he said to her. Little Xi walked slowly into the yard with her eyes fixed on the banner on the house front: GRAIN FALLEN ON THE GROUND DOES NOT DIE.
She thought to herself, I’ve only ever heard that the spirit does not die, or that matter cannot be destroyed, but this says that a grain of wheat never dies-it certainly accords with philosophical materialism.
The man responsible for the Church of the Grain Fallen on the Ground was called Gao Shengchan. From his name, meaning “high level of production,” one could easily tell that his parents had been minor local officials who had given their children names like “Production” and “Planning” in accordance with government policies at the time of their births.
Two years earlier, Gao Shengchan, Li Tiejun, and three others had organized an underground Protestant church in Jiaozuo City. But they soon came into conflict with the government-run Three-Self Patriotic Church, were arrested by the Public Security police on orders from the local Bureau of Religion, and were sent to prison. There they dubbed themselves “grain fallen on the ground,” from Jesus’s parable that if only one grain of wheat fell on the ground and died, it would then give birth to a great deal more wheat. They had already resolved to die for their religion and they grew even stronger in prison; they would never abandon God’s work. After their release, they were all the more resolute. Li Tiejun, who had made some money in business, bought a piece of land in the Warm Springs township, built a big meeting house, and established a Christian fellowship. Four leaders set up fellowships in the villages around Jiaozuo and put into practice Mao Zedong’s policy of “the countryside surrounding the city.” Gao Shengchan traveled between these four fellowships preaching the gospel. Nowadays the Bureau of Religion and the Public Security police no longer bothered them as before. Even more unusual was that almost more people than the fellowships could handle were asking to join their church.
More than thirty people now participated in the Warm Springs fellowship’s daily witness meetings and Bible- study sessions, and there were upward of two hundred people at their weekend revival meetings. The parishioners introduced new members every day, and some, like Little Xi, just walked in off the street.
Gao Shengchan had once worried that if the church was too active it might attract the attention of the authorities. But Li Tiejun and the other three leaders had already dedicated their lives to God’s work and they wanted to press forward with no regard for the consequences; there was no way Gao Shengchan could restrain them. For example, when Li Tiejun wanted to put spring couplets with Christian themes up on the church gate, Gao Shengchan opposed this as being too conspicuous. In China there are things that you can do, but you cannot be too loud about doing them, he thought. Gao could not change Li’s mind, and Li Tiejun said that they not only had to have a good product, but they also needed some good propaganda, and the spring couplets were an advertisement. What Li Tiejun said also moved Gao Shengchan: “Our mission is just and honorable, and I refuse to hide our light under a bushel.” In the end, Li had been right. Many people learned about the church from the spring couplets; they came in to listen to the revival meetings and ultimately joined.
Later on, officials from the Bureau of Religion had come to the church and asked them about their activities. But the officials’ attitude was not at all antagonistic; they didn’t say much, and after they’d gone, nothing more was heard from them. Over the last two years, the government had been keeping a very low profile.
Gao Shengchan was a graduate of the provincial university. Before going to prison, he’d been a middle-school teacher and an avid reader of the
In order to protect their long-term development, Gao proposed that each Christian order or sect attend to its own affairs only. The Evangelicals, the Liberals, the Fundamentalists, and the Charismatics should not meet together, and churches within the same sect should not come together too often. He didn’t want the government to have the impression that the home churches were developing into province-wide or even nationwide organizations. Many people who attended the churches didn’t understand his concern, and they criticized him for being insufficiently open, or caring too much for his own church group, or even for trying to set himself up as a supreme leader. Gao Shengchan told them, however, that the main thing was to communicate directly with God and not to communicate with each other.
Another thing that Gao Shengchan himself could do, however, was to write articles and circulate them to the various believers; this was actually a way of sending information to the government. His most important theme was “God is God and Caesar is Caesar.” He wrote that the Christian church did not seek secular political power; it was a force for social stability, and thus the secular government should not interfere with religion. His hope was that he could influence the government to change its usual policy and accept the idea that politics and religion were separate realms. He wanted to erect a firewall between the political regime and his religion, and that would be of great assistance to the development of religion at this point in time. He also wrote blogs under several names to support those Beijing scholars who advocated the desensitization of religion.
However, Gao Shengchan didn’t advocate putting extra pressure on the government during the desensitization process, and he was opposed to the demands of urban radical Christian intellectuals for official recognition of the home-church movement and for the legalization, open operation, and free publication of formerly underground churches. He believed that the government could not officially recognize the home churches; desensitization was their bottom line. After desensitization, the best thing would be for the government to act as though it were unaware of the underground churches, and for the Bureau of Religion to act as though it had never heard of any home churches outside of the Three-Self Patriotic denomination. The home churches should not do anything to embarrass the government. If they didn’t cause any trouble, everybody could save face and everybody could function well.
Gao Shengchan thought that later generations would probably look back and say that this was the purist age of Chinese Protestant Christianity. Because it operated outside the Three-Self Patriotic Church, Protestant Christianity still retained its underground character, and there were very few secular benefits to becoming a member of the church. So most of the new members joined the church with a pure heart; they were practicing faith for the sake of faith. If some church leaders or volunteer workers became corrupt, they were the exception and not the rule. People in China who were genuinely ambitious for fame, profits, or power joined the Communist Party, the so-called democratic parties, commercial-interest groups, organized-crime gangs, or the entertainment industry; comparatively few would choose the religious arena. Even if they did, they would join the government-recognized religious organizations or found a sect of their own; they would not be very likely to join a Protestant denomination. On the other hand, in a country like the United States, where Protestant Christianity was the mainstream religion, the churches could hardly avoid being associated with fame, profit, power, and interest groups. Gao Shengchan hoped that Chinese Christianity could continue to develop underground for a long time so that ambitious characters would not be interested in the home-church movement and Chinese Christians would be able to remain as pure- hearted as they were now.
The Church of the Grain Fallen on the Ground had quite a good reputation in Chinese Christian circles, and, since all its leaders had spent time in prison, many foreign Christians came to see them. Li Tiejun and the others were particularly happy to associate with foreigners, but Gao Shengchan was quite wary of this; he was afraid that the Communist Party would charge them with the crime of collaborating with foreign powers. From his exchanges with visitors from abroad, Gao Shengchan realized even more clearly that, although the Christian churches didn’t aspire to secular power, they could still be drawn into politics as in America, where the Evangelical Christians
