6
By 1978, when the Chinese government officially declared the end of the Cultural Revolution, Protestants in Rui’an had established a network of house meeting sites across the county, though churches (both Protestant and Catholic)—as well as most Buddhist monasteries and village temples—were still closed.1 The home gathering network consisted of 270 sites where families and small groups met for worship, more than twice the number of Protestant gathering sites in 1949.2 Protestants had grown fourfold and their numbers were still increasing.3 A history of local Protestant churches claimed that “every year several thousand people were baptized, more than eighty percent of them young or middle-aged.”4
Mao’s death in 1976 and the subsequent government reshuffling led to a dramatic shift in state policy regarding religion, concurrent with a fundamental restructuring of the state’s role in rural areas. After 1978, the government set off to “reinstate religious policy” (luoshi zongjiao zhengce), adopting a milder approach that had been strongly criticized within the party since 1957.5 New guidelines reinstated the principle of religious freedom prescribed in the 1954 Constitution and authorized churches to reopen.
This policy shift appeared to be an opportunity for the return of church buildings and the legalization of local Protestant organizations. Yet as before, the guidelines stipulated loyalty to the party-state as a condition for churches to operate. From the central to the local level, religious communities were required to register and organize themselves within the framework of religious associations that the government had first attempted to implement in the 1950s, essentially a proxy for state control of religion.
At this crucial historical moment, Protestant communities in Rui’an faced both opportunities and challenges. They could leave behind house meetings, with all the secrecy and instability that might entail, join government-recognized churches, and pursue the expansion of the church through officially sanctioned means. Yet many church leaders could not accept the new rules and institutions set up to keep the church under the firm grip of the state. After thirty years of conflict and attacks on religion under Mao, some Protestants were simply unwilling or unable to trust the state.
This chapter explores the ways that Protestants navigated the political and institutional shifts of the early reform period and their consequences for Protestantism in Wenzhou and beyond. The Maoist legacy played a crucial role in the formation of today’s flourishing yet deeply divided Protestant church in Wenzhou. While focusing on Protestant communities, I compare them with other religious communities as well, Catholic ones in particular, to better understand why Protestantism has become such a strong force in Wenzhou’s contemporary religious revival.
The Reinstatement of Religious Policy and “Regulatory Priority”
In the early 1980s, the Chinese government initiated a series of critical policy changes affecting the regulation of religious affairs. The central government passed its first new rule concerning religious properties in July 1980, when the State Council approved a proposal to return occupied properties that historically belonged to religious organizations and settle issues related to their ownership.6 This regulation would become the official policy most often cited in the restitution of churches, but in many areas it does not seem to have been implemented right away. Local communities like those in Rui’an were probably unaware of its content or even its existence.7
In March 1982, the central government issued new guidelines for religious affairs, the “Basic Viewpoints and Policies on the Religious Question during Our Nation’s Socialist Period” (Guanyu woguo shehuizhuyi shiqi zongjiao wenti de jiben guandian he jiben zhengce), commonly known as Document No. 19. It renounced the use of coercive measures to stamp out “religion” and reiterated the party’s policy of “religious freedom.” It also stipulated the “selective” and “gradual” reopening of some sites for legal religious activities.
Both the reinstatement of institutionalized religion and the central government’s new religious concerns necessitated an adjustment in religious policy. In the early reform period, starting in the late 1970s, economic development became the government’s first priority. The state initiated a policy of boluan fanzheng (correcting wrongs and returning to normality), with an agenda of settling historical issues, reaffirming policies “distorted” during the Cultural Revolution, and resurrecting the apparatus of state. Religious affairs were attached to United Front work with its own policy restitution intended to strengthen solidarity and clean up leftist influence. The return to a more accommodating policy on religion, somewhat similar to the policy that had reigned before 1957, matched the direction of United Front work.8
The most immediate motive for the formulation of the new religious policy was the government’s concern about being unable to control religious communities at a critical moment when the country was “opening up.” Thirty years of Maoist rule had not eliminated religion, but only pushed it underground, making it difficult for the government to grasp the real scope of religious communities. What the government found even more worrisome was the antagonism against it, which had accumulated during the Mao era. United Front officials pointed out that it might “push religious followers to the side of the enemy,” especially “overseas hostile forces.”9
The peril was real and imminent in their eyes. Foreign churches, as well as churches led by overseas Chinese, particularly those based in Hong Kong and Taiwan, were taking steps to establish a presence in the PRC. With the assistance of local Chinese Christians, they smuggled tens of thousands of Bibles, pamphlets, and other religious materials into Guangzhou and other coastal cities. Overseas churches reconnected with churches in China, often in the name of visiting family or making investments.10 All these developments urgently demanded changes in the regulation of religion to allow the government to contain religious communities and the political threats they might pose. After coercion and blunt repression under Mao had failed to eliminate religion, the government turned to a more permissive stance.
In principle, the new religious policy applied to all legal religions. In practice, the central government perceived religions differently depending on factors such as their history in different regions. There were differences in how the national policy was applied, particularly by local administrations.
Buddhism, Catholicism, and Protestantism all represented different issues in party ideology under Mao. In the 1950s and 1960s, Buddhist temples had been stripped of their estates. Land reform had eliminated the wealthy class who made up their customary patrons.11 There were no Buddhist ordinations for almost two decades, and very few regular active Buddhist communities. Provincial authorities estimated that more than 70 percent of the population of Zhejiang Province had been Buddhist in 1940,12 but by the end of the Cultural Revolution, the religion had fallen into a slump. Moreover, the threat of “feudalism” was no longer a pressing ideological concern.
By contrast, the state associated Catholicism and Protestantism with the threat of imperialism. The state intended to force Christians to sever their connections to overseas churches and to nurture the Three-Self organizations to ensure compliance and loyalty to the state.13 Isolating Chinese Christians from foreign influence and keeping them under the control of the government became all the more important when China reopened to the world in the 1980s.
Wenzhou was a particularly crucial site in the government’s battle against foreign influence because of its position as an entryway into China and its large share of Christians compared to the country as a whole. In 1949, Zhejiang Province had 17 percent of the total Protestant population in the country, which represented the largest share of Protestants among all the provinces.14 Zhejiang also had numerous Catholics at the time. A historical study estimated that there were nearly 95,000 Catholics in Zhejiang in 1949.15
Unlike Buddhist temples, Christian churches in Zhejiang successfully endured Maoism. The government estimated that the total number of Christians (both Protestants and Catholics) in 1983 was more than 600,000, twice the number in 1949.16 However, the pro-government Three-Self organization established at various levels in the early 1950s was virtually disbanded after the Great Leap. Starting in the early 1970s when China normalized its relations with the United States, local authorities in Zhejiang began to raise concerns about growing links between local and foreign Christian organizations: local Christians attempting to reconnect with foreign churches, as well as foreign churches penetrating Chinese Christian communities.17 After 1978, the rapid increase in China’s communication with the outside world made this a more pressing concern.
