{"id":54469,"date":"2016-05-23T19:11:26","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T19:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/nyt_decapitated_churches_in_chinas_christian_heartland\/"},"modified":"2016-05-23T19:11:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-23T19:11:26","slug":"nyt_decapitated_churches_in_chinas_christian_heartland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=54469","title":{"rendered":"[NYT] Decapitated Churches in China\u2019s Christian Heartland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>..people familiar with the government\u2019s deliberations say the removal of crosses here has set the stage for a new, nationwide effort to more strictly regulate spiritual life in China, reflecting the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/02\/27\/world\/asia\/in-china-civic-groups-freedom-and-followers-are-vanishing.html\">tighter control of society favored by President Xi Jinping<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/article\/0181dc9eb62b4c91ae76818b97c17eb0\/chinas-xi-warns-against-religious-infiltration-abroad\">major speech on religious policy<\/a> last month, Mr. Xi urged the ruling Communist Party to \u201cresolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means,\u201d\u009d and he warned that religions in China must \u201cSinicize,\u201d\u009d or become Chinese. The instructions reflect the government\u2019s longstanding fear that Christianity could undermine the party\u2019s authority. Many human rights lawyers in China are Christians, and many dissidents have said they are influenced by the idea that rights are God-given.<\/p>\n<p>In recent decades, the party had tolerated a religious renaissance in China, allowing most Chinese to worship as they chose and even encouraging the construction of churches, mosques and temples, despite regular crackdowns on unregistered congregations and banned spiritual groups such as Falun Gong.<\/p>\n<p>Hundreds of millions of people have embraced the nation\u2019s major faiths: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and Christianity. There are now about 60 million Christians in China. Many attend churches registered with the government, but at least half worship in unregistered churches, often with local authorities looking the other way.<\/p>\n<p>But Mr. Xi\u2019s decision to convene a \u201creligious affairs work conference\u201d\u009d last month \u201d\u201d the first such leadership meeting in 15 years \u201d\u201d suggested that he was unhappy with some of these policies. People familiar with the party\u2019s discussions say it intends to apply some lessons from the campaign in Zhejiang to rein in religious groups across the country.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/05\/22\/world\/asia\/china-christians-zhejiang.html?_r=1\">Read it all<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>..people familiar with the government\u2019s deliberations say the removal of crosses here has set the stage for a new, nationwide effort to more strictly regulate spiritual life in China, reflecting the tighter control of society favored by President Xi Jinping.<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=54469\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":832,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,157],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion-news-commentary","category-religious-freedom-persecution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/832"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}