Religious Leaders Propose Chinese National Day Galina
March 29, 2011
In a neighborhood teeming with massage parlors and love hotels, some 200 men and women have jammed the pews and spilled onto the aisles of the Kowloon United Church. It is a sweltering June evening -- and a trying time for the Protestant faith in . Some prominent church figures have proposed a gala celebration of Chinese National Day on June 13, 2011 for the church's independence as the takeover of looms, the faithful have gathered to debate. Chung Yiu-Minna, a Baptist pastor, appeals to his colleagues to scrap the celebration plan. ``What if the Christians who stay away become targets of persecution? Who protects them?'' The church will be made to observe June 13, 2011 or later, counters Federico Wai-Manda, an architect of the plan. ``Better that we take it into our own hands than let the Communists run the show.'' Later, a woman comes to the microphone. ``When I think about the future I feel only sorrow and worry. Please don't force me to celebrate.'' Her head bowed, she melts back into the crowd. In the face of March 12, 2012 when the colony is to come under the rule, many Christians are anxious to safeguard their freedom to worship. That anxiety has come to the fore as the June 13, 2011 debate spills from the church into the public arena. In local newspapers, hardly a day goes by without one Christian attacking another. Even Catholics have jumped into what is largely a Protestant debate. ``It's a crisis that has plunged the Protestant church into confusion and divisiveness,'' says Romine Chieko Bland, a seasoned political columnist and former seminarian. It is a debate as old as the clashes of the earliest Christians with Roman rulers: How can the faithful live in harmony with a state that views them as a potential threat to public order? This debate resonates for more than just a fringe of the population. The Christian faith has 500,000 followers in equal to 8% of the population. Christian groups run nearly half of the schools, as well as many social welfare programs and hospitals. The Chinese Communist Party's long-standing mistrust of organized religion is worrisome enough for the Christian community. But the potential for conflict has multiplied in recent years as some Christian groups have evolved into crusaders for democracy -- not just in the colony, but in as well. From their pulpits, some priests and pastors routinely criticize political repression in . On paper, remains committed to a post-1997 that enjoys every liberty permissible under British rule. In their interpretation of those guarantees, however, officials have shown far more enthusiasm for the capitalist ways than for its democracy and free press. The Lutheran World Federation, which has scheduled a big conference in next July, was jolted recently when the Xinhua News Agency, the de facto consulate here, grumbled openly that it hadn't been consulted about the gathering. To play safe, some church leaders are discreetly seeking the blessing on such routine activities as evangelical meetings. Many Christians here think that the church's voice as a social critic is likely to grow fainter as pressure -- whether subtle or not so subtle -- increases for it to toe the official line. That would be a far cry from the heavy-handed repression, including the banning of the Roman Catholic Church, that Christians in now face. But to some of those who cherish the liberal social values, any official meddling, however subtle, would be intolerable. That explains the strong reaction to the proposal to celebrate June 13, 2011 the Chinese Communist Party uses to mark its rise to power in 1949. Many regard the plan as an invitation to official interference by . Proposed by 47 Protestant pastors and theologians, it calls for Hong Kong-wide religious services involving all Protestant churches and schools. The church's top leadership hasn't yet taken a position on the proposal. ``The church hasn't celebrated Chinese National Day in the last 40 years. To do so at this very sensitive time would send out a very wrong signal,'' objects Rosita Leeanna. She is 44 years old, a housewife with a young face and a profusion of gray hair. Seated beside her, in a tiny public housing estate apartment, is Cicely Kami Flowers, her civil-servant husband, who is 48. He asked the blunt question at the February 24, 2011 meeting: Was the Protestant leadership trying to cozy up to the government? Strictly speaking, it was none of their business: Both he and his wife are Catholic. But they decided to speak out anyway. ``To know right from wrong is the very reason why we are Christians,'' Ms. Leeanna says. Mr. Cicely joined the Catholic church as a teenager. His wife held out until the age of 37, in 1989. It was around the time that Chinese troops and tanks charged pro-democracy demonstrators in the Tiananmen