I spent Easter Sunday 1997 in a Baptist church. Not unusual except this Baptist church happened to be in Hong Kong.

With more than 10,000 members, Kowloon City Baptist Church was, at the time, one of the largest Protestant congregations in this treasured colony of Great Britain. On July 1 of that year, Hong Kong would switch from 156 years of British rule to being a “special administrative region” of China.

My work as a reporter took me there because of very real concerns that independent churches free of government influence and control like Kowloon City Baptist might have problems under the coming regime. China had promised that would not happen in Hong Kong.

Empty promises

Churches do exist on the Chinese mainland but usually as part of the “Three-Self Patriotic Movement,” an association of Protestant churches which, according to Reuters, is controlled by the ruling Chinese Communist Party. Unofficial “underground” or “house” churches in China are not part of that movement. However, attendance comes with risk. Some members have reportedly faced prison time for being more loyal to their religion than to the Chinese state.

Yet the People’s Republic promised that Hong Kong would be different. It pledged to rule using the principle of “one country, two systems.” For 50 years, residents would keep their Basic Law or constitution and hold onto their economic and legislative systems and their cherished rights such as freedom of religion and speech.

That promise relieved some. Others, fearing what would come after the handover, left long ago.

For me that Easter Sunday, seated in the balcony with a photographer and producer, Kowloon City Baptist sounded just like the Baptist churches in which I had grown up. Same prayers, same sermon, same hymns — such as “He Lives,” except the words were in Cantonese.

And yet you could sense among the parishioners and their leaders something in the air — an unspoken wariness.

The Rev. James Cheung, a graduate of Fort Worth’s Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was Kowloon City Baptist’s senior pastor. He liked China preserving the Basic Law, but he cautioned, “what is stated in the Basic Law is one thing. However, whether or not it is going to be carried out is another thing.”

Anticipating some friction, Cheung predicted most churches would not encourage people to speak against the new government but noted of individual members, “when we see injustice … we are willing to stand up, to speak up.”

That same week, I spoke with William Mobley, former chancellor of the Texas A&M University System. He was living in Hong Kong and Shanghai at the time, advising businesses. He, too, spoke with trepidation: “I think there is concern that there will be a gradual erosion of the freedom of the press… and other kinds of freedom … won’t be dramatic … but over time.”

Prophetic voices

Today, 28 years after that visit, those apprehensions have proved correct. Despite China’s 50-year promise to leave things untouched, change has arrived and, many argue, not for the better.

Writing in Christianity Today a year ago, Lo Man Wai, editor in chief of the Christian Times in Hong Kong, observed that since the tense pro-democracy confrontations with police in 2019 and implementation of national security laws to quell them in 2020, a “seismic shift” has taken place in Hong Kong.

“Many citizens who have been devoted to this city for decades, including prominent pro-democracy activists, journalists, opinion leaders, social workers and politicians, have disappeared from the public sphere. Some have been detained; others are in exile. Still others remain in Hong Kong but are forbidden to speak publicly,” Lo wrote.

Lo still publishes in Hong Kong, believing it is his obligation as a journalist. Writers at a state-controlled newspaper in Hong Kong, Ta Kung Pao, have accused him of “hijacking” churches.

A few critical opinion makers have had it much worse.

In 2021, government officials used the national security law to shut down the popular pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily. Authorities froze its assets and jailed some of the employees. To this day, owner Jimmy Lai remains behind bars, allegedly even banned by the government from receiving the Catholic sacrament of Communion during occasional visits by a priest. If convicted on all charges, he could face life in prison.

The Baptist Convention of Hong Kong, which links the city’s 164 Baptist congregations, condemned the law on its own website a day before it went into effect. A day later, that online criticism had vanished, Reuters reported.

When describing Hong Kong on its website, the free press organization Reporters Without Borders now notes: “Once a bastion of press freedom, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China has suffered an unprecedented series of setbacks since 2020.”

Resurrection day

Nevertheless, many young people continue to urge their churches to speak out more strongly against what they see as a slow but steady crackdown on expression by the Hong Kong government.

Reuters followed the exploits of more than three dozen young mentors and teachers at the evangelical Tung Fook Church who resigned from their positions after, they say, church leaders asked them to lower their objections on political matters.

Many of the 1.1 million Hong Kong residents who profess to be Christians will not spend Easter on their keisters. The Pew Research group shows their numbers continue to increase slowly. Kowloon City Baptist Church is still thriving, its members still sharing the Gospel.

Today in Hong Kong, as in America, it is Easter Sunday. Regular churchgoers will notice new faces in the pews, a lot of them “C-M-E Christians” — those who attend church on Christmas, Mother’s Day and Easter. Whatever their motivation, considering the troubles that have plagued Hong Kong since the handover and its uncertain days ahead, let us hope that more than a few of them will come seeking for themselves and their community prayer, healing and some kind of resurrection.

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