The Christian Manifesto

"Direction of Endeavor for Chinese Christianity in the Construction of New China", commonly known as "The Christian Manifesto" or "The Three-Self Manifesto", was a political manifesto of Protestants in China whereby they backed the newly founded People's Republic of China (PRC) and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Published in 1950, the manifesto paved the way for the government-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) of Protestants. This movement proclaimed the three principles of self-government, self-support, and self-propagation. The drafting and content of the manifesto was, and remains, controversial to this day.

The manifesto was devised after Protestant leaders presented their concerns with religious freedom to Zhou Enlai, the Premier of China. Instead of receiving their report, Zhou demanded them to come up with a statement in support of the new communist leadership. Y. T. Wu and other leftist clergymen espoused the task and presented a draft manifesto that, after some opposition and changes, became a foundational text of Christianity in the new People's Republic. It condemns missionary activities in China as a form of imperialism, pledges loyalty to the communist leadership, and encourages the Church to take up an indigenous Chinese stance toward Christianity.

Published on the front page of the ''People's Daily'', the manifesto was accompanied by a campaign to gather signatures. Many Christian leaders and laymen signed, while others refused to do so. After the Korean War broke out, the campaign became an increasingly politicized test of loyalty that became merged with the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries.

Some view the manifesto as a betrayal of the Church, while others find sympathy for the position of Chinese Christians struggling to reconcile their faith with the changed political situations. The manifesto ended missionary activities in China and the separation of Church and state. It led to the founding the TSPM and brought persecution to dissidents.

Background

After the declaration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, religious life in mainland China was forced to adapt itself in relation to the new rulers. Of all religions in China, Christianity was particularly susceptible to such pressure, because its inherently foreign character made the government think of it as a political threat. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was compelled to draw up a plan to persecute Christians whose religion it viewed as an ideological competitor of Marxism, or at least, to make the Christian population politically accountable. At the same time, the Common Program adopted by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 1949, the ''de facto'' interim constitution of the PRC, guaranteed freedom of religion. Chinese Protestants dispatched envoys all over China to see how this provision was being met in practice. Upon their return, they planned to write a report about the situation and present it to the Chinese government.

The Chinese Church faced four problems in the changed reality: it was dependent on foreign funding, its confession was fundamentally at odds with the communist ideology, it was wary of how local CCP cadres would implement religious policy of the new government, and finally, the Church was uneasy with China's foreign policy of friendly ties with the Soviet Union. In order to exert control, the government supported those Christian groups that were willing to accommodate. One such group were Chinese Protestants who were based in Shanghai, headed by Y. T. Wu, the secretary of YMCA in China. Wu had envisioned transforming the Chinese Church even before 1949: he developed ideas ranging from advocating the Social Gospel to Christian socialism and communism. The government's political goals thus coincided with his. The core ideas of "The Christian Manifesto" had already been presented by Wu in a 1948 article "The Present-Day Tragedy of Christianity". Similarly, in December 1949 Wu's associates published an open letter "Message from Chinese Christians to Mission Boards Abroad" that declared foreign missionary activities unwelcome in China and called for their legacy to be critically reassessed.

Wu and his associates would implement the government's desires by publishing a document outlining Chinese Christianity in the new era.

By late summer of 1950, "The Christian Manifesto" had become part of a campaign to establish the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) to replace its more outward-oriented predecessor, the National Christian Council of China (NCC). The TSPM would not be a church, but a government-sponsored parachurch organization directly controlled by the Religious Affairs Division (RAD, later the State Administration for Religious Affairs), which in turn was under the United Front Work Department of the CCP. The role of the TSPM was, and still is, to ensure that Protestant churches approved by officials operate according to the government's religious policy.

History

Y. T. Wu and other Shanghai churchmen were joined by Protestants from the northern regions of China to hold talks with Premier Zhou Enlai in May 1950. Some of the other Christian leaders included in the 19-strong delegation were Deng Yuzhi, T. C. Chao, and . Three such meetings were arranged, on the 2nd, 6th, and 13th, each lasting several hours. On the agenda were, most likely, all four problems of the Church: reliance on foreign funding, irreconcilability of faith and the communist ideology, suspicion towards local party cadres, and resistance to China's friendly ties with the Soviet Union. It was, however, the local CCP cadres that were the Church leaders' main concern and the reason they had requested audience with Zhou.