Therefore, in the early reform period, local authorities in Zhejiang treated Christianity as a priority in the regulation of religious affairs. Zhejiang Party Secretary Wang Fang made this clear in a 1983 provincial religious affairs meeting: “[Zhejiang] is one of the key provinces in terms of religious work. We have 700,000 religious followers. Protestants and Catholics are the majority. Other religious groups are the minority.”18 In another provincial religious affairs meeting in 1991, Zhejiang Governor Liu Feng said, “religions of faith are concentrated [in our province]. Number one is Protestantism, which has 960,000 followers, and number two is Catholicism, which has 130,000 followers. Therefore we have to prioritize focal regions (zhongdian diqu) and focal religions (zhongdian zongjiao).”19 Liu’s message was clear: Buddhism and other legal religions in Zhejiang were in the minority, while Christianity should be the focus of their regulatory efforts.
In the context of religious policy and the government’s focus on Christianity, the remainder of this chapter explores different Christian communities’ experiences of the new religious policy, as well as the dramatic, far-reaching effects these had on the development of Christianity in Rui’an and Wenzhou today.
The Legalization and Proliferation of Protestant Churches
When the Cultural Revolution gave way to reform, the most urgent issue for Protestant communities in Rui’an and elsewhere in China was the restitution of churches. The vast majority of these had been occupied, demolished, or shut down in the 1950s and 1960s. For different reasons, the Chinese government shared a similar concern. Document No. 19 considered “appropriately arranging religious activity sites” a “crucial material condition of religious normalization” and made this one of two priorities for officials engaged in works on religion.20
In Rui’an, the number of religious sites whose restitution was planned (ying luoshi, literally meaning it “ought to be implemented”) was significantly different for Buddhism and Christianity. Christianity was allocated disproportionate government resources in the restitution of religious sites.21 The government set out quotas allowing a maximum number of sites to be restored. Seventeen Catholic churches and fifty-nine Protestant churches were included in the quota, including each of the permanent Protestant churches that had been in operation before 1949.22 Buddhism was allocated a quota of fifty-six temples, less than 15 percent of the total number of Buddhist temples that had been active in the early 1950s.23
By 1990 two Catholic churches and thirty-two Protestant churches had been returned and reopened “with the approval of the [county] government” (zhengfu pizhun),24 which in fact meant “after direct intervention by the county government.” Christian communities salvaged five Catholic churches and eighteen Protestant churches after negotiations with the occupying entities, in some cases employing the mediation of town, district, or other lower-level branches of government. In contrast, there were extremely few government interventions to aid the restitution of Buddhist temples in the 1980s. Buddhists managed to obtain the return of fifty-two of the fifty-four monasteries in the quota; none of them was returned with the “approval” (meaning assistance) of the county government.25 In seeking the restitution of temples, Buddhists were largely left to fend for themselves.
Equally striking was, within Christianity, the difference between Catholics and Protestants in their attitudes toward the government, which significantly influenced the extent to which each benefited from the status of Christianity as a “regulatory priority.” The conditions for Catholic communities in Rui’an were certainly not as good as for Protestants, though both had to operate without a formal church. In 1982, none of the seventeen Catholic churches had been restored. Only four Catholic communities were reported to be active. In one of these four communities, Li’ao of Tangxia District, a joint investigation by provincial, city, and county officials in July 1981 found that only a fraction of Catholics regularly attended meetings.26 The number of Catholics in 1982 had increased about two and half times since 1949, only slightly faster than the growth rate of the population as a whole.
Catholics in Wenzhou adamantly refused to cooperate with the authorities. As a result, they benefited much less from “regulatory priority” status. Soon after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Catholic clergymen were released from prison and re-established the Roman Catholic diocese of Wenzhou. The diocese reconnected with the Vatican and insisted on two “no contacts”: no contact with the government and no contact with patriotic associations.27 The Wenzhou Patriotic Catholic Association established in 1980 was virtually inactive for at least ten years. The Rui’an Patriotic Catholic Association was only established in 1999, though the city government had planned it since 1982.28
The Roman Catholic church established twenty-one gathering spots by the end of the 1980s. By then, Catholics had restored seven churches, but only one had set up a “church affairs regulation team” (tangwu guanli xiaozu), a sign of official recognition. In 1990, in the entire Wenzhou region, local authorities believed that more than 90 percent of Catholics were still under the influence of “underground forces” (dixia shili), that is, Catholic churches loyal to the Vatican.29
By contrast, Protestant responses to the new religious policy were polarized, but in the early reform period, most Protestants did not refuse to build links with the government. The Meeting of the Rui’an County Council of Communications, a countywide network of five Protestant congregations (still excluding the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and some communities belonging to the Assembly), reassembled in June 1980. The position of general manager was abolished and managers of each section (pianqu) were given seats on the council.30
After the reshuffling, those who supported the establishment of the Three-Self Church of Rui’an were in the majority, and the council formally voted in favor of joining the Three-Self Church.31 Some Protestant leaders left the council in protest, but the majority of the board members, plus a number of leaders in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, remained. In 1981 they established a Three-Self Church incorporating the Rui’an County Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Committee (Rui’an Jidujiao Sanzi Aiguo Weiyuanhui) and the Rui’an Protestant Council (Rui’an Jidujiao Xiehui).32
Christians and church observers have long characterized the Three-Self Church as merely a puppet set up to serve government aims. This is not entirely fair. The re-establishment of the Three-Self Church created a platform for Protestants (that other religions did not enjoy at the time), allowing them to reach out to the government during a crucial period of religious development.
The Three-Self Church played a pivotal role in the restitution of churches in the early reform period. In 1980, the central government mandated the return of religious properties to religious organizations only.33 Moreover, the church restitution procedures issued by the Rui’an County Government in 1982 stipulated that only religious organizations were qualified to apply for the return of church buildings. Before the establishment of the Three-Self Church, it was difficult for local officials to identify legal religious organizations. Because no law recognized local Christian communities as legitimate organizations, the return of churches could only be negotiated in an informal way between relevant parties, such as local Christian communities and occupiers of church buildings. Even after successfully negotiating an agreement, Christian groups could not be certain that a church would actually be returned. The county government was even less willing to condone informal negotiations of this kind: being left out of the negotiation process meant they lacked effective control over local churches, which was an essential purpose of church reopening per the central government’s directives. The problem was the same for every county government in the Wenzhou region before the establishment of a local branch of the Three-Self Church.34
After the Rui’an Three-Self Church was established in July 1982, the Three-Self Committee suggested to the county government: “some district and commune leaders proposed that . . . it ought to be the patriotic organization that files the petition [to reopen a church]. Once the county government approves, local [government] leaders should do their work to carry it out.”35 Making the Three-Self Committee the proxy in church reopening, they believed, “is conducive to building up the authority of the Three-Self patriotic organization.”36 The suggestion was accepted.37
That same year, the Three-Self Committee intervened in its first case of church recovery, filing a request to reopen Lower Village Church in Xinmin Commune, Xincheng. This request was immediately approved. The following year, the county government formally issued a notification requesting the establishment of a church affairs committee within Lower Village Church. The main hall and some of the annexes were returned. In 1986, the remaining property issues were settled between Lower Village Government and the county Three-Self Committee with the mediation of the county government.38
Once this pattern proved viable, the committee rapidly expanded its work. In November 1984, the county government authorized at once a total of “seventeen Protestant churches to be Protestant activity sites (Jidujiao huodong changsuo). . . . The applicable church properties . . . should be returned to religious organizations.”39 Property issues regarding major churches in eight districts were eventually settled pursuant to this notification. Among the earliest of major churches to be returned was Yahou Protestant Church in the county seat, formerly the headquarters of the Methodist Church in Rui’an (Photo 6.1). By early 1995, fifty-four of fifty-nine churches had been returned, that is, nearly 92 percent of the churches that Protestants possessed in 1949, with only a few cases remaining to be settled. At least thirty-seven of those fifty-four churches were re-established through the Three-Self Church’s collaboration with the county government.40
Photo 6.1. Yahou Protestant Church in Rui’an county seat, 2013. Formerly the headquarters of the Methodist Church in Rui’an, it is among the first of the churches to be restituted, in the 1980s.
