OPINION:
Free speech and religious liberty are the cornerstones of a healthy and vibrant nation, which is why it should come as no surprise that these very ideals are often the first rights to be curtailed and obliterated by militant and nefarious officials and governments.
Tragically, too many nations today are led by dictators, miscreants and other odious villains bent on controlling populaces and forcefully tipping the will of the people toward their whims and selfish desires, using terror and even murder to eradicate free speech and religious liberty.
China is just one of these nations, where Christianity and other faiths are systematically and increasingly denigrated, with shocking acts of government malfeasance eroding any semblance of democratic normalcy.
Authorities in the communist nation have been forcing Christian symbols out of churches and other religious locations, replacing crosses and images of Jesus and Mary with Chinese Communist Party slogans and even pictures of party leaders.
The censoring of religious texts is also part of this fiendish crusade, with clergy reportedly being mandated to preach communist ideals from their pulpits.
According to The Christian Post, these details seem to indicate that China is pursuing “an aggressive policy to integrate the CCP’s ideology into religious practices.”
The disturbing allegations and details are presented in a recent report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal agency that monitors such infractions. According to the report, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “sinicization of religion” policy has “fundamentally transformed China’s religious environment.”
Thus, the government seeks to force religious culture into the confines of CCP ideology, undermining faith and forcing it to comport with Marxist ideals. This is affecting not just Christians, but also Muslims, Taoists and Buddhists, violating international religious laws and protections along the way.
“They … forcibly eradicate religious elements considered contradictory to the CCP’s political and policy agenda with ultranationalist overtones,” the report reads. “Government officials have installed CCP loyalists as leading religious figures, altered houses of worship with CCP-approved architecture, integrated CCP propaganda into religious doctrines, and otherwise criminalized non-CCP-backed religious activities, all with the goal to ensure the stability of CCP rule.”
China’s horrors aren’t new, but reports in recent years have led some activists to fear an alarming ramping up of persecution and the perversion of religious ideals. Among other actions, the CCP has been attempting to rewrite the Bible in an effort to present it through a more communistic lens.
“This is a project that the Chinese Communist Party announced in 2019. At the time, they said it would be about a 10-year process … to release a new translation of the Bible,” Todd Nettleton, spokesman for The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), told me in 2022. “This new translation … would really support the Communist Party.”
Among some of the reported changes, the CCP took a well-known Bible story in John 8 about Jesus showing compassion to a woman caught in adultery by rescuing her from being stoned. Instead, China’s version portrays Christ as stoning the woman and calling himself a “sinner.”
The issues don’t end there. Popular Christian app Pray.com was removed this year from the Apple App Store in China under the nation’s 2022 “Measures for the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services” law, a regulation requiring a government permit to post religious information online. The law also bans other religious liberties such as broadcasting religious events and worship services.
These stories only scratch the surface of the disturbing policies that have led many in China to flee government-controlled churches and to, instead, worship underground.
The intense persecution inside China makes it difficult to track how many Christians and other religious adherents actually live there, especially considering the potential ramifications for those who openly worship.
“[President Xi has] become more … like a dictator,” David Curry, CEO of Global Christian Relief, a persecution watchdog, told me last year. “It’s gone back underground, because of the increased restrictions. So, to be self-identified as a Christian means to put yourself in the crosshairs of a lot of government surveillance and other things, because Christian behavior is punished in their social score system, and they have a very sophisticated way of monitoring this.”
It’s impossible to cover these acts of persecution without mentioning the predominately Muslim Uyghurs and others who have faced genocide in Xinjiang, with China reportedly placing more than one million of these individuals in reeducation camps and prisons.
These human rights abuses deserve constant attention in U.S. and international media, as pressure must be placed on China to halt these horrors. Tragically, the opposite seems to be happening, with the communist nation wielding its power to shut freedom down while the world ignores or looks past the Chinese people’s plight.
At a time when free speech and religious liberty battles persist in our own nation, it’s important we look at China and recognize the stark reality: the result of a terrifying experiment showcasing what happens when people allow the government to become the arbiter of truth and rightfulness.
Politicians in America who do not respect the First Amendment and its associated free speech and religious freedom ideals deserve to be nowhere near elected office. We must work diligently to ensure our nation looks nothing like this unmitigated disaster.
• Billy Hallowell is a digital TV host and interviewer for Faithwire and CBN News and the co-host of CBN’s “Quick Start Podcast.” Mr. Hallowell is the author of four books.
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