wfn.org | NCC Protests Exclusion From Delegation to China

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

18-February-1998 
98054 
 
    NCC Protests Exclusion From Delegation to China 
 
    by Tracy Early 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
NEW YORK-The biggest ecumenical organization in the United States, the 
National Council of Churches (NCC), has sharply protested at its exclusion 
from a delegation of U.S. religious leaders visiting China from Feb. 
9-March 1 to "discuss" religious freedom. 
 
    When China's President Jiang Zemin visited the U.S. last October, he 
offered to allow a delegation of U.S. religious leaders to come to China, 
including Tibet, and look at the religious situation for  themselves. 
Those chosen to go, with financing from private sources, were Rabbi Arthur 
Schneier, spiritual leader of a New York synagogue  and founder-president 
of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation; Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore 
E. McCarrick of Newark, New Jersey, who is chairman of the International 
Policy Committee of the U.S. Catholic (Bishops') Conference; and Donald 
Argue, an Assemblies of God minister and president of the National 
Association of Evangelicals (NAE). 
 
    After the three-member delegation to visit China was announced last 
year, the NCC launched a campaign to take part, protesting that a major 
sector of the American religious community was being excluded. (The NCC has 
as members 33 mainstream Protestant and Orthodox churches in the U.S.) 
 
    After its various efforts had failed, the NCC sent President Bill 
Clinton a letter late last month expressing "keen regret and some 
puzzlement" and protesting the "exclusion" of the NCC and its general 
secretary, Joan Brown Campbell.  And it hinted that without the NCC'S 
viewpoint the delegation's report could have limited credibility. 
 
    "Our hope is that we will not need to distance ourselves and our 
churches from its findings," the NCC said.  "However, we must preserve our 
separate standing in order to engage the religious persecution issue in the 
future in a way that may serve to neutralize its manipulative use in our 
own country and its damaging effect on religious communities overseas." 
 
    The question of religious freedom in China has become a highly 
contentious issue in American political life, particularly since early 1996 
when the NAE and other religious groups launched a campaign claiming that 
the U.S. government was not doing enough to stop the persecution of 
Christians abroad. 
 
    A U.S. State Department report subsequently mentioned China as one of 
the countries in which Christians faced problems. Some Republican members 
of Congress have introduced legislation seeking to force President Bill 
Clinton's administration to exert more pressure on China through trade 
sanctions. (The Clinton administration has generally shown reluctance to 
get involved in questions of religious freedom in China.) 
 
    Ironically, despite its exclusion from the delegation, the NCC has 
generally supported the Clinton administration's reluctance to get involved 
in the issue of religious rights in China, arguing that although problems 
of religious freedom exist in China they are not as severe as those talking 
about "persecution" paint them.  In any case, the NCC and its supporters 
claim, confrontation will not help the Chinese churches. 
 
      The visit by the three U.S. religious leaders to China has overlapped 
with the visit of two Chinese delegations to the United States - one 
consisting of church leaders and the other of officials of the government's 
Religious Affairs Bureau, which oversees religious practices in China. 
 
     Wenzao Han, President of the China Christian Council, which represents 
most of the country's Protestants, told ENI that he deeply regretted that 
the NCC's general secretary, Joan Brown Campbell, had not been included in 
the delegation to China. He said that President Jiang 
Zemin had extended a general invitation, and the National Security Council, 
which is part of the White House operation, had selected the individuals. 
 
    Han told ENI that China did have religious persecution (during the 
Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976), and he himself had had a "difficult 
time" when he was sent out to the countryside.  But he said that Christians 
in China now had "a reasonable amount of freedom." 
 
    Han mentioned the opening of thousands of churches, the publication of 
millions of Bibles and the establishment of 17 theological schools. 
 
    He said China was a vast country, and there were "problems from place 
to place, especially in the remote rural areas."  Whenever church leaders 
learnt of these problems, they asked government officials to "rectify" the 
situation, he said. 
 
    But Han said he did not known of anyone in prison for his faith.  There 
were probably some Christians among China's prisoners, as in other 
countries, but "I wonder whether they are sentenced just because of their 
faith," he said. 
 
    The visit to China of the three U.S. religious leaders has coincided 
with reports that Gao Feng, known as a prominent leader of house churches, 
was released from a labor camp in early February.  There was speculation in 
the media that the Chinese government released him because of the visit of 
the delegation. 
 
    The National Security Council refused to comment. 

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