Source: Author.
In addition to the quota of fifty-nine former church buildings which could be reclaimed, local authorities in some areas granted Protestant communities permission to build new churches. One of these was the Xincheng Assembly, the largest of all the Assembly congregations in Rui’an. Before 1949, the community did not have a formal church building, and thus it was not on the list of churches to be reopened, though its membership had significantly grown during the Mao era. Thanks to a petition by the Three-Self Church, the Xincheng congregation was allocated a parcel of land to build a permanent church.41 The petition argued that the nearby Lower Village Church, historically the China Inland Mission’s headquarters in Rui’an, was already overcrowded during Sunday meetings and could not possibly hold the more than two thousand members of the Xincheng Assembly (who therefore would have had to congregate in private homes instead). This would have been a problem for county officials, as the central government required that they channel Christians into sanctioned church meetings rather than family assemblies. The Xincheng Assembly later built the Qianbu Church on the parcel of land allocated by the government.
The Three-Self Church intervened in cases of official restitution and new construction. Yet most of the newly erected churches in the 1980s and early 1990s were neither on the first official list of Protestant churches to be restored, nor was their construction officially sanctioned by the government. For instance, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church was the smallest of the six Protestant denominations in 1949, with only three churches and a few temporary gathering spots, but by 1992, not only had those three churches been restored, six new churches had been built, leaving only two Adventist communities without church buildings.42 None of the six new churches had been built with the official permission of the county government.
The construction of new churches was motivated by the hope of securing and furthering the development of the church through the creation of permanent gathering places. Moreover, it was greatly encouraged by the accommodating attitude of local authorities. Most of the churches built without official permission, as well as the church organizations attached to them, were allowed to register with the government as long as the church communities joined or recognized the leadership of the Three-Self Church. Occasionally the communities were asked to pay a fine.43 Because Preacher Shu Chengqian and several other Adventist leaders participated in the Three-Self Church, the government sanctioned the new Adventist churches soon after their construction.44
Thus, amid the “church-building fever” (jiantangre) that swept all of Wenzhou in the 1980s and early 1990s, the number of “patriotic associations” soared (aiguo hui, an alternative name for Three-Self churches). By 1990, the number of Three-Self churches in Rui’an rose rapidly to 126, including sixty-seven of the eighty-nine newly built churches.45 In 1995, the total number of Three-Self churches reached 185, including 131 newly constructed church buildings.46
The local authorities’ accommodating stance toward newly erected churches was above all grounded in local realities. Though the central government had requested the selective reopening of a small number of churches, the high number of Protestants in Rui’an after the end of the Mao era made this an unrealistic goal. Protestants had not only greatly increased in number since 1949, they had also become more widely distributed throughout the county. It would have been impractical, perhaps impossible, to squeeze the large Protestant population into the fifty-nine churches initially permitted to reopen.
The political imperative to bring religious communities under centralized control may have played an even more important role in facilitating the establishment of new and restored churches. The central government’s new religious policy in the 1980s was to channel Christians from underground (dixia) to above ground (dishang), and from family gatherings to meetings in government-sanctioned church buildings. In this context, allowing the construction and recognition of new churches was in accord with the principle of channeling Christians into formally recognized churches.
Schisms among Protestant Churches
As Protestant leaders sought to exploit the new religious policy to retrieve, rebuild, and legalize church buildings, rifts already present within the church became more pronounced. The Three-Self Church became a pervasive presence in church life, bringing tensions to the fore. Recent alliances forged during the Cultural Revolution fell apart, shattering the delicate unity among Protestant communities.
Preexisting Discord
The unity among Protestant churches in Rui’an and throughout Wenzhou which took shape before 1978 was doomed to be fragile due to its weak institutional underpinnings. For Protestant communities in Wenzhou, one of the most important consequences of Mao-era policy was probably the flattening of hierarchies within the church (which probably also occurred in Buddhist and territorial temples and monastic institutions). With the departure of missionaries, the discontinuation of foreign aid, and the persecution of Chinese clergy in the 1950s, Protestant communities survived by temporarily forging bonds across denominational divides.
Protestant networks established during the Cultural Revolution were not formal organizations with a coherent internal structure, but rather a loose cooperative network set up under exceptional circumstances to weather the political storms of the Cultural Revolution. There were no hierarchical relationships or financial ties between different member communities, or between member communities and regional or county councils.47 Consequently, even as the Cultural Revolution elicited cooperation between church groups across villages, towns and denominations, it also pushed church groups to become more independent of each other and of umbrella organizations. Thus, at the start of the reform period, these networks of Protestant communities lacked the means to prevent a schism.
Moreover, sources of discord existed within Protestant churches, sometimes even dating back to before 1949.48 The political campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s and the interference of the Three-Self patriotic movement deepened old rifts and caused new cracks to appear between Protestant groups.
During the Mao era, many Protestants gave in to political pressure and publicly renounced their Christian faith.49 Some were pushed to attack and denounce fellow Protestants and church organizations for their own survival, while others exploited the political currents for their private interests. Many of those who fought back were tortured, imprisoned, or even killed for refusing to renounce their faith, suffering the verbal and physical attacks of those who had been their fellows in the church.
Religious persecution provoked a strong antagonism toward the government, but it also ripped apart the church, creating an atmosphere of distrust, disdain, and even resentment between Protestants. These feelings were so pervasive that they could only be put aside temporarily when the need to endure severe attacks on religion surpassed all other concerns. Yet while contained, the affective burden of the Mao era never went away.