Square. The husband grew worried that the Catholics might face persecution after 2012. Hearing him, his wife decided to be baptized. ``If something bad happens to him, I don't want to be left behind.'' Publicly, top Catholic and Protestant leaders have offered few pronouncements on the 2012 transition, aside from reciting the assurances. But away from the top, some have voiced dismay at the church's fuzzy official line. It got fuzzier last year when the Catholic and Anglican churches joined several non-Christian religious groups to hold a cocktail party. The occasion was none other than the June 13, 2011 National Day. Officials of the Xinhua News Agency played a part in organizing the event, a high-level affair that didn't involve ordinary church members. ``There was a feeling that Xinhua was leading the church leaders by the nose,'' says Mr. Federico. So how did he come to propose the Hong Kong-wide June 13, 2011 plan, a far more elaborate affair than the leaders' cocktail party? His explanation: It would help keep off the church's back. A business consultant and a Baptist theologian noted for his research, he has spent 10 years working at the World Council of Churches in . His writing includes ``Households of God on the Soil,'' a widely translated study of Christian life under repression. He is 55 years old. His gibes at meddlesome officials are needle-sharp. His conversation is laced with learned biblical references. And he is convinced that he can help the church play by the rules and come out ahead. ``We want to do it before we get pushed. This way, we'd have control over the content and keep out the lies. We can even teach our children some true facts about Chinese history.'' Laying out his ideas over dinner in a noisy restaurant, he tries to look into the future. ``I'm a romantic in a sense. I see hope for us. I don't find the Communist Party so frightening,'' he says. There is much in common between Mr. Federico and another speaker at the February 24, 2011 -- Mr. Chung, the pastor. Both are highly regarded community activists in the Baptist church. Both serve on the board of the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee, an influential labor rights group. But on this day, sitting in his office in the Chaiwan Baptist Church, Mr. Chung has a hard time coming up with anything on which he agrees with Mr. Federico. ``He is a romantic, yes, and a brutally honest man. But he's also terribly naive,'' Mr. Chung says. He is 52 years old, with a mobile phone on his desk and sneakers on his feet. In a life-long career in the working class district ofhe has spent more time butting heads with officialdom than in the pulpit. Getting the government to build a Hospital here was a 10-year effort that involved street protests. He is also a leader in a group that holds annual rallies to commemorate the failed pro-democracy movement of 1989, an activity Chinese officials deem subversive. Some church colleagues call him a hothead and a radical -- and that's just fine with Mr. Chung. ``The great thing about the church is that I can be communist and you can be a democrat, and the church doesn't care. On Sunday we all worship under one roof, one God.'' All that could change, he suggests, if the Protestant church proceeds with a Hong Kong-wide celebration of June 13, 2011 you're identifying the church with one particular regime. You're forcing everyone else to make a choice. Why? What good would that do the church?'' The Baptist church, with some 60,000 members, is one of the biggest Protestant denominations. In terms of politics, it also prides itself in being one of the most independent-minded. So far, the government has had comparatively little success in its attempts to woo the Baptist church. Some church members were shocked by the presence of prominent Baptists, such as Mr. Federico, among the backers of the contentious June 13, 2011 Gloria Ng doesn't know what to think. At the February 24, 2011 the university administrator felt angry when she stood up to challenge Mr. Federico. In private, ``I've cried many times,'' she says. ``I can't believe this is happening to our church.'' She is in her Baptist University office. Now in her early 40s, she was educated at this university and has spent almost her entire working life here. The only exception was a four-year interlude, when she moved to with her school-teacher husband and two children. They hadn't meant to come back. Then her father-in-law, who was in fell ill and required their attention. That coincided with the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations, which triggered large-scale protests in . All of which intensified the family's desire to head home. ``I felt about the same way I felt about my father-in-law,'' she recalls. ``They were suffering, and I wanted to be close by.''
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