The Chinese government is wary of religion for several reasons. China is officially an atheist state and Communist Party members are banned from believing in or practicing any faith; there is concern that religion can function as an alternative to Communism and thus undermine loyalty to the government.
Missionaries were expelled from China in 1949 when the Communist Party came to power, and the religion was associated with Western imperialism. However, Christianity experienced a resurgence of popularity since the reforms under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s and 1980s.
From 1966 to 1976 during the Cultural Revolution, the expression of religious life in China was effectively banned, including even the Three-Self Church. During the ten-year period the government began to crackdown and persecute all religions.
Religious activities were suppressed in most former communist countries during the totalitarian period, as political elites believed that religion was incompatible with the advancement of communism. Clergy were persecuted, killed and imprisoned and churches were demolished or closed.
In 2018, the United Front Work Department initiated a crackdown on large outdoor religious statues. The government of China continued to persecute Christians during the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic, demolishing the Xiangbaishu Church in Yixing and removing a Christian Cross from the steeple of a church in Guiyang County.
The constitution of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which cites the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), states that citizens “enjoy freedom of religious belief” but limits protections for religious practice to “normal religious activities,” without defining “normal.” The government recognizes five ...
Falun Gong practitioners in China are reportedly subject to a wide range of human rights abuses: hundreds of thousands are estimated to have been imprisoned extrajudicially, and practitioners in detention are subject to forced labor, psychiatric abuse, torture, and other coercive methods of thought reform at the hands ...
Currently, among China's major religions, which include Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and folk beliefs, Christianity is the only one whose major holy text cannot be sold through normal commercial channels. The Bible is printed in China but legally available only at church bookstores approved by Beijing.
Religions that are not permitted to exist in China like the Falun Gong or Jehovah's witnesses are not protected by the constitution. Religious groups that are not registered by the government, like Catholics who are part of an underground church or Protestant house churches, are not protected by the constitution.
The People's Republic of China is officially an atheist state, but the government formally recognizes four religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity (Catholicism and Protestantism) and Islam.
Studies in the 21st century suggest that, in terms of percentage and worldwide spread, Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world.
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in Europe.
The United States has the largest Christian population in the world, followed by Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and the Philippines.
The Chinese government is wary of religion for several reasons. China is officially an atheist state and Communist Party members are banned from believing in or practicing any faith; there is concern that religion can function as an alternative to Communism and thus undermine loyalty to the government.
China. Jehovah's Witnesses' activities in China are considered illegal. Former Canadian-American Jehovah's Witness missionary Amber Scorah recounted the lengths that she and her husband went through to preach illegally in China in the early 2000s.
The most godless country in the world, however, is China. According to the survey, fully 67% of respondents in China considered themselves 'convinced atheists' – more than double the percentage in the world's second-most atheistic country, Japan (29%).
Although formally banned in 1612 and today critically portrayed as a foreign "religion of colonialism", Christianity has played a role in the shaping of the relationship between religion and the Japanese state for more than four centuries.
Santa is known as 'Sheng dan Lao ren' in Mandarin, which translates as 'Christmas Old Man', and he is seen as a non-religious figure who lives in a fairytale Arctic Christmas Village in China's North Pole.
Russian law technically recognizes Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as the four “traditional” religions. But, only the Russian Orthodox Church is elevated to the role of representing the ideals and faith of Russia, passed down across untold generations .
"Customs officials continued to monitor for the 'smuggling' of Bibles and other religious material into the country," the report said. "Religious texts published without authorization, including Bibles and Qurans, may be confiscated."
The Bible is reported to have been banned in North Korea and several incidents have emerged in which Christians were arrested or executed for possessing and/or selling the book, while other reports state that they have their own translated Bible.
The makers of apps for reading and listening to the Qur'an and the Bible say their apps have also been removed from Apple's China-based store at the government's request. Apple didn't return requests for comment Friday. Neither did China's embassy in the U.S.
Adherents hold that Hinduism—one of the principal faiths in the modern world, with about one billion followers—is the world's oldest religion, with complete scriptural texts dating back 3,000 years.
Although the 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the "subversion of state power" and "protection of state secrets" clauses in their law system to imprison those who criticize the government.