by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - China is implementing its “sinicization” campaign to change Christianity into an arm of the state.
Bitter Winter reports that pastors in Henan province were recently distributed a Bible study tool entitled The Analects Encounter the Bible, in which Confucian teachings discussing social obligation, hierarchy, and the like are harmonized with the biblical revelation.
“The CCP is subtly changing our faith,” a pastor from China’s state-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement told Bitter Winter. “Since reading the Bible is now the same as reading the Analects, doesn’t it mean it suffices to read the Analects and to believe in Confucius? This is the erosion of Christianity.”
Churches in China are considered illegal unless they are part of the TPSM, whose leader in March pledged to make Christianity “more Chinese,” ridding it of Western influences that serve foreign powers as part of the Communist regime’s “sinicization” efforts to blend socialism and Chinese nationalism with faith.
Chinese President Xi Jinping first announced the campaign in 2016 to “actively guide the adaptation of religions to socialist society,” a move in response to which 400 dissenting pastors gave their signatures to a September 2018 open letter voicing opposition.