Crypto-Christianity

According to one interpretation, the historical Jesus wanted to avoid the immediate occurrence of a confrontation with Rome, because the Roman governor Pontius Pilate would not have tolerated the existence of a popular leader who would have referred to himself as the Messiah.

In contrast, many Christians, including Polycarp,[3] chose to retain their beliefs and suffer persecution, due to the fact that Christian doctrine did not allow Christians to publicly profess another religion, even if they held a mental reservation against it, which made it stricter than the Muslim practice of taqiyya and Jewish opinions on the matter, but many did so out of weakness: All the inhabitants of the empire were required to sacrifice before the magistrates of their community 'for the safety of the empire' by a certain day (the date would vary from place to place and the order may have been that the sacrifice had to be completed within a specified period after a community received the edict).

Crypto-Christian crosses and graves, camouflaged to resemble Buddhist imagery, can still be seen in the Shimabara Peninsula, Amakusa islands and far south in Kagoshima.

Shūsaku Endō's acclaimed novel Silence draws from the oral history of Japanese Catholic communities pertaining to the time of the suppression of the Church.

An early attestation and justification of crypto-Christianism is found in an epistle of Patriarch Ioannes 14th (Ιωάννης ΙΔ') (1334-1347) of Constantinople to the Christians of Bithynia (Asia Minor).

[5] Due to the religious strife that has existed in the Balkan Peninsula and Anatolia, instances of crypto-Christian behavior are reported to this day in Muslim-dominated areas of the former Yugoslavia, Albania, and Turkey.

[7] Further information is contained in "The Crypto-Christians of the Pontos and Consul William Gifford Palgrave of Trebizond," London: Valiorum Reprints, 1988, from Peoples and Settlement in Anatolia and the Caucasus 800–1900, by Anthony Bryer Crypto-Armenians are believed to represent at least two groups of Armenians which are living in modern-day Turkey.

Representatives of a different, much smaller crypto-Armenian group live in separate villages which are inhabited by Turks and Kurds in Eastern Turkey (on the territories of the traditional Armenian homeland).

Many Crypto-Christian communities existed in Middle-East till the 19th century, as Muslim authorities continued to tolerate minimal requirements of obedience by converts.

Chinese house churches are unregistered Christian churches in the People's Republic of China which operate independently of the official government-run religious institutions: the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and China Christian Council (CCC) for Protestants, and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association for Catholics.

In addition to Christians practising their faith secretly in a non-Christian society, there have been instances of crypto-Catholics in majority Protestant, or Protestant-dominated territories and Eastern Orthodox countries.

More recently, Protestants in Eritrea, an Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church-majority country, number about 2% of the population and often practice in secret to avoid persecution and torture from the authorities.