The Christian Manifesto: Direction of Endeavor for Chinese Christianity in the Construction of New China
The statement of July 1950 in which Chinese Protestant leaders pledged support for the new government and set their churches the aims of ending foreign control and purging “imperialist” influence. It is the founding statement of what became the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
Read the text at archive.org ↗The Communist Party’s account of the manifesto and the movement (in Chinese) ↗
The manifesto was drawn up by Wu Yaozong and others after their meetings with the premier, Zhou Enlai, in May 1950, and was then circulated for signature in the churches. It is short. A section headed “The Task in General” commits Christians to support the government’s Common Programme and to oppose imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism under the government’s leadership. Its “fundamental aims” are that the churches should recognise how imperialism had used Christianity, purge that influence, and watch against American imperialism in particular. The Communist Party’s account adds that it set the churches the task of becoming self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating in the shortest possible time.
It is the signers’ own statement of their case. How freely the signatures that followed were given is disputed; the collection that prints this translation was compiled by former missionaries, and its notes say that some at first refused to sign. See the Chinese Church under the People’s Republic.
Cited in
- 1950 to 1954, firm date