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China and Christianity

THOUSANDS are visiting China​—an estimated 10,000 tourists this year. “What you will find,” reports an article for tourists in The Wall Street Journal, “are spacious rooms, comfortable trains, familiarly crowded airplanes, . . . excellent tea and some of the most courteous and friendly people you will meet anywhere.” But what about religion, and, in particular, Christianity?

Religion is not popular​—except for “red religion.” Christianity is now practically nonexistent. An Associated Press dispatch from Peking last July 31 notes: “Most churches have been converted to other uses, as schools, garages or warehouses. There are two Christian churches in Peking, primarily used now by foreign residents and visitors. One is Roman Catholic and the other Protestant.”

Why is there such little interest in Jesus and his teachings? Communism in China, of course, has suppressed such religion. But there is more to it than that. The churches have misrepresented the teachings of Christ, as the New York Times of January 15, 1979, stated: “The image of the Western missionary has been equated with Western politics since the first Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic missionaries moved into the country late in the 19th century.”

Yes, many missionaries appear to have served as advocates more of their national governments than of the kingdom of God. According to an earlier New York Times report, an international theological conference lamented: “It is unfortunate that Christianity being the official religion of the West was made to justify in various ways imperialism, feudalism, colonialism and bourgeois capitalism.”

In June 1947, however, two Christian missionaries, of a sort entirely different from the missionaries of Christendom’s churches, entered China. They were Harold King and Stanley Jones, graduates of the eighth class of the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead. They joined the small group of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Shanghai, China, sharing with them in preaching about the kingdom of God from house to house.

In time, Stanley Jones met housewife Nancy Yuen during his house-to-house calls. Although her husband was not interested in the Bible, Nancy was, and she immediately saw the difference between Christendom and the Bible-based teaching of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Soon she became a most active Witness herself. She progressed rapidly, proving to be very zealous in house-to-house preaching and in conducting Bible studies, all in the Chinese language.

In the early 1950’s, as many as 175 attended meetings in Shanghai, although restrictions had been placed on the activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Then, in 1956, Nancy Yuen was arrested and held by the authorities. When King and Jones inquired as to her welfare, they were rebuffed with the words: “This is a Chinese affair. Mind your own business.” Two years later, King and Jones themselves were arrested, and they spent five and seven years respectively in Chinese prisons before being released and deported.

But what about Nancy Yuen? We believe that you will find the following story about her to be of absorbing interest.