China (MNN) — The new leadership of China’s State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) recently met with Christian ministry leaders in the country. Erik Burklin, with China Partner, attended the meeting and says he saw it as an opportunity to witness to government officials and build relationships with them.
After the formal event, he introduced himself to SARA’s director, Mr. Huang. The Chinese Communist Party’s oversight of Christians is strict, and authenticity from officials can be hard to gauge, he says, but Burklin was encouraged by Huang’s initial reception.
“I never really sensed from him that he was anti-foreign or anti-missionary, which was interesting,” Burklin says.
SARA is run by China’s United Front Work Department, an arm of the Communist Party responsible for addressing opposition groups. As leader of the group, Huang is tasked with oversight of China’s five officially recognized religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism.
These groups must be registered with the government in order to hold legal worship services. But the CCP goes further than simply requiring permitting. According to the 2023 report on international freedom, “Regulations require clergy to pledge allegiance to the CCP and socialism and to ‘resist illegal religious activities and religious extremist ideology, and resist infiltration by foreign forces using religion.’”
Given this reality, Burklin says the meeting and fellowship with Huang was strategic. He hopes to continue meeting together, especially to hear how the department is interpreting and implementing a nationwide sinicization push. After the October event, Burklin sent a personal letter to Huang asking to continue conversing.
“We care about how we operate in China,” Burklin says he told Huang. “We respect you. We respect the governing authorities. We don’t want to do anything illegally, but we care about your people and your country.”
Huang touts the country’s religious freedoms, a routine recognized as political propaganda by Christians and other minority groups facing religious persecution in the country. Despite the difficulty of navigating discrepancies in the administration’s speech and action, Burklin says ministry leaders at October’s event interacted with Huang as an image-bearer of God.
“In that meeting you could sense the love that there was for this individual by many who came – of course all of us are Christian, born again,” he says.
Photo courtesy of Javier Quiroga via Unsplash
Burklin asks believers to pray for Huang’s salvation and to remember that the Lord holds the heart of kings in his hand.
“God is in control. He knows these people. He cares for these people. He loves these people. And we as Christians need to do the same,” he says.
Christians can also pray that SARA leadership would begin to look with favor on Christians across China and that God would give Huang wisdom and discernment in his work.
“These are not just government officials that we sometimes put in a category of evil – although their ideology is evil and it’s anti-God, we understand this,” Burklin points out. “But God can use these men and women for his glory.”
Featured photo courtesy of Zhang Kaiyv via unsplash.
