If you listened closely enough, there were always voices protesting religious persecution in China, from missionaries to human rights groups to followers of the Dalai Lama.
But they were seldom heard in Washington until evangelical Christians, particularly those who are active in conservative politics, took up the issue over the last few years.
Suddenly religious persecution became a hot issue, with a powerful lobby in Congress.
And suddenly China’s “most favored nation” trading status with the U.S., often a political football, was in danger of being booted right out of the playing field. Who on Capitol Hill was going to defend an enemy of religion?
Good as coming down hard on China sounds in Congress, however, no recent president of either party has wanted to be the one responsible for closing down what is potentially the world’s biggest market. So after meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin last fall, President Clinton appointed three religious leaders from the U.S. to travel to China and see what they could do.
The three were Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York; Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J.; and Rev. Don Argue, president of the Carol Stream-based National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group that represents nearly 50,000 congregations, including many of those most adamant about China.
Argue, in turn, asked professor Brent Fulton of Wheaton College to brief him on China and ultimately accompany the delegation when it made its three-week tour last month.
Fulton, managing director of the college’s Institute for Chinese Studies, has studied China for 14 years. So when Chinese officials told the delegation that religious freedom in China is improving every day, Fulton was not impressed.
“We were told again and again, `Look at what was going on 20 years ago.’ But if you look at China in the last couple of years, it looks like things are getting much tighter,” Fulton said this week.
Although the Chinese government sanctions certain churches, it forces those churches to register with the state and subject themselves to government control. The official Chinese Catholic Church, for instance, has no relations with Rome because, among other reasons, Chinese officials insist on appointing the church’s bishops.
Meanwhile, the government appears to have cracked down on unofficial churches, sometimes imprisoning their leaders for years at a time without trial, according to Fulton.
More Top Picks Calming Strategies For A Sensory Meltdown
And though the delegation saw numerous signs of worship, it also knew what–and who–it was not allowed to see.
But as far as the delegation was concerned, it was not there on a fact-finding mission but a message-sending mission.
So the American trio held 60 meetings with government officials and with President Jiang himself.
“It was not stony silence. I was pleasantly surprised. They were listening to what we had to say,” Fulton said.
There were other signs of hope as well. Government newspapers highlighted the visit, acknowledging, if not fully explaining, that the Americans were there to discuss “disagreements.”
“There’s never been a period in the history of the People’s Republic of China when religion was covered so thoroughly,” Fulton said.
“The government is changing very rapidly. There are people in the government who honestly want reform.
“The fact that this trip happened, the fact that the president (of China) invited us to come and talk about religion is in itself history,” he said.
The delegation released a report on its trip last week and immediately took criticism from activists who argued that it had not accomplished anything concrete. Others have worried publicly that the trip was nothing more than a photo opportunity for the Chinese and political cover for Clinton.
Fulton has plenty of pragmatic and scholarly arguments for why Americans are better off talking to the Chinese about freedom of religion in ventures like this than not talking at all. But as a Christian, he also has another line of reasoning, which differs sharply from other evangelicals’ hard-line approach.
“I don’t see the Bible promoting isolationism. Wherever Christians are, they are supposed to be salt and light,” he said. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
And if religion has become the new trump card in the debate over trade with China, Fulton’s argument is one that Washington would do well to consider.
———-
E-mail: [email protected]