PRC: FAITHFUL FLOCK TO OFFICIAL CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BEIJING 003059

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/05/2029
TAGS: PHUM PGOV PTER PREL KIRF CH
SUBJECT: PRC: FAITHFUL FLOCK TO OFFICIAL CHRISTIAN CHURCHES
IN HEBEI AND URUMQI

Classified By: Political Section Chief Aubrey Carlson. Reasons 1.4 (b/
d).


1. (C) Summary: Regular worshippers at two official
Protestant churches in Hebei Province and the Xinjiang Uighur
Autonomous Region regularly exceed 3,000. Growth in
attendance poses new challenges for the official church,
particularly in the areas of clergy training and social
services. In response, Hebei's Bethel Church opened a new
lay training center October 17, and Urumqi's Mingde Street
Church is expanding social services. One scholar claimed
that in light of unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang in recent
years, PRC officials increasingly view Christian groups as
relatively benign. End Summary.

Hebei: Thousands Attend Bethel Church Service
--------------


2. (C) PolOff traveled October 17-18 to Baoding, Hebei
province, approximately 120 miles southwest of Beijing.
Bethel Church, the largest official Three-Self Patriotic
Movement (TSPM) Protestant church in northern China and the
second largest in the country, hosted U.S. evangelical
preacher Rev. Franklin Graham, a delegation from the Billy
Graham Evangelical Association (BGEA) and its affiliated NGO
Samaritan's Purse, for an October 17 service to dedicate a
new Layperson Training Center at Bethel Church and to preach
at a Sunday service October 18.


3. (C) With seating for 3,000, Bethel Church is Hebei's
largest Christian house of worship. However, church leaders
said that training of clergy had not been able to keep pace
with the growth in the congregations of local official TSPM
churches. The newly constructed training center, located on
the grounds of Bethel Church, aimed to fill this gap.
Approximately half of the funds for the new six-story
training center came from the national TSPM organization and
the China Christian Council. The remainder of the
construction costs came from individual donations, loans to
Bethel Church and a $50,000 contribution from BGEA. The
training center included classrooms, a dormitory and a
cafeteria. According to Bethel church volunteers, at
capacity, it would be able to train fifty lay clergy at a
time, mostly from Hebei province.


4. (C) On October 17, Rev. Graham participated in a
well-attended dedication ceremony for the new training
center. Rev. Yunpeng Jin, president of the Hebei provincial
TSPM office, Bethel Church Pastor Baoshan Cheng, Hebei
Christian Council officials, and United Front Work Department
representatives also gave remarks at the opening, focusing on
the positive role that the training center would play in the
community. On October 18, Rev. Graham was welcomed to Bethel
Church by a marching band and a large crowd of congregants.
Unofficial estimates of the crowd following the service were
between 4,000 and 4,500; Bethel Church officials later
claimed the number to be 10,000.

Urumqi: Attendance Grows; Social Services Expanding
-------------- --------------


5. (C) During a visit to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous
Region (XUAR),PolOffs met October 20 with Rev. Fan
Chenguang, Vice Chair of the Urumqi Christian Council and
Pastor of the Mingde Street Church, located in downtown
Urumqi. According to Rev. Fan, the 2,500-seat, 4,000-member,
Mingde Street Church is the largest TSPM Protestant church in
Urumqi, as well as the largest in the XUAR. To accommodate
its large congregation, the church holds two Sunday services,
each attended by approximately 2,000 people, seated on three
different floors, with the service broadcast to each floor
through closed-circuit television.


6. (C) The majority of her parishioners were Han, Fan said,
with very few Uighurs or foreigners attending services. In
recent years, the number of worshippers at churches in
Urumqi, including her own, had increased steadily, Fan
stated. While able to build a new church in the late 1990s,
Fan said, she lamented the fact that the Mingde Street Church
still lacked adequate training facilities to meet the demand
for more clergy. Fan had heard about the opening of the
Baoding Bethel Church Lay Training Center and hoped that her
church could build a similar facility.


7. (C) The growth in the number of her parishioners had been
met with an accompanying expansion of church services, Rev.
Fan said. Fan described a range of social support services,
small group activities, and classes. The church supported
more than 80 seniors and provided medical care to those in

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need. In addition to nightly prayer meetings, the church
hosted a Saturday evening youth group. The basement of the
six-story church building had been converted recently into
smaller rooms for use by these small groups and included a
computer classroom.


8. (C) Rev. Fan reported that, in Urumqi, the relationship
between house churches and the official church differed from
the situation in other parts of China. There were many house
churches n Urumqi, Rev. Fan noted. Worshippers often
attended smaller-scale prayer meetings at house churches
during the week and attended weekend services at the official
church.

Christian Faithful Less Threatening than Other Religions?
-------------- -


9. (C) The numbers of congregants attending Hebei's Baoding
Bethel Church and Urumqi's Mingde Street Church are
illustrative of the growth in Protestant congregations in
China. In an October 21 meeting with PolOff in the Xinjiang
city of Shihezi, Peking University Professor He Weifang, "on
detail" to Shihezi University, echoed Fan's comments that the
number of Christians in Xinjiang was increasing.
International media reports on October 21 quoted Rev. Gao
Feng, president of the China Christian Council, as saying
that one of the biggest challenges facing the official church
was training enough pastors to keep up with the growth in the
Christian community. For example, Rev. Feng noted that in
his home province of Shandong, one congregation of 40,000 had
just one trained pastor.


10. (C) During an October 24 meeting with PolOff, Liu Peng, a
scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences American
Studies Institute, claimed that following the Lhasa riots in
March 2008 and the Urumqi riots in July 2009, the general
attitude of the Chinese government toward Christians had
changed. Christians were now perceived as "less of a threat
to social stability than Muslims." Liu said that the Chinese
government viewed Christians as "only seeking to pray on
Sunday mornings," in contrast to a perception that Uighur
Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists were responsible for the
violent unrest in Tibet and the XUAR.
HUNTSMAN