China: Official Protestant churches and the new five-year-plan

A must-read article was published by China Source on 3 April 2024, in which US Professor Carsten Vala of Loyola University Maryland compares the previous five-year plan (2018-2022) of the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and the China Christian Council (CCC) with the most recent one (2023-2027). In conclusion he states: “The most important conclusion is that the TSPM/CCC now lays far greater emphasis on political loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party and comparatively weaker emphasis on traditional Christian ideas.” He also states: “Much of the concern overseas has been that the official church is rewriting the Bible or changing traditional theological concepts. In fact, in more than 20 years of studying the church in China, this is the closest that I’ve seen such efforts actually taking place.”

World Watch Research analyst Thomas Muller comments: “The 2023-2027 plan states that Protestants should ‘abandon content that cannot keep pace with the times in interpretation of the Bible and doctrine’ and ‘reform old ideas that are out of date and inconsistent with biblical principles’. However, this should be done via a theology with ‘Chinese characteristics’. This is a well-used phrase by Xi Jinping and can be seen as a gateway for introducing Communist political values into theology. As Vala points out:

Does this mean throwing overboard traditional and orthodox theological concepts? And integrating traditional culture into theology? Yes to both! For example, the outline calls for efforts to ‘construct a theory of man with Chinese church characteristics’ that draws on traditional culture and biblical teaching to ‘correct the negative and one-sided human theory that overemphasizes original sin and total depravity.’ In its place, the call is to ‘build a Christian theory of man that combines the tradition of the ecumenical church and the excellent Chinese cultural tradition … in line with the middle way’.

If consistently implemented, this may have several implications, according to Vala:

First, divisions within the official churches will sharpen, as Protestants more swayed by political pressures will strengthen in comparison to those holding to more traditional and theologically orthodox beliefs. In particular, the cleavages between higher levels of bureaucratic leadership, particularly between the national or provincial leaders and individual church pastors, will become a chasm.

Second, the theological distance between orthodox unregistered ‘house’ church congregations and the official churches will widen considerably, as house churches will increasingly criticize official churches for ‘playing politics’.

And, most importantly:

Third, if Protestant churches more and more ‘toe the Party line’, their distinctiveness to members of society who are not affiliated with the churches will wane, weakening the attraction of the Christian faith. And, perhaps, this has been Xi Jinping’s vision for a Sinicized Christianity all along.”

Thomas Muller concludes: “Only time will tell how quickly and intensively this new 5-year-plan will be implemented and it may anyway be hard to see the effects easily from outside China, given the continuing restrictions on receiving news, including censorship and self-censorship. Meanwhile, it is good to keep in mind that in socialist ideology, religion is seen as ‘opium for the people’ and it would therefore be good to get rid of. This can be done by violent means, but also by strict measures to force religions to adapt and make them in effect meaningless. This seems to be the path the Communist Party wants to follow in China.”