4

Destruction and Renewal: Christian Churches from the Early 1950s to the Mid-1960s

A few years after land reform, Christian activities publicly re-emerged. For the Catholic Church, it was a slow recovery. As was the case for communal religion, the end of land reform did not put a stop to state’s efforts to circumscribe or even eliminate the role of religion in local society. As part of the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, the central government launched a nationwide crackdown on the Legion of Mary, an organization affiliated with the Catholic Church.¹ In Wenzhou, the suppression of the Legion of Mary took place from the winter of 1951 to the spring of the following year. The Rui’an County Government clamped down on two branches of the Legion of Mary, forcing its twenty-two members to disband, and arrested Priest Lin Mingzhu of Rui’an parish in 1952 for his alleged involvement with the group.

The suppression of the Legion of Mary occurred on a relatively small scale, but it created a horrific atmosphere among local Catholics. They were afraid of being associated with a group now labeled as “counterrevolutionary,” and these fears were probably not without reason.² A report from a police station in the neighborhood where the Rui’an parish church was located shows that every church activist was under close surveillance. The report listed detailed information about the backgrounds, social relations, and personal characteristics of Catholic activists.³ Many Catholics did not dare rejoin their congregations after land reform for fear of political consequences. By January 1953, only ten out of the region’s twenty Catholic churches were reported to have resumed their activities. Five more became active again sometime in the next two years, but as of July 1955, the remaining five were still closed.

In contrast, Protestant churches made a much faster recovery. Many became active again soon after land reform without asking local authorities for permission. A few congregations did not resume their gatherings because they could not find a meeting place or their ministers had not returned. But by January 1953, almost all Protestant congregations had taken up their routine activities once more.

This chapter follows the evolution of Christianity in Wenzhou from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, with a focus on Protestantism. I start by tracing the development of Protestant churches up to 1957 and the tensions surrounding the growth of the church. I then move on to the “great leap in religious work” as it affected the church and explain why 1958 was such a critical moment for Protestants under Mao. The last part of the chapter explores the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward and how it transformed the landscape of Christianity in Wenzhou.

1950–1957: Protestant Growth, Catholic Stagnation

From 1952 to 1957, the central government implemented two crucial policies: collectivization and “unified purchase and sale.” These policies encountered fierce resistance in Rui’an, including riots and a massive exodus from collective farms along the southern bank of the Feiyun River and in the western mountains. These happened to be the areas where Protestant churches were the most active at the time. The root of the conflict was not quite the same as in communal religion, which had seen massive expropriations of land and then temple buildings. As with temples “borrowed” or taken for public purposes, collectivization and other political directives certainly supplied more pretexts to take over religious buildings belonging to Protestants. But the ongoing expropriation of religious properties did not have the same effect on Protestant congregations, as they had long housed gatherings in members’ homes and other convenient meeting places. In fact, Protestant communities throughout Rui’an continued to form new branches and gain new converts in the early stage of collectivization.

The Methodist Church is the only Protestant denomination that did not establish new branches after 1949. All of the other Protestant denominations formed at least one or two new branches during this period.⁴ The expansion of the Assembly was even more rapid. Solely in Chuanhe Township, Huling, from the second half of 1954 to July 1957, its gatherings increased from three to six. Between 1951 and 1958, the Assembly established a total of eleven new gathering places (juhuidian) in Huling, Tangxia, Xianjiang, and Mayu districts.⁵

Some Protestant communities were preparing to build new churches. In Zhuyuan Village, Huling, Protestants became the majority population in 1957, and the village’s Adventist community had collected all the necessary construction materials for a new church as of 1957.⁶ Ou Fachen, a founding member of the Assembly in Qianbu, Xincheng, recalled that the cloth factory where they met was no longer big enough to accommodate their membership, so they sought a bigger permanent meeting place in 1953.⁷ They collected donations amounting to 100,000,000 RMB (yiyi renminbi, about 10,000 RMB after the currency reform in 1953),⁸ and the new church was about half-built in 1958 when the Great Leap Forward put a stop to construction.

The government carried out multiple surveys in the 1950s in order to track changes in the religious landscape.⁹ Though colored by state discourse, these surveys lend some insight into Christianity in Rui’an from land reform to the Great Leap Forward.¹⁰

We can broadly class changes in church membership over this period into five categories: decrease, stagnation, fluctuation but overall increase, steady increase, and newly created communities. These categories cover ninety-two Christian communities in Rui’an. “Decrease” includes Christian groups whose membership fell more than 20 percent. “Stagnation” refers to Christian groups whose membership fluctuated less than 20 percent. Groups whose membership increased more than 20 percent fall in the categories “steady increase” or “fluctuation but overall increase.”¹¹ Figure 4.1 depicts the trend of Protestant populations between 1950 and 1957, using the above five categories.

Figure 4.1. The trend of Protestant populations, 1950–1957.

The Methodist Church and the China Inland Mission (CIM) were the two oldest and largest Protestant denominations before 1949. As Figure 4.1 shows, both grew after 1949, though in slightly different ways. Nine out of a total of twenty-one Methodist churches either stagnated or decreased in membership, whereas six Methodist churches showed a steady increase. Membership in the other five Methodist churches dropped in 1956 but increased overall. Sixteen of the seventeen branches of the CIM whose membership can be traced show a steady increase in numbers. By contrast, ten of a total of nineteen local Catholic churches either stagnated or decreased, while eight experienced steady increases in membership between 1951 and 1957.

The Seventh-Day Adventist Church seems to have lost ground after land reform. Of its eleven branches, two, the Jiaopu Church in Pingyangkeng and the Dongkeng Church in Huling, did not restore activities. However, membership in its seven other churches nearly doubled or even tripled. Among the fourteen China Jesus Independent churches (CJICs) listed in the surveys, seven experienced a steady increase in membership and one experienced fluctuations in membership, but there was an overall increase. The CJIC’s remaining six churches, which only appeared in government surveys after 1953, were mostly new establishments. Finally, nineteen of the Assembly’s twenty-three churches experienced steady increases in membership. Between 1951 and 1956, total membership in the Assembly increased by 86 percent.

