Love China '75

The Manila hotel ballroom was festooned with red Chinese lanterns last week, and behind the podium hung a huge black and white photo of Communist Chinese workers and soldiers on a sightseeing tour of the Forbidden City. The meeting was not, however, a rally for Mao, but a gathering of 419 Evangelical Protestants from 22 nations intent on spreading the Gospel to the People's Republic.

After the founding of that republic 26 years ago, bitter anti-Communism ran strong among the Chinese Evangelicals scattered across Asia, and the Western missionaries who work with them. Many of them seemed to think that Communist China did not exist. Yet at the conference, called "Love China '75," some delegates talked about Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai almost as if they were their old friends. Remarked one delegate: "For the first time, Chinese Christians outside the mainland are seeing the Chinese not as 800 million blue ants but as human beings."

Friendly Statement. Missionaries are still barred from China. But some of the delegates wanted to send a friendly message to the Chinese people, while others favored a declaration insisting that the Communist government halt repression of Christians. The presiding chairman of the meeting favored a hard line. He was "Brother Andrew," a Dutchman who smuggles Bibles into Communist nations. "We can never trust the Communist leaders," he said. "Dialogue is a moral farce." By week's end the group decided to broadcast a friendly statement to the mainland.

Delegates also eagerly traded news about Christian communities that have survived, even thrived, under Mao (TIME, Dec. 16). One participant, former China Missionary Leslie Lyall, soberly suggested that the experiences on the mainland taught an important lesson. Believers in all countries, he warned, should begin memorizing Bible verses in case Christianity had to go underground in their countries as well.

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