BEIZHAN, China — Han Tingming, 64, beamed as he regarded the gleaming white church spires that shoot up toward heaven from this village of simple mud-brick homes, towering over the wheat fields.
Built by villagers but paid for largely with donations from Roman Catholics overseas, Beizhan's grand new church has finally replaced a small one destroyed during the anti-religious fervor of the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960's. Now, 1,500 of Beizhan's 5,000 residents fill the wooden pews on a typical Sunday, with up to 3,000 on holy days like Christmas.
"It took us 12 years to get our land back and, even after we had the money, for several years we couldn't get approval to build," said Mr. Han, a grizzled farmer, who helped lay the bricks for the church. "But now look. As I watched it rise up from the ground, words can not describe my feeling. We finally had a home."
There has been a remarkable renaissance in the construction of Catholic churches and in charitable works in China in recent years. Behind this development is a resurgence of faith, a relaxation of government policy toward officially registered religious groups and — particularly in poor rural areas — better access to money from international Catholic organizations.
The changes, however, have heightened tensions between the "official" churches, which register with the government and allow the Communist Party to govern church affairs, and the clandestine "underground" churches, which cling to the supremacy of the pope at the cost of persecution. Only the official churches are allowed to accept foreign money.
In the last few years, hundreds of Catholic churches have been built in central Hebei Province alone, according to Beifang Jinde, China's first Catholic charity. Through its bilingual Web site and overseas lobbying efforts, the organization has helped secure foreign financing for 100 churches since it was founded in 1999. But that is not all: Beifang Jinde as well as a number of parishes in this area are also busily building schools, clinics and nurseries — social services that China's lapsed socialist system no longer provides.
It is a striking burst of religious activity in a country where freedom to worship varies significantly from place to place, depending on the often begrudging tolerance of local officials, the negotiating skills of parish priests and their willingness to abide by government rules on registration and practice.
Over time, foreign charities have become increasingly willing to assist government-registered congregations like the one here in Beizhan, and to accept congregants as genuine Catholics, albeit Catholics who are forced to live with compromises.
The revival of religious activity has drawn a number of formerly clandestine Catholics back to open practice at official churches. At the same time, those who remain underground have felt ever more intense suffering.
This summer in the village of Dingzhou, about 100 miles north of here, the police bulldozed a church that was under construction by an unregistered congregation, according to the United States-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, which tracks China's underground Catholics.
Also, the revival of church building and charity work by groups like Beifang Jinde has left many officials anxious about maintaining control.
In September, the police in Bao-ding, also in Hebei, opened a yearlong investigation of local Catholics, both "official" and underground, according to documents provided by Li Shixiong, head of the Committee for Investigation of Persecution of Religion in China, which is based in New York. Under special scrutiny are Chinese clerics who have ties with or accept money from abroad, even though such donations to registered groups are legal under a 1999 law.
"Even as this kind of money is coming in, the persecution of underground Catholics is ongoing and getting worse — all 50 of the underground bishops are now under arrest, under surveillance or on the run," said Joseph Kung, head of the Cardinal Kung Foundation. "You are either a good Catholic or not quite a good Catholic, like the people in the `patriotic' church."
Although the Vatican considers the "patriotic" church illicit for its rejection of papal authority, it generally recognizes the validity of rites performed in state-sanctioned churches, said the Rev. Drew Christiansen, former director of the Office of International Justice and Peace of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
There are about 12 million practicing Catholics in China today, experts say, a number that by all accounts is growing rapidly. Exact figures are hard to come by, because an estimated 50 percent of these attend underground churches — generally in places where officials block worship even by state-registered parishes or where church leaders regard any degree of government involvement as sacrilegious.
The divide between the state-run and underground churches began shortly after the Communists came to power in 1949. Ties with the Vatican were severed, and religious activity was subsumed under a "Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association." Catholics who persisted in their allegiance to the pope formed secret "house churches." During the most radical years of Mao's rule, all religious expression, legal or not, came under severe attack.