The appearance of new converts in several villages of the western mountain areas is surprising. Some were even party members, a fact that concerned the authorities. “Protestant families in Duikeng Village in this township [Chuanhe] grew from one family before 1949 to fifty-five families with a total of 234 people [in 1955]. What is even more worrying is that [Christianity] infiltrated our party’s grassroots organizations in the countryside. Five party members and nine Youth League members joined Protestant churches.”¹²

In Huang’ao, Xianfang Township, the CJIC had set up a gathering place in 1938. There were only seventeen Christian families in the village in 1951. However, by March 1955, the number had increased to eighty-one families with a total of 348 members, making up more than half the population in the village. Three of the eight party members converted to Christianity.¹³

We see similar trends in some parts of Pingyang County bordering Rui’an to the south. The Protestant population in the towns of Qiaodun, Lingxi, and Zaoxi went from 237 before land reform to 352 in 1954.¹⁴ Comparing 1951 and 1954 membership numbers in the Assembly in Mocheng Township (in the suburbs of the Pingyang county seat) also shows an increase. Before 1954, Protestant gatherings were only active in a few villages, but after 1954, small groups started holding regular meetings throughout the township. Two Assembly churches in Mocheng had 308 baptized members and 305 inquirers (mudaoyou) in 1951. The number rose to 363 baptized members and 414 inquirers in 1954; 111 of these, most of them inquirers, participated in the Church’s activities after 1951.¹⁵

Socialist Production and Religious Freedom

As Protestant churches resumed and expanded their activities, their growth led to mounting tension with the state. During the Great Leap Forward, friction with local cadres, even local communities, would soon have a high price for the church. Government reports noted the Christian background of some of the individuals who took part in the riots (e.g., Protestants in the riots in Lingya Township, Huling, in 1953, and Catholics in the petitions for grain in Mayu in 1954) as well as those who quit collectives.¹⁶ Local authorities did not explicitly blame the church for the riots and the exodus from the collective, yet official documents were full of rhetoric denouncing church meetings for “obstructing production”—which may have worried grassroots cadres more than the church’s political or ideological dimensions.

From a structural perspective, religious activities almost inevitably collided with state-imposed collective units, from mutual aid teams to primary and advanced cooperatives (chujishe/gaojishe). These made up an ordered hierarchy of collective units that the state had created to exert full control over rural society. As the state reorganized traditional communities from the ground up, it came into conflict with religion, which was integrated into the rhythm and order of rural life. When religious activities continued to exist outside of state-imposed institutions, they unsurprisingly met with intervention and suppression, though the extent of this varied in different contexts.

In different communities, the state showed various degrees of tolerance toward religious life depending on its local influence and the extent to which local cadres perceived it as a threat to the collective order, especially the calendar of agricultural production. Collective religious activities, from Christian gatherings to Buddhist meetings and rituals in territorial temples, were all accused of “obstructing production.” Official propaganda often criticized dragon boat racing for wasting time and money that could be put toward production.

Grassroots cadres probably cared more about religious followers complying with agricultural production and the general order of the collective than the ideological and political issues surrounding religious activities. This was a real issue that they saw and had to deal with in everyday life. Some grassroots cadres felt that Christian activities interrupted collective production much more frequently than Buddhist meetings or territorial religious activities. Traditional communal rituals such as dragon boat rowing were usually annual or seasonal, while Christian gatherings took place on a much more frequent basis. In addition to Sunday worship (or Saturday for Adventists), small groups met for worship on weekdays. Together with annual festivals and gatherings, weekly Christian meetings formed a dense schedule that interfered with collective production. Thus, local cadres who wished to maintain the rhythm of collective life saw church meetings as an obstacle.

Some mutual aid teams or cooperatives mainly made up of Christians were willing to cooperate with the production aims of village cadres. Cadres did not harass them and turned a blind eye to church meetings.¹⁷ However, in official reports, numerous complaints by village cadres suggest that it was common for Christians not to cooperate with the schedule of agricultural production. Cadres from the coarse cloth cooperative in the town of Xincheng complained, “When Sundays came, Christians all went to church. [We] therefore could not complete the cooperative’s production plan. Their slogan is, ‘traditionally there are only six days [of work], there is no tradition of [working] seven days. Sunday is only a day of rest’. . . [We] could not implement the core programs of our party. They did not want to attend all kinds of meetings. Those who attended sometimes left in the middle [of a meeting].”¹⁸

In cases like this, retaliation was swift. Local cadres in Pingyang County quickly “intervened in religious life,” according to an official report:

Agricultural production cooperatives forced Christians to give up their faith as the prerequisite for participating in the cooperative. Some Christians suffered discrimination and exclusion in cooperatives. There were cadres who considered Christians “bad people” and treated them differently. They intentionally arrange more work on Sundays, wanting to prevent Christians from going to worship. . . . Christians complained that there was no freedom in the cooperatives. . . . The Christians of Lubian Village all quit the advanced cooperatives of Nanping Township and formed a separate basic cooperative.¹⁹

When cadres interfered with church meetings, Christians often cited the principle of religious freedom to fend them off.²⁰ In Xijie Village (Qianku Town) and Linjiayuan Village (Puqian Township) in neighboring Pingyang County, officials reported:

On Easter, the Qianku parish of the Catholic Church seized the opportunity to hold a meeting with the managers and followers of all nineteen branches. More than [one or two—unclear] thousand people attended and the meeting lasted for three days, which seriously affected spring plowing and production. Town cadres went to ask [them to join in]. Instead [of joining], they cited the “religious freedom of the Common Program” to reject [the request] of our cadres, who could only stare at them angrily. Grumbling that “the Catholics are rebelling,” they still had to hold in their rage. A member of Qianku Town militia said to the town head: “if you agree, I can use one bullet to shoot down the head [of the statue of Christ]!”²¹

