Will church registration stop persecution in China?

There was an interesting piece of news this week from our friends at the China Aid Association:

Right after Christmas, Pastor Jin Tianming, a pastor of at least nine house churches in Haidian District (Beijing), was detained and questioned at a police station for one night. Dozens of other leaders in his church were also questioned. Pastor Jin, an ethnic Korean and a Qinghua University graduate, dedicated his life to Christian ministry in the beginning of the 1990’s. According to a reliable source, Pastor Jin’s church had been negotiating with the government to register his churches with the government, but the PSB denied Pastor Jin’s request to register his church with condition that they not join the government-sanctioned “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” (TSPM).

One of the things we sometimes hear from China watchers is that if the house churches would simply register with the government, their troubles and the persecution would end. But this case shows the fallacy of that position: here was a group of churches TRYING to register, but instead their churches were raided and the leaders detained and interrogated.

Registration is not the key issue for the Chinese Communist government. CONTROL is the issue they care about. As one Christian told me during one of my visits to China, Communist leaders want the people to believe that salvation comes from the Party, from being a good Communist. The idea that salvation comes through Jesus Christ is therefore considered dangerous by Communist Party leaders.

This case, where churches that were trying to register were instead raided by the Public Security Bureau, shows that registration isn’t the inoculation against persecution that some China observers say it is.

Todd Nettleton is the Director of News Services for The Voice of the Martyrs—USA.