“Chinese students attending a Christian house church in the central Guizhou province are being threatened by government authorities who are warning them that if they don’t stop going to the church, they will be barred from going to college,” the Christian Post reported.
The report was based on a memo from China Aid, which works “to promote religious freedom and rule of law in China,” according to its website.
“This notice was sent to all of the schools in Huaqiu,” the person in charge of Huaqiu Church, which received the notice, told China Aid in a memo published July 14. “They (public security) intend to cleanse us and ask us to join the Three-Self Church.”
The Post adds:
The house church members have also reportedly been pressured into signing a document vowing that they will not take minors into the church. Additionally, parents have been told that they will be sued if they bring their children to church, while the children themselves will not be allowed to take the college entrance exam or be admitted into the army.
House churches in China face regular crackdowns from the Communist Party, which fears the rise of Christianity in the world’s most populous nation, with followers of Christ outnumbering members of the Party.
Even state-run churches have faced religious freedom challenges in the past couple of years, with an ongoing-campaign continuing to tear down church buildings and church rooftop-crosses over alleged building code violations in several Chinese provinces. Protests from Christian pastors and church members have led to hundreds of arrests.
The Huaqiu Church has faced authoritarian threats for years now, China Aid reports. In the past, officials wanted to destroy their church building, claiming they did not have the proper permits to build it.
“Now, [authorities] want to purify us,” a leader of the Huaqiu Church told China Aid in late June. “They ordered us to go to the county religious affairs bureau to register. If we don’t go register, they will call on our believers, command us to confess at the local police station and detain us for five days. [They said] if we did not go, we would be detained for 15 days.”
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IMAGE: China Aid
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