in 1998 did not end well. After officials sought to pair the boy with the abbot of Kumbum, a revered monastery in Qinghai Province, the abbot, Arjia Rinpoche, fled China and sought asylum in the United States. "It was a very difficult decision, but I did not want to be seen as a collaborator with the Chinese government," Arjia Rinpoche said by telephone from Indiana, where he now lives.

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By Radio FREE Asia

July 29, 2011

Beijing fails again to force acceptance of their choice of a senior Tibetan Buddhist figure.

By CNN World News | Stan Grant (trying to) report from Beijing
April 24, 2011

The site of a planned outdoor Easter service at one of China's largest independent "house" churches was eerily silent Sunday as police blocked more than 500 worshippers from leaving their homes and detained more than 36 for attempting to attend religious services in Beijing, church officials said.

The gathering place for worshippers was empty as church-like bells sounded in northwest Beijing. Hundreds of uniformed and plain-clothed police officers swarmed the site of Shouwang Church and prevented CNN journalists from accessing the area.

Authorities confiscated credentials from CNN crew members and detained them for half an hour.

Worshippers spent several months preparing for the Easter service, according to members who spoke with CNN. Police on the scene told CNN they were stationed there for "security reasons."

Shouwang Church's senior pastor Jin Tianming is currently under house arrest by the authorities.

"More police have come to stand watch in front of my door in anticipation of Easter," Jin told CNN in a phone interview. "I've spoken to several of my fellow worshippers who attempted to attend our planned service this morning," but some were detained, Jin said.

"But we will not change our plans. We will not change our decision to worship as this is a matter of faith," Jin said.

A few worshippers were seen praying with bowed heads near Shouwang's proposed site for the service, but the site itself was sealed off by law enforcement. Vigilant plainclothes officers filmed passersby.

Shouwang means "to keep watch" in Mandarin.

Usually hundreds of worshippers gather at this illegal "house" -- or unofficial -- church, which is one of the largest Christian gathering places in the country. Shouwang Church is an unregistered Christian group that was forced outdoors after authorities blocked the rental of its previous office space in November, the church said. It has not been able to obtain a new location since.

"This is the worst time in terms of religious freedom across the board in two decades," said Bob Fu, a former independent church pastor and founder of the non-governmental organization China Aid. Fu has been speaking with Shouwang worshippers unable to attend the service.

"[Worshippers] are not a threat to stability, not a threat to society, and not a threat to China's harmonious society," Fu said. "By cracking down on these hundreds of thousands of worshippers, it will only create the opposite effect. To the churches, I would encourage them to stand firm."

Over the past month, more than 200 Shouwang churchgoers have been arrested and detained, according to the church. The leaders of the church remain under house arrest amid a wider government crackdown on dissidents throughout China over the past three months. Calls to local police regarding their exact violations went unreturned.

Shouwang Church representatives had vowed to defy Communist government mandates to cancel outdoor public services on Easter Sunday. According to a notice from the Governing Committee of Shouwang Church on Saturday evening, the outdoor worship service location would remain the same despite pressure from authorities.

On Shouwang's Google Buzz page, Jin warned that police would likely detain those gathering at a set meeting site but that it was important that members stood up for their faith.

"Each believer may act in accordance to his or her own faith, whether to be taken away quietly (by police) or to meet in a nearby location," the statement read.

The number of practicing Christians in China is disputed. Recent official data states there are approximately 15 million Protestants and five million Catholics worshipping at official churches in China, but unofficial estimates are as high as 130 million.

Authorities have cracked down hard on dissidents, activists and rights lawyers since anonymous Internet calls emerged in February for regular "Jasmine" protests. Prominent artist Ai Weiwei has been detained for approximately three weeks by police.

Sunday's worship ban came just days before an annual human rights dialogue between U.S. and Chinese diplomats scheduled for later this week in Beijing.

>>  Original Report

By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
April 17, 2011

It has all the trappings one would expect from the capital's most well-heeled and prestigious Christian congregation: a Sunday school for children, nature hikes for singles and clothing drives for the needy. Last year, the church, called Shouwang, or Lighthouse, collected $4 million from its 1,000 members to buy its own house of worship.

But Shouwang, according to China's officially atheist Communist Party leadership, is technically illegal. It is a so-called house church, which in recent years had come to symbolize the government's wary tolerance for big-city congregations outside the constellation of state-controlled churches. The church has been a release valve for an educated elite seeking a nonpolitical refuge for its faith.

That is, until now.

Evicted yet again from its meeting place by the authorities, Shouwang announced this month that its congregants would worship outside rather than disband or go back underground. Its demands were straightforward but bold: allow the church to take possession of the space it had legally purchased. Officials responded with a clenched fist.

On Sunday, for the second week in a row, the police rounded up scores of parishioners who tried to pray outdoors at a public plaza. Most of the church's leadership is now in custody or under house arrest. Its Web site has been blocked.

"We are not antigovernment, but we cannot give up our church family and our faith," Wei Na, 30, the church choir director, said last week just before more than 160 congregants were corralled onto buses and detained. "Satan is using the government to destroy us, and we can't let that happen."

The move against Shouwang, as well as other house churches, coincides with the most expansive assault on dissent in China in years, one that has led to the arrests of high-profile critics like the artist Ai Weiwei, but also legions of little-known bloggers, rights lawyers and democracy advocates who have disappeared into the country's opaque legal system. The crackdown, now in its second month, was prompted by government fears that the Arab revolts against autocracy could spread to China and undermine the Communist Party's six-decade hold on power.

