LINFEN, CHINA—Old Wang was fast asleep in his bed when the mob arrived.

It was 3 a.m. one Sunday last September.

“People shook me and told me. ‘Get up. Get outside. Hurry up!’ ”

What he witnessed on the grounds of the Gospel Shoes Factory – a rural Christian community where he lived and worked with 60 others near here – was complete chaos: a raging mob of more than 200 men were pushing their way through the darkness with flashlights, wooden clubs, bricks, hoes and pieces of metal, smashing everything and anyone in their path.

A perimeter wall had been toppled. The main gate was smashed. Men were pouring through it.

Behind them came a roaring bulldozer, then an excavator.

As Wang stared in disbelief, he was clubbed over the head and trampled to the ground, his face streaming with blood.

Then someone hurled a brick at him, fracturing his leg.

As he lay there he could hear a man yelling, “Beat them. Beat them as hard as you like. I’ll take responsibility for everything.”

To his amazement, and the amazement of other eyewitnesses, the mob was led by a local Communist Party official backed up by uniformed police.

They were clearly on a mission. But what that mission was, wasn’t clear to those under attack.

It was, in fact, one of the more violent flare-ups in China’s ongoing campaign against Christians, a community that – according to researchers – exceeds 100 million and is growing rapidly.

That growth has stoked concern and even alarm among some government officials, who see the spread of Christianity as a threat to their authority.

Officials here took the threat seriously and decided to act – with force.

The Gospel Shoes Factory had all its papers in order. It had a building permit. Its business license was current.

But it also had a church.

China’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but it comes with a catch: every church must register with the government and submit to control by the Communist Party of China.

The Gospel Shoes church was not registered: it was what is known in China as a “house church.”

The government maintains the same registration requirements for China’s four other “officially approved” religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam and Catholicism. Each is assigned a government-appointed body that oversees the group’s activities throughout the country.

But Gospel Shoes was operating without such oversight. As a consequence it was deemed illegal.

So over the course of the next few hours, under the direction of the Communist

Party and local police, the mob bulldozed the factory and church into the ground.

In the process they killed livestock, looted appliances and wounded 30 members of the community, seven seriously.

Most were taken to hospital by tractor and private cars.

“As long as I have lived, I have never seen brutality like this, “ says Old Wang, a Christian man in his 40s dressed in trousers and a t-shirt, who asks that his first name not be used for fear of reprisals.

“My father was a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army,” he says. “I was raised to respect authority. But how can I, after this?”

The Star also viewed copies of more than 20 other individual, eyewitness accounts signed or stamped with official thumbprints corroborating Wang’s account.

“This was the most violent attack on a house church in China in a decade,” says Li Fangping, a Beijing lawyer who later defended one of the church leaders.

It was also a sign, says Li, who is also a Christian, that the government has grown frightened of the house church movement – those churches outside the government’s grip that are growing with increasing speed.

“The government is beginning to realize that they’re beyond their control,” he says.

Some academics who study religious movements in China agree.

Protestant Christianity especially, they say, is experiencing “explosive” and even “exponential” growth in China, both in the countryside as well as in major cities: from Heilongjiang province in the north to Guangdong province in the south – from cities like Shanghai and Chengdu, to Beijing and beyond.

When Mao Zedong first took control of the country in 1949, there were just 1 million Christians in China. Today, while it is difficult to calculate a precise number, many now estimate that number to have grown by a hundred-fold.

By comparison, the Communist Party itself has just 70 million registered members.

And the numbers of Christians are growing. Some academic studies place that growth at 5 to 7 per cent annually. But most feel that pace has now accelerated.

“The house churches have been growing so fast,” eminent American sociologist Richard Madsen told an audience in Philadelphia last year, “that the government can neither stop them, nor ignore them.”

What happened in Linfen could be seen as a one-off – a rare and violent reaction by local officials in the far-off countryside responding to a unique local circumstance.

But evidence from media reports, rights organizations and interviews with religious leaders and believers across the country, suggest it is not.

Instead, what happened in Linfen is only the most egregious example of a pattern of state surveillance, harassment, intimidation and threat that has increased over the past 18 months, as the Communist Party of China struggles to come to terms with what some say is a difficult truth: its policy on religion is failing.

