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Faith on tight rein in Beijing
by Bill Bowder
 Protest: a member of Students for a Free Tibet unveils a banner outside the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing on Wednesday last week. Four activists from Britain and the US were detained by the police afterwards |
| Picture: PA
A SPORTS COMMENTATOR in Beijing has criticised the “complete absence of anything religious” at the Games, which opened in China this week. Olympic regulations require that services are made available for all the main world religions. Reporting from the rowing course, where there are high hopes for Britain’s women’s quadruple scull on Sunday, Dr Robert Treharne Jones, an Anglican and a former BBC commentator on the Boat Race for 14 years, said that fans had been banned from waving large icons. “There appears to be a complete absence of anything remotely to do with religion at the Games,” he said on Wednesday. There was also “nothing of an overtly spiritual nature” at the opening ceremony, although some of the set pieces could be interpreted from the perspective of belief. “The emergence of the enormous globe out of the ground to represent the ‘One World, One Dream’ motto of the Games best reflects this.” One of the “overriding aspects” of the Games, though, was the way in which the Organising Committee had “chosen to restrict freedom of expression in many ways”, although conditions could be different in the Olympic Village itself, he said. The state-approved Protestant Church, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, is providing religious services for the 20,000 competitors, coaches, and doctors at the Village. It has permission to distribute 10,000 Bibles, 30,000 New Testaments, and 50,000 tracts containing the four Gospels. Presbyter Fu Xianwei, who chairs it, told Ecumenical News International (ENI): “The fact that we Protestant leaders are invited to the opening ceremony means that Christianity is now more integrated into the society, and the government respects religions and society accepts us.” Its pastors were accredited as official chaplains. The coadjutor RC Bishop of Hong Kong, the Rt Revd John Zen Ze-kiun, said that he had been invited to the opening ceremony, but his Cardinal had not. “A number of Chinese bishops have been detained or placed under house arrest,” he told ENI. The Union of Catholic Asian News, in Bangkok, said on 7 August that “quite a number of bishops and priests” had been forbidden to minister near Beijing since July. Three US Christian activists protesting for religious freedom were removed from Tiananmen Square last week. Brandi Swindell, founder of Generation Life, said: “We are here to pray peacefully.” Dutch Christians who were singing and handing out balloons in the square were also stopped, as was a protest against China’s forced-abortion policy. Compass Direct News, based in the US, said that Chinese police had taken the house-church leader Zhang Mingxuan, his wife, Xie Fenlang, and his co-pastor Wu Jiang He into custody at a police station in Hebei, after a BBC journalist tried to interview him on 4 August. The China Aid Association in the US said that the authorities had forced house-church leaders to halt services during the Olympics. The Church of England website has a prayer for the Olympics. www.cofe.anglican.org/prayers |
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