Christianity and Women in Contemporary China

Abstract

In May 2005, Chong Yi Church, the biggest church in China, which sits about 5,000 people, was completed and dedicated in Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province in China. The ceiling above the spacious choir loft of this impressive church soars to more than two hundred feet, and the prominent white cross at the center measures sixty feet tall. During the dedication ceremony, Yang Lufu, at 90, conducted the choir of several hundred members with joyfulness and gratitude. The widow of the Rev. Cai Wenhao, a prominent Christian leader in Hangzhou, Yang has lived through the ups and downs of the Chinese churches: the adaptation to the founding of the People’s Republic of China; the closure of churches during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976); the reopening of churches in the late 1970s; and the phenomenal growth of churches in recent years. When the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, there were about 2.7 million Catholics, 700,000 Protestants, and 300,000 Orthodox Christians.1 In the 1950s, when foreign missions were attacked as cultural imperialism, the Chinese churches severed their ties with foreign missions and launched the China Christian Council and ThreeSelf Patriotic Movement: self-governing, self-supporting, and selfpropagating. The Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant churches was formed in 1954;2 in 1957, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association was established and the Chinese Catholic Church began to elect and consecrate its own bishops. However, many Chinese Christians remained suspicious of the Three-Self Movement and fearful of government control in religious affairs. Instead of joining the Three-Self The Journal of World Christianity 2010, Volume3:1 #1-17