\n\tIt was my first July 4 in the United States. That weekend I attended a church service imbued with thankful sentiments for freedom of religion. Church
\n\tmembers from different countries together sang a special \u201cliturgical song.\u201d As we raised our voices to intone \u201cThen conquer we must, when our cause it is
\n\tjust, And this be our motto: \u2018In God is our trust,\u2019\u201d I burst into tears. Although I am not a U.S. citizen yet, I can\u2019t help being enormously proud of this
\n\tcountry, the \u201cland of the free and the home of the brave\u201d over which that Star-Spangled Banner is waving.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThis emotional celebration of freedom, however, evoked painful recollections of the hardships fellow Christians in my native China are enduring in their
\n\tpursuit to have a true Christian church in my home city of Beijing. On June 2, 2011, Time magazine reported on the China story. I know the reality of what
\n\tthey reported. Early in the morning of the day of worship, skinny young girls dressed in jeans and wearing ponytails, elegant couples in their 40s, and
\n\tdistinguished men who look like retired teachers all gather, with a funny mix of hesitation and bravery on their faces, at an unwelcoming square in the
\n\tmiddle of the university neighborhood in Beijing. Minutes later antiriot police intervene and arrest them without encountering any resistance. On the bus
\n\tthat takes them to the police station, they open their prayer books and start singing liturgical songs.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThose Chinese Christians belong to a nongovernment Protestant church in Beijing. The name of the church is Shouwang, meaning \u201ckeeping watch.\u201d The church
\n\tleaders\u2019 aim is for their church to be \u201ca city upon a hill,\u201d as Jesus said in His sermon on the mount. The light of the world and a city that is set on a
\n\thill cannot be hidden.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tMembers of the Shouwang have been detained more than 1,600 times; 60 members have been evicted from their homes; and more than 10 have lost their jobs
\n\tbecause they attended the church\u2019s outdoor worship services or simply because they refused to change their membership to a government-sanctioned church.
\n\tMany others were sent back to their hometowns, and some were confined to their homes during the weekends. Every time the church members were arrested, the
\n\tpolice recorded their phone numbers and addresses. Then they were tracked, blocked at home by the police from Friday evening to Sunday night, and prevented
\n\tfrom attending church service. The church members and their families were constantly intimidated and harassed so that they would give up their true
\n\tChristian faith. Some of them were tortured and forced to sign a disavowal of their spiritual guide before being released.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\t Why can\u2019t the church have a specific building to house its congregation and hold services? Chinese law does not explicitly state that churches cannot own
\n\tproperty and land, but the Communist Party rules that all land belongs to the country and the \u201cpeople,\u201d and the government gives itself the arbitrary right
\n\tto give land to or take it away from anyone without due process.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tShouwang started meeting at the founder pastor\u2019s home. With more and more members joining the church, they had to rent larger places, such as a restaurant
\n\tor office building, to hold services. By 2011 the church had more than 1,000 members, and rejected the government\u2019s demand to segregate members into
\n\tsmaller groups deciding instead to congregate together. After paying $4 million for meeting space in a Beijing office building, the church could not get
\n\taccess to the building because the authorities pressured the sellers who were afraid and refused to hand over the keys. Meanwhile, the government
\n\tthreatened other landlords into not leasing any space to the church, leaving the congregation with no place to meet and worship.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tDetermined to be that \u201ccity on a hill\u201d of which Jesus spoke, the church leaders continue preaching in a public park. They said, \u201cWe want only one thing: to
\n\tpractice freely our religion.\u201d Becoming a government-sanctioned church means that the pastor has to be chosen by the government, what the pastor preaches
\n\tmust be censored by the government, and evangelism is completely banned. As the worshippers at the church said: \u201cWe take only Jesus Christ as the head of
\n\tthe church and the Bible as the only moral standard.\u201d This is fundamentally against the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tEven before coming to the United States, I knew this country aspired to be a \u2018Shining City Upon a Hill,\u2019 just as Puritan John Winthrop preached to the
\n\tfirst wave of migrants to America in 1630. I fled from the grip of the Chinese Communist regime and joined a church here where I can attend every service
\n\tfreely and joyfully.\n\t<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the twentieth century at least two American presidents have quoted the \u201ccity upon a hill\u201d passage to remind us of our spiritual obligations, not just to
\n\teach other, but to the whole world. That sense of spiritual obligation is encouraged by the example of the Shouwang church, an example that moves Chinese
\n\tChristians and should move Christians all over the world to serve only God as our one and only Master, not the Communist Party or any other anti-Christian
\n\tform of government.\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was my first July 4 in the United States. That weekend I attended a church service imbued with thankful sentiments for freedom of religion. Church members from different countries together sang a special \u201cliturgical song.\u201d As we raised our voices to intone \u201cThen conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307],"tags":[139],"class_list":["post-6311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-july-august-2015","tag-july-august-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}