Other sources of friction in the church were less personal, but no less divisive. The political attacks of the Mao era and particularly the Cultural Revolution had pushed Protestant denominations to set aside their differences, but these came back in force during the early reform period. Before 1949 the different Protestant denominations in Wenzhou had distinctive theological beliefs, ritual practices, and even different versions of hymns, which they transmitted to their followers. There were sometimes differences in the theological interpretations and practices of preachers belonging to the same denomination. While these differences were mostly set aside during the Cultural Revolution, they did not disappear. With reform and the legalization of Christian practices came the opportunity to act on theological differences. Miao Zhitong, a preacher from Rui’an, recalls that when he traveled through the Wenzhou region to preach in the early 1970s, he had heated debates with several other preachers on the question of who qualified for salvation, in particular with Preacher Yu Dubin of Yueqing County.50 Their disagreements eventually led to Yu leaving to join the Three-Self Church in the early 1980s.51
Protestants in the early years of reform did take steps to patch over denominational differences, such as sharing preachers and unifying different versions of hymns.52 But not everything could be the subject of tolerance or compromise. The Wenzhou Meeting of the Regional Council of Communications (Wenzhou Qu jiaotong zonghui), a loose intraregional alliance of all pre-1949 denominations forged in 1971 (excluding Seventh-Day Adventism), ruled that the “head-covering” (mengtou) custom of the Assembly was a heresy.53 The causes for the decision are uncertain, but the implications were clear. Communities who insisted on maintaining this custom would not be accepted into the alliance. The Adventist church was also labeled a heresy and even an evil cult for proselytizing among followers of other denominations.54
Around the same time, the southern Zhejiang network of the Adventist Church faced similar accusations. Jiang Xinghua of Hushang’ao Village of Yueqing was a senior Adventist preacher and was very influential among Adventists in surrounding communities. It was said that he attached great importance to the practice of the Ten Commandments but placed much less emphasis on the saving grace (jiu’en) of Jesus Christ. Because he considered the use of the cross as a form of idol worship, his gatherings prohibited the display of crosses in any form. Water baptism was also abolished, as were the dietary rules of the traditional Adventist church. These unorthodox practices worried other Adventist leaders in the region. After attempts to sway him proved futile, Jiang and his gatherings were declared heretic and were cut off from all connections with other Adventists in 1975.55
All these internal issues—disagreements and feuds, theological and ritual differences—resurfaced after the end of the Cultural Revolution, a few years before the re-establishment of the Three-Self Church in the Wenzhou region. The network of Adventist communities in southern Zhejiang experienced its first major split in May 1978. The split seems to have been provoked by reform measures concerning hymns and Saturday worship instituted by Shu Chengqian and other church leaders. The reform of Saturday worship included the addition of a procedure for worshipping the Holy Spirit and the Holy Father, which allowed multiple people to lead prayers individually (rather than just one or two people, as in the traditional practice). Wu Buxun, a young preacher in the Wenzhou municipality, maintained that the Father must be worshipped before the Holy Spirit because the Father, he believed, is greater than the Holy Spirit. He also disagreed with the revision of the number of hymns, as well as the content of some of the hymns. After realizing he could not persuade other leaders to adopt his suggestions, Wu asked to take a share of the common fund for his gatherings and no longer accepted visits from preachers belonging to other Adventist groups.56
Initially the split was limited to a small number of gathering spots in Wenzhou municipality and its suburbs that were under the influence of Wu and Zhao Dianhua, another young preacher. Yet the schism soon took on catastrophic proportions as it spread to member churches throughout the Adventist network in southern Zhejiang, including the Wenzhou region, neighboring Taizhou, Lishui, and Fuding in northern Fujian.
In his memoir, Preacher Shu Chengqian blamed older pastors and preachers who stood behind Wu and Zhao for aggravating the schism. According to Shu, these older church colleagues had been absent when the church was suffering, hiding and not daring to participate in gatherings, certainly not preaching or serving the church. When they suddenly re-emerged after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Shu believed they stirred up conflict so they could seize leadership of the church.57
The separatists referred to themselves as the “old sect” (laopai), emphasizing the authenticity of their path and their connections to the pre-1949 church. These characterizations, argued Shu, were a matter of expedience and did not reflect the truth. Many older colleagues who had suffered for the church during the Cultural Revolution chose not to join the “old sect.”
These schisms in the Adventist Church foreshadowed the difficulties that all other Protestant churches would have to face sooner or later. The lifting of political constraints boosted the church’s growth as more people, old and new converts alike, could be encouraged to publicly join church activities. Yet the lifting of constraints also made internal differences rise to the surface, eroding the fragile unity among Protestant communities.58
Tensions Generated by the Three-Self Church
If the loosening political environment had the effect of reopening schisms in Protestant churches in Rui’an and Wenzhou, the government’s plan to re-establish the Three-Self Church made further rifts almost unavoidable.
In 1979, the government set out to restore religious work offices as well as “patriotic religious associations” at all levels. In December of that year, twelve former members of the Three-Self Church in the 1950s were convened to re-establish the Wenzhou Three-Self Protestant Patriotic Association. With the assistance of the Wenzhou Three-Self Association, the government sought to re-establish the Three-Self Church at the county (prefecture) level.
This almost immediately sparked off controversies among Christians throughout Wenzhou. The Three-Self movement engendered both support and opposition in the Meetings of the Wenzhou Regional and Rui’an County Councils of Communication. Many of those who were petitioning the government for church restitution59 felt that the Three-Self Church acting as a liaison could help them take back church properties and allow Christians to meet again in church halls (as opposed to temporary house gatherings). Endorsing the establishment of a Three-Self Church organization matched their goal of furthering the overall interests of the church. Yet their opponents argued that “church hall meetings would allow the government to control the church. The government is atheistic and wants to eliminate us. Therefore we should not congregate in church halls.”60 Opposition to formal church meetings turned to antipathy toward the Three-Self Church, which the government had tasked with ending home gatherings and replacing them with approved church hall meetings.
The strongest opposition to the Three-Self Church came from the accumulated distrust and resentment against the government and the former Three-Self Church under Mao. Having suffered decades of religious persecution, many church leaders felt a strong hostility toward the government. They likely felt an even greater antipathy toward those working for the Three-Self Church, considering them not to be true believers, perhaps even traitors to the church.
Twelve founding members of the new Wenzhou Three-Self Church in 1979 all belonged to its former incarnation in the 1950s. Most former leaders in the Three-Self Church were members of the clergy who seemed to have given up Christian activities for decades, as no evidence shows any of them actively engaging in church activities during the Cultural Revolution. Miao Zhitong, a church leader who was opposed to the Three-Self movement, accused the Three-Self Church leaders of having “either betrayed God and friends or committed blasphemy [in the past], and denied their Christian faith.”61 A few of them, Miao believed, were in fact Communist Party members. Their return therefore only served to increase hostility toward the Three-Self Church.62
The self-styled unified churches in Wenzhou faced the first major split around 1981 due to the polarization in attitudes toward the Three-Self Church. Members of the Wenzhou Regional Council had attempted to reach a basic consensus in dealing with shifting social and political conditions in March 1980, but what transpired is unclear. Some claimed that the council came to an agreement that it would oppose the Three-Self movement, while others denied the existence of such an agreement.63 The following year, Lin Naimei and Jin Daoxing,64 two of the three standing committee members, decided to participate in the activities of the Three-Self Church and left the council. The Meeting of the Wenzhou Regional Council of Communications virtually fell apart, with only Miao and his colleagues remaining.
