The Chinese government has forced pastors of unregistered churches to pledge there will be no worship services at their congregations’ meeting sites during a three-month period surrounding the Summer Olympics, a human rights group reported Aug. 13.
The pastors also were required to promise they would not organize or attend any religious gatherings that were not approved by the communist regime, according to China Aid Association, an American-based organization that monitors religious persecution in the world’s most populous country.
The report provided additional evidence of ongoing religious repression in China, reinforcing critics’ claims that the regime has not lived up to its commitment to improve its human rights record when Beijing was named in 2001 as the host city for this year’s Olympic Games. Unregistered congregations, which are not approved by the government, are among the religious groups under pressure from the Chinese regime.
China Aid Association provided an English translation of the document pastors were coerced to sign.
The form included a statement committing each signer to “refrain from organizing and joining illegal gatherings and refrain from receiving donations, sermons and preaching from” foreign religious entities. It also said “activities at the gathering sites will be shut down for three months (July 15-October 15).”
A China Aid staff member said the report reveals Beijing is “extremely two-faced.”
“I think it displays the blatant hypocrisy of the Chinese government, who is telling the world on one hand that they’re tolerating religious freedom while at the same time they are severely persecuting house church Christians,” Daniel Burton told Baptist Press. “All the house church wants to do is worship in freedom without fear of being persecuted.”
China Aid estimates from 60 to 80 million Christians are part of unregistered churches.