Beijing, China - Growing up in communist China, Li Heping had always been taught that religion was nonsense. But when friends invited the Beijing lawyer to an underground Protestant service six years ago, he felt an intellectual duty to learn more about their beliefs. "The government says we Chinese are atheist, but I thought I should give the Christian view a fair hearing," Li says. A year later, another friend asked him to come to a Bible study session. Listening to strangers read from the New Testament that night, Li studied the faces around him and reflected on his life.
A son of "hill peasants" from a village in central China, he had beaten severe odds just by making it to college, where he earned a degree in law. As a young attorney, he continued fighting the odds by defending clients in a justice system where the accused are presumed guilty and trials are often a formality. It was exhausting work, and the pay was paltry. Yet sitting among the Christians in a friend's apartment, his frustrations seemed petty. Over the next several months, Li began reading about the religion on his own. What impressed him most, he says, was Christianity's role in promoting freedom, democracy and respect for human rights around the world.
He believed in these principles too, and realized he'd discovered a deep system of values that resonated with his life and work. He began going to church regularly and started taking on riskier, politically sensitive cases. Recently, the 35-year-old lawyer defended another attorney who was detained for helping clients sue provincial authorities for an illegal land seizure. The historic case, one of the largest in Chinese history, puts the country's legal system itself on trial, according to Li. "I still don't have a complete understanding of Christianity," he says. "But my road is different now than it was before.
Growing numbers of progressive lawyers, journalists, environmentalists and other civic activists in China are converting to Christianity, finding support for their causes as well as personal strength in the teachings of Jesus. According to underground church leaders and community activists, these new converts are speaking out on Internet forums, sharing their vision for change with rural congregations and closely studying the work of former Christian civil-rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr.
Often members of the educated urban middle class, they have emerged as some of the most strident and gutsy of those who advocate liberal political reforms in China. These democracy and human-rights advocates embrace Christianity because they are activists, and not the other way around. And they say the religion fits in with their vision of how to change China. "It's the newest believers who tend to be among the most radical," says Jiao Guobiao, a scholar who lost his job at Beijing University after writing an essay on the Internet attacking party censors, and who recently became a Christian. "They complain that other Christians aren't taking action."
China is experiencing a religious—and, in particular, Christian—boom. Scholars and clergy estimate that there are at least 45 million Christians in the country now, most of whom practice in illegal churches rather than in the state-sanctioned Catholic and Protestant organizations. The numbers reflect a spiritual yearning often attributed to rapid social change, a popular disillusionment with communist ideology and the painful transition to capitalism.
Moral certainty can be divisive, however. In late May, for example, a visit by Chinese Christian activists to the White House prompted an acrimonious debate among reformers about who has the right to represent them. President George W. Bush invited Christian activists Yu Jie, Wang Yi and Li Baiguang to discuss their faith and their work with him. A fourth Chinese activist, who is not a Christian, asked to attend as well, but Yu and Wang refused. Many Chinese intellectuals denounced the pair on the Internet, accusing them of trying to hijack the democracy movement and discriminating against non-Christians. (Yu and Wang said the White House had specifically invited the three to discuss their faith.)
Despite such wrangles, the new Christian activism is a potential headache for the government. The party has long been wary of Christianity because of its ties to the West and its potential as an organizing force that the authorities cannot control. Already, churches have helped reform-minded people meet, recruit supporters and work together. Recently, Christian activists rallied to support a well-known lawyer, Chen Guang-cheng, whom authorities roughed up and detained. Chen (who is not a Christian) ran into trouble after he tried to organize a lawsuit on behalf of peasants who claimed their local authorities had forced them to have abortions or undergo sterilization to enforce the one-child policy. Facing threats from officials in Chen's home province, the activists have offered emotional support and advice to his family and provided him legal counsel. Chen was formally charged two weeks ago with "disturbing social order" and "harming public property." Thanks in part to the Christian activists and other supporters, his case has become a worldwide cause. "Christianity is a challenge to the Communist Party because more people are turning to it and it presents alternative viewpoints," says Liu Xiaobo, a prominent free-speech advocate who is not a Christian. "This fact, along with pressure from the West on the Communist government, will help the cause of freedom in China."
Many Christian activists argue that democracy alone is not enough to change China. Yu Jie, 35, one of the dissident writers invited to the White House, is among the most well known and outspoken of these converts. After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, he became active in the democracy movement, writing scathing critiques of the Communist Party's attempts to "brainwash" young people. In 2000 Yu's wife became a Christian and began running an unregistered church in the couple's apartment. Listening to her wife and her friends read Bible stories, Yu admired Jesus' philosophy of nonviolent resistance. And he liked the idea of change fueled by love rather than hate.
Three years later, he also converted. Yu has traveled to the countryside to preach his brand of proactive Christianity to Christian peasants. He stresses that, as in the Bible, Christians must defy authority when faced with oppression, such as the kind he claims Beijing practices. "I had to find a new belief. Democracy is only a political system," says Yu, who is thin and speaks with a slight stutter. "Of course, I would fight to the end for democracy, but it can't bring spiritual happiness." Can spiritual fulfillment help bring political reform to China? It's not clear, but the converts are determined to try.