After the reshuffling of the Meeting of the County Council of Communications in Rui’an in June 1980, Miao, the most vocal opponent of the Three-Self movement, was marginalized. In July, the General Council formally voted to support the Three-Self Church. The Meeting of the Rui’an County Council of Communication dissolved, with most council members joining the Three-Self Church formed in September 1981, though Miao and his colleagues in Rui’an continued to operate under the name of the Communications Council.
In 1987, Miao and his colleagues organized a new Meeting of the Wenzhou Regional Council of Communications, with Miao elected to be one of the co-directors.65 Miao’s leadership, however, never went unchallenged. In 1986, member churches belonging to the Meeting of Communications in Rui’an split into two sects: the Zhitong sect (Zhitong pai, named after leader Miao Zhitong) and the yuehan sect (yuehan pai, Yuehan being a transliteration of “John”). These two sects controlled fourteen churches and developed seventy-six gathering spots with a total of 7,880 followers.66
In the 1980s, opposition to the Three-Self movement became a nearly universal mobilization strategy for any individual or group who wished to initiate a separation from their own or other Protestant communities. The strategy was so effective that some anti-Three-Self sects would set themselves apart by questioning and attacking the motivations of other sects opposed to the Three-Self Church. In this climate of maneuvering and opposition, the Yingling sect (named after its founder), which wanted to be the dominant organization among non-Three-Self churches, went so far as to criticize Miao’s sect because some of its leaders maintained personal communications with members of the Three-Self Church, accusing them of being “polluted” (dianwu).67
At the same time as the split in the regional and county meetings, the Shouters (huhan pai) were making discreet steps to infiltrate Protestant churches in the Wenzhou region. The Shouters were named for their distinctive practice of shouting the name of the Lord during worship. Organizationally, the sect was a direct offshoot of the Assembly and mainly carried out evangelical activities among communities affiliated with the former Assembly.
Apart from their distinctive practices and theological positions,68 the most significant way in which the Shouters appealed to Protestants was none other than their determined opposition to the Three-Self Church. In their propaganda, like other groups opposed to the Three-Self Church, they compared it to an “adulterous woman” (a biblical metaphor), and “a tool that the Communist Party used to eliminate Christianity.”69 They said that they “would defeat and bring down Three-Self [organizations],” and “occupy church territory and keep a firm grip over the power of the church.”70 The strategy was effective: twenty-seven churches and gatherings, the majority of the former Assembly communities opposed to the Three-Self Church, joined the Shouters in early 1983.
Within the Adventist Church, the initial split in 1978 did not have much to do with the Three-Self Church: some of the major leaders in the “old sect” also participated in Three-Self activities. In 1984, however, an Adventist Church leader, Wu Huanwen, approved the ordination of pastors in the Three-Self Church. This provoked a severe disagreement between Wu and Chen Dengyong, an Adventist Church leader from Rui’an. They consequently split from each other and formed their own sects. Chen renamed his sect the “Church in the Wild” (kuangye jiaohui), a biblical reference implying that it was the one left to endure persecution and glorify God in the wild.
Objecting to the Three-Self Church was made into the core appeal of the “Church in the Wild.” The sect refused to register under the name of the Three-Self Patriotic Church. Comparing the Three-Self Church to an “adulterous woman” (like the Shouters), they described the act of registering with the government as a Three-Self Church with the phrase “worshipping the beast,” another biblical metaphor, drawing an analogy between Satan and the socialist state.71
As schisms grew rapidly among Protestant churches in the 1980s, church leaders leaned into theological disagreements to justify their opposition to the Three-Self Church. Many of the theological trends that appeared in Wenzhou during the reform period came from abroad, from the Shouters in the 1980s to Arminianism and Evangelicalism in the 1990s and Reformed theology in the first decade of the 2000s. These imported theological stances were intentionally emphasized and even exaggerated in order to justify opposing the Three-Self Church. The result was often another split in the church.
For instance, in 1995, the issue of salvation provoked a great debate within the network of the Meeting of Wenzhou Regional Communications. Several Yueqing churches had adopted Reformed theology and advocated the idea that those who had taken refuge in Christ were “once saved, always saved.” Conversely, under the leadership of Miao Zhitong, several churches in Rui’an had chosen to follow Arminian theology.72 These churches proclaimed that being saved was a lifelong process, and that a follower should “always believe, [to] always be saved.” The disagreement could not be resolved, and the western Liushi section of Yueqing churches split from the rest of the Meeting. While some churches formed their own alliance, many member churches were still allied with the Arminian churches in Rui’an.
In Wenzhou, after the 1980s, theological disagreements also played an important role in splits within the Adventist Church. Some members of the “new sect” (xinpai) were strongly influenced by Evangelicalism and eventually formed their own splinter group, which they dubbed the “new-new sect” (xinxinpai). Today there are at least fourteen sects in the Adventist Church in Wenzhou (Photo 6.2).73
Photo 6.2. A house Adventist Church in Rui’an county seat (2019). The sign reads: “Seventh-Day Adventist Church.”
Source: Author.
Consequences of Schisms
Pervasive schisms in the 1980s had a lasting effect on Protestant churches in Rui’an, Wenzhou, and beyond. Not all of these were detrimental to the expansion of Protestantism in Wenzhou: in fact, the immediate outcome of internal splits was the proliferation of Protestant communities. In many cases, rival groups within a community would completely cut off ties with each other. Two or more communities then took shape, each with its own followers and place of worship. This type of split was fairly common in the 1980s and for some time thereafter.
Protestant communities that had built or intended to build churches and did not stand in opposition to the Three-Self Church indirectly benefited from the state imperative to suppress dissident groups. Indeed, the appearance of dissident sects—many of whom made their hostility to the Three-Self Church into one of their main rallying points—proved an added incentive for the government to “settle [the issue] of religious activity sites” by acknowledging and aiding Protestant groups willing to recognize the leadership of the Three-Self Church.
In 1983 the central government launched a nationwide campaign against the Shouters, whose rapid dissemination, overseas connections, and nonconforming political stance deeply worried central leaders.74 In Wenzhou, a crucial measure to counter the influence of the Shouters was to open more churches and legalize house meetings. As Wenzhou Party Secretary Yuan Fanglie said in a meeting on the handling of the Shouters sect:
one of the means [they] employ to expand their power is to force people to comply by occupying churches. We should fully utilize church space as a front to fight the Shouters. Different places should draft internal plans for opening churches and (re)open some churches accordingly . . . based on their own conditions. . . . Family gatherings . . . are not permitted in principle and we should actively induce them to come to churches for gatherings. In places where people have no church or where churches have been destroyed . . . [we should] merge dispersed “family gathering spots” into joint gathering spots and implement the regime of fixed members, fixed locations, and fixed times [of worship] in order to reinforce the regulation of believers.75
Schisms sped up the outward expansion of Wenzhou churches. Starting in the 1980s, Wenzhou Christians—businessmen in particular—strove to spread the gospel to other parts of China and even directly established a number of new churches throughout the country. The internal splits in Wenzhou churches significantly contributed to this movement as they pushed some preachers to seek new territory for expansion outside of Wenzhou.
