Posted on 04/04/2014 2:42:33 PM PDT by don-o
Thousands of Chinese Christians have mounted an extraordinary, round-the-clock defence of a church in a city known as the 'Jerusalem of the East' after Communist Party officials threatened to bulldoze their place of worship.
In an episode that underlines the fierce and long-standing friction between China's officially atheist Communist Party and its rapidly growing Christian congregation, Bible-carrying believers this week flocked to the Sanjiang church in Wenzhou hoping to protect it from the bulldozers.
Their 24-hour guard began earlier this week when a demolition notice was plastered onto the newly-constructed church which worshippers say cost around 30 million yuan (£2.91 million) and almost six years to build.
Officials claimed the church had been built illegally and used red paint to daub the words: "Demolish" and "Illegal construction" onto its towering facade.
The threat triggered a furious reaction in Wenzhou, a booming port city known for its vibrant Christian community, said to be China's largest. Related Articles
Hundreds of people, including elderly and in some cases disabled women, have now occupied the church to prevent demolition teams moving in.
"There are bad people out there trying to damage our church so we must defend it," said Li Jingliu, a 56-year-old former factory worker who has been sleeping in one of its back offices since Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
This is going to get fairly dramatic within the next few hours.
II cant think of a more honorable place to take a stand..and dont know of a more inflexible evil bunch of opponents than the red chinese government [s]..
God Bless the church and their efforts!
What a powerful photo.
I wish they would do the same to Church in NY that the mussies are taking the crosses off of.
In the US, they are too busy making rainbow flags to hang in their freak churches.
GODSPEED to these wonderful men and women!
They are brave, courageous people. Prayers up.
So much for a “government sanctioned” church. In the end, the enemies of Jesus Christ are totalitarian governments. This will be very interesting to watch. I hope the media follow this story. Fox News probably will follow it.
The RC church has two groups - one under the authority of the Vatican and the other under the government’s toe. Naturally the Vatican loyalists are underground.
The dispute over Sanjiang has highlighted the ongoing difficulties facing China's fast growing Christian community. In 1949, when the Communist Party took over, it boasted around one million members. Today, there are thought to be more Chinese Christians than Communist Party members, with up to 100 million mainland believers, according to some estimates.
I did not know that.
Yang Zhumei, 74, said she had pleaded with officials to leave her church alone. "I held their hands and said, "Comrades, don't take down our cross. I can give you my head instead."
Amazing.
Make the replacement crosses out of metal and wire a fence charger to them.Make a nice surprise for the thieves.
They aren’t thieves, they got permission from NY to rip them off the 100yo+ building.
Ever try to make any changes to an old building, ESPECIALLY in NY? They don’t let you change anything.
Declaring the building to be "illegal" AFTER it had passed all the permitting red tape and inspections -- and after all the money had been spent on construction -- is blatant, vindictive, despotic persecution.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.