China Training Pastors to Preach on Communism, not the Bible

Officials in China’s third largest province are training pastors to include communist ideology in their weekly sermons, according to a new report from a religious liberty watchdog.

The same officials also are forcing pastors to affirm traditional Chinese beliefs – such as ancestral worship – that conflict with Scripture. 

At issue is the approval of pastors within the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the government-approved Protestant body that faces severe restrictions.

Pastors who failed a test on communist beliefs weren’t approved. 

Last year the Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs in Henan province – the third-largest province with 94 million people – began applying Communist Party membership standards to screen Three-Self preachers, according to Bitter Winter, an organization that monitors religious liberty. 

The assessment included two parts: a sample sermon and a questionnaire. 

The Bureau told the pastors to write a sample sermon that must include “national policy, traditional culture and the core socialist values” in the text, Bitter Winter reported. Christian doctrines such as eternal life, heaven and hell were prohibited from being included. 

“The preachers are worried that churches in China will eventually become the CCP’s political propaganda agencies,” Bitter Winter’s Jiang Tao wrote.

One pastor was told to prepare a…