”The policy is, on its own terms, a complete failure,” according to Prof. Madsen, who has studied religion in China for more than 20 years. And there are signs, he says, that the Chinese government is realizing it.

Communist theory has long held that religion is nothing more than “superstition and foolishness,” and that as China prospers and becomes more modern, religion will fade away.

But that hasn’t happened.

Instead, religious belief is growing.

In an age when China has abandoned Communism in favour of market principles, more and more people are turning to religion, “looking for hope, and a better life,” says Madsen, head of sociology at the University of California, San Diego.

Party members also confide that Christianity’s rapid rise has raised concern within the Communist leadership itself: a new set of closed-door conferences is being held in Beijing and the Party is commissioning new research on how to respond.

This isn’t purely about religion, of course.

What troubles China’s central government isn’t belief – but the fact that the house churches are growing into a potentially formidable force with leadership, organizational structures, independent financing and a loyal and growing following.

It is these kinds of characteristics, they fear, that could build into an alternative belief system in opposition to the government.

“Of course that’s why they’re wary,” says Madsen.

Back in Linfen, the local authorities were very wary – and far from finished.

After crushing the Gospel Shoes factory, they didn’t stop there.

When a well-known, local preacher, Yang Rongli, dared to mount a day of prayer and protest at the site and threaten to take the church’s grievances all the way to the central government in Beijing, she was arrested with four other church elders.

Yang, a university graduate and fourth generation Christian, was leader of Linfen’s Golden Lamp Church – the mother church of Gospel Shoes – believed to be the biggest house church in all of China, boasting 50,000 followers.

In 2008, Yang and church elders had raised the equivalent of $1.5 million in donations from church followers to build the towering, eight-storey, Golden Lamp Church.

In size, it rivaled all local Communist Party buildings .

As Yang was being arrested on her way to Beijing on Sept. 25 last year, hundreds of armed, uniformed and riot police swooped down and surrounded the Golden Lamp.

“I was inside,” says one church elder who has still managed to elude arrest. “There were about 100 of us in there. And we all knelt to pray.”

“No one slept that night,” he adds. “We were just too nervous.”

The standoff lasted 24 hours.

At 4 p.m. the next day, armed police moved in, took control of the church and arrested more leaders.

Following a one-day trial, Yang Rongli and four other church officials were sentenced to three to seven years in prison for constructing a church on agricultural land and for mounting a protest that had blocked traffic.

Five other church officials were also sentenced – without trial – to two years of “re-education” in a government-run labour camp.

Today the Golden Lamp Church, still under state control, faces a demolition order. Just as they crushed the Gospel Shoes complex, authorities intend to reduce the Golden Lamp to rubble.

Official papers have been issued, but no date has been set.

Zhang Kai, one of the defence lawyers at the trial, has appealed the demolition order but the appeal was rejected.

In July, Zhang traveled to Linfen, some 800 km. southwest of Beijing, to address court officials directly.

But police at the courthouse blocked him from entering.

Zhang showed them his lawyer’s license – but that was useless.

“They said, ‘You’re Zhang Kai. You’re not allowed in here. Those are our orders,’” says Zhang.

Still, Christian believers here remain defiant.

“Even if they do destroy the church, it won’t destroy our faith,” says the elder who was trapped inside the church the night of its siege.

“We believe in what we believe,” he says.

And so do others: On a steamy Sunday morning in Beijing’s college district a disproportionate number of pedestrians make their way along Bei Sanhuan Zhong Lu, coalesce into lines and disappear down an alley. At the bottom of the alley they file into a private club.

The lobby is filled with great photographic moments of Chinese Communist Party history. Mao Zedong’s smiling face is everywhere.

But from a back auditorium, comes the ascending sound of a church choir.

This is Beijing’s biggest, unregistered house church, known as Shouwang, in English: The Lookout.

Inside, the auditorium overflows with 400 Christian faithful – people are standing in the aisles—and this is just the first of three services to be held today.

Psalms are recited. Scripture is read. A sermon is preached.

And when the hymns are sung – everyone joins in.

The audience looks mainly young to middle-aged, middle-class people dressed in their Sunday best. Very few are old.

