China Sees Red: Christian Protest Puts Hundreds of Crosses Back in Public

[Valin]

Christianity Today:

(UPDATED) Protestants and Catholics unite for 'safe and legal non-violent disobedience.'

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra

8/3/2015

 

Update (Aug. 4): Several churches held a prayer service outside a government office yesterday, holding up crosses and banners that read, "Can't remove the cross in our hearts," reports the Union of Catholic Asian News.

 

The cross dispute is "destined to become one of the 'pain points' in the history of the [Chinese] church’s development," wrote Lude Wang in a Pushi Institute for Social Science analysis highlighted by ChinaSource.

 

"At its core, the Zhejiang Cross Dispute has revealed that in light of the backdrop of a new society, neither the church nor the state has sufficiently prepared to enter into a mature and constructive dialogue; nor have they shown a readiness to settle their differences and conflicts on the basis if the rule of law," she wrote. "How the church will coexist within a community holding different values to itself is an urgent question."

 

-----

 

The government of "China's Jerusalem" has torn down hundreds of giant red crosses from church buildings over the past two years. Now Chinese Protestants and Catholics are joining together to put red crosses—albeit much smaller ones—back in the public eye.

 

In an online campaign, church leaders in the eastern province of Zhejiang have called on Christians to craft hundreds of small wooden crosses, paint them red, and display them at home or on their cars.

 

“Each time they take a cross down, we will put more up,” one church leader, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Guardian. “We are even considering making flags and clothes with cross patterns. We will make the cross flourish throughout China.”

 

(Snip)

 

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Zhejiang church demolitions: timeline of events

 

H/T Via Meadia