Political theology in China

Christianity entered China during the imperial period, with the Church of the East's interaction with the Emperor Taizong and Jesuit missionaries in the Ming court.

In 845, during the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, the Church of the East was misunderstood as a sect of Buddhism and was banned by Emperor Wuzong.

During this time, the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church also sent envoys to the Mongol Empire capital Khanbaliq (present-day Beijing).

Jesuits exerted considerable influence at court via the policy of accommodation and converted several senior officials, such as Xu Guangqi.

[6] After 1949, the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese Protestant leaders encountered new challenges – the new regime of the communist government is based on atheistic ideology of Marxism.

Some of them, such as Y. T. Wu, who were willing to support the new government, helped to pen the Christian Manifesto and initiated the Three-Self movement (TSPM) in 1950s; they reconstructed theology in terms of cooperation.

Others, such as Wang Mingdao, were unwilling to endorse the radical TSPM and refused to support the new government, are regarded as the forerunners of the present-day house church.

[7] In the 1950s Denunciation Campaigns, some Christian leaders, such as Wang Mingdao, Watchman Nee, from the opposing camp were arrested and sentenced in the name of counter-revolutionaries.

[9] In the 1950s, after Zhou Enlai saw the possibilities in Protestantism with the TSPM, a similar approach was taken with Catholicism leading to the formation in 1957 of the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), severing ties with the Vatican.

However, after being released from prison in 1982, he took several leadership roles within the CPA, including becoming founding rector of the Sheshan Seminary and bishop of Shanghai in 1988, without Vatican approval.

[15] Despite the Anti-Confucius developments of the Cultural Revolution, since the 1980s, there has been a restored interest in Confucianism as offering a renewed political ideology for mainland China.

The founding group of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, including Y. T. Wu, drafted the document in consultation with Premier Zhou Enlai.