Then Pastor Song Jun steps to the lectern and announces that the time has arrived to welcome newcomers.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he says, “when the microphone is passed to you, please announce your name.”

Eighteen people rise.

“Dear brothers and sisters how are you?” says a handsome young man taking the microphone. “My name is Song Yubin. I’ve always gone to Haidian Christian Church, but I heard about Shouwang from friends. Sister Zhao Yi brought me here today and I’m very glad to meet you. God bless you all!”

Another young man is handed the microphone.

“My name is Han Song,” he says. “And it was God who brought me here!”

The audience laughs appreciatively. “This is the very first time I’ve come to Beijing, so it’s my first time to Shouwang.”

Then another man nervously takes the microphone and, in doing so, seems to forget his name.

“Dear brothers and sisters,” he says, “this is my first day inside a church.” He pauses then. “God be with you,” he says. “Hallelujah!”

When the introductions are complete the choir and community burst into a rendition of “Jesus Loves You,” before spilling out into the street where hundreds of others are preparing to get in.

It’s a spirited scene.

China’s central government has never tried to bulldoze Shouwang.

But it has tried everything else.

In Sept. 2004, state police raided the church founder’s home, seized religious materials, detained him for 15 hours and warned him to stop the services.

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But the services continued.

In May 2008, state police raided Shouwang in the middle of a service, sealed the congregants inside, took down all names, i.d. numbers and work place details – and ordered workplace bosses to “have a chat” with the churchgoers and threaten them with firing if they continued to attend.

But the congregants kept coming.

In Nov. 2009 – just weeks before a state visit to China by U.S. President Barack Obama – state police finally succeeded in threatening the church’s landlords to terminate the church’s lease.

Shouwang then held its services outdoors in the snow, attracting wide public attention.

Finally, after two weeks and with President Obama preparing to board Air Force One, Chinese government authorities – fearing a public relations disaster during the president’s visit – relented and allowed the church back indoors.

They even provided it with new premises – the “private club” where the church now meets is associated with CCTV, the state broadcaster – presumably so it can keep a closer eye on church activities.

But insiders say the church and its followers have had enough interference.

They are now preparing to move into their own property in downtown Beijing, recently bought with tens of millions of Chinese yuan in church donations.

It is a bold move, and certain to spark a showdown.

But the challenge for China’s central government is bigger than Shouwang.

Many other house churches have sprung up across the capital, with names like, The Cedar, Mt. Zion, Grace Evangelical, The Gospel, The New Tree, The Ark and others.

They too have attracted police attention and some leaders, like prominent Chinese writer and intellectual Yu Jie, have been detained and questioned about their faith.

In Yu’s case, it’s strong: he is an elder at The Ark and one of the country’s most outspoken advocates for social justice.

It’s a Wednesday evening in July, in a book-lined, art-filled apartment with solid furniture and stunning views of Beijing. Eleven people – artists, office workers, students – have gathered to sip tea and hear Yu lead a discussion on a Bible reading from Kings: 21. It’s the timeless story of Naboth, a man with a piece of property that the king and his wife want, and get, by having Naboth killed.

Land is a combustible issue in today’s China.

Corrupt government officials are regularly colluding with real estate developers and pushing people off land to make profit, a point Yu stresses.

He refers to a case months ago when a desperate woman in Sichuan province, publicly set herself on fire and died rather than suffer the injustice of being hurled from her home.

“So you can see,” says Yu, a slight man with glasses and a firm but gentle manner, “there are similarities here…you can see that the current society in China is often worse than that of ancient Israel.”

There are knowing nods across the room.

Just days before Yu had been brought to Beijing’s Dougezhuang police station for 11 hours of interrogation.

There, an officer named Zhu warned him, “not to use religion to play politics. Such deeds will reap severe consequences.”

Yu posted a transcript of the interrogation online – all 17 pages.

“Every Christian certainly has the right to take part in political activities since Christians are citizens too,” Yu replied. “Politics is part of public life, a way to distribute power, and it’s not patented by the Chinese Communist Party.”

“When a political power violates our freedom of belief, we have a right to criticize and oppose it,” he said.

In July, Yu said publicly that if Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao dismantled China’s monolithic state security system that watches over every detail of dissidents’ lives, there would be more than enough money for health care and education for all.