Many grassroots cadres felt frustrated not only because of the resistance from below, but also because of the criticism they received from their superiors, putting them in an impossible position. County officials often construed village and town cadres’ responses to religious activity as inadequate or too divisive. According to an official report from 1955:

Our cadres are not willing to confront [religious issues], afraid of violating freedom of religious belief and making [political] mistakes. Some cadres even believed that any move would constitute interference with religion. . . . Therefore they did not dare ask about [religious activities]. . . . In some other areas, [cadres] use different approaches. . . . Some cadres in the district [of Huling] . . . consider all religious activities as counterrevolutionary. . . [They] arrest religious leaders in the middle of religious activities and interrogate them [as criminals]. Some places confiscated the Bible. Mayu seized church land for cooperatives to farm. Some places use verbal harassment (pilao baogao) to disturb festival activities . . . causing discontent among religious followers.²²

The pent-up anger and frustration of cadres could quickly turn into something worse. The “great leap in religious work,” which I discuss in the next section, represents the culmination of local cadres’ grievances against Christians and the momentary triumph of the hard-line approach. Though it was an attack on all religious traditions, it hit Christianity the hardest. For Protestant churches, it was the first such attack since 1949. The “great leap in religious work” was so extreme that it even caught the attention of some officials in the central government, as I describe in the following section.

The “Great Leap in Religious Work” and Its Aftermath, 1958–1960

In late 1957, religious control in southern Zhejiang tightened once again in the midst of the national Anti-Rightist Campaign. In October 1957, the Ministry of United Front Work formulated a plan to urge religious leaders to follow the socialist path and to accept the leadership of the Communist Party through debate. Yet when this plan was brought to execution in Wenzhou in 1958, local officials went much further than United Front officials in Beijing expected. Driven by the frenzied atmosphere of the Great Leap Forward, local governments promoted a local campaign of a “great leap in religious work” (zongjiao gongzuo dayuejin).

To Wenzhou Christians, the Great Leap marks a turning point in their relations with the state. While the brutal repression of Christianity is often associated with the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, it was in 1958 that local officials implemented new drastic measures throughout the region of Wenzhou to minimize the presence and influence of religion.

Prefectural officials in Wenzhou believed that if agricultural and industrial production could leap forward, so “certainly could religious work because it is the same as other works” (zongjiao gongzuo yu qita gongzuo yiyang shi wanquan neng dayuejin de).²³ A local campaign of “great leap in religious work” was therefore launched against religion in conjunction with the great leap forward of agricultural and industrial production. Almost all churches and gathering places were shut down or seized during the campaign. Local churches became deeply divided as many followers were coerced to abandon their Christian faith and even attack other members of the church.

The Ministry of Public Security and the National Bureau of Religious Affairs apparently favored the extremism displayed by local governments in Wenzhou. Officials from both departments, including He Chengxiang, the head of the National Bureau of Religious Affairs, held a special on-the-spot meeting in Pingyang in September, without officials from the United Front Work Ministry, to praise and popularize the Wenzhou experience.²⁴

The new drastic measures temporarily put a stop to church expansion. In April 1958, the Rui’an County Government convened a ten-day socialist education movement study class, which could be considered a prelude to the “great leap in religious work.” Two hundred and sixteen people attended the class, including Protestant and Catholic clergy, “core lay Christians” (hexin xintu), and Buddhist monks and nuns from all over the county. Among those summoned was Preacher Shu Chengqian of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the town of Mayu, ten miles away from the county seat. County officials considered “restraining and weakening religious activities” as a complementary measure to “support [the great leap in] industrial and agricultural production.”²⁵ But Shu, who wrote a memoir about his experiences, described the study class essentially as “a measure to exterminate religion (miejiao).²⁶

In the class, religious leaders and adherents were mobilized to denounce the “crimes” of imperialism and missionary enterprises in meetings and big-character posters. They were also asked to sign the “patriotic convention” (aiguo gongyue), agreeing to reduce the length of church meetings and restrict themselves to one gathering per week. Many religious leaders complied, apparently under great pressure from local officials. Some even “ ‘voluntarily’ canceled” weekly worship and “donated houses and church facilities to the commune,”²⁷ as officials reported.

The small group meetings were what Preacher Shu found most painful. Organizers distributed materials containing evidence of the “crimes” committed by religious leaders and activists, and attendees were asked to confess and denounce others, particularly fellow participants whose “crimes” were listed in the materials. Some made self-criticisms “admitting their problems.” Pastor You Daoshu of the Methodist Church, for instance, said: “While I pray to God all day and entrust my hope to empty delusion, [other] people are actively participating in the Great Leap of production and construction . . . I am useless to the construction of our country. I want to break away from the church and participate in production.” People like Shu tended to remain silent during the meetings. Shu was condemned for instigating villagers to withdraw from the cooperative in 1957 and was even accused of rape. According to his memoir, he did not respond to any of these charges.²⁸

In a similar case, Preacher Ye Zhiqing, a major leader of the Assembly in Rui’an, was also charged with several crimes. Ye was publicly attacked by some other Christians attending the study class for “throwing himself into the lap of imperialism” (toukao diguozhuyi), referring to his close relations with foreign missionaries before 1949. Liao Zhensheng, a fellow preacher who had been a close friend of his for over twenty years, even requested that Ye be sent to a labor camp.

Ye denied all accusations and refused to renounce his faith, but he and several other church leaders and activists were nevertheless convicted as rightists and counterrevolutionaries.²⁹ Shortly thereafter, at the Rui’an Christian meeting that the government convened, Ye and three others were formally expelled from the church.³⁰ We do not know whether the people who expelled them had any motives other than political pressure from the government. What is clear is that the attacks on Ye and other church leaders fomented divisions and distrust within the church.

