‘Abandon Your Faith’: China Is Forcibly Merging Churches to Curtail Christianity

China is inventing new ways to force the closure of churches as part of its crackdown on Christianity. 

The religious liberty watchdog Bitter Winter says four legal churches were shut down in recent months under pressure from government officials who justified the closures with questionable tactics. 

All four churches were part of the government-approved Three-Self movement.

In February, according to a new Bitter Winter report, government officials in Xinyu city in Jiangxi province closed a church because, the officials said, “it is not allowed to have two churches in one area.” The congregation was forced to merge with another church. 

When an elderly church member protested and said he and other older members couldn’t walk to the other church, a local government official told him, “If you can’t walk that far, then abandon your faith. This policy comes from above, and the church has to be merged.”

In May, another Three-Self church in the Jiangxi city of Xinyu was shut down and merged with a local congregation. The government then rented out the unoccupied building. 

“The government has adopted a step by step approach now: First, they dismantled our cross, and now the church has been forced to merge with another one,” said a church member from the Xinyu congregation that was closed. “Every week, they send people to take…