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On the basis of 180 taped, in-depth interviews in China, Hong Kong's Chinese Church Research Center told TIME Correspondent Bing Wong that there are 5 million Protestants in the more than 50,000 "house churches" that kept functioning during the Cultural Revolution and became the mainstream of Chinese Christianity. Protestants, accustomed to lay leadership, began worshiping in such homes, often at night, and sharing memorized Bible stories as well as hymns. Churchless Catholics sometimes joined these clandestine meetings.
The underground services fostered a truly indigenous form of religion that has finally freed Chinese Christianity from the control of foreign missionaries and thus strengthened its appeal to xenophobic Chinese. Bishop Ding has recently extended official recognition to all rural house churches and hopes gradually to unify them under his organization. Local house leaders, though, are understandably wary of joining any agency under close Communist supervision.
There are far fewer Catholics than Protestants in China, and their situation is complicated. Of the 41 Catholic bishops in the country, only eight were appointed by the Vatican. The remaining 33 were elected by priests in China without papal approval, and are bishops of the government-approved Chinese Catholic Church, known as the Catholic Patriotic Association. There is one notable exception to this schismatic situation: Bishop Dominic Tang, 73, a Jesuit trained in Portugal and Spain. Even though Tang was appointed by the Vatican, remains loyal to the Pope and has so far refused to join the Patriotic Association, the government let him out of prison last year. It has also chosen to regard Tang as a bishop, mainly because so many Catholics in his diocese demanded it.
This February, when Pope John Paul II was in the Philippines, he addressed China and declared, "Whatever difficulties there have been, they belong to the past." Significantly, the Pope has not risked mainland disapproval by appointing a nuncio to Nationalist China, or naming a Cardinal to succeed the late Paul Cardinal Yu Pin of Nanjing, who went to Taiwan in 1949 with the Nationalists. The Pope pointedly refers to that island's religious hierarchy not as bishops of China but as "the bishops of Taiwan." Vatican insiders believe he would drop diplomatic ties with Taiwan in return for restored relations with China.
But the Chinese response to his Philippines speech was cold, and the "patriotic" Chinese bishops may decide to snub the Pontiff and reject the Vatican's overtures. Even if the status of existing bishops is worked out, the Communist rulers of China may not allow future bishops to be appointed by a Pope in far-off Rome.
Neither the Pope nor China's rulers know quite what to do about the many Chinese Catholics who, like Bishop Tang, suffered intense persecution for decades because they remained loyal to the papacy and spurned the patriotic bishops. It is possible that most Chinese Catholics will continue to refuse to recognize the government-imposed religious hierarchy. Says one such Vatican loyalist in Shanghai: "Many of us grew up together and shared the sufferings of being Catholic. There isn't a single one who will go to a patriotic church."