The churchmen had prepared a letter to Zhou explaining the adversities faced by the Church and likely hoped to get assurances of protection from him.; . Zhou, however, "turned the tables on them", insisting that they came up with a new document that supported the government instead. The delegation was forced to cancel its future appointments in the provinces and start working on the manifesto. At the final meeting, a first draft manifesto was presented by Wu and approved by the government. The manifesto had been largely composed by Wu. It is possible that Wu and Zhou had privately agreed on writing the manifesto beforehand. Wu was in contact with Zhou throughout drafting, but accusations at home and abroad that Zhou had personally penned the manifesto have proven unsubstantiated. Some attributed the work to Chen Xingui of the China Democratic League whose writings were very similar in content. Among the Protestant parties concerned, attitudes to the situation varied widely and so writing the manifesto had been "as painstaking as it was controversial". Churches in China protested the draft, and Wu was forced to make some changes, although he refused other suggestions on the grounds of time constraints. The draft ultimately went through several revisions, some of which were discussed with the leaders of the CCP in Beijing. Some members of the clergy were left discontent and they withdrew from the movement led by Wu. The manifesto was issued on 28 July. Later, on 23 September, it was published on the front page of the ''People's Daily''; with editorials and signatures the release spanned three pages. Wide circulation followed. Over the subsequent days, the Christian magazine ''Tian Feng'' and other newspapers, particularly in Shanghai, published it as well. It was the publication in the newspaper of the CCP that made it an authoritative statement, however. Both the Chinese Church and foreign missionaries were left out of the process from that point on. The publication was accompanied by a campaign among Protestants to collect signatures in support of it.

Signatures

The document's 40 original signatories were all Church leaders, including T. C. Chao, Jiang Changchuan, , , Zhao Fusan, and . The initial publication in the ''People's Daily'' was accompanied by 1,527 signatures from Christian leaders. These names included Han Wenzao, Yu Zhihai, Zhu Guishen, and Sun Yanli.

''Tian Feng'' closely followed the success of the manifesto and the number of its signatories. By the end of August, more than 1,500 had signed, 3,000 by September and 20,000 by November. January 1951 saw the figure go up to 90,000 and April 180,000. The campaign ultimately reached 417,389 claimed signatories before the circulation was over, in 1954, amounting to about half of all Chinese Protestants. More than one million additional signatures were gathered after the official circulation had been concluded. The high number of signatures has since been disputed by journalist David Aikman and others. For instance, more Lutherans purportedly signed the document than were in existence in China. It has also been claimed that many names were included without consent. Regardless, the number of signatories can be interpreted in two ways: a relatively high number of signatories testifies to the success of Wu and the campaign to accommodate to the communist government. Conversely, the number of people who did not sign the manifesto count as people who did not want the Chinese Church to sever its links with foreigners. It was feared that the NCC, which had facilitated cooperation between Chinese Protestants and foreign missionaries since 1922, would lose its independence. Most appear to have signed the document out of patriotic sentiments, not because of fundamental agreement with the actual provisions of the manifesto: not all were convinced Marxists. It is also possible that becoming a signatory was initially on a voluntary basis, but after the Korean War had broken out, doing so certainly became a test of loyalty that could not be avoided. The war resulted in the campaign rising to an unforeseen level of political urgency, and by early 1951 it had become mingled with the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries. Similar intensification affected other government-led campaigns as well. After China's entry into the war, leaders of independent Chinese churches who refused to sign the manifesto began to be persecuted: they lost their churches, pastors were arrested, congregations forced underground, and dissidents were dragged to "denunciation meetings" that sometimes could result in imprisonment or execution. Though only a small number of Christians ended up being indicted or executed, the meetings were very humiliating for the dissidents.

Some notable Protestant ministers, such as K. H. Ting, did not sign the document. In Ting's case, the reason remains unclear. He stated that he supported the document but said, nonetheless: "it just happened that I haven't signed it". It could have been that the reason was that he was abroad at the time of the manifesto's circulation. He could have, like many did, sign it after official circulation, but never did. This casts some doubt on his stated rationale. Wang Ming-Dao outright refused to sign "The Christian Manifesto". This, and his deliberate failure to register his church with the RAD, led to his imprisonment for 23 years and ensured his worldwide fame. , too, refused to sign, although he took part in the activities of the TSPM later. Notably, Watchman Nee did sign, as did many members of his Little Flock church. Nee was able to gather as much as 34,983 signatures in total, though most of them had been for a petition against the nationalization of Little Flock property; Nee simply included them in "The Christian Manifesto" as well. The move proved to be controversial. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee thinks that Nee complied with the wishes of the campaign, but Tang Shoulin, an associate of Nee, has said that he was just trying to appear cooperative on the surface but, in reality, sabotaged the campaign. The share of signatures gathered by Nee was 17% of total signatures of the manifesto at the time. Of earlier signatories of the manifesto, the largest segment had been members of the indigenous Jesus Family

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