In the process of creating his own organization, Adventist leader Chen Dengyong adamantly refused to register his “Church in the Wild” as a Three-Self Church. But Chen did not enjoy strong support among local Adventists. He had to rely on the endorsement of pastors from the Adventist churches in Shanghai and Hangzhou. Today, the Church in the Wild still has only a very limited presence in Rui’an and has not even built a church. Since the end of the 1980s, Chen has spent most of his time preaching and ordaining new pastors to build up his personal influence elsewhere in China.
The case of Miao Zhitong is more complex. Miao’s organization remains a major sect in Wenzhou. However, competition from other sects drove him to develop his church and organization elsewhere in China. Considered a major separatist in the Wenzhou Protestant church, Miao was under heavy government surveillance from the early 1980s onward. Since then, he has been much more active outside Wenzhou, which in turn has helped him achieve nationwide fame. By his death in 2013, he was widely eulogized within China as a major house church leader.
The repercussions of the schisms for Wenzhou Protestant communities still leave much room for further research. Splits in local churches have likely intensified internal competition, as different sects compete for the same pool of potential converts. As church leaders admit, the rivalry between churches sometimes got very ugly and in extreme cases even went from squabbles to actual fights,76 which could have harmed the reputation of the church in society at large.
A curious phenomenon I learned is that local churches in recent years no longer treat proselytizing native local residents as a priority. When they do carry out evangelism at home, it is more likely to be with migrant workers, not Wenzhou natives. Their focus is on expansion elsewhere in China. As Wenzhou preachers have traveled beyond Wenzhou in part to propagate their own idiosyncratic theological ideas, theological splits in Wenzhou Christianity may have had a significant impact on Christianity throughout China.
Conclusion
After the Cultural Revolution, Protestant communities in Wenzhou transitioned from underground family gathering to meetings in formal church buildings. This shift has not been adequately studied until now. A dramatic passage in the history of Christianity in Rui’an and Wenzhou, it generated both prosperity and chaos, occurring alongside deepening splits in Christian communities.
While Christianity had never been a majority religion in Zhejiang, the expansion of Christianity under Mao made it a “regulatory priority” for the reform-era government. While Buddhism and village temple activities had entered a steep decline during the same period, the number of Christians and churches had grown dramatically. Most Protestant leaders adopted a pragmatic stance toward the re-established Three-Self Church, a state-backed organization that acted as a liaison with the local government, allowing Protestant communities to take full advantage of their status as a regulatory priority. By contrast, Catholic communities could not do so because of their persistent refusal to collaborate with the government and the Three-Self Church.
Yet the loosening political and institutional environment was a mixed blessing for the Protestant Church. The government’s accommodating attitude toward formal church meetings (as opposed to family gatherings) considerably accelerated the construction, restitution, and legalization of churches both old and new. But the reappearance of the Three-Self Church tested the fragile unity that churches had achieved during the Cultural Revolution. Protestant communities were torn apart by schisms at every level, from pan-denominational organizations to small village churches, spawning splinter groups and dissident sects. Opposition to the Three-Self Church, mingled with often exaggerated theological disagreements, repeatedly ignited schisms, which appear to have become a new normal in the Christian ecosystem of Wenzhou.
From the perspective of the church’s relationship with the community at large, the rapprochement between the government and mainstream Protestant churches also had far-reaching consequences for Wenzhou Christianity. The government’s new policy framework and the local dynamics associated with it may have alienated the larger community in which churches were embedded. The restitution of former churches and the legalization of many newly built churches in the 1980s de facto confirmed the church’s territorial expansion and penetration of the Wenzhou region. To non-Christian villagers, the state assistance afforded to Christian communities in reopening churches was in striking contrast to the government’s attacks on village temples. To them, this contrast revealed a bias toward Christianity among local authorities, provoking strong grievances. Non-Christian villagers found it difficult to understand such favoritism.
The government’s new policy on property rights for Christian churches may have been a further source of discontent. Under the new religious policy, only state-sanctioned church organizations could legally claim property rights to occupied churches. Conversely, villagers had no right to do the same for village temples. Christian communities and the Three-Self Church representing them, on the one hand, and the village government, on the other hand, often became adversaries in the struggle for ownership of former church buildings, which was unlikely to occur in the case of former village temples. Most church buildings were eventually returned in one way or another. Yet there was not always a smooth transition, and the settlement of property rights often required the intervention of the county government, sometimes after years of conflict. The Protestant Church in Lower Village, Xincheng, did not obtain the return of its entire church building. Its plan to construct a new church was delayed for decades due to opposition from villagers living nearby. In a few extreme cases, old churches were even demolished by non-Christian villagers after negotiations were unsuccessful.77
Do these conflicts signal a deterioration in the relations between Christians and non-Christians? In any case, they seem to represent a hostile current in attitudes toward Christians, echoing tensions in religious life in Wenzhou dating back to before 1949. How non-Christians accommodate the much increased presence of Christians since the 1980s, now legally protected by the state, invites further study. The next chapter discusses the revival of communal religion, and how it relates to resentment against Christian communities.
1Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi (A history of Rui’an Church), internal document, 1998, 18–20.
2A comparison of locations of gatherings spots and churches shows that many gathering spots had no church in proximity before the 1960s—a clear sign that Protestant churches had extended to new territory during the Cultural Revolution.
3“Guanyu Rui’an Shi zongjiao wenti diaocha qingkuang de huibao” (Collective investigational report on the issue of religion in Rui’an City), December 22, 1990, Rui’an City Archives 1-38-6: 31–54. There were 16,853 Christians (Catholics and Protestants) in Rui’an in 1956. See “Guanyu dangqian zongjiao huodong qingkuang de baogao” (Report on current religious activities), April 4, 1957, Rui’an City Archives 1-9-85: 65–68.
4Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 18.
5Zhang Zhiyi, Zhang Zhiyi wenji (The works of Zhang Zhiyi) (Huawen chubanshe, 2006), 351. Zhang was the vice director of the Communist Party’s United Front Work Department in the early to mid-1950s and the early 1980s.
6“Guowuyuan pi zhuan zongjiao shiwuju guojia jianwei deng danwei guanyu luoshi zongjiao tuanti fangchan zhengce deng wenti de baogao” (The State Council’s approval and transmission of the report by Religious Affairs Bureau, National Development Committee, and others concerning implementation of policies on properties of religious organizations), July 16, 1980, Rui’an City Archives 4-31-34: 16–19.
