A new Chinese Christian man is dunked in the water in a small tub as he is baptized during a ceremony at an underground independent Protestant Church on October 12, 2014 in Beijing, China. China, an officially atheist country, places a number of restrictions on Christians and allows legal practice of the faith only at state-approved churches. The policy has driven an increasing number of Christians and Christian converts 'underground' to secret congregations in private homes and other venues. While the size of the religious community is difficult to measure, studies estimate there more than 65 million Christians inside China with studies supporting the possibility it could become the most Christian nation in the world within a decade. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images/TNS)

CHENGDU, China — Li Chengju glared at her prison interrogator as he pressed her to renounce her Christian church and condemn her pastor.

Her captor warned she would not be so lucky as the pastor, who was locked in secret detention but at least might get a day in court.

"Look at you. You sweep the floors at church," the interrogator said. "You think you're getting a trial like your pastor? You don't qualify."

Li still refused to sign the document disowning her church.

"I'm a citizen who has faith," she told the interrogator. "God knows everything you are doing and he will judge you one day."

Then she repeated a saying she'd heard at church about the Chinese president: "Xi Jinping is sinning against God. If he doesn't repent, he will be judged by God."

Li, who recounted her detention in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, belonged to the Early Rain Covenant Church, which authorities here in Chengdu dissolved late last year as part of a sweeping campaign by the government to rein in the country's fastest-growing religion: Protestant Christianity.

The state-sanctioned Three-Self Church has long been the only legal place for Christians to worship in China, even as the country saw a proliferation of so-called house churches — congregations such as Early Rain that meet in office buildings, hotel conference rooms and other makeshift sanctuaries.

The government calls its campaign "Sinicization" — a euphemism for turning faith into a tool for indoctrination in Chinese Communist Party ideology. The official five-year plan, issued in 2018, calls for inserting "patriotic education" and "socialist core values" into churches, revising the Bible, and using church sermons to enforce party leadership and reject foreign influences.

One pastor in Hong Kong, who spoke on the condition that his name not be published, said the message was made clear when a group of Chinese officials visited in 2016.

"You keep talking about separation of church and state," he said they told him and other theologians. "But Chinese tradition is that state leads and church follows. ... In China, you are a tool to transform the people."

The pastor said the campaign in some ways was repeating history.

In the 1950s, the newly established People's Republic of China co-opted Protestant leaders with the Three-Self Church's anti-colonial slogan: "Self-governance, self-support,

self-propagation."

But by the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, all religion was violently purged. Even the Three-Self Church was not immune, and many of its founders were tortured, sent to labor camps and worked to death.

The house church movement sprang up at the end of the Cultural Revolution, starting in rural areas, where mass conversion in provinces like Henan brought the number of Christians to 3 million by 1982. It rapidly spread to cities in the 1980s and 1990s, as rural preachers followed migrant workers and university students disillusioned by the Tiananmen Square massacre turned to Christianity.

By 2018, official statistics said there were 39 million Protestants in China. Scholars estimate that including house church worshippers pushes the real number to at least 80 million — almost 6% of China's population, on par with Communist Party

membership.

Fenggang Yang, founding director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University, predicts that by 2030 China will have more Christians than any other

country.

He said that growth has been particularly worrisome to Xi, who became general secretary of the Communist Party in 2012 and Chinese president in 2013 with a governing ideology centered on Communist Party control over all aspects of

life.

"Since Xi took power, militant atheism has prevailed in China," Yang said, contrasting that approach to the "enlightenment atheism" of previous Chinese leaders.

"Enlightened atheism emphasized sympathy and education," he said. "Militant atheism wants to control by political

force."

Experts described Sinicization as a creeping process

that starts when authorities ask house churches to

register with the government, often promising not to interfere with the preaching

content.

"Then they start to document you," said the pastor of a large house church in

Chengdu who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Then your children cannot go to church. Then you have to plant a

flag."

Eventually, clergy are forced to change their sermons to align with "socialist core values" and paste Communist Party slogans on the walls.

Having seen that process unfold at other churches,

the pastor refused to register. Police began standing outside the church daily and following and harassing

attendees.

In August, his church left its makeshift sanctuary

in an office building, breaking into small groups that met in houses instead.

"Church is not a location," the pastor said. "Church is a group of people."

His congregation has been preparing for his arrest, hiring lawyers and training members to lead smaller fellowship groups if he and the elders

disappear.