“The social contract in this country is broken,” Yu says later in an interview. “We are now in a period of moral nihilism, where people seem to care only about money and power.”

“Christianity,” he says, “provides principles and morality. Both are sorely lacking in today’s China.”

People want “a direct relationship with God,” he adds, without state oversight or interference. That’s why more and more people are turning away from “officially approved” churches and finding their way to independent house churches, he says.

But finding your way to Pastor Wang Dao’s house church in the southern city of Guangzhou might prove more difficult than one might imagine – and may even take a miracle.

Pastor Wang has had to move his church 30 times in the past two years.

His Liangren house church has been hounded by state police.

“Every time we find a new location, police threaten the landlords and our premises are padlocked and the lease terminated.”

But that’s not all.

Pastor Wang was detained for 36 days in May and June.

State police took him from his home on May 8 telling him, he says, “You’re a fake pastor. A bullshit pastor. A fake prophet.”

Wang came to believe in God in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square student movement. He was born Wang Tongjiang and jailed for more than a year after calling on students in the city of Wuhan to remember the Tiananmen massacre of June 4, 1989.

Politics are no longer his business today, he says. Still, his services have been broken up by armed police.

And yet on a recent Sunday morning following a service in a hotel auditorium in Guangzhou’s southern suburbs, a new generation of students praise his church.

“I don’t really understand why the government doesn’t like it,” says 21-year-old Lou Rong Heng. “Nothing bad happens. Everyone gets along. There’s harmony here.”

Says 23-year-old Wu Wenjing, “I find it good to be a Christian, to be part of a community. There’s something about the kindness here, the peacefulness, the way people treat each other like family,” she says. “I think it’s important to believe in something in your life.”

But independent religious belief in China comes with a cost.

All across the country the state’s bureaucracies for religious surveillance remain firmly in place: the State Administration for Religious Affairs—which declined an interview request for this article—the various patriotic associations which oversee religious activity, the public security police, the state security office, and the land resources bureaus among others. There is a phalanx of forces at every level of government to deter independent religious activity.

And there remains, too, a measure of fear among the people and religious leaders, born of hard and sometimes harsh experience.

Down a dirt road in Hebei province about 150 km. south of Beijing, past fields of corn and pear orchards and vineyards, through air thick with the stink of pig manure, beneath the haunting, screaming sound of cicacadas perched in trees above the baking earth, lies the Catholic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Wuqui Village.

It is Monday noon and upon its grounds one can hear the sound of children playing. There is an orphanage here that is home to 80 children, many suffering from severe disabilities.

They are looked after by an impoverished group of nuns and a single cleric, Bishop Jia Zhiguo, without any state support.

“People just leave them on our doorstep,” explains Sr. Zhang Ruizhen, a gentle, smiling woman in her 50s. “If we don’t care for them, who will?”

Bishop Jia is 76-years-old, in frail health and has just been released from 15 months of arbitrary detention.

But he has endured worse: as a young layman he served 15 years in prison for inviting a Catholic priest to his hometown.

Today Bishop Jia is under 24 hr. guard.

Appointed a bishop by the Vatican in 1980, the Chinese Communist government regards him as a renegade.

China doesn’t acknowledge the authority of the Vatican.

The Vatican doesn’t officially recognize China and instead maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

But as a concession, Chinese authorities allow Jia to say daily mass and some locals are allowed to attend. But he is officially prevented from carrying out any of his bishop’s duties.

The Star managed to elude his security detail in July and reach his room: a sparsely decorated chamber with a bed, a desk, a chesterfield, and on the wall, artists’ renderings of Jesus Christ and one of the church’s French saints, John Vianney.

He greeted his visitor warmly.

But on learning that the visitor was a journalist, Bishop Jia, bent with age and moving gingerly, bowed his head and refused to be interviewed.

He would not appear on camera. He would not be photographed.

“I cannot be interviewed,” he said softly. “Such a thing would only get you into trouble and – I assure you – it would only bring me misfortune.”

Religious belief in China continues to flourish, surprising the state with ever more visibility and greater growth.

But in China’s countryside, in places like Linfen and Wuqui Village and countless small counties, and indeed even in major cities like Beijing and Guangzhou, faith and fear still stalk the land.

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