THE Communist Party is struggling to manage the only cult in China bigger than itself—the Christian church. All down the country’s eastern seaboard it is hard to find a village that does not boast a spire or tower topped with a cross. To some in the party, this is a provocation, especially in the south-eastern province of Zhejiang around the coastal city of Wenzhou. Over the past 18 months, party leaders have ordered the demolition of such crosses. But this month the provincial branches of the Catholic Patriotic Association and the Protestant Christian Council—two of the government bodies that administer the official churches allowed in China—each issued an open letter to provincial officials condemning the demolitions.

The letters accuse the party of violating its own commitment to the rule of law. They add that the incidents have damaged the Communist Party’s image at home and abroad. It is, says Yang Fenggang of Purdue University in Indiana, the first time that leaders of official churches have come out openly on the side of ordinary believers against the Communist Party.

Normally it is “house churches”—unofficial congregations meeting in homes or rented office space—that bear the brunt of official persecution. But, according to the Protestant letter, there are many official churches among the 1,200 it says have had their crosses removed. Some churches have even been demolished.

Zhejiang’s party chief is known for his hostility to Christianity. But Christians wonder whether the onslaught against their churches, which began in earnest in 2014, with a new wave this year, is being directed from Beijing. Xi Jinping, the Communist Party’s general secretary, visited the province in May. “I think it is hard to imagine that this second wave is happening without his approval,” says Mr Yang. A centrally directed campaign would be in step with other attacks on civil society around the country. In recent weeks several hundred human-rights lawyers and other activists have been rounded up.

Mr Xi is well aware of churches’ role in the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. The Presbyterians also played a part in Taiwan’s democratisation. In May Mr Xi warned that religion in China should be “independent of foreign influence”. He has also reiterated that party members must not be religious believers. The issue of religious freedom is complicated by the fact that Islam and Buddhism are closely linked to two ethnic minorities, the Uighurs and the Tibetans, with restive tendencies and resentment over Han rule.

The party’s problem is that it increasingly needs people like the law-abiding Christians in its fight against corruption. It also needs them to play a greater part in the social work it cannot do itself. Most Christians are apolitical. One Wenzhou pastor says when he tells his flock to be more politically engaged, he is met with blank stares. “They don’t want to know,” he says.

Strangely, the assault on officially sanctioned churches comes as attitudes to house churches appear to be softening. On his first visit to China last month, Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was surprised when Yu Zhengsheng, one of Mr Xi’s six comrades in the standing committee of the Politburo, the party’s highest body, admitted there were as many house-church Protestants as the 38m worshippers in official state Protestant churches. (China might have as many as 100m Christians in total.) To date many officials, not to mention Politburo members, have pretended that house churches do not exist. Senior house-church Christians in Beijing say that the authorities have recently approached them about the possibility of dialogue. They speak of renewed hope that their congregations could be formally recognised by the party.

With official churches less compliant and house churches more ready to talk, the lines are more blurred than ever. The party seems to be groping around with a stick in one hand and a carrot in the other, looking for ways to bully and coax Christians into serving its ends. Archbishop Welby quotes Edward Gibbon, the great historian of the Roman empire: religions in Rome “were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”