God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [71]
At first, officials at the local religious-affairs office would visit, trying to persuade him to change. They acted a bit like those police officers at our home the other day. By 1955 the government’s tolerance ended. It turned out to be the largest calamity since the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, when more than twenty thousand Christians were murdered. In 1955 more than a thousand churches in China were burned down. Tens of thousands of Christians were arrested. Several thousand were executed on charges of belonging to a cult. In Beijing, the government thought rebellious religious leaders would be intimidated by what was happening in other parts of the country. Chairman Mao called this “encircling your enemies.”
Liao: Yet no one stepped forward to support the Three-Self movement?
Yuan: That is correct. On the night of August 7, 1955, Reverend Wang Mingdao and his wife were arrested, along with dozens of other preachers.
Liao: Those church leaders got long jail sentences.
Yuan: From fifteen years to life imprisonment. Under threat of physical torture, Reverend Wang wrote a confession and was released immediately, but he was haunted by his betrayal. Spiritual torture was more painful than physical torture, so he turned himself in to the police. He said, “I’m going to spend the rest of my time in jail so I can appease the wrath of the Lord.”
My father wavered too. Following the August 7 arrests, many preachers, including my father, bowed to pressure and took part in political study sessions. One Communist official told my father, “You are still young and have a bright future in front of you. You should try to reform yourself.” He encouraged my father to openly express his support for the Party’s policies at meetings, but my father chose to remain silent. Deep down, he was torn. Eventually, through prayers and self-reflection, he made up his mind, and in 1957, when called upon to declare his support for the Three-Self principles, he said the government’s religious policy was unfair. Freedom of religion was guaranteed in the Chinese Constitution, but Christians could no longer enjoy that freedom. Some Christians, the favorites of the new government, espoused the Three-Self principles, but they were hypocrites. When the Japanese came, they surrendered to the invaders. When the Americans came, they managed to get on their payrolls. Now, they ingratiated themselves to the new government. Those people were not patriotic. They were simply opportunists who took advantage of religion to serve their own interests. Afterward, Father said he had never felt so elated and liberated.
During the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, study groups were told that the government required each of them to identify four “Rightists”—people who had strayed from the Party line. Just like that, my father had become an enemy of the people.
However, once my father was declared a Rightist, he didn’t have to pretend to be politically progressive and stopped attending political study sessions. He stayed at home and kept up with his routine of prayer and Bible study. He preached. “The head of the church is Jesus, not an official at the religious affairs office,” he said when friends urged caution. Pastor Qi, an old friend of the family, told my father at dinner with us:
“Brother Yuan, I want to offer you some advice. I know you won’t listen, but as a friend, I feel obligated to say it. You are in a very precarious situation now. Under this new roof, I advise you to bend your head and control your own temper. If you can’t, you should at least pretend to be compliant and keep attending political study sessions. If you continue to be stubborn and stick with your own views, you could face unimaginable consequences. Just do it for the sake of your family. You have to take care of your ailing mother and your children. If anything happens to you, what do you expect them to do? Your children will carry the black label of a counterrevolutionary for the rest of their lives. It’s not fair to them.”
Pastor Qi became emotional