Conditions became worse in the second half of 1958 when the entire Wenzhou region was swept up in the fury of the Great Leap Forward. The Wenzhou Three-Self committee meeting in May decided to abolish denominations and form joint services (lianhe libai).³¹ This, as Fuk-tsang Ying points out, was an extremist move that was intended to reinforce the power of the Three-Self organizations. It would further weaken traditional denominations and their leadership over Protestant communities.³² Nine hundred and eighty-two churches and gathering places were consequently shut down in Wenzhou (and Lishui, which was then under the jurisdiction of the Wenzhou Prefectural Commission). From July onward, only five churches in Wenzhou prefecture, Lishui prefecture, and the county seat of Qingtian were kept open for weekly half-day joint services for all denominations.³³ The shuttered churches were mostly taken over by communes and production teams. Some were remodeled or even demolished.

As churches and temples were shut down, most church leaders and members of the clergy were labeled as rightists and counterrevolutionaries. Some were forced to publicly renounce their faith and give up religious items. Preacher Shu was once brought to a mass meeting held at the playground of a school in Mayu along with lay Christians and the leaders of other congregations. They were forced to “donate” Bibles, hymn books, churches, and other property to the collective, but Shu refused to comply. He was tortured by being made to kneel on sharp pebbles with a heavy slate on his calves. A young man stood on the slate, grabbed Shu by the shoulder and repeatedly pushed him down for two to three hours, asking him to surrender, until the end of the struggle session.³⁴ Similar meetings were held throughout Rui’an.

In the frenzy of attacks against religion, even the Three-Self organization was destroyed. An official report claimed that “90 percent of temples and churches were voluntarily donated to brigades,”³⁵ though as in the struggle meetings described by Shu, these “donations” inevitably took place under conditions of violence or duress. In April 1958, Pastor Chen Zhehai of the Methodist Church, who was also the president of the county’s Patriotic Protestant Association, was convicted of being a rightist and counterrevolutionary and was arrested along with several other Christian leaders. He died in prison about a year later. Cao Yongqi, an elder (zhanglao) of the CJIC, also died in prison.³⁶ Many church leaders were sent down to the countryside to “support agricultural production.” Cadres urged Shu Chengqian to go back to Wenzhou municipality, his registered hometown, but he insisted on staying in Mayu. He was driven from the church to a neighboring village, where he was assigned to supervised labor (jiandu laodong) until the start of the Cultural Revolution.

Regrouping of Protestant Gatherings, 1961–1965

Some United Front officials in Wenzhou were concerned that the “great leap in religious work” would sharply antagonize local communities. Considering that it had deviated from normal religious policy, they did not endorse the campaign. In 1959, the Zhejiang Provincial United Front Work Department issued an investigation on the implementation of religious policy in Wenzhou and asked for excessive measures to be rectified.³⁷ Yet their efforts were too little and too late.

Christian congregations, both Protestant and Catholic, had largely though not entirely disbanded between late 1958 and late 1960. In addition to the “great leap in religious work,” other factors conspired to temporarily silence religion, notably the Great Famine of 1959–1961. The famine hit the southeast coast less severely than other regions of China, but there were still about 141,000 recorded “abnormal” deaths in Zhejiang.³⁸ In August 1959 alone, the Rui’an government reported 10,895 cases of “swelling sickness” (fuzhong bing), referring to dystrophia caused by hunger.³⁹ It seems likely that the famine contributed to ending house meetings for a time.

The “great leap in religious work” marked a turning point for Christian churches under Mao. When Christian congregations re-emerged in the wake of the campaign, they began to hold church meetings entirely in private homes. Before 1958, a majority of Protestant communities were already congregating in members’ homes, but beginning with the Great Leap, Christians had to devise new strategies to hold any meetings in an increasingly hostile political environment.

The top priority for Protestants was to sustain group meetings in secrecy, or at least keep a low profile. They began to develop a new set of patterns for worship. The dates and times of gatherings were not fixed. Members sometimes had to take turns participating in worship. Meetings were generally held at night time in order to evade the attention of local cadres as well as allowing participants to join from afar.⁴⁰ The challenge of dealing with the difficult political climate also influenced their choice of locations and led them to keep congregations small. It is from these maneuvers that we see the beginning of a reinvention in the church.

In Mayu, as early as 1959, some Adventists who used to belong to the Adventist Church in the town center joined services in nearby Wujia Brigade, with the encouragement of Preacher Shu Chengqian. About a dozen people took turns attending the meetings and they limited the number of participants to ten.⁴¹ Preacher Shu, who was undergoing supervised labor and was restricted from traveling or communicating with villagers outside of agricultural production, probably did not attend meetings in the new locations until these restrictions were lifted in 1961.⁴²

Protestant congregations became larger again starting in the fall of 1960 when conditions gradually improved.⁴³ In the district of Tangxia, Pan Jinyou, the former resident manager (zhutang) of Shangma CIM church at Baotian Commune, along with his wife, visited former church members under the guise of seeing friends and sick people in Baotian and neighboring communes (though the official report did not indicate whether the couple were doctors or not). They eventually got together a group of more than forty people, which was unusually large for a congregation at the time. Some participants came from as far as Yongqiang Commune in Wenzhou Prefecture.⁴⁴ Separately, some churchgoers who used to meet at the Methodist Church in Tangxia Commune dispersed to four nearby villages to hold secret meetings coordinated by Preacher Zhao Hongtian and Deacon Zhao Hongzhu. According to official documents at the time, they had assembled a group of eighty-two Protestants by 1965.⁴⁵

In eight county districts, local authorities noted that all five Protestant denominations showed signs of a revival.⁴⁶ Gatherings were held in Christians’ homes. Most were simply prayer meetings without pastors or other members of the clergy, many of whom had either been imprisoned or were too intimidated to lead services. By the fall of 1962, according to an estimate by the county government, about twenty Protestant gathering places had appeared in the county, with about eight hundred participants in total.⁴⁷ In an unusual occurrence in early 1962, adherents of the CJIC in Lingxi Commune in the mountainous Huling District even started holding public services in their old church. That same year, after learning about the central government’s “Sixty Articles on Agriculture” (nongye liushi tiao, issued in 1961),⁴⁸ Zhao Hongxu (a deacon of the Methodist Church in Tangxia), Yang Chisheng (a CIM preacher in Hai’an), and Zhu Shunli (an elder of the Assembly in Taofeng Commune) spontaneously convened about thirty Christians to go to the county government and demand the reopening of churches.⁴⁹

