(HorizonPost.com) – In an op-ed at Fox News, Congressman Mike Gallagher raises the alarm about the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to control religious faith among the Chinese people.
Gallagher, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the US and China, noted that several years ago, the CCP launched a 10-year project to rewrite religious texts like the Quran and Bible, which he argues is President Xi Jinping’s “quest to make the faithful serve the party rather than God.”
According to Gallagher, an excerpt from the rewritten Gospel of John that appeared in a university textbook in 2020 included the story of the adulterous woman who is brought before Jesus. But unlike the original, in the Chinese version, Jesus does not forgive the woman and tell her to “go and sin no more.” Instead, Jesus stones her to death.
During the 19th Communist Party Congress, Xi said the party would “insist on the sinicization of Chinese religious” while providing “active guidance” so that socialism and religion can co-exist, Gallagher writes.
As part of that effort, the Vatican agreed during a secret negotiation in 2018 to permit the Chinese Communist Party to select China’s Catholic bishops. In exchange, the Vatican asked for reassurances of safety for Catholics in China, reassurances that Beijing quickly ignored.
Additionally, Beijing wants the authority to choose the next Dalai Lama, a move Tibetan Buddhists are trying to prevent. By way of defense of the move, Beijing has cited that the Vatican has accepted its authority over the Catholic Church in China.
According to Rep. Gallagher, while the constitution of the People’s Republic of China states that its citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief,” Beijing’s definition of “freedom” more closely resembles what we in the US would consider “oppression.”
Religious affairs in China are managed by the United Front Work Department since religion is something to be “coerced,” “co-opted,” and “corrupted” to advance the goals of the CCP, Gallagher writes. Once it is controlled by the party, he adds, the CCP can “control people’s minds.”
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