Christianity booming in China, may have more believers in 2030 than America
China’s 5,000 seat church makes headlines as the revival in the communist nation could result in more Christians than are present in America by 2030. The Easter Sunday coverage in China by The Telegraph paints a bright future for Christianity in China.
“It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It gives us great confidence,” Jin Hongxin, a 40-year-old visitor to the Liushi church said in the article. The 5,000-capacity Liushi church, which boasts more than twice as many seats as Westminster Abbey and a 206ft crucifix that can be seen for miles around.
One other declared the facility a “miracle that such a small town was able to build such a grand church.” This “grand church” cost around $16 million and an incredible visible symbol of the conversion into one of the largest Christian congregations on earth.
“If everyone in China believed in Jesus then we would have no more need for police stations. There would be no more bad people and therefore no more crime,” Jin added.
The People’s Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor their new brand of pseudocapitalism seem to have supplied.
Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution.
“By my calculations China is destined to become the largest Christian country in the world very soon,” said Fenggang Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule.
“It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change.”
China’s Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre’s Forum on Religion and Public Life.
[…] Wenzhou, known as “China’s Jerusalem”, is where the country’s largest Christian community resides. Earlier this month, thousands of Chinese Christians flocked to the church and stationed themselves in and outside of it when Party officials threatened to tear it down in what’s believed to be a campaign to curb the spread of Christianity. […]