As local authorities noted the re-emergence of Christian meetings in private homes, they saw no change in Christian strategies to engage members, which they described as “expelling demons to cure patients.”⁵⁰ In the 1950s, officials reported several incidents where preachers persuaded patients not to take medicine or consult a doctor, allegedly delaying treatment and leading to death.⁵¹ Whether or not this is accurate, it is clear that prayer as a tool against disease was a powerful means for evangelists to attract new members to the church. When underground gatherings were established in Tangxia in the early 1960s, Protestants typically used the same methods to make new converts and bring back former members of the church, visiting the families of sick people and performing exorcisms to rid them of disease.⁵²

An exorcism was typically hosted by a preacher who would convene a group of Protestants to pray in front of the invalid. Many Protestants believed that the patients in question were possessed by Satan or were polluted because of contact with idols, meaning any object related to the worship of local deities. Sometimes, they grabbed the sick person’s shoulders or hands in order for the power of God to work directly on their bodies. Such prayer sessions lasted several hours or more. Participants sometimes prayed day and night without pause until they believed that the demons had been driven away.

Shu Chengqian often hosted collective prayer sessions to expel demons in patients’ homes.⁵³ Some active organizers of Protestant gatherings in Tangxia also received patients and organized prayers in their own homes. Ten house gatherings in Tangxia in 1962 led to sixteen new converts, all reportedly due to illness.⁵⁴ There were even cases where brigade cadres gave Protestants permission to say prayers to cure illness and expel demons.⁵⁵

To a lesser extent, official reports also accused Christian preachers of luring people to church by spreading eschatological messages like those heard before 1958. As elsewhere in China,⁵⁶ eschatological redemption features prominently in indigenous Protestant Christianity in Wenzhou in the twentieth century. In the early 1950s, the authorities denounced Christian “rumors” such as: “the end of the world is coming. When the second millennium of Christ’s calendar [begins], a raging fire will consume the earth and humans will all die out. [Those who] believe in Jesus Christ will be saved;”⁵⁷ or “those who do not believe in Jesus will die on the road with birds pecking [their] bodies and dogs eating [their] bones.”⁵⁸ According to county officials, Christian preachers started spreading the same sorts of messages in the early 1960s. Seizing opportunities to preach, such as when people were resting, sitting on a bridge or under the shade of a tree, Deacon Zhao Hongxu of the Methodist Church, Zhaozhai Brigade, Tangxia, claimed that “we have disaster this year, [you] would do better to change course and believe in Christ . . . then [you] will be saved.”⁵⁹

Concerns about the resurgence of Christian churches and their messages led to a few arrests in Rui’an. For instance, Teacher (jiaoshi) Chen Dengyong of the Adventist Church ignored warnings and insisted on organizing house meetings in multiple locations in the county seat. He was arrested and put into a labor camp in a remote inland province in 1960. Chen’s wife carried on the congregations after his arrest until she was arrested as well.⁶⁰ Neither of them was released until 1980. Nevertheless, from the early 1960s until the start of the Cultural Revolution, state hostility toward Christian activities never reached the same height as in 1958.

Provincial and prefectural officials in Wenzhou who had not favored the radical movements against religion in 1958 took measures to reduce the impact of the crackdown starting in the early 1960s.⁶¹ Their preference was to avoid provoking further tensions. For instance, concerned about the growth in Christian activities, the Zhejiang provincial government sent officials to investigate the religious situation in Wenzhou in 1960 and 1962 but did not launch any major operations.⁶² The Wenzhou Regional Committee drew up a list of “counterrevolutionary bad elements” within religious organizations in the spring of 1964, but it seems that the plan was never carried out.⁶³

More importantly, though Christian communities were recovering, their scale and scope were incomparable to what they had been before the 1958 crackdown. Therefore, it was less urgent for local officials to impose drastic measures. In this context, superior officials observed that brigade and commune cadres once more adopted a passive attitude toward religious work, as they had done in the early 1950s. County officials criticized brigade and commune cadres for “being short of methods [in dealing with religion].”⁶⁴ Brigade and commune cadres, in their defense, complained that religious affairs were difficult to handle. The head of Xincheng Commune said in a meeting, “if we did not handle [religious affairs] well, it would affect religious freedom. However, if we do not interfere, religious activities will gradually expand, which would affect production and the development of socialism. We are caught in the middle. It is better for superiors to provide [us] with some solutions (chuzhuyi).”⁶⁵

As described in official reports, the typical responses of brigade and commune cadres in the early 1960s were either “crude actions” (cubaozuofa) or “letting things drift” (fangrenziliu). “Crude actions” could mean “simply calling together Christians to force them to write confessions or educating them together with thieves, landlords or counterrevolutionaries and asking them to write guarantees (baozheng) [to promise to abandon their religious activities].”⁶⁶ At the other end of the spectrum, “letting things drift” meant that some cadres simply did not interfere. An investigation of Protestant gatherings in Shangma Brigade, Tangxia, in 1961 found that “brigade cadres neither took any measures regarding those [Protestant] gatherings nor did they report it to their superiors.”⁶⁷ Vice brigade secretary Chen Liangkui even claimed that without directives from above, they lacked the means to control Christian activities. Brigade and commune cadres would also give permission to religious activities. The same investigation in Shangma also discovered that Chen Liangkui’s father mobilized village elders to rebuild a sanbaodian (literally a Buddhist temple, but possibly referring to a village temple instead). This initiative was said to have received tacit permission from Chen.⁶⁸

Preacher Shu Chengqian wrote in his memoir that when he was still doing supervised labor in 1963, a man living in Mayu Town center got very sick, allegedly possessed by demons. His wife went to ask the brigade cadres’ permission to get help from Shu, and the cadres then came to Shu and asked him for help curing the possessed man.⁶⁹ It is worth noting that at least in the early 1960s, some Christians retained positions as brigade and commune cadres. For instance, Ou Mensan was from a family that had been Protestant for three generations and was baptized in early 1958. But he was still selected as brigade party secretary and remained in his position throughout the Cultural Revolution. He told me that he stopped going to Protestant meetings until his retirement in the mid-1990s.⁷⁰

Conclusion

The period from the beginning of collectivization to the eve of the Cultural Revolution saw that Christian communities lost almost all churches and turned completely to house gatherings, a turn that would have profound impacts on the power dynamics in the Christian community in Rui’an today. But the process unfolded in radically different ways between the Catholic Church and Protestant churches. Whereas the politically charged “counterrevolutionary” stigma overshadowed the Catholic Church until the end of the Mao era, most Protestant churches were less heavily stigmatized, allowing them to resume services and even evangelical activities. Many village churches welcomed new converts, and new church groups were founded, resuming the expansion of Protestantism that occurred from the 1940s to late 1957.

These developments were made possible partly by the mobility of Protestant gatherings. By comparison, the activities of communal temples or Catholic churches in Rui’an were traditionally tied to a permanent sacred space. Additionally, the extensive native leadership of Protestant denominations allowed many Protestant communities to regroup in the early 1960s, even in the absence of pastors and other formal clergy. Crucially, in the worsening political atmosphere, shifts in policy created an environment that sometimes allowed Protestant communities to employ the discourse of religious freedom to shield their activities from the interference of local cadres, who were often bewildered by policy changes and adopted a passive stance.

The increase in the number of Protestants in the early to mid-1950s was certainly not limited to Rui’an and Wenzhou. A study shows that between 1951 and 1958, the Protestant population in Yunnan Province increased from about 100,000 around 1949 to more than 120,000 in 1958.⁷¹ An internal state report also noted a growth in Protestantism in at least four counties of Jiangsu Province in 1957.⁷² In Hunan Province, from 1954 to 1955, membership of the Anyang Assembly increased by more than 50 percent, from 1563 to 2467. In 1954, all eleven assemblies in Fujian Province saw a threefold increase in their church membership.⁷³

This ongoing growth before 1958 had consequences, however, creating friction with state programs, local cadres, and even non-Christian villagers. As Protestants invoked the principle of religious freedom and the government’s conciliatory measures to defend churches and worship, grassroots cadres increasingly came to see them as unruly subjects who posed an obstacle to the reorganization of rural life. Thus in Wenzhou, the Great Leap Forward, which was intended to promote industrial and agricultural development through radical collectivization, was manipulated to launch a “great leap in religious work,” shutting down all churches and forcing many Christians to renounce their faith. To make sense of why a national development campaign generated another local campaign against religion, one must consider the tension between local cadres and church members, as cadres encountered resistance to strict production schedules and political gatherings. In this sense, the extreme violence against religion in 1958, particularly against Christianity, appears to be an unintended consequence of the Great Leap Forward.

The campaign left Protestant communities deeply divided, with fresh wounds and old feuds mixed with new ones. Cracks appeared in church communities. Yet the destructiveness of the Great Leap triggered a renewal in Protestant churches. The departure of clergy members and old leaders meant that others had to fill the vacuum if church life were to continue. The hostile political climate led to clandestine house gatherings and new ways of operating for Christian communities. This shift would bring about a much more dramatic transformation during the Cultural Revolution, explored in the next chapter.

¹For a history of the Legion of Mary in China and the Communist government’s crackdown on the Legion of Mary, see Paul P. Mariani, Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 46–53, 75–87.

²“Zhixing zongjiao zhengce diaocha baogao” (Investigational report on the implementation of religious policies), April 9, 1953, Rui’an City Archives 1-5-62: 14–15.

³“Dongmen paichusuo Tianzhujiaotu paidui” (Profiling Catholics under the jurisdiction of East Gate police station), 1953, Rui’an City Archives 1-5-113: 6–14.

⁴Rui’an City Archives 1-7-35: 2.

⁵Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 13.

⁶Shu Chengqian, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi (Memoirs of fifty years’ life in the church), internal reference materials (“neibu cankao ziliao”), 2002, Chapter 15 (section 1). When the Great Leap Forward came early next year, the government confiscated all their materials and even took the land that they intended to use to build the church. The materials and the land were distributed to villagers to build new houses.

⁷Ou Fachen, interview by author, Rui’an, May 7, 2013.

⁸Xianwei pizhuan xianwei xuanchuanbu xian gong’anju dui Tianzhujiao shengmu nian huodong de ji dian yijian (The county party committee issues several opinions by the propaganda department and public security department on the Catholic Church’s celebration of the Assumption of Mary), June 1, 1954, Rui’an City Archives 1-6-12: 4.

⁹See “Guanyu minzheng gongzuo zhuanti baogao he Chengguan, Xianjiang Jidujiao, Tianzhujiao jiben qingkuang dengjibiao” (Special report on civil affairs, registers of Protestant churches and Catholic Church in the county seat and Xianjiang), 1951, Rui’an City Archives 4-3-12: 45–135; “Guanyu zongjiao gongzuo wenjian cailiao” (Documents on religious work), January 1953, Rui’an City Archives 1-5-113: 29–33; “Guanyu zongjiao gongzuo, zhengyong simiao wenti, ji jiaohui ganbu, jiaotu mingce” (Report on religious work and expropriation of temples, and registers of church leaders and followers), 1958, Rui’an City Archives 4-10-75: 14–28.

¹⁰Three comprehensive surveys of local Christian groups were taken in 1951, 1953, and 1957. A further survey of the China Jesus Independent Church was taken on the eve of the Great Leap Forward. These religious surveys vary in levels of detail. The most detailed surveys include a brief history of each individual church, the name of its leader, the church’s financial statement, a summary of recent events, and information about membership (e.g., total number, each member’s origin [village name], gender, age, baptized or not, family relations, class, education and occupation). Less detailed surveys only contain the location of individual churches, the leader’s name, and the total membership of the church. These surveys may not be accurate and can even be problematic for various reasons. It is unknown if officials edited these surveys and made any adjustments, especially of the membership numbers, before putting them together into final form to present to their superiors. The definition of “church member” (xintu or jiaotu) also raised ambiguities. In spite of these reservations, these surveys, when supplemented with the historical records kept by local churches and information provided by witnesses in interviews, can provide a basic sense of the trajectories of different Christian denominations.

¹¹The 20-percent mark reflects the fact that every group falling within the “stagnation” category generally witnessed a membership fluctuation of far less than 20 percent (generally tending to fluctuate only slightly above or below zero percent, with a maximum fluctuation of around 16 percent).

¹²Rui’an City Archives 1-7-35: 3–4. This number (234) likely included all non-Christian family members. The number that this church provided for the religious survey in 1955 is fifty. In the registers submitted by individual local churches, they did not include the family members of Christians among their church constituents.

¹³Rui’an City Archives 1-7-35: 6.

¹⁴“Pingyang Xian zongjiao gongzuo yijian” (Opinions on religious affairs in Pingyang), July 19, 1954, Rui’an City Archives 1-6-70: 28.

¹⁵“Guanyu Mocheng xiang Yesujiao de huodong wenti qingkuang zonghe baogao” (Comprehensive report on Christian activities in Mocheng Township), November 4, 1955, Pingyang County Archives 1-7-164: 173–174.

¹⁶Rui’an City Archives 1-7-35: 2.

¹⁷Zhu Yujing, “Guojia tongzhi, difang zhengzhi yu Wenzhou de Jidujiao” (State rule, local politics and Christianity in Wenzhou) (PhD Dissertation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011), 92–93.

¹⁸“Zhengzhi guashuai, pochu mixin” (Politics in command, eradicating superstition), July 27, Rui’an City Archives 3-1-5: 82.

¹⁹“Zhonggong Zhejiang Shengwei zhuanfa shengwei zongjiao gongzuo weiyuanhui guanyu Pingyang Xian Yishan, Jinshan liang qu zhixing zongjiao zhengce qingkuang de jiancha baogao” (Zhejiang Communist Party Committee issuing Religious Work Committee of Zhejiang Party Committee’s investigation report on the implementation of religious policies in Yishan and Jinxiang Districts, Pingyang County), Zhejiang Tongxun 30 (1956): 15–16.

²⁰Followers of other religious traditions, for instance Buddhist monks and nuns, similarly used official policies to serve their purposes. See Holmes Welch, Buddhism under Mao (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 257–266.

²¹“Pingyang Qianku Zhen Xijie Cun Puqian Xiang Linjiayuan Cun zongjiao qingkuang baogao” (Report on the religious situation in Xijie Village of Qianku Town and Linjiayuan Village of Puqian Township, Pingyang), June 7, Pingyang County Archives, 1-7-164: 182.

²²Rui’an City Archives 1-7-35: 5.

²³“Wenzhou diwei guanyu quanqu zongjiao gongzuo xianchanghui qingkuang baogao he Pingyang Huqian xiang dui zongjiao douzheng shidian zongjie baogao” (Wenzhou Party Committee’s report on the regional on-the-spot religious affairs meeting and summary of the experiment on the struggle against religion at Huqian Township, Pingyang County), November 1, 1958, Longquan City Archives 1-5-172: 76–79.

²⁴“Longquan City Archives 1-5-172: 76–89.

²⁵“Guanyu 1958 nian zongjiao gongzuo zongjie baogao” (Conclusion report on religious work in 1958), April 24, 1959, Rui’an City Archives 1-11-183: 109.

²⁶Whether the government planned to immediately stamp out religion is debatable (Zhu 2011, 94–95). The central government did not issue a formal policy of eliminating religion, even though the radical steps by the local government in Wenzhou were endorsed by some officials in Beijing and Hangzhou (e.g., officials of the Department of Public Security and the National Religious Affairs Bureau) who had once intended to popularize the Wenzhou experience in the country. Documents of county governments did not place “exterminating religion” as a concrete goal to be accomplished.

²⁷Rui’an City Archives, 1-10-161: 42–61; Rui’an City Archives 1-11-183: 107–111; “Xincheng Town zhengzhi guashuai, pochu mixin” (Putting politics in command, abolishing superstition in Xincheng Town), July 27, 1958, Rui’an City Archives 72-5-2: 82–84.

²⁸For Shu’s accounts of the study class, see Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 4. As elsewhere in the country, the wave of withdrawal from the cooperative, which swept mountainous areas of the county in 1957, included villages with the presence of Adventists. Adventists constituted the majority population in Zhuyuan Village, Huling, where church leaders Du Zhulai and Du Zhuxiong allegedly led the withdrawal campaign. See Rui’an City Archives 1-11-183: 108.

²⁹“Rightist” and “counterrevolutionary” were polyvalent concepts during the Maoist era. These church leaders were likely convicted as rightists or counterrevolutionaries because they refused to cooperate with the government. As such, they received penalties varying from self-criticism, “re-education through labor” (laodong gaizao), to execution in some cases.

³⁰Rui’an City Archives 1-11-183: 110; Rui’an City Archives, 1-10-161: 58.

³¹“Wenzhou jiaohui shixing hebing” (Wenzhou church to carry out a merger), Tianfeng 9 (1958): 20–21.

³²Ying Fuk-Tsang, Fandi, aiguo, shulingren: Ni Tuosheng yu jidutu juhuichu yanjiu (Anti-Imperialism, patriotism and the spiritual man: a study on Watchman Nee and the “Little Flock”) (Hong Kong: The Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 2005), 178–183.

³³“Guanyu Wenzhou diqu zongjiao zhengce zhixing qingkuang de baogao” (Report on the implementation of religious policies in the Wenzhou region), June 26, 1959, Rui’an City Archives 1-11-248: 18.

³⁴Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 (section 1).

³⁵Rui’an City Archives 1-11-183: 108.

³⁶Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 14–15.

³⁷“Guanyu Wenzhou diqu zongjiao zhengce zhixing qingkuang de baogao” (Report on the implementation of religious policies in the Wenzhou region), June 26, 1959, Rui’an City Archives, 1-11-248: 17–19.

³⁸See Cao Shuji, Dajihuang—1959 nian—1961 nian de Zhongguo renkou (Chinese population between 1959 and 1961) (Hong Kong: Shidai guoji chubangongsi, 2005), 282.

³⁹See Yang Jisheng, Mubei—Zhongguo liushi niandai dajihuang jishi (Tombstone—a historical record of the Great Chinese Famine in the 1960s) (Hong Kong: Tiandi tushu chuban gongsi, 2008), 246.

⁴⁰“Guanyu zongjiao huodong qingkuang de diaocha” (Investigation of religious activities), August 1, 1962, Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207: 177.

⁴¹Rui’an City Archives 4-13-42: 4.

⁴²Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 5 (section 2).

⁴³“Guanyu muqian zongjiao huodong qingkuang” (On current religious activities), November 16, 1961, Rui’an City Archives 4-13-42: 5.

⁴⁴Rui’an City Archives 4-13-42: 16–19.

⁴⁵“Ruhe zhizhi Tangxia Yesujiao jiating juhui” (How to prevent Protestant house gatherings in Tangxia), November 6, 1965, Rui’an City Archives 49-17-12: 116–117.

⁴⁶Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207: 170.

⁴⁷Ibid.

⁴⁸“Sixty Articles on Agriculture” is short for “nongcun renmin gongshe gongzuo tiaoli cao’an” (A draft of the regulations on the work of the people’s commune), which were new central guidelines on the management of communes that gave more rights to brigades and reintroduced private plots. With the issuing of “Sixty Articles on Agriculture” in 1961, the Great Leap Forward quietly came to an end. Although those sixty articles were not about religion, for religious followers at that time it might be read as a sign of the state loosening control of rural society.

⁴⁹Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207: 170–171.

⁵⁰Rui’an City Archives 4-13-42: 6.

⁵¹“Wei Yesujiao chuanjiao renshi zuzhi bingren yanyi fuyao zaocheng shengming siwang” (Protestant preachers obstructed patients from seeing doctors and taking medicine, leading to death of lives), 1957, Rui’an City Archives 4-9-79: 67.

⁵²Rui’an City Archives 4-13-42: 9–19; Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207:173; Rui’an City Archives 49-17-12: 116; Rui’an City Archives 4-21-27: 96–97, 117.

⁵³Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 5 (section 2) and Chapter 6 (sections 2 and 7).

⁵⁴Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207: 179.

⁵⁵Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 5 (section 2).

⁵⁶Xi Lian, Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).

⁵⁷“Pingyang Xian zongjiao gongzuo yijian” (Opinions on religious work in Pingyang County), July 19, 1954, Pingyang County Archives 1-6-70: 33.

⁵⁸Pingyang County Archives 1-7-164: 174.

⁵⁹“Guanyu muqian zongjiao huodong qingkuang” (On current religious activities), November 16, 1961, Rui’an City Archives 4-13-42: 176.

⁶⁰Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207: 175–176.

⁶¹Zhu, “Guojia tongzhi,” 96–97.

⁶²The news of the coming of provincial officials to villages was ironically advertised by leaders of Christian communities as a sign of the loosening of restrictions on Christian gatherings (though county officials seemed to suggest that the Christians were in fact misled by provincial officials into believing that the provincial government had more religious tolerance). County officials accused “sent-down” provincial officials of being “out of touch with reality” and only relying on “policy directives from above.” See Rui’an City Archives 1-4-207: 175.

⁶³“Guanyu daji zongjiao neibu fanhuaifenzi de yijian baogao” (Opinions on strikes against counterrevolutionaries and bad elements inside religious sector), June 1, 1964, Rui’an City Archives 1-16-80: 76–77.

⁶⁴Rui’an City Archives, 4-13-42: 4.

⁶⁵“Guanyu muqian zongjiao huodong qingkuang” (On current religious activities), November 16, 1961, Rui’an City Archives, 4-13-42: 7.

⁶⁶“1961 nian zongjiao huodong qingkuang” (Situation of religious activities in 1961), November, 1961, Rui’an City Archives, 4-13-42: 4.

⁶⁷“Guanyu Meitou, Changqiao, Baotian, sange gongshe zongjiao huodong qingkuang de diaocha” (Investigation of religious activities in three communes: Meitou, Changqiao, and Baotian), October 12, 1961, Rui’an City Archives 4-13-42: 19.

⁶⁸Ibid.

⁶⁹Shu Chengqian, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 5.

⁷⁰Interview by author, Tangkou Village, May 12, 2013.

⁷¹Su Cuiwei and Xiong Guocai, eds., “Yunnan Jidujiao fazhan kuai, huodong luan wenti fenxi ji duice” (Analysis and resolution for rapid growth and chaotic activities of Christianity in Yunnan), in Yunnan zongjiao qingshi baogao 2003–2004 (A Report on Religious Conditions in Yunnan, 2003–2004), eds. Xiong Shengxiang and Yang Guozheng (Kunming: Yunnan daxue chubanshe, 2004), 73–74.

⁷²“Jiangsu xinjiao renshu juzeng” (Number of new converts to Protestant Christianity grew rapidly in Jiangsu), Neibu cankao, the Xinhua Agency, May 17, 1957.

⁷³Joseph Tse-Hei Lee, “Politics of Faith: Patterns of Church-State Relations in Maoist China (1949–1976),” Historia Actual Online 17 (2008), 133.