History OFFERS the best reference for crisis management in times of upheaval. This is particularly true for Christian churches in Hong Kong under China’s draconian security rule.
Last month, Monsignor Javier Herrera-Corona, previously the Vatican’s unofficial envoy in Hong Kong, warned that the territory’s further political integration with China would surely lead to autocratic restrictions on religious activities, and the Catholic Church should be prepared.
Worse still, Beijing and its public security agents in Hong Kong publicly condemned Cardinal Joseph Zen (陳日君), a 90-year-old retired bishop, as one of the leading figures in the 2014 “Umbrella movement” and the 2019 democracy protests, even though Zen offered only moral and humanitarian support to victims of police oppression. In light of the government’s warning, local Christians would have to keep their heads down.
Even as Christians in Hong Kong remain a minority, it is a visible living faith. Churches in the territory provided vital relief efforts for countless mainland Chinese refugees in 1949. Catholics and Protestants in Hong Kong helped build an impressive structure of medical, educational and social welfare systems that healed the sick, nurtured the young and fed the poor.
Church leaders performed a delicate balancing act stabilizing church-state relations, but they are now waking up to the government’s fear over their global connections.
The territory is facing tremendous challenges under Hong Kong’s National Security Law. For the first time since 1989, none of the Catholic parishes, Protestant churches nor local mission schools commemorated the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4 this year.
The suffocating silence is forcing Christian agencies and churches to reassess their everyday operations in a restricted environment. Some foreign agencies have handed over executive and financial management responsibilities to their local colleagues to avoid suspicion.
Keeping Hong Kong out of the international spotlight is a top priority for the security regime. This harsh reality has made it difficult for clergy to keep politics at arms’ length, while defending church members critical of human rights abuses.
During this year’s anniversaries of the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the July 1, 1997, democracy rally, Hong Kong security officials ordered several political prisoners to tell Amnesty International and overseas churches not to publicize their cases in exchange for shorter sentencing. Such a manipulative tactic was designed to isolate the prisoners and weaken their resolve.
Despite Beijing’s intensifying ideological and political control of the territory, more Christians are learning the stories of martyrs in the Maoist era and the involvement of Taiwanese, South Korean and Philippine churches in democratic struggles. Reflecting on martyrdom and civic activism reveals valuable insights for empowerment.
The experiences of migrants and cross-cultural exchanges have transformed the Christian landscape. A significant number of Hong Kong’s Catholics and Protestants are from abroad, with numerous ministries for Southeast Asian domestic workers and for Mandarin speakers. Neighborhood churches often provide multilingual religious services in Cantonese, English, Mandarin, Tagalog and more.
Given Christianity’s cosmopolitan profile, China would need to think carefully before imposing mainland-style religious patriotic control in the territory.
Hong Kong Christians are part of global churches. They have lived with anxieties and on the stamina of their faith for decades. They have overcome great odds and are unlikely to give up now.
Joseph Tse-Hei Lee is professor of history at Pace University in New York.
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