7Buddhist leader Po Yiha told me that he did not know the policy until he wrote a letter to ask the national Buddhist association regarding the restoration of Sagely Longevity Temple of Xianyan in 1981. “At that time Shanghai government did implement the policy. But [government] in other places put aside the policy.” He explained: “[speaking from] the local government side, you asked schools and factories to move out, where did you want them to move? Therefore the policy was put aside.” Interview with Po Yiha, May 15, 2013.
8Zhang, Zhang Ziyi wenji, 351, 397–398, 413–414. It was actually not a return. Even before 1957, there was never a stable policy line on religion. The religious policy in the period 1949–1957 fluctuated between marginalizing and eliminating by coercive measures, and fostering unity with religious communities (Fuk-Tsang Ying, “The CPC’s Policy on Protestant Christianity, 1949–1957: An Overview and Assessment,” Journal of Contemporary China 23, no. 89 (2014): 884–901). The guidelines of new religious policies in the early 1980s were closer to the more lenient end of the spectrum.
9“Guanyu dangqian zongjiao gongzuo zhong jixu jiejue de liang ge zhengce xing wenti qingshi baogao” (Request for instructions on two policy questions in current religious affairs urgently needing to be resolved), October 21, 1978, Rui’an City Archives, 1-27-670: 101–110.
10“Zhongyang guanyu dizhi waiguo jiaohui dui wo jinxing zongjiao shentou wenti de qingshi baogao” (Report and request by the Central Committee on the issue of resisting infiltration by foreign churches), March 4, 1982, Rui’an City Archives, 1-28-47: 1–12. See also Zheng Datong (Mengfu zhi lu—Jidu li shiyi de rensheng (The path of blessing—poetic life in Christ) (Hong Kong: Xundao weili zhongxin, 2010), chapter 22) for the account of a church leader on their contacts with the outside world during this period.
11Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, 159–160.
12The Republican government had continued to track the changes to the number of both Christians and Buddhists, as well as followers of other legal religions. According to the Zhejiang Department of Civil Affairs, by 1940, Buddhists occupied 70.47 percent whereas Christians (Protestants and Catholics) only occupied 10.65 percent of the total of 663,231 religious believers in the province. See Zhejiang minzhengting (Zhejiang Department of Civil Affairs), Zhejiang minzheng yuekan 4 (1940): 149.
13Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 158–159.
14Fuk-Tsang Ying, “Zhongguo Jidujiao de quyu fazhan: 1918, 1949, 2004” (The regional development of Protestant Christianity in China: 1918, 1949 and 2004), Hanyu Jidujiao xueshu lunping (Sino-Christian Studies) 3 (2007): 171.
15Zhejiang Sheng zongjiaozhi bianjizu, ed., Zhejiang Sheng zongjiaozhi ziliao huibian yi: Tianzhujiao (Documents on history of religion in Zhejiang, volume one: Catholicism), internal document, 1993, 47.
16See “Guanyu Wenzhou zongjiao wenti huibao tigang” (Outline report on religious questions in Wenzhou), May 15, 1981, Rui’an City Archives 7-29-46: 31.
17“Guanyu daji liyong zongjiao jinxing pohuai huodong de fangeming fenzi de qingshi baogao” (Report and request about a crackdown on counterrevolutionaries exploiting religion to conduct destructive activities), February 2, 1973, Rui’an City Archives 1-21-60: 14–17.
18“Wang Fang shuji zai quansheng zongjiao gongzhuo huiyishang de jianghua” (The speech of Secretary Wang Fang at the provincial religious work meeting), June 22, 1983, Rui’an City Archives 1-31-63: 36. One wonders how the Zhejiang government came up with this figure. Zhejiang had about 600,000 Christians in 1983. Therefore, it is very likely that either the government did not add the data of lay Buddhists, or the number of people self-identified as lay Buddhist was extremely low at the time.
19“Liu Feng tongzhi zai quansheng zongjiao gongzhuo huiyishang de jianghua” (Comrade Liu Feng’s speech at the provincial religious work meeting), November 24, 1991, Rui’an City Archives 49-43-5: 63.
20The other task was to “let patriotic organizations fully play their roles.”
21The difference in political arrangement, which was a critical instrument of United Front work, was also pronounced. In the 1980s, six Protestant leaders and two Catholic leaders were selected as people’s political consultative committee members, whereas only one Buddhist leader was assigned as a committee member.
22Rui’an City Archives 1-38-6: 32–33. Thirty-seven temporary meeting spots established before 1949 were not included.
23It is unclear how the county government selected and decided the number of Buddhist temples to be restored in Rui’an.
24Rui’an City Archives 1-38-6: 33.
25Ibid. Lack of approval from the county government does not mean there weren’t interventions on the temples’ behalf from lower level officials. Most temples were occupied by state institutions. The overall progress of the return of Buddhist temples was not necessarily smoother and quicker than that of Christian churches. A Concise History of Buddhism in Rui’an written by Pan Yiheng listed 489 monasteries that were still active in the late 1940s (Pan Yiheng, Zhe’nan Rui’an Fojiaozhi [History of Buddhism in Rui’an of Southern Zhejiang], internal document, ca. 1992). Only 119 of them were returned or rebuilt between 1978 and 1991. For the county seat and the suburb, the ratio is 23.81 percent. Ten of forty-two Buddhist temples were restored by 1991. Seventy-six among 178 temples (42.7 percent) were returned or rebuilt in Xincheng and Tangxia of Tang River basin. Yet in sharp contrast, only ten of 119 Buddhist temples (0.08 percent) were returned or rebuilt in the western mountains, including Huling, Taoshan, and Gaolou. For Mayu and Xianjiang in the plain areas to the south of Feiyun River, the ratio is, respectively, six out of ninety two (0.06 percent) and thirteen out of sixty-one (21.31 percent).
26“Guanyu Tangxia Gongshe zongjiao qingkuang ji Li’ao Gongshe xinyang zongjiao qingkuang” (A preliminary investigation of the religious situation in Tangxia Commune and Li’ao Commune), July 2, 1981, Rui’an City Archives 49-33-18: 18. It is unclear how “Catholic” was defined in this report. Local Catholics seemed to report all of their nuclear family members as Catholics, including newborns, to local authorities in the 1950s, whereas no such case is found among the surveys of Protestant population.
27Rui’an City Archives 49-43-5: 36–37.
28Rui’an Buddhist Association was not formed until the end of 1988. One reason, I learned in an interview with Po Yiha, is that monks were traumatized and did not want to take the responsibility. Master Daofa, the first head of the Buddhist Association, hesitated to take the position for years until he was finally persuaded by Master Yuanche, a friend and the general secretary of the National Buddhist Association at the time.
29Rui’an City Archives 49-43-5: 36.
30A section roughly corresponded to an administrative district. Tangxia was the only exception. It has two sections.
31Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 22–24.