Although many congregations continue to hold services unhindered, in recent weeks the pastors of two large unofficial churches in the southern city of Guangzhou have been detained and their congregations rendered homeless. In Shanxi Province, a house church organizer said the police attacked him with electric batons, and religious leaders in places like Xinjiang in the far west and Inner Mongolia in the north have reported increased harassment, according to China Aid, a Texas-based Christian advocacy group. Last year, the organization reported 3,343 instances in which house church members or leaders were detained or beaten, a 15 percent increase over 2009. Bob Fu, the group's president, said such incidents were part of the latest government campaign to try to force house church members into state-run congregations.

"I'm not optimistic a peaceful solution will be found to this crisis," he said. "The government's moves are forcing nonpolitical churches to commit acts of civil disobedience, which the government is not likely to tolerate."

Global Times, a state-owned newspaper that broke new ground last year by writing positively about house churches, gave voice to the most recent shift in official attitude with an editorial last week that condemned Shouwang as trying to "twist Chinese society by politicizing religion" and suggested that overseas Christian groups were using the church to subvert the government.

"All Christians, as well as those of other faiths, are Chinese citizens first and foremost. It is their obligation to observe discipline and abide by the law," it wrote.

Although house church leaders are careful to say that they have no interest in politics, their insistence on independence from state supervision and their real or imagined associations with foreign churches have stoked deep-seated fears among China's authoritarian leaders, who have been suspicious of Christianity since 1949, when the Communists took power, branded missionaries as agents of imperialism and threw them out of the country.

"The bottom line is that house church members believe in Jesus, not the party's version of Jesus," said Zhang Minxuan, a pastor and president of the Chinese House Church Alliance, who says he has been detained 41 times.

>> Complete Report Here

By Andrew Jacobs and Sharon LaFraniere | The New York Times
April 11, 2011

The police detained more than 100 members of an underground Protestant church on Sunday after the congregation tried to pray in a public plaza in the north of the capital.

The raid on the church, which sought to pray outside after it was evicted from its building under government pressure, was part of a broad crackdown on dissent over the last seven weeks. The campaign has led to the jailing of scores of rights lawyers, writers and activists, as well as the repression of unauthorized worship.

The authorities have also clamped down on less obvious threats, canceling events as diverse as a St. Patrick's Day parade and a collegiate debate tournament this weekend.

The Protestant church, Shouwang, was evicted last week from the space it was renting after the government pressured the landlord not to renew the lease. The congregation, whose 1,000 members make it one of the largest unregistered churches in China, has been seeking legal recognition since 2006.

According to church members, the pastor, the Rev. Jin Tianming, church leaders and scores of other parishioners were blocked by the police from leaving their homes on Sunday. Others were seized as they emerged from the subway station at Zhongguangcun Plaza, where the services were to be held.

By 8 a.m., hundreds of police officers, both uniformed and in plain clothes, swarmed the area. They questioned passers-by and corralled church members onto buses.

At one point, a group of plainclothes police officers kicked and beat a group of four young people. As one of the buses pulled away, the congregants pulled out a prayer sheet and began to sing.

Church leaders said 169 people were detained throughout the day, with most taken to a nearby elementary school, where they were briefly questioned and photographed; most were released later in the day, although church leaders said that at least three people, including a pastor, were still being held as of Monday morning. A man who answered the phone at the Haidian police station, several blocks from the site of the planned prayer service, refused to answer questions about the detentions.

After years of tolerance by religious authorities, unregistered churches have faced pressure to either disband or join the system of state-controlled congregations. The government first forced Shouwang out of its rented quarters in 2008. In 2009, the church paid $4.1 million for a floor in an office building but the owner, under pressure from the authorities, has refused to hand over the keys. Until last week, the church had been meeting in a restaurant.

The church made no secret of its plans to gather outdoors, announcing the service on the Internet. During his final sermon last week, Mr. Jin warned his congregants they would likely meet resistance. "At this time, the challenges we face are massive," he said. "For everything that we have faced, we offer our thanks to God. Compared with what you faced on the cross, what we face now is truly insignificant."

The canceled debate tournament was to have drawn students from 16 universities to the Beijing Institute of Technology, where they were to have wrangled over the topic of China's 1911 revolution. The revolution against the Qing Dynasty, which helped cement Sun Yatsen's reputation as the founding father of modern China, may not seem controversial at first blush.

But authorities might have been concerned about the organizers' statement on the tournament's Web site, urging students to recognize not only "the inspirational revolutionary victory, but what is hidden deeper beneath: the awakening of the awareness of this country's people and the dissemination of a system of democracy."

The Web site also encouraged students to "think deeper about nationalism, democracy and livelihood, to continue to blaze new trails in a pioneering spirit, to keep fighting for the renovation and development of the nation."

Zhang Ming, a judge for the competition and a political science professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said the municipal Communist Youth League committee ordered organizers to cancel the event on Friday evening, a day before the opening debate.

"Everyone was pretty disappointed," Mr. Zhang said in a telephone interview on Sunday. "This is really hateful for them to do. The organizers said they tried to negotiate with the committee, but they couldn't change the decision."

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