A magazine on religious liberty and human rights
Chinese propaganda still claims The Church of Almighty God was responsible for the murder of a woman in a McDonald’s diner in Zhaoyuan in 2014. Scholarly studies have demonstrated that the crime was committed by a different religious movement and The Church of Almighty God had nothing to do with it.
A new regulation confines mention of religion on any Internet platform to a few government-controlled organizations that will receive a special license for very limited Web activity.
Three Korean Christian media, CBS, CTS, and Kukmin Ilbo, reported on the false demonstrations against The Church of Almighty God in Korea. In a frenzy to attack “cults” with whose theology they disagree, they took the side of the persecutors and the Chinese Communist Party against harmless refugees. We publish the letter our editor-in-chief wrote […]
Some hoped that with the new religious law, which was finally signed on August 26, 2017 and came into force on February 1, 2018, there would have been less control on religion. In fact, things went from bad to worse.
An official U.S. report details the massive efforts deployed by the United Front, under the personal guidance of President Xi Jinping, to manipulate information about China abroad and contain criticism on the issues of religious freedom and human rights.
Between the government-controlled “red market” of religion and the banned and persecuted groups of the “black market,” lies the vast area of the religious “gray market,” including churches and temples that are neither legal nor explicitly banned as xie jiao and a number of other religious and spiritual activities. Massimo Introvigne
“Official” or “government-controlled” religions are often mentioned in China. Five religious bodies are indeed authorized by the regime, although even their liberty is limited. Massimo Introvigne
Since the late Ming era, China has used xie jiao to designate religious movements the government does not like. Their repression has always been brutal, but what a xie jiao is, is far from being clear.
Despite severe persecution, the CAG grew in China and, according to Chinese official sources, had reached four million members in 2014. Several thousand members have escaped abroad, where they have founded churches.
