CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27407, 21 July 1954, Page 11

CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA

FREEDOM OF RELIGION FOUND BY CHAPLAIN (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, July 19. Dr. Marcus James, Anglican chaplain to the University of London, who has just returned from a month’s tour ci Communist China, said he found religious freedom there. “The churches are open,” he said, in a statement to the press. “I had private talks with many religious leaders. There is no persecution. “They say .the time may come when there will be a clash between *them as Christians and the regime of Mr Mao Tse-tung. They don’t know.” Dr. James travelled about 4000 miles inside China —to Peking, Nanking, Tientsin, and Mukden—as a representative of Christian Action. Christian Action is a British organisation which brings together members of many religious bodies, Roman Catholic as- well as Protestant. Its chairman is Canon John Collins, of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Dr. James said the strength of Mr Mao’s regime was that the average man in the street believed it to be an improvement on thait of Marshal Chiang Kai-shek. While education was no longer in the hands of the churches, they were free to give religious instruction. “Christians in China are upset by reports reaching them that Christians in the West think they have compromised their faith,” he said. “The message they send is that the Christian Church in China is not dead, but a going concern.”