Churches in China

(continued from Three Self Patriotic Movement)

Here are the other major issues plaguing the Three Self churches in China:

1.  There is no transparency and no accountability on how the offerings collected at the 60,000 Chinese government-controlled Three Self churches are spent.

2.  While the house church and Three Self church Christians in rural China remain poor, the Three Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council are building showpiece mega-churches in China's major cities as symbols of religious freedom in China.

Above is Chong Yi Church, China's first mega-church, in the affluent city of Hangzhou whose construction cost 42 million yuan, which could have purchased 4 million Chinese Bibles.

On the left is Beijing's Haidian Church, designed by Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner, the famed German architects who also re-designed the National Museum of China.

3.  The Chinese Communist Party has rigged all 60,000 Three Self churches with face recognition-enabling CCTV cameras to both identify Christians and to deter their attendance (see Christian persecution in China).

4.  Three Self churches promote Seventh Day Adventists. Rewarded for being one of the first to fall in line with the Chinese Communist Party, the Seventh Day Adventists have flourished in China. They occupy over a thousand churches across China, and under the Three Self umbrella, pass themselves off as a legitimate Protestant denomination.

5.  Most seriously, the Three Self churches do not preach the True Gospel.

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