Christian History Magazine Collection

The house-church movement survived persecution and created a surge of Christian growth across China.

by Tony Lambert from Christian History magazine no. 98

On the eve of the Communist victory in 1949, there were around one million Protestants (of all denominations) in China. In 2007, even the most conservative official polls reported 40 million, and these do not take into account the millions of secret Christians in the Communist Party and the government. What accounts for this astounding growth? Many observers point to the role of Chinese house churches.

The house-church movement began in the pre-1949 missionary era. New converts—especially in evangelical missions like the China Inland Mission and the Christian & Missionary Alliance—would often meet in homes. Also, the rapidly growing independent churches, such as the True Jesus Church, the Little Flock, and the Jesus Family, stressed lay ministry and evangelism. The Little Flock had no pastors, relying on every “brother” to lead ministry, and attracted many educated city people and students who were dissatisfied with the traditional foreign missions and denominations. The Jesus Family practiced communal living and attracted the rural poor. These independent churches were uniquely placed to survive, and eventually flourish, in the new, strictly-controlled environment.

In the early 1950s, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement eliminated denominations and created a stifling political control over the dwindling churches. Many believers quietly began to pull out of this system. They chose to meet in homes, although such activity was highly dangerous. According to a Communist source, by the mid-1950s these groups had grown to be “more numerous than all the other Protestant churches combined.”

In 1953, the chairman of the Communist-controlled Religious Affairs Bureau attacked the “rapid growth of meetings in the home” as “suspicious.” By 1958, the year of enforced “church unity,” the TSPM was prohibiting house churches altogether: “All so-called ‘churches’, ‘worship-halls’ and ‘family meetings’ which have been established without the permission of the government must be dissolved.”

At “accusation meetings,” Christians were encouraged to denounce their own leaders as “lackeys of Western imperialism.” Despite this, a number of key evangelical leaders took a stand against Communist Party interference in church affairs. Wang Mingdao, pastor of the independent Christian Tabernacle in Beijing, accused Y. T. Wu (the first chairman of the TSPM) and his later successor Bishop K. H. Ting of denying the basic doctrines of evangelical faith. Wang was imprisoned for 23 years. In the south, Baptist-trained Lin Xiangao (later known as Pastor Lamb) was also imprisoned and sent to do slave labor in the coal mines. Allen Yuan in Beijing was sent to labor camp for opposing the TSPM. Many others were also persecuted. It is very doubtful whether the church would have survived in China without their sterling testimony and patient, Christ-like suffering in the dark days under Mao.

The crucible

Helen Willis, the last Protestant missionary to leave China in 1959, reported that Christians in Shanghai were meeting “frequently in twos and threes to pray, often with tears and much earnestness.” Some even met every Sunday in a home to share the Lord’s Supper. In 1962, four years after most churches had been closed, a Chinese writer in the Hong Kong Standard described informal Christian activities springing up in many places, despite persecution:

…although the visible and formal churches are dying out, the invisible, formless, non-political and true ones are growing in number in Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and other towns and cities … The wife of a former professor at Beijing University belonged to a small prayer group of four Chinese women … She says there are many such small groups formed by people whose churches have either been shut down or taken over by the Communists. They meet irregularly but not infrequently at different homes for prayer meetings, Bible study and fellowship. They have won many souls who have found God a great help in time of trouble.

There seems little doubt that the long nightmare of the Cultural Revolution (officially 1966-76, although the period of major violence and anarchy lasted only from 1966-69) was the crucible from which the Chinese house churches emerged spiritually refined and poised to spread the gospel across the nation. For an even longer period (1966-1979), all church buildings were closed and Christian activities were banned. Bibles were burnt, and many church leaders (including TSPM pastors) were imprisoned for long years in labor camps. Meeting for prayer and Bible study was extremely dangerous. Miners met in the depths of the northern coal mines, their hymnbooks and scribbled Bible verses disguised as Mao’s “Little Red Book.” Miao Christian tribespeople in the far southwest hid Bibles in mountain caves to which they climbed for secret meetings.

While the official church was moribund, the house churches kept alight the flame of Christian witness. The church survived as a lay movement, often led by poorly educated Bible women who memorized Scripture and passed on the faith to family members and (if they dared) to neighbors and friends.