ABSTRACT
Since 1980 remarkable stories of the revival of public worship in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have appeared in the Chinese press. In October 1981, a delegation of Chinese Christian leaders went to their first international ecumenical conference since 1949. They announced to the world that after three decades of isolation from the universal Church Chinese Christians wanted to re-establish a relationship with global Christianity—but only on terms of equality and mutual respect. When the Communists defeated the Nationalists in 1949, Mao Zedong declared that China had “stood up” against the “imperialist” domination of the West and the “feudal” authoritarianism of traditional China. To the new Communist government, religion was one of the “four thick ropes” binding China’s peasants to this feudal past. No one is more surprised by the dimensions of post-Mao religious revival than the government and the religious communities themselves.
