A senior Chinese official said yesterday that China will continue
to uphold its policy of religious freedom and manage religious
affairs according to the law.
State Councillor Ismail Amat made the remarks when addressing
participants at a national Christian conference that ended
yesterday in Beijing.
Participants at the meeting, which touched upon such topics as
strengthening the moral standards of Chinese Christians, elected
Cao Shengjie as president of the China Christian Council and Ji
Jianhong as president of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement
Committee of the Protestant Churches of China.
Ismail Amat stressed the importance of independence in the
development of Chinese Christianity, in keeping with Chinese
Christians' traditions of self-administration, self-support and
self-propagation.
Official statistics show that China has more than 10 million
Christians, with the numbers growing most rapidly in recent years.
At the end of 2001, the council and committee had published 28
million copies of the Bible.
The five-day meeting was convened at a time when calls from the
nation's Christians to clamp down on cults are on the rise.
"The cults have made use of the Bible, quoting it out of context
and making up heresies," Cao said. "They control followers, barring
them from rational reasoning. They have bad morals and have even
violated the law."
Meeting participants approved a resolution yesterday urging
Christians in China to oppose cults, particularly those that
operate under the cloak of Christianity.
They voiced support for the Chinese government's efforts to weed
out cults and pledged to help Christians who have been taken in by
cults.
Cults are more influential in rural areas and small townships,
where the number of Christians is increasing rapidly but qualified
clergy are in short supply.
"Reality has shown us that the future of Chinese Christianity will
be harmed if we do not attach importance to the churches in rural
areas and help followers there improve," Cao said.
Ye
Xiaowen, director of the State Administration for Religious
Affairs, also called for more efforts to groom more church
personnel to fill in the gap.
Training and advanced studies of various kinds are encouraged in
addition to Christian seminaries, Ye said.
(China
Daily May 27, 2002)