Chongqing, China - Chinese Christians are preparing to celebrate Easter amid a nationwide religious renaissance led by an army of young people seeking faith in the modern world, religious leaders and academics said.
Although young Chinese are largely flocking to traditional religions such as Buddhism and Taoism, many are also turning to Christianity in an effort to seek greater knowledge of the West, they said.
"We are seeing more and more college students coming to our services," said Father Andrew Liu Wenming, priest at St. Joseph's Church in China's populous southwestern city of Chongqing.
"They are seeking faith in religion, but they are also drawn by a desire to learn more Western knowledge."
Liu, 42, was ordained in 1990 and is leading the youth movement in the Chongqing diocese that boasts up to 220,000 mostly elderly Catholics.
As an older generation of priests have died, young men in their late 20s and 30s now make up the majority of the 14 priests in the Chongqing diocese, Liu said.
On any given Sunday, up to 1,000 worshippers attend services at St. Joseph's, but in the past few years that number has more than doubled for Christmas and Easter mass, he said, adding that most of the newcomers are young.
"Most of these youths learn about Catholicism through their friends and come to our mass to learn more," Liu said.
"We need to support their belief so we have set up a seminary for lay people and we have a series of courses on Bible study and church doctrine that we offer to the youth."
According to Liu Zhongyu, a professor at the Religious Culture Research Centre of East China Normal University in Shanghai, China has up to 40 million Protestants, far more than the 16 million officially recognised.
There are also an estimated 14 million Catholics.
Due to a rift between the Vatican and the Chinese government, which do not officially recognise each other, about 10 million Catholics worship in "underground" churches loyal to the Vatican.
The remaining four million worship in government-approved churches such as Liu's in Chongqing.
Liu Zhongyue this year published results from a survey of 4,500 people since 2005 which concluded that around 300 million Chinese follow a religion, compared to an official figure of around 100 million.
About 12 percent of those polled said they were Christian, the poll found, with 62 percent of respondents aged between 16 and 39 years old.
Liu said there were many reasons more Chinese were turning to Christianity but the communist government's long-standing persecution of traditional religions in the 30 years leading up to China's late 1970s reform and opening period played a significant role.
After the communists established their atheist government in 1949, they tried to eradicate religious faith and continue to directly administer religion through heavy-handed bureaucratic oversight.
"We have persecuted our traditional religions too long and created far too many sects, so for a lot of young people there are no other choices (besides Christianity)," Liu Zhongyu said.
"Christian religions have a strong tradition of converting people to the religion, at the same time it is easier to enter into the faith."
Christian churches also have strict training for priests, so religious professionals tend to have a higher level of education and training than in traditional Chinese religions, he said.
Although Christianity is spreading in China, Catholics represent a small portion of Chongqing's faithful, said Zhou Jun, an official at the government-run Chongqing Catholic Patriotic Association.
In Chongqing and elsewhere around the country, Taoism, Buddhism and Islam are also making a comeback.