"I was little then, but I still remember how we were paraded through the streets and the priests were sent to labor camps," said the Rev. Ji Hailei, a priest who works for Beifang Jinde. "Many still find it difficult to trust the government and so refuse to go to an official church."
Still, with government policies relaxing, the official church has become an increasingly comfortable home to many Catholics, who are delicately treading a path to greater openness.
Many "official" priests, like those at Beifang Jinde, are now testing the limits of tolerance here in ways that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
Careful to balance church building with social welfare — from school construction to disaster relief — the charity has in turn won a degree of good will from local officials. It has also become skilled at linking remote Chinese parishes with international Catholic groups, like Caritas and the German social action group Misereor.
But it is a difficult balancing act, as the group discovered two years ago, when it was reprimanded for publishing in its newspaper a list of 120 new saints canonized by the Vatican — some of whom the Chinese government considered traitors.
"To a degree, there is pressure from all sides," the Rev. John B. Zhang, a founder of Beifang Jinde, said in his office in Shijiazhuang, an image of the Virgin Mary on the wall, a small frayed photo of Pope John Paul II tucked on a shelf.
"Parishioners are angry because they say we should just be building churches," he said. "Foreign donors say you shouldn't cooperate with the Communist Party." Leaders of the underground church view the group's willingness to work with the government as a breach of faith and repudiation of their years of suffering.
"Over time, I hope people have come to appreciate the value of what we do and its good public relations effect," Father Zhang said. "When we go to build a school in a village, the officials ask what kind of group we are. We explain we are Catholics. And when they see the nuns in their habits, they say: `Catholics! We've only seen you in movies."'
In 1980, as part of post-Mao reforms, China's government decreed that confiscated land and buildings should be returned to religious organizations. But churches had generally suffered heavy damage, and local governments for many years refused to return property they had come to regard as their own.
In Xingtai, for instance, a city an hour's drive from here, the former bishop's residence was taken over by the military. A hospital was built where the church once stood.
So when the Catholics of Xingtai began petitioning the local government in 1990 to get back their land, it was the start of a long struggle. First, the city offered them a room 20 feet by 40 feet in a decrepit brick building to use as a church.
But the congregation has grown rapidly in recent years, and the limited space is now reserved for the very elderly. Hundreds more listen from the dusty courtyard outside. "To get back a church is very difficult," the Rev. Zhang Guojun said. "We've been pressing for a church for a very long time."
It was only this year that the parish broke ground on a new church, a soaring structure whose half-finished shell is now squeezed onto a small plot behind some convenience stores that the hospital ultimately provided.
Parishioners contributed about $12,000 and occasional days of labor. Beifang Jinde helped secure an additional $30,000 from Catholic charities overseas. About $40,000 more is needed to complete the church.
To economize, priests in Xingtai decided to forgo stained glass, and the steeples were lowered to 118 feet from a planned 135. They have relied on a local architect. "He had never designed a church before," Father Hou said. "We gave him plans and photos."
In Hebei Province, Beifang Jinde is now seeking money to expand a church-run old-age home in Xingtai and for a reservoir in Pingshan and a new church in Yin village. It builds schools, but not religious schools, because those are prohibited by the state.
"The government still isn't 100 percent open to the church, but it's better," said one young priest in the official church, who occasionally attends an underground Mass. "Everyone hopes that there will be relations with the Vatican. But what they do in the meantime depends a lot on their spiritual bent."
Xin Zenjing, a plump 75-year-old, said she had worshiped every Sunday in Xingtai since childhood — at first, before Communist rule, in the "huge and grand" church that was torn down in the 1960's and later at home. "It was dangerous even to have a Bible," she recalled, stepping out of the 20-by-40-foot room after Sunday Mass.
But she said she looked forward to the completion of Xingtai's new church, even though it will be state approved. "I thank the Lord," she said, "for providing us with a decent church."