“When I went to the police station, [I felt] joy to be able to give witness to the gospel,” Miller said. “As a foreign worker, we spend all our time trying to avoid the religious affairs people … but here they were sitting across the table and I didn’t need to worry about saying the wrong thing. … I could tell them to their faces that I’m a Christian and yes, Jesus is worth all this. … I could openly identify myself as a brother to these persecuted Chinese Christians.”
Last fall, missionary John Miller sat in the back row of an unregistered church in Sichuan province, worshipping as he had every Sunday morning for the past year and a half. Then eight police officers walked in. As the only foreigner in the room, Miller tried to sneak out of the building, but police noticed him and ran down the aisle to stop him. They asked for his passport and took down his information before allowing him to return to worship.
Two days later, Miller heard the police knocking on his door but didn’t answer. Miller had no idea how police had found him—he was staying in an apartment rented by local church member John Wu (for security reasons, I’ve given pseudonyms to Wu and the missionaries in this story), and Miller had not registered the address. He moved to another apartment owned by church members. One week later, police contacted Wu and insisted he bring Miller to the station the next morning to register his address.
Miller and Wu complied, arriving at the police station at 10:30 a.m. For the next nine hours, local police as well as officers of the Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Affairs interrogated Miller about what he was doing in China and why he attended the unregistered church. He refused to implicate the Chinese believers, but spoke openly about his faith. “I respect and obey the laws of China because God has given this authority to you,” Miller recalls telling the officer. “But if your laws contradict God’s laws, I must obey God’s laws.”
Eventually officers handed him a written statement that he would be fined RMB 2,000 ($296) for not registering his address. They gave him 10 days to leave the country. After ministering in China for five years with a focus on Christian education, Miller flew home to the United States. Since then, he’s continued teaching his students through video chat.
“When I went to the police station, [I felt] joy to be able to give witness to the gospel,” Miller said. “As a foreign worker, we spend all our time trying to avoid the religious affairs people … but here they were sitting across the table and I didn’t need to worry about saying the wrong thing. … I could tell them to their faces that I’m a Christian and yes, Jesus is worth all this. … I could openly identify myself as a brother to these persecuted Chinese Christians.”
Miller’s story is becoming increasingly common in China as the central government cracks down on foreign missionaries in the country. Beijing has made a targeted effort to rid the country of all foreign influences, especially Korean and Western missionaries who work with house churches. The government has even kicked out entire mission agencies—and missionaries who remain in the country recognize their time is limited.
MISSIONARY JAMES YOUNG also experienced the new hostility. He had ministered to an unreached ethnic minority group in China for 13 years before taking a furlough two years ago for his children’s education. Young continued traveling to China to help mentor church leaders there: Last August, 11 officers showed up in the parking lot of the hotel where he was staying. They handcuffed him, placed him in the back of a minivan, then drove to his apartment in a neighboring city. Rummaging through his apartment, they found Bibles translated into a minority language and information regarding his international mission agency.
They took Young back to the station and for the next eight days interrogated him, keeping him inside a room at a hotel where they had booked every room on the floor to keep watch over him. For several hours each day, the agents repeatedly asked him about the work he was doing in the country, why he was interested in ministering to ethnic minorities, and who his co-workers were. He refused to answer the last question but provided information about his missionary endeavors.
Unbeknownst to him, the Ministry of State Security had also detained and interrogated eight other missionaries in his organization in order to compare answers and grill them if they differed. Although the authorities confiscated Young’s phone and laptop, he was able to hide a microchip that contained his most important information.
Between grueling interrogation sessions, Young had the opportunity to chat with his head interrogator, who slowly began to open up about his personal life. As Young gained the officers’ trust, he was able to stay in the room by himself and make calls on the landline phone to his wife. Yet on the sixth day, a new head interrogator took over and yelled at Young, asking what he would do if the “good news” he brought the ethnic minorities caused them to rise up against the government. Would he take responsibility for that? Feeling physically and emotionally fatigued, Young began doubting his work. Back in his room, he wept.
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