32The Protestant council was a new setup created within the Three-Self (self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation) Church and implemented nationwide since the 1980s. The division of labor between the committee and the council, according to the Three-Self Church itself, was that the former aims at promoting unity of Protestants and the Three-Self movement, whereas the latter is in charge of internal affairs of the church, such as theological education and publication.
33Rui’an City Archives 4-31-34: 16–19.
34“There was no church that was reopened at the initiation of the government. . . . Yet by March of the year (1981), in the entire [Wenzhou] region, the number of religious activity sites, whose reopening were spontaneously resolved, has reached nearly one hundred.” See Rui’an City Archives 7-29-46: 31.
35“Guanyu kaifang Xinmin Xia Cun jiaotang de baogao” (Report on reopening the Lower Village church at Xinmin Commune), November 20, 1983, Rui’an City Archives 4-3-50: 58–59.
36Rui’an City Archives 4-3-50: 58–59.
37In the subsequent registrations of religious properties, all churches had to be nominally registered in name of the Three-Self Church since they are considered the legal organization of Christianity.
38“Guanyu jiejue Xincheng Xia Cun jidujiaotang fangchan yiliu wenti de qingshi” (Request of settling the remaining property issues in the Protestant church at Lower Village, Xincheng), March 26, 1986, Rui’an City Archives 72-19-6: 42–46.
39“Guanyu huifu shiqi zuo jidujiaotang de tongzhi” (Notification on restoring seventeen Protestant churches), November 10, 1984, Rui’an City Archives 4-35-16: 17–18.
40Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 29.
41Ibid., 30.
42Shu Chengqian, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi (Memoirs of fifty years’ life in the church), internal reference materials (“neibu cankao ziliao”), 2002.
43Zhu 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), 158.
44In contrast, a sect led by Chen Dengyong, which separated itself from other Adventist groups, did not recognize or join the Three-Self Church. They (and the churches they built) could not be legally recognized as the heir of old Adventist churches.
45Rui’an City Archives 1-38-6: 32.
46Five of fifty-nine old churches were still not restituted.
47There were mutual financial aids, but in no case did a gathering place entirely live through the financial support of others.
48Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 12 (section 2).
49See also Zhu, “Guojia tongzhi,” 105–106.
50Miao Zhitong, Wenzhou qu jiaohui shi (Church history in Wenzhou), internal document, 2005–2006(?), 153–163.
51Yu stayed only briefly and then left after losing in the power struggle in the Three-Self Church, according to Miao.
52Chen Fengsheng, “Wenzhou jiaohui yigong fazhan lichen” (The development course of volunteers in Wenzhou church), Jinling shengxue zhi 3 (2010): 33–36, and “Wenzhou Jidujiao shengshi fazhan lichen” (The making of hymns in Wenzhou Christianity), Jinling shengxue zhi 1 (2009): 69.
53Qingquan, “Wenzhou jiaohui dashi niandaibiao xia” (Chronicle of events in Wenzhou church). Maizhong, April issue, 2007. http://www.wheatseeds.org/wheatseeds/2007-04.08/wz/08.html (accessed on May 4, 2018).
54Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 9.
55Ibid., Chapter 24.
56Ibid., Chapter 12 (section 1).
57Ibid., Chapter 12 (section 2).
58The Unified Church in 1978 had not yet had to deal with the great split that the Adventist Church experienced at the time. The Unified Church was not without signs of discord, though. Some perennial issues, such as the form of water baptism, the issue of communion cup (one cup or many cups), and the issue of salvation were frequently brought up for debate among rival groups in the meetings of Wenzhou Regional Communication Meeting, suggesting that the unity within the Unified Church was fragile (Miao, Wenzhou qu jiaohui shi, 167–168).
59Zhu, “Guojia tongzhi,” 115.
60Zheng, Mengfu zhi lu—Jidu li shiyi de rensheng, prologue of Chapter 5.
61Miao, Wenzhou qu jiaohui shi, 179.
62The re-emergence of former church leaders, from the perspective of power, could be a challenge to regional and county Communication Meetings and church leaders at the time. Council members of Communication Meetings, that is, those who were leading Protestant churches in Wenzhou in 1978, including preachers and church elders, were all non-clerical church co-workers. In this case, there was understandably unrest among incumbent church leaders over the return of former clergies and the Three-Self Church they attempted to reorganize.
63Zheng, Mengfu zhi lu—Jidu li shiyi de rensheng, Chapter 5 (section 2).
64Both soon stopped engaging in the activities of the Three-Self Church.
65“Zhuanfa shiwei tongzhanbu ‘guanyu Yueqing Xian Jidujiao “Jiaotonghui” huodong qingkuang ji chuli yijian de baogao’ ” (Transmitting “the report on activities of Protestant ‘communication meeting’ in Yueqing County and handling opinions” by the United Front Department of the Wenzhou Party Committee), June 31, 1987, Rui’an City Archives 1-35-41: 46–47.
66Rui’an City Archives 1-38-6: 34–35. See also Miao, Wenzhou qu jiaohui shi, 189–191.
67Ibid., 192–193.
68Theologically they stressed rediscovering the true meaning of the Lord and using a recovery version of the Bible that was heavily annotated by their founder Lee Changshou. The Shouters’ theological stands are controversial even among Christians. Many church leaders consider the Shouters a heresy even today.
69Rui’an City Archives 1-35-41: 47.
70Ibid.
71Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 21 (section 3).
72See Nanlai Cao, Constructing China’s Jerusalem: Christians, Power, and Place in Contemporary Wenzhou (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 103–104.
73See Duan Qi, “Cangnan fuyin dahui yougan” (Comments on the Cangnan evangelical meeting), Maitian, Autumn issue, 2010, http://www.mtfy.org/magazine.php?mod=view&id=212 (accessed on May 4, 2018).
74“Guanyu chuli Huhanpai wenti de baogao” (Report on the handling of the Shouters), May 26, 1983, Rui’an City Archives 1-31-63: 18–25.
75“Yuan Fanglie tongzhi zai chuli Huhanpai wenti baogaohui shang de jianghua” (Comrade Yuan Fanglie’s speech at the meeting on the handling of the Shouters issue), May 17, 1983, Rui’an City Archives 1-31-63:15–16.
76Zheng, Mengfu zhi lu—Jidu li shiyi de rensheng, Chapter 9 (section 2); Shu, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi, Chapter 12 (sections 3–5).
77“Guanyu Tangxia Xinhua Qianchi Dadui jiaotang bei chaihui de baogao” (Report on the demolition of the church of Qianchi Brigade, Xinhua [Commune], Tangxia [District]), March 25, 1982, Rui’an City Archives 49-34-22: 28–30; “Renzhen zuohao dang de zongjiao gongzuo wei woshi zhili zhengdun he shenhua gaige fuwu” (Taking the party’s religious work seriously to serve rectification and readjustment and the deepening of reform in our city), May 1990, Rui’an City